OBSERVER: Beam me up AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS
Financial Times, Jan 18, 2001
Beam me up
Other gatherings of the world's most influential people have hardly proved tranquil affairs - just ask the veterans of the World Trade Organisation's get-together in Seattle or the International Monetary Fund's Prague meeting last autumn.
But in Switzerland they do things differently. The movers and shakers coming to the Davos business summit next week can rest easy: there is a local ban on demonstrations.
All the same, the anti-globalisation activists will try to hold a protest on January 27. For their part, Swiss police are mounting a huge security operation for the January 25-30 event.
Still, demonstrators will have a home-grown high-tech means of getting their message across.
The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's swissinfo division has set up a special service that allows users to send text messages from their mobile phones or the web - and renders them into large green letters on the slopes of one of the mountains overlooking Davos itself.
"These messages will be projected in giant letters on to the slopes of Mount Bolgen in Davos by a laser beam, after being checked by swissinfo's editorial team," the company explained yesterday.
It calls the "interactive happening" Hello Mr President - a reference to Davos attenders such as Mexico chief Vicente Fox, who may well find themselves reading what the mountains are saying. (For details on how to project to the power set, see www.hellomrpresident.com.)
Swissinfo reckons the whole thing will be a work of art, arguing: "It enables people to express their feelings and opinions about the main issues of the meeting of the World Economic Forum." Just don't expect all the messages to be fan mail.
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2000.