The Information Society Available to Purchase

Governments across the world are waking up to the potential of the Information Society, to greater or lesser degrees. Some maintain that private enterprise must lead the way with a minimum of government intervention; some insist on taking a leading role in the development of an information infrastructure for their country. All of them show a more enlightened attitude to the information revolution than the late Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer of the British Post Office in 1876, who said of the invention of the telephone: ‘The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.’ In this column we plan to report on developments in various countries around the world that help buildup the Information Society. Readers from around the world are invited to send us reports from their own area: please e‐mail tel@learned.co.uk