The founder of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia dropped a bombshell during his keynote speech at ICT Expo 2007 last week by saying that Internet censorship is one of Thailand's biggest problems and that the system should be reexamined to see if it is in the best interests of the country.
Addressing an audience that included high-level officials from the host Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Nectec and the National Science and Technology Development Agency, Jimmy Wales said that a strong economy requires the free flow of ideas and that the disruption of the Internet harms projects like Wikipedia.
"Thailand should recognize that censorship is a barrier to progress," he said.
Later, when asked if he realized that his hosts at the Ministry were the ones responsible for censorship in Thailand, Wales said that he was glad he had been talking to the right people.
Wales' comments came after ITU deputy secretary general Zhao Houlin announced that Thailand would host ITU TelecomAsia next year from September 2-5 at IMPACT Arena, adding that the ITU's Global Symposium for Regulators would take place in Pattaya from March 11-16.
The importance of Internet infrastructure was also emphasized in the final morning keynote at ICT Expo last Friday when Cisco Systems senior vice president Howard Charney stressed how the Internet was both an engine of innovation and a single global ecosystem that provided tools to enhance competitiveness.
Later Motorola Asia's head of technology Ray Owen took the stage to explain the importance of wireless broadband, calling new technologies such as WiMAX an essential technology to improve the ICT readiness countrywide.
"I believe that it is specifically important for Thailand," Owen said. "We believe that Thailand has a real opportunity now to be one of the leading countries in Asia for wireless development and one of the key enablers of that is spectrum release," he added.
In other keynotes, a call for a national root CA system in Hong Kong was made by Andrew Cheng, winning support from the director of the electronic transactions commission secretariat here for this approach to be applied in Thailand, while Asia Online's Dion Wiggins unveiled his company's statistical machine translation engine, which he claimed can now translate up to seven million words a day between Thai and a number of other languages.
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WIKIPEDIA should be totally banned from major research institutions throughout the world for it provides the means for distortions and untruths to be put in print across the whole globe. This cannot be good for humankind as if people start to believe every word that appears in Wikipedia, they will get things wrong. It is as simple as that, but the consequences could be huge for economies and people.
If you wish to read more I suggest that you get a full insight into Wikipedia and visit (web link)
and go to the bottom of the page.
Wikipedia is run in reality by a bunch of overgrown kids who do not care about those who really count, people themselves.
Dr. David Hill
World Innovation Foundation
Bern, Swiss
Posted by david hill on Sunday, November 25 2007 02:35 AM