If civil society is going to adopt and recover the notion of an information society, it should return to these basic notions, posing the correct questions:

Who generates and possesses information and knowledge? How is it valued?

How is knowledge spread and distributed? Who are the custodians?

What restricts and facilitates the use of knowledge on the part of people to attain their goals? Who is best and least positioned to take advantage of this knowledge?”

Alternative formulations under debate: Given the predominance acquired by the term information society, alternative formulations tend to use this term as a demarcation reference.

An initial objection has to do with the word society in the singular, as if it was dealing with a uniform world society. The proposed alternative is to speak about information or knowledge societies (using plural).

Several UNESCO documents refer to knowledge societies. This idea was taken up by civil society actors who participated in the Summit and who adopted the term societies in their consensus documents.

As for information, the argument brought forward by Antonio Pasquali (2002)  had repercussions on civil society at the Summit: To inform essentially connotes causative and ordering unidirectional messages with a tendency to modify the behavior of a passive receiver; to communicate, the interrelation of relational, dialogical, and socializing messages between speakers equally qualified for free and simultaneous reception/emission.

If Information tends to dissociate and create hierarchies between the poles of the relation, communication tends to associate them; only communication can give birth to social structures. (emphasis by the author.)

And in fact, civil society consensus documents adopted the formula information and communication societies in order to be set apart from the techno centric vision present in the official discourse, without losing their referentiality to the Summit theme.

One could consider that this option was an important gesture within the context of the WSIS; but it does not escape from being a weighty formulation for current usage.

As for the debate on the knowledge society, those who uphold it consider that it evokes precisely a more integral vision and an essentially human process.

Others, however, object to it for its association with the dominant concept that reduces knowledge to its economic function (the notion, for example, of knowledge management in companies, which emphasizes essentially how to assert one’s claim to and take advantage of employees’ knowledge); which values only the type of knowledge that is supposedly objective, scientific, and digitizable, disparaging that which is not.

An interesting variant, which emerged within the framework of the WSIS debates, even if there were very little repercussions in the process, is shared knowledge society (ies) (sociedad(es) del saber compartido or ... de los saberes compartidos).

Among others, Adama Samassékou (at that time president of the WSIS bureau) proposed regarding the information society: It is important to understand what this concept covers: it does not have to do with information that is disseminated and shared, but rather with a society in which there is a wish to communicate in another manner and share knowledge. It has to do then with a shared knowledge society and a knowledge society.

Alternate definitions: The concept information society, born under the precepts of neo-liberal globalization, infers that henceforth it will be the technological revolutions that will determine the course of development; social conflicts would be things of the past.

For the same reason, this concept is no longer the most appropriate to qualify the new trends in societies, nor much less to describe a counter-hegemonic project of society.

Our position is that, beyond debating the appropriateness of one term or another, what is fundamental is to contest and delegitimize any term or definition that reinforces this techno centric conception of society.  We do not intend to propose an alternative formula herein, but rather present some criteria to foment the debate.

First, we welcome the notion that any reference to societies should be in the plural, recognizing the heterogeneity and diversity of human societies.

This also implies reaffirming the interest of each society appropriating technologies for their specific development priorities, and not simply adapting to them in order to be part of a supposed predefined information society.

Second, we affirm that any definition that uses the term society cannot describe a reality circumscribed to the World Wide Web or ICTs. The Web may be a new social interaction scenario, but this interaction is strictly integrated to the physical world, and the two spheres are mutually transformed.

Lastly, we are backing a project of society where information is a public good, not a commodity; communication, a participative and interactive process; knowledge, a shared social construction, not private property; and technologies, a support for it all, without becoming an end in itself.

Reflection on Good Governance and Development in the Knowledge-Based Society: For In good governance and development in the knowledge-based society, emphasis must be set in the production of knowledge and its transformation in concrete applications, and must contribute to the well-being of citizens and societies.

The importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as essential tools in the facilitating of democratic participation by all stakeholders should also be showcased, as well as the use of these tools to increase transparency and accountability on the part of all countries.

Good governance and development in the knowledge-based society must be accompanied by the promotion of democracy; social and economic development and; promotion of human rights.

It is expected that the participation in the virtual forum will contribute to a deep analysis of the issues corresponding to governance and development in the knowledge-based society.

There is no doubt that nowadays the driver of competitiveness and economic development is knowledge. Countries rely less and less on their natural and physical resources to create value and rely more on intangible know-how.

This is the main attribute for a knowledge-based society.  But this society does not limit itself to a massive and pervasive use of ICTs. It demands new competences that require learning capacities from institutions, from the productive and academic sectors, and most importantly it requires the generation of inter-institutional networks to solve society’s problems.

The knowledge-based society demands compromise, commitment, and shared responsibility among governments, the private sector, and the civil organizations. The goal being an equitable distribution of the benefits that this type of society produces.

The diverse countries face the challenge to set appropriate national policies and incentives to promote the transformation of their economies to their knowledge-based societies that will meet:

Economic goals such as: A better insertion in international markets based on adding-value to our natural resources so they are no longer considered as commodities but as differentiated products that meet the needs of final consumers; A better diversification of the domestic economies so that potentialities are realized and provide massive economic opportunities; creation of skill-intensive jobs that secure adequate earnings to workers so they can enjoy better standards of living; The spread use of intellectual property rights as one of the most efficient ways to protect knowledge; build the basis for sustainable development by using adequately our renewable resources and by substituting non-renewable ones by other forms of capital such as an increased knowledge base; the reduction of the informal economy so that the tax base is wider and tax revenues allow governments to meet their populations’ demand for public goods;
Social and political goals such as: Improving the access and quality of education, via the use of ICTs, for human capital is the basic resource to create knowledge; improving the quality of health services to native and rural communities by increasing the access to modern medicine services but also by rescuing and improving native knowledge; alleviate poverty and increase the opportunity of wealth creation for poor populations by valuing their traditions, culture and native knowledge, and by making them attractive to international markets; reduce gender, physical handicap, and ethnic biases, among others, by providing the population with equal opportunities to develop their unique skills and to value them adequately; reduce social exclusion and increase citizenship as a basis of democratic governance, by means of opening spaces of informed participation aided by ICTs.

Email: bbazimya@yahoo.co.uk