From: tai@starbird.WPI.EDU (Lisa Taikitsadaporn)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.thai
Subject: PostDatabase:  IT CONFERENCE WELL TIMED
Date: 12 Nov 92 18:28:27 GMT
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
NNTP-Posting-Host: starbird.wpi.edu



IT CONFERENCE WELL TIMED

Neshan Dias
Post Database, November, 4, 1992


Last week's conference on "Improving the Quality of Life with Information
Technology (IT) and Telecommunications," was very timely considering the
growing awareness of the importance of IT for development here and public's
push towards improving the quality of life through democracy.

The event was organized jointly by the Telecommunications Association of
Thailand (TCT) and the TIDE 2000 non-governmental agency.

Although according to the organisers, choosing Thailand was more of a
coincidence than due to the fact that the country is in the midst of major
telecommunications and political changes, it produced valuable insight and
raised issues that need to be addressed at the government level to set the
stage for productive development. 

This was what Dr. Kosol Petchsuwan, TCT secretary general who was
instrumental in organising the event that featured renown international
experts, said he hoped would come out of it.

Thailand has become aware that information technology and a strong
telecommunications infrastructure are key ingredients to development, but
development does not always mean an "improved quality of life."

Development has long been gauged by a country's Gross National Product
(GNP), but according to a paper presented by Dr. Mary Bitterman, vice
president of TIDE 2000 in Hawaii, "quality of life has been conceived as
social well-being or the general welfare."

What this means, Dr. Bitterman went on to say, is a satisfactory level of
health, housing, education, employment, and personal safety, as well as
environmental quality, leisure, freedom, and justice.

IT and telecommunications have played a dramatic role in improving this
definition of the "quality of life," noted Dr. Bitterman, adding that a Thai
perspective is "Information is proving to be the new wealth creator, the new
source of power, and the enabling resource of the new ear - the Information
Age  of the 21st century."

She also referred to telecommunications and information systems as being the
"backbone" of the country's information infrstructure.

Dr. Bitterman noted that telecommunications contributed to reducing the
informaton gap between the rural and the urban communitites and in turn led
to "nation-building."

Research done by the Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT), she said, had
shown that lack of telephone facilities, which is especially a problem in
rural Thailand, was a great disadvantage to economic and social development. 
Although a public phone can new be found in every tambon, it will take
another 10 years before every villiage in Thailand will have a telephone,
added Dr. Bitterman according to TOT study.



Articles related to the aforementioned IT conference:
(send requests to me directly for a copy)

"Mobilise IT to promote good govts."
	(An abridged version of a presentation by Justice Kirby, President
of the Court of Appeals, New South Wales, who looks at IT in the lightof
good government and social responsibility.)

"Technical revolution causing dichotomy"
	(Excerpts from the impressions on improving the quality of life in
Asia given at last week's - Oct 27-30 - conference by Dorodjatun
Juntjoro-Katki of the University of Indonesia's Faculty of Economics, who
also sits on Indonesia's Natonalal Advisory Board of Telecommunicatoins.)

"More questions than answers remain"
	(Vincent Lowe of Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang gives his
impressions ofthe conference, in whcih he raises several questions, having
been faced, as he termed it 'information overload.)