Knowledge Versus Information Societies (fwd)

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KNOWLEDGE VERSUS INFORMATION SOCIETIES: UNESCO REPORT TAKES STOCK OF THE
DIFFERENCE
http://www.unesco.ru/eng/articles/2004/polina10112005141145.php

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 making linguistic diversity a priority, sharing environmental
knowledge and developing statistical tools to measure knowledge and help
policy makers define their priorities.

Knowledge societies, the authors** stress, are not to be confused with
information societies. Knowledge societies contribute to the well-being
of individuals and communities, and encompass social, ethical and
political dimensions. Singapore, for example, started out as a
developing country of shantytowns at independence and achieved economic
growth rates that surpass those of most industrialized nations in just
four decades by promoting knowledge (education) and creativity.

Less well known is Villa El Salvador in Peru, a community of several
thousand people who were evicted from Lima in 1971. Settled in the
desert, they built, without any outside assistance, schools and
education centers and turned their slum into an organized town of more
than 400,000 inhabitants. Ninety-eight percent of children in the town
go to school, adult illiteracy is the lowest in the country at 4.5
percent and more than 15,000 students are enrolled in the University of
Villa El Salvador or in universities in the capital, Lima.

Information societies, on the other hand, are based on technological
breakthroughs that risk providing little more than “a mass of
indistinct data” for those who don’t have the skills to benefit from
it.

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.”

Cultural and linguistic diversity are also central to the development of
knowledge societies, say the authors, pointing out that local and
traditional knowledge can be invaluable for agriculture and health, for
example. This category of knowledge, often found in societies where no
written language exists, is particularly vulnerable. With one language
estimated to be dying out every two weeks, much of this traditional
knowledge is being lost. Examples illustrating the utilisation of
traditional knowledge, for instance in agriculture in Fiji, are
included in the report.

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.


* The first in a new series of World Reports, “Towards Knowledge
Societies” will be presented at the World Summit on the Information
Society (Tunis, November 16-18). The next World Report, scheduled for
2007, will examine cultural diversity
**An international team of leading experts and intellectuals, directed
by Jérôme Bindé, Deputy Assistant Director-General for Social and Human
Sciences and Director of the Division of Foresight, Philosophy and Human
Sciences at UNESCO, contributed to the World Report.

Full version of the report “Towards Knowledge Societies"  (PDF, 5.5 MB)