PRIISM: National Information Infrastructures In Pacific Asia: Visions, Reality, and Research Inquiry

Over the last two years, PRIISM, via its members, has participated in three major conferences and workshops whose effort was to focus on research and policy issues related to the information revolution in the Pacific Rim. This increased interest is no accident. It has been suggested that we will soon enter a "Pacific Century," in which the world's economic center of gravity, having shifted from Asia to Europe and then to North America, is now returning to Asia. But it is returning to a very diverse Asia, with many regional differences in language, culture, ideology, income levels and income distribution, and economic policies. Despite this diversity, most - if not all - of the leaders of Asian countries are firmly convinced that IT will help propel their country into the Information Age. Indeed, many nations in Asia Pacific have recently begun to design and implement their widely-publicized national information infrastructures (NIIs). In the previous edition of this column, NII was identified as one of the major information technology issues in the Pacific.