 Hello, I'm Heather Haywood, the head of the Information Management Service at ITU and I'm very honored today to be speaking with two very distinguished historians, Dr. Gabrielle Balby and Dr. Andreas Vickers. The reason that we invited you to speak with us today is that the two of you co-edited a book that was published last year in June 2020, titled History of the International Telecommunication Union Transnational Techno Diplomacy from the Telegraph to the Internet. Can you tell us a bit about the book? What was your inspiration for the book and how you came to work on it together? This is a book about international and transnational communications and ITU was the first organization ever and still plays a crucial role in managing global communication today. We also try to have a global perspective with chapters on the United States, on Europe, but also on Africa and Asia, so sometimes those are regions that are not so much considered. I think this is really important to embed our book into this tradition of looking at technological infrastructures, communication technologies in a long-term historical perspective and to see how non-state actors like the ITU played really a key role in making that transnational Europe possible that we know today. What we see is right from the start of the ITU that people from different backgrounds, with different expertise, with different also disciplinary traditions and expectations come together at ITU conferences and have to negotiate new standards, have to negotiate prices, have to negotiate institutional rules and regulations and hereby we see that technicians, technical experts somehow become also diplomats and diplomats need to learn the language of the technical experts in order to understand each other. And this interesting mixture in this international arena, which is the ITU, is for us a perfect example of what we call technical diplomacy, it's about democracy, it's about globalization, it's about accessibility. So these are all questions that are at the very heart of ITU negotiations. For us historians engaging with these topics means that we try to raise our voice as historians and say we have the same when it comes to such big questions as the right to communicate versus the right to monitor for example. Why look into the archives? To me, I really like the idea of finding the lives of people of the past, finding alternative ideas of communication for example, ways of looking at forms of communication among humans that even today are surprising, are stunning. Communication history is not a linear process, so if you look at the past you see also these roots that going in different direction. And very often we face also the problem of not having access to the sources, so in this sense I really want to take the opportunity of thanking and congratulating the ITU, of doing such an effort in digitizing their collections and making them openly accessible, which is absolutely not the case with most of especially private archives. So I think really ITU is doing a fantastic job in making this heritage accessible and usable for research and the book that we wrote has profited largely from this online availability of sources. So thank you for doing such a good job. The ITU has been living through let's say the age of high imperialism, colonialism, of the nationalism leading to world wars and in all of these times questions of free communication of the right to exchange information and to speak has been under threat. And the ITU from the very beginning has learned how to deal with that. So I think really the ITU has to a certain degree paved the way for new kind of dealing with technical issues which have become center stage for modern societies. It's more and more important today, more and more relevant the role of the ITU as a neutral institution, a neutral international organization. There is a need for what the late is called a superpartis association, more now than ever I think. Again, looking at the past, why the ITU had such a relevant role because it was a key place what we call an arena. In the book we said that it was an actor, an arena and an antenna. And being an arena, so the place, the hub we could say today where the negotiations are made, negotiations on regulatory regimes as we said before, physical space but also virtual place. Think about the correspondence or the journal telegraphic that I mentioned before where people could exchange opinion. This could be something to be preserved by the ITU according to me. So being always a kind of arena where discussions can be taken, a relevant place where you look at for having recommendations in terms of standards. Then also the antenna thing is important. The ITU has been able in the past to pick up ideas and to bring these ideas to the international discussion. This is something more and more difficult but it should be done even today. Being for example at the forefront of the research. Today is something that we tend to think is preserved to big private companies. They have big research and development departments and they have to do it because they have the money to do it. I don't think it's the only place where you can find contemporary research. For example in these international organizations like the ITU you can also find places where relevant important technicians can discuss about the future of innovation. What I think is important in the geopolitical perspective and also in the antenna function that Gabriele was mentioning is to give also countries, players, actors a forum, a sounding board that come from the global south for example. So really ITU from its statutes has a philosophy of kind of egalitarian voice giving one voice to one country. And so here the United States have the same kind of power as a very small country like Belgium for example or some other country from Africa or Latin America. And I think this is really important. This is a huge difference to other more industry driven institutions. And that's what I hope will remain a key role of the ITU to be that sounding board in a more democratic and egalitarian view on how to rule, how to regulate global communications. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us today and for sharing your knowledge with us. Thank you.