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Note to the reader from the UNU
With science and technology having an increasing impact on our social and natural environments as well as on the conduct of the scientific community itself, the UNU considered it important to create a forum for leading experts to contemplate the directions in which specific advances are leading us. To meet this end, a seminar series on "Frontiers of Science and Technology" was established in 1991. The first symposium under this series looked at the role of the emerging theory of chaos in discussing "The Impact of Chaos on Science and Society."
The symposium on "Expanding Access to Science and Technology- The Role of Information Technologies" was the second symposium under the "Frontiers" series. New information technologies are fundamentally restructuring traditional ways of access to science and technology. However, with the growing amount of scientific information and the current rate of technological innovation there is a trend to greater disparities among nations in terms of information access and retrieval, and the ability to apply existing data to social and economic development. Based on the symposium, the current publication assesses the new technological potential in providing access to, retrieval, exchange, and handling of information. In this context intelligent information access and its impact on information retrieval and transfer as well as opportunities of developing countries in utilizing the new information technologies are of major concern.