[governance] Condolences

[Divina MEIGS]

Dear Flore, dear all,

I just now find the various messages on the list about the sudden passing
away of your father. This is very sad news for our whole community of
researchers and activists. It is also a very sad personal loss for me as he
was a very solid and sincere friend. I feel I have to tell you that he loved
you and always mentioned you in conversation, being very proud of your
independent spirit and confident in your future.

I have met Francis in Geneva in 2003, much like many of us, and we have
worked together in similar coalitions, him for sciences me for humanities,
all pushing for civil society's voice to be heard in a constructive manner.
Francis was a very bright scholar in his own right, in chemistry, working
among other things on the beautiful topic of the memory of water. He was
also a genius at computing, with generous ideas about the internet of
things, for which I used to say that he should also push for the internet of
subjects,something that made him laugh but to which he definitely agreed. He
was developing with ITU a research on alternatives to the generation of
domain names, always in the perspective of making the digital networks more
accessible to all. (see a recent article in Le Monde:
www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2009/10/02/les-65-000-concurrents-de-l-i
cann_1248113_651865.html

I am particularly distraught because I feel that he was on the verge of
making the contribution to society that he was dreaming of, which I fear
will be lost with his passing away. When I saw him recently at Eurodig, in
mid-september in Geneva, he was genuinely happy, recovering from the
hardships inflicted on him in France. Like many mis-understood people, he
was not a prophet in his own country, something from which he suffered
though he was genuinely a citizen of the world. He will be remembered here,
among other things, for his proposal for "Mécénat global" that is slowly
catching up with the general public, as you can all check by going to Le
Monde: 
www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2009/09/09/le-mecenat-global-alternative
-a-hadopi_1238166_651865.html
   
He had just recently sent me his references as I will quote him in an
upcoming book. As he wrote back to me, "you can go and check it all there:
http://www.muguet.org".

I join my voice to Wolfgang Kleinwachter, to ask for a minute of silence in
his memory at IGF, in Sharm el Sheik, to commemorate a magnificent member of
our community whose name for me will always be connected to the memory of
water and to the surf of the internet. If all this is true, his memory will
endure in the fluidity of our open networks.

As he would always say at the end of any number of  meetings, "A plus"...

Divina 

  
^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=
Divina Frau-Meigs
Professor, media sociology, University Sorbonne nouvelle, Paris (France)
Director, master's programme "E-learning and media education engineering"

Board Member, ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Asso)
Past vice-president, IAMCR (Intl Asso for Media and Communication Research)
Focal point, education, academia and research taskforce, WSIS
website: www.medias-matrices.net
^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=





____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance