Welcome!

Burkinabes hook up to the net © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep

If you are concerned about issues surrounding the emerging information society, and the process of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), then this is the time and place to speak up!

Digital Opportunity Channel is running this discussion forum in partnership with Bytes for All, a South Asian online volunteer network, and in coordination with Sri Lanka-based Mandate the Future, which is running an online forum on WSIS.

This forum is being moderated by Partha Pratim Sarker, Editor of Bytes for All.

What do we want to achieve?

We aim to:

- Help stakeholders from the South exchange ideas and debate issues about the emerging information society and the WSIS.

- Provide them with a platform to take their voices to policymakers in order to influence national, regional and global strategies.

The forum will run until December 2003 and will discuss a number of broad themes, focussing on each of the topics for about a month. At the end of every topic-based discussion, summaries will be prepared and made available on the Web. The outputs of this discussion - including the reports - will also be presented to various authorities and at various events where the agenda for the information society are being formed.

» Find here more information about this forum

» Sign up for this discussion

Discussions on this forum began on 15 May 2003. Here are summaries of discussions that have taken place so far:

Theme line 2: (June 16 - July 31, 2003)

» Freedom, rights, laws and ethics: How to address these issues for Information Society in the South?

Sub-topics:
» 2.A. Community and Freedom
» 2.B. Development and Self-Expression
» 2.C. Censorship and Self-Censorship
» 2.D. Patent and Copyright
» 2.E. Wi-fi, Internet and Other Technology Issues
» 2.F. Right to Communicate


Theme line 1: (May 15 - June 15, 2003)

» Information Society: What does it mean for the South?

Sub-topics:
» 1.A. Should ICT be always associated with Information Society?
» 1.B. Information society for grassroots development
» 1.C. Indigenous knowledge and information for local needs

Even if you have not joined the forum yet, you can go through recent messages posted to this forum or can read past discussions in the archives.

Watch this space for the summaries of current and future discussions! We will publish them here at the end of every thematic period.

15.12.2005 n the heart of sub-Saharan Africa's most-crowded metropolis, in a dimly lit Internet café thumping with Nigerian music, clusters of two and three teenage boys hover around aging computer screens. They use their Nike T-shirts and baggy jeans to wipe sweat off their brows and palms as they intently craft deceptive e-mails and scour the Web for foreign e-mail addresses.

21.11.2005 "Some inventions are ahead of their time. Others are perfectly of their time. Still others seem so obvious and natural that once people hear about them, they wonder why it took so long for them to come into being. It is a rare invention indeed that manages to be all those things at once," remarked Kofi Annan while lauding MIT's One Laptop Per Child initative at WSIS.