Will this week's Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, have any lasting impact? The annual Summit, writes Stephen Johnson, "has become a venue for endless photo opportunities, commitments with little follow-up, and platforms for rants by mischief-makers like Venezuela's leftist president Hugo Chávez."

At their worst, "staid summit proceedings encourage loose cannons like Chávez to speak their minds." The Summit could end up "looking like a bad date that the 30-odd attending heads of state may want to forget the morning after."

That's not inevitable, concludes Johnson, if delegates can counter the antics of spoilers with meaningful discourse on the root causes of the problems to be addressed.

---

Read "The Keys to a Successful Americas Summit"
by Stephen Johnson

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently published a study detailing the demograph­ics of the U.S. military. The study was undertaken in response to a request by Representative Charles Ran­gel (D–NY), who in December 2002 claimed that “[a] disproportionate number of the poor and mem­bers of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the military, while most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent.”

For decades, the Internet has developed with a minimum of government interference. The core governance of the medium has been performed by non-governmental entities and overseen by the U.S. government, which has exercised a light regulatory touch. It is no coincidence that the medium has prospered from this benign neglect, growing from a research curiosity into a major force in the world economy and an invaluable venue for the exchange of information.