This publication studies the way information technology can be used to achieve broader developmental goals and integrate the region into the global information society. It addresses three main questions: what kind of information society is desirable; what are the specific regional traits of the move towards an information society; what policies are needed to support the transition. The book also contains the text of the Bavaro Declaration, which lays out some guiding principles.

This publication studies the way information technology can be used to achieve broader developmental goals and integrate the region into the global information society. It addresses three main questions: what kind of information society is desirable; what are the specific regional traits of the move towards an information society; what policies are needed to support the transition. The book also contains the text of the Bavaro Declaration, which lays out some guiding principles.

"This book analyses the development of information societies in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, and provides input for public policy on information and communications technologies (ICT) issues."--Provided by publisher.

What can be said of Latin America and the Caribbean's experiment with regional integration? Did it live up to the expectations? What does this experience say about the regional integration agenda moving forward? Do the tectonic changes undergone by the world economy in the last quarter of a century matter for policy design? This report offers answers to these pressing questions. It argues that while the "new regionalism" was in general effective to promote international trade, it failed to boost the region's competitiveness abroad. Fragmentation is seen as the original sin, and convergence the path to redemption. The policy recommendations offer different routes to convergence, from a cautious, cumulation of rules or origin approach to a non-stop sprint to a LAC-FTA. But they all come with a warning: in the current challenging trade environment, the benefits of caution might be too little, too late.

This book presents pioneering research that is designed to show, from a qualitative and ethnographic perspective, how new information and communication technologies, as applied to the school system and to local governance initiatives, merely reproduce traditional pedagogical approaches and the dominant forms by which power is exercised at the local level. The studies thus constitute points of departure for further thinking about the need to promote an Internet culture based on the social application of a OC right to communication and cultureOCO and an OC Internet right, OCO that will permit the establishment of true citizen participation and free access to knowledge, with due regard to personal and individual rights such as those of privacy and intimacy."