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Abstract

WHILE SERIOUS EFFORTS are underway to improve the information infrastructure of the developing world, an equivalent effort is needed to build the “content infrastructure” that would permit all nations to produce the content needed to fill the Global Information Infrastructure. Shortcomings in this area can be seen in the lack of television production in much of the world. With little money available to pay production costs, countries import cheap American fare, even if it conflicts with their national values. Book production follows a very similar process, with lack of skilled workers and high production costs resulting in limited book publishing even on local subjects. Computer databases, a new form of information packaging, are dominated by American companies, even more so than is the case for television or books. The World Wide Web and other international data transfer approaches seem initially to offer a solution to the problem; however, shortcomings in telecommunications means that very poor countries will have no more presence on the Web than they do in international bookstores.

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Correspondence to William Wresch.

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William Wresch is Associate Vice Chancellor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. He spent the 1993–94 academic year in Africa as a Fulbright Scholar teaching computer science at the the University of Namibia and doing research on international information flow. His book,Disconnected: Haves and Have Nots in the Information Age, was published in 1996 by Rutgers University Press.

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Wresch, W. Empty highway. J. Comput. High. Educ. 9, 71–91 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02954767

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