The Pacific Dialogue

International Center for Communications

From San Diego to Singapore the Pacific Community, with its vast distances, diverse cultures, and hundreds of languages, shaped by the planet's greatest ocean and by the tide of telecommunication and information technology, is the fastest-growing economic region on earth. The Pacific Community is our world's most striking example of the internationalization of business and human relationships. From the Pacific shores of the Americas to the traditional societies of the Island Nations to the ferment of modern Asia, this emerging new community is at once the birthplace of humankind's oldest continuing civilization, and from Silicon Valley to Singapore, the focus of worldwide technological change. Today's business--indeed, today's human society, depends profoundly on communication and information. We have been called an information society, living in a knowedge-based economy. Effective systems of telecommunication and information are critical and in developing these systems and regimes, cooperation is central to our common success.

The Pacific Dialogue is a new and highly focused program of the International Center for Communications addressing the crucial issues of communication and information within the Pacific Community. University-based, regional in scope and thoroughly international in design, the Pacific Dialogue accommodates many perspectives but maintains and academic neutrality in its programs and management.

The programs of the Pacific Dialogue take several forms:

• A collaborative program of research, addressing communication issues critical to the development of the Pacific Community.

• A series of invitiational meetings and seminars at which those responsible for technology and policy can address ideas and seek consensus.

• Educational events concerning the nature of community and communication, for the children of the Pacific Community.

• Region-wide teleconferences at which nation's leaders in technology and political life explore issues of regional concern.

• Publications, both paper and electronic that report the work of the Dialogue and support that work by adding to the educatonal and informational resources of the Pacific Community.