[LIS-Forum] Unesco on knowledge societies

[Subbiah Arunachalam]

Improving access to knowledge

Knowledge versus information societies: UNESCO report takes stock of the
difference, a press release dated yesterday. Excerpt:

    A UNESCO report launched today urges governments to expand quality
education for all, increase community access to information and
communication technology, and improve cross-border scientific
knowledge-sharing, in an effort to narrow the digital and “knowledge”
divides between the North and South and move towards a “smart” form of
sustainable human development. “Towards Knowledge Societies”, launched
in Paris today by UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura, also
advocates...sharing environmental knowledge and developing statistical
tools to measure knowledge and help policy makers define their
priorities....The Report, opens a panorama “that paints the future in
both promising and disquieting tones,” says the Director-General,
“promising because the potential offered by a rational and purposeful
use of the new technologies offers real prospects for human and
sustainable development and the building of more democratic societies;
disquieting for the obstacles and snares along the way are all too
real.” One of the main obstacles, according to the Report, is the
disparity in access to information and communication technology that
has become known as the digital divide. Only 11 percent of the world’s
population has access to the internet and 90 percent of those
connected live in industrialized countries. This digital divide is
itself the consequence of a more serious split. “The knowledge
divide,” write the authors, “today more than ever, separates countries
endowed with powerful research and development potential, highly
effective education systems and a range of public learning and
cultural facilities, from nations with deficient education systems and
research institutions starved of resources, and suffering as a result
of the brain drain.” Encouraging the development of knowledge
societies requires overcoming these gaps, “consolidating two pillars
of the global information society that are still too unevenly
guaranteed – access to information for all and freedom of
expression.”...The stakes are high, stresses the Report, for the cost
of ignorance is greater than the cost of education and knowledge
sharing. It argues in favour of societies that are able to integrate
all their members and promote new forms of solidarity involving both
present and future generations. Nobody, it states, should be excluded
from knowledge societies, where knowledge is a public good, available
to each and every individual.

(PS: The report itself is not online, at least so far.)