[Telecentres] Basic Telecentre Items/ICT Definition

[Don Cameron]

(in relation to the South Korean PC Bangs experience)

>> And when those businesses disappear - what will happen to the community?
So the community may not have originally been the driving factor, but the
community is now a driving factor... (snip)

Taran the reality is that a majority of these businesses have already
disappeared. As to the question of "what happened to the community", this is
difficult to answer... The community of businesses (if there ever truly was
one) has clearly diminished. The community of online users continues to grow
and evolve beyond a need for physical points of access due to the wide
availability of home computers and broadband. The community of users from a
perspective of Cyber Cafés offering 'community' perse (an ability for people
to meet and gather at a physical venue) probably never existed to begin
with. Anyone involved with urban Cyber Cafés knows only too well that most
guests walk in the door, sit at a computer terminal and leave a few hours
later without ever speaking to another living soul other than to pay for the
service. Unlike a Telecentre these are not places of physical community.

Being technically literate by global standards, the broader South Korean
community probably laments the loss of so many SMO's to the national economy
however view these developments as an expected evolutionary development of
technological deployment. Old technologies are replaced by new; Physical
access centre's involving the constraints of time and travel in already
congested cities will certainly be replaced by home access. Maybe some view
this as a new opportunity - or maybe not... I am no expert on Korean
thinking or culture - what is evident is that many Koreans have come to
realise that ICT's are not a means in and of themselves; they are a tool
that can damage as easily as they can build.

Rgds, Don