The pace of the revolutionary changes in the ICTs and their applications and their impacts, influences and challenges are more pronounced in the developed countries. The rest of the world is also catching up with them fast in the digital stakes.
Public policy makers in both the developed countries and the rest of the world and administrators, who have even bigger challenges than policy makers, will have serious problems to tackle. Censorship and freedom will be in conflict with each other in relation to the use of and access to the ICTs.
ICTs have ushered in a new era of global communication, production, trade and investment. It has implications for all of the players in the economy and society irrespective of whether they reside and work in the developed countries or in the developing countries. The digital economy is transforming the lives of people beyond recognition. There is a revolution in the way that things are produced and traded before they reach the final consumer. Also there is a revolution of rising expectations as the world is getting transformed to a global village and the access to the good things in life will no more be in the domain of the rich and influential, whether in developed or developing countries.
The buzzword is e-commerce. The term e-commerce goes beyond doing business electronically. Doing business electronically means that the conventional processes are computerized and are done on the Internet, however now it seems that the Internet is not merely an alternative to make a channel for marketing or selling product online. Instead the electronic marketplace enables the seller to innovate the whole business process from the producer to consumer to service by integrating them in the seamless whole, where product choices and prices are updated according to the customer information in real-time on web stores.
