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