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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.
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