UNESCO'S PROJECT ON THE EXCHANGE OF KNOWLEDGE FOR ENDOGENOUS DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

“Information is knowledge. Knowledge is power.” More than ever, this saying is acquiring compelling force, although it has in fact been true since man sought to communicate and to free himself from the constraints and dangers threatening his survival or hampering the development of his highest potentialities. But with the extension of relationships with societies, this maxim of Auguste Comte becomes even more pertinent. Those who lack knowledge see their fate shaped by others in the light of their own interests. This is true of individuals as well as of social groups and of people. Millions of human beings are subjected to oppressive forms of domination, both covert and overt, because they lack access to knowledge. What will the situation be tomorrow? Does irreversible “planetarization” mean that some individuals or groups of people will become the brain, storing and originating knowledge, while others will be reduced to functioning as connective or muscular tissue? The metaphor (if such it is) may be open to criticism, but the question, which is at the heart of this whole research on the exchange of knowledge, remains valid. We must face the possibility, remote though it may be, of an unequal division of mankind into a more or less standardized, mechanized, and “functional” mass and an initiated elite in possession of all the power. Processes are moving ahead that will culminate in such a situation ‐ unless we prove capable of instituting a new international economic order. No further evidence is needed than the increase in the disparities and inequalities of income and ability to acquire knowledge not only between industrialized and Third World countries, but also within each of these groups of countries, between sections of the population, between regions, and between town and country.

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