A recent discussion on another forum really strengthened the need to clarify just what the term 'Telecentre' means. A proponent of South Korea's 'PC Bangs' (Korean parlance for an Internet Caf�) described the 20,000 South Korean 'PC Bangs' as Telecentre's. The use of this descriptor was argued by other respondents as inappropriate because not one of these commercial Cyber Caf�s is community based or driven by development objectives (most are simply computer gaming venues). None are true Telecentre's as all commenced life as commercial ventures vying for an ever decreasing market; a market where home PC adoption makes 'PC Bangs' largely obsolete (South Korea is the worlds most wired nation and while there were more than 50,000 PC Bangs in year 2000, today there are less than 20,000 due to changing market conditions). I can only wonder at a market where 30,000 small businesses vanish in the space of 4 short years!
There are many lessons to be learnt from the Korean experience and to me, the two most evident are: 1/ Sustainability is not as simplistic as a choice of software or venue as it contains many variables of importance; not the least being the matter of a mission driven by need and supported by the community. A Telecentre that looses community focus is doomed to the anonymity of being 'just another provider' in a highly competitive market. 2/ WSIS makes scant reference to the threat of ICT's and totally fails to provide deliverables for threat mitigation other than a few oblique references to Spam and security - yet South Korea teaches that development is also not as simplistic as 'build it and they will come and prosper'. The populace of this highly wired nation are increasingly called to deal with the downside of interactive ICT's. Quite apart from the loss of 30,000 small businesses, one-third of South Korea's online population; more than 20% of the total population are now considered to be 'Internet Addicts'. The Government is so concerned about the social implications that South Korea has established a "Centre for Internet Addiction Prevention and Counselling" that receives thousands of requests for help per day. We are potentially opening Pandora's Box and WSIS seeks to hasten the process by placing unrealistic timeliness on Governments to achieve a vision yet to be tested or evaluated, even less understood. If Telecentre's can promote anything to this process I hope it is that of caution; of slowing down the zealous nature of WSIS to drive change overnight. Telecentre's have a long history of promoting managed and contributory development and acknowledge that development does not occur in quantum leaps - I hope we can bring our culture, ethos and work ethic to the table of WSIS. Rgds, Don _______________________________________________ telecentres mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/telecentres To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
