More on Geneva and the World Bank report from Forbes: NEW YORK - Sometimes all good intentions get you are good intentions and a lot of talk.
That's my general impression of the meeting in Geneva this week of the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society. The group consists of some 1,700 experts who are gathering to talk about how to address the so-called digital divide. That would be the gap between people around the world who are presumably well-off enough to afford a telephone line, be it wired or wireless, and an Internet-connected PC, and those who are not. The U.N. General Assembly endorsed the idea of holding a summit on the problem in 2001 in two phases, according to the information on its Web site. The first phase took place in Geneva in late 2003, and the second will take place in Tunis this November. The meeting now taking place in Geneva is being labeled a "preparatory meeting" to get ready for the big meeting in Tunis. <snip> Meanwhile, it appears the digital divide is shrinking at a healthy clip, with little intervention from the United Nations. A new report from the World Bank says half the world's population--that would be about 3.2 billion people if you go by U.S. Census Department world population figures--now has access to a telephone of some kind, either through a fixed line or a wireless network. That's a fair improvement over the 2.5 billion who had access to a phone in 2003, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). [...] The article: http://www.forbes.com/personaltech/2005/02/25/cx_ah_0225tentech.html -------------------------------------------------------- Cedar Pruitt Online Content Manager EDC Center for Media & Community http://cmc.edc.org cpruitt @ edc.org (617) 618-2185 --------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
