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Knowledge
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For updates, send a blank email to digitalgovernance-subscribe@yahoogroups.com The
human race has entered into the new millennium.
The new millennium sees ourselves moving towards a world of greater
inter-connectedness-- in terms of flow of information, capital, goods and
services, inter-twined economies and their globalised impacts. The force (along
with the others) that is fueling this transition is Information and Communication Technology
(ICT).
The advances in information and communication technology,
are re-structuring the global social economic equation - shifting from income divide to knowledge divide. The info-technological revolution on one hand is spearheading the growth of Knowledge Societies in developed countries and has aroused much interest among the civil society, markets and the agents of change. On the other hand, more than 850 million people in developing countries are excluded from a wide range of information and knowledge.
An isolated world does exist amidst the world that has over a billion mobile
phone subscribers and over 500 million Internet users. The poor, especially in developing countries remain much isolated - economically, socially and culturally from the burgeoning information and progress in the arts, science and technology.
It needs to be realized that with the inception of ICT in the modern society:
The direct implications of these attributes are that whoever accesses and manages the knowledge better and uses it more innovatively will
reap the maximum benefits of it. Further, same knowledge would have
differentiated values for different users and it is the ability
and vision of the end user to recognize and embrace the
differentiated values of knowledge and put it to gainful use to realize even more value out of it.
The obvious fact is that Developing Nations and its people are at an unequal platform in comparison to their counterparts in Developed Nations to harness the true potential of
"Knowledge" because of the various barriers to their transformation to Knowledge Societies. Something certainly needs to be done about it and . . . . . . . hence the evolution of the
KnowNet.org Initiative.
Policy Analyst, UNDP, New York (Inlaks Scholar, London School of Economics, UK) Let us know of your comments and feed-forward by signing our Guestbook |