In 1989, The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (Basel Convention) was adopted. The treaty aimed to reduce the movement of hazardous waste between countries and prevent exporting such waste from developed to less developed countries.
Timeline
Borges died in Geneva
Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
Borges
Borges chose Geneva as his home and, ultimately, the place where he is laid to rest. Borges, one of the leading writers of the 20th century, was the master of discovering paradoxes and of addressing irreconcilable contradictions in human existence.
He rarely provides answers in his writings. Instead, he takes us on a journey showing that every certainty triggers a new uncertainty. Borges’s work gives a sobering look at the human condition and the limits of reason when it comes to solving personal and social problems.
His fiction is inspirational reading for addressing the core questions of humanity’s future, centred on the interplay between science, technology, and philosophy. His short story The Library of Babel, written in 1941, is prophetic; it outlines the search for meaning in endless volumes of information, as we do today on the internet. Borges writes: ‘Nonsense is normal in the Library and that the reasonable (and even humble and pure coherence) is an almost miraculous exception.’
The truth exists somewhere in Borges’ library but is almost impossible to find as it is overwhelmed by irrelevant information, fake news, and competing narratives.
In addressing informational chaos, Borges shies away from giving a naive hope of certainty, but he does provide some hope: He advocates for order in chaos and argues that by taking an occasional rest, we can stop, or at least slow down, the constantly shifting kaleidoscope of meaning.
Borges wrote about Geneva:
Of all the cities in the world, of all the homelands that a man seeks to earn, Geneva seems to me to be the one most likely to bring happiness. Thanks to her I discovered, since 1914, French, Latin, German, Expressionism, Schopenhauer, the doctrines of Buddha, Taoism, Conrad, Lafcadio Hearn and nostalgia for Buenos Aires. Also love, frienship, humiliation and the siren call of suicide. Things remembered are always pleasant, even trials. These are personal reasons, but I can give a more general one. Unlike other cities, Geneva has no emphasis. Paris is not unaware that she is Paris. Benevolent London knows that she is London. Geneva, however, barely realizes that she is Geneva. Here are the towering shadows of Calvin, Rousseau, Amiel and Ferdinand Hodler, but no one speaks of them to the traveller passing through. Geneva, somewhat like Japan, has renewed herself without losing her past.
Borges
Here you can find an excerpt from Jovan Kurbalija’s study published in the Geneva Digital Atlas: EspriTech de Genève | Why does technology meet humanity in Geneva?
Establishment of IETF
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is established to coordinate the operation, management, and evolution of the internet.
TCP/IP meets ARPANET
The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), developed in the 1970s, is adopted as the sole protocol standard for the US government-sponsored Advanced Research Project Agency Network (ARPANet). ARPANet evolves into what is known today as the internet.
ISO headquartered in Geneva
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a non-governmental international organisation composed of 165 national standard-setting bodies that are either part of governmental institutions, or mandated by their respective governments. Each national standard-setting body, therefore, represents a member state.
WHO founded
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialised agency of the UN whose role is to direct and co-ordinate international health within the UN system. WHO is increasignly involved in dealing with digital issues, particularly focusing on the role of digital technologies in attainment of health and well-being globally.
IEC headquartered in Geneva
Founded in 1906, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is the world’s leading organisation for the development of international standards for all electrical and electronic technologies. The IEC’s standardisation work is advanced by nearly 20000 experts from government, industry, commerce, research, academia, and other stakeholder groups.
The IEC is one of three global sister organisations (in addition to the ISO and the ITU) that develop international standards.
ITU establilshed
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a UN specialised agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs) comprising of 193 member states and over 900 companies, universities, and international and regional organisations.
ICRC established
Established in 1863, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is an independent international humanitarian organisation headquartered in Geneva. The ICRC is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, along with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and 192 National Societies.
The ICRC addresses the manifold implications of technology, ranging from data protection for humanitarian actions to the application of international humanitarian law to cyber operations in armed conflict.
Birth of Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Geneva-born linguist, whose book ‘Course in General Linguistics’ (1916) (1) became the cornerstone of modern linguistics. Saussure’s work on language and systems laid the basis for natural language processing (NLP) and modern AI.
Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.
Ferdinand de Saussure
Saussure’s pioneering linguistic research on identifying language patterns and relationships between signifiers and signifieds (or words and their meanings) is key to understanding how NLP systems can map words and other linguistic units to the concepts they represent, allowing them to perform tasks such as text classification and machine translation.
The conceptual bridge between Saussure and the latest AI developments is represented in Alan Turin’s paper Computing machinery and intelligence.
Here you can find an excerpt from Jovan Kurbalija’s study published in the Geneva Digital Atlas: EspriTech de Genève | Why does technology meet humanity in Geneva?
1. Published by Saussure’s students from lecture notes after his premature death. de Saussure, F. (1916). Course in general linguistics. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23291521M/Course_in_general_linguistics
2. Turing, A. M. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind 49: 433-460. https://redirect.cs.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf