[Telecentres] Basic Telecentre Items/ICT Definition

[Don Cameron]

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 Café) 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
Cafés 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