While the World Summit has a focus on Information Society, the report opposes the concept of Knowledge Society. The report stresses that while information societies are built on technological breakthrough, understood and used by a happy few, the knowledge societies “encompass much broader social, ethical and political dimension”.

“Knowledge societies are not limited to the information societies, unlike information, knowledge societies cannot be a commodity”, said UNESCO assistant director-general Françoise Rivière presenting the report in Brussels. “ICT offers new opportunities to the countries of the south, for developments and for all forms of sharing of knowledge,” she added.

The report urges governments to expand quality of education for all and stresses that one of the main obstacles in optimising sustainable human development is the disparity in access to information and communication technology which “has become known as the digital divide.”

Only 11 per cent of the world's population has access to the Internet, and 90 per cent of those connected live in industrialised countries stresses the report. However this digital divide is itself the consequence of a more serious split.

''The knowledge divide today more than ever separates countries endowed with powerful research and development potential, highly effective education systems and a range of public learning and cultural facilities, from nations with deficient education systems and research institutions starved of resources, and suffering as a result of the brain drain," the study says.

In a series of ten recommendations, the report aims to foster the debates about how to achieve knowledge societies globally. Among the recommendations feature the need to invest more in quality education and to intensify the creation of partnerships to foster digital solidarity.

The report is part of a series of study to be published by UNESCO every two years. More than 100 researchers took part in the study.

The report can be downloaded here: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=20507&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

WSIS: http://www.itu.int/wsis/