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World Information Day

World Telecommunication and Information Society Day is an international day proclaimed in November 2006 by the International Telecommunication Union Plenipotentiary Conference in Antalya, Turkey, to be celebrated annually on 17 May.

History

The day had previously been known as 'World Telecommunication Day' to commemorate the founding of the International Telecommunication Union on 17 May 1865. It was instituted by the Plenipotentiary Conference in Malaga-Torremolinos in 1973.

The main objective of the day was to raise global awareness of social changes brought about by the Internet and new technologies. It also aims to help reduce the digital divide.

World Information Society Day was an international day proclaimed to be on 17 May by a United Nations General Assembly resolution, following the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis.

In November 2006, the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Antalya, Turkey, decided to celebrate both events on 17 May as World Telecommunication and Information Society Day.

Significance

World Telecommunication and Information Society Day is observed every year on May 17 in order to raise awareness about the possibilities of the use of Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICT) in bringing societies and economies together by the ways to bridging the digital divide.

A few Themes

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology”—Carl Sagan

“As people talk, text and browse, telecommunication networks are capturing urban flows in real time and crystallizing them as Googles traffic congestion maps”—Carlo Ratti

“Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data”—John Naisbitt