William Melody

A Little About the Speaker

William Melody is the founding director of the Centre for International Research on Communication and Information Technologies (CIRCIT) in Melbourne, Australia. CIRCIT is an interdisciplinary policy research centre which examines the economic and social implications of new communication and information technologies.

Commentary

Belief Systems:

Mr. Melody talked a lot about "supply and demand" giving the impression that he believed the overriding belief system is the one described by the market economy concept.
He expressed the idea that the Canadian government's belief system was out of sink with the true issues that need to be resolved regarding the information highway. According to Mr. Melody, the Canadian government was wrongly focussed on building an infrastructure (i.e., the plumbing). In effect, he was saying that the government's belief system is still based on an industrial age viewpoint where infrastructure development was important to the development of industry.
Apparently this viewpoint is no longer valid. Mr. Melody suggested that the focus should now be put on the education and training of the people.
Consciousness:
Development:
Emotion:
Interaction:

Mr. Melody emphasized his belief that interaction with regards to technology is governed by the economic idea of supply and demand.
Language:
Learning:

Mr. Melody felt that education would be impacted by the information highway. This would be through the advent of distance learning and computer assissted learning.
Memory:
Perception:
Performance:
Skill:

Mr. Melody recognized society's level of skill is important to the facilitation of convergence. He felt that it was important to spend more time on educating people with the proper skills, rather than spending the time on further developing the technology.
Thought:

Return to Speaker Summaries Menu

Let me know what you think: email vlad@combdyn.com
Return to Vlad Vila's Homepage