The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2005). Towards knowledge societies.   Retrieved February 27, 2008, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001418/141843e.pdf

Towards knowledge societies is a document produced by UNESCO. It is surprisingly readable. I usually expect such documents to be dry and more "academic." In any case, there are some interesting observations and statistics offered. Below are some quotes and ideas (from the first chapter) that I wanted to keep track of.

• In knowledge societies, everyone must be able to move easily through the flow of information submerging us, and to develop cognitive and critical thinking skills to distinguish between "useful" and "useless" information (p. 19).

Tom Brown (2005) also recognized this phenomenon when he introduced the paradigm shift in education from that of "knowledge production" to "knowledge navigation." I, too, have discussed how mobile learning can provide a variety of methods for learners to navigate through the ever-increasing amount of information out in the world (Koole, 2006).

• The new value placed on "human capital" suggests that traditional models of development, predicated on the enormous sacrifices deemed necessary for the achievement of long-term growth (at the cost of very great inequalities and possibly a high degree of authoritarianism), are gradually giving way to models centered on mutual help and the role of the public services. Making the most of knowledge leads to imagining a new, collaborative development model based on the guarantee, by government, of "public property", where growth is no longer viewed as an end in itself, but simply as a means to reach the target. (pp. 19-20).

I see in my notes in the margin of the paper, I wrote the word "utopian." I think that was my initial reaction to this paragraph. There are some companies and countries in the world that may benefit from the private ownership of information. Therefore, I cannot see that the world, as a whole, will share all information—even with peoples in dire need of economic relief.

The paragraph is also interesting in that it sees government as playing a role in guaranteeing access to information. Greenspan (2007), in his recently published book, suggests that the protection of property is one of the most important factors in promoting capitalism. Without protection of property (i.e., "ownership"), economic relationships would break down. Are these two viewpoints (UNESCO vs. capitalism) in opposition? It would appear that information must become a "human right."

• But it is not so much the brisk growth of new information and communication technologies, such as the internet and mobile telephony that is the revolutionary breakthrough--it is the use of those tools by providers of informational, educational and cultural contents, along with the media play an increasingly important part. (p. 21)

I would suggest that this partially alludes to the task-artifact cycle. Technologies are introduced, but through use, their purposes and actual use is modified according to needs (Kukulska-Hulme, 2003).  The technologies, in turn, may be modified to better suit the new practices, and on through the cycle.

• . . . the number of Internet users is growing at a very brisk pace, rising from over 3 percent of the world population in 1995 to more than 11 percent in 2003 - or over 600 million people.
  
  
• We are already living in a "one-fifth society", in which 20 percent of the world's population monopolizes 80 percent of the planet's resources. . . As we shall see the digital divide helps widening and even more alarming divide - the knowledge divide, which adds up the cumulative effects of the various rifts observed in the main areas that make up knowledge e(access to information, educational, scientific research, and cultural and linguistic diversity) and is there real challenge facing the building of knowledge societies. (p. 22)

This UNESCO article also suggests that we are, possibly, in a trend of "'hyper-industrialization' because knowledge itself has become 'commoditized' in the form of exchangeable, and codifiable information" (p. 22). The fear is that this may threaten "cognitive cultures." Because so much importance is placed on technical and scientific information, local, traditional, and indigenous ways of knowing may be inappropriately devalued.