Moral challenges in the information society

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"There is in current public debate, policy and practice a strong emphasis on the importance of information and information technology. The forthcoming United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (Geneva, 2003) stresses the prospect of future societies as ‘information societies'.

It is disconcerting that most of the preparatory documents for the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (2003, Geneva) 'communication' has practically disappeared. There is a real danger that the Summit will make the same mistake as the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), which in its Final Declaration did not refer to communication, but only mentioned information and news. Yet, the real core question is how to shape 'communication societies'. In fact for the resolution of the world's most pressing problems we do not need more information processing but the capacity to communicate. Ironically as our capacity to process and distribute information and knowledge expands and improves, our capacity to communicate and to converse diminishes.

In complex modern societies we need urgently to communicate with each other. For the resolution of our most urgent social problems the capacity to communicate is much more critical than the capacity to inform. It is a very disturbing prospect indeed if we manage to develop information or even knowledge societies in which people are incapable of conversing with each other...."

Editor's note: This document is not currently online (2014). Please consult the WACC website.