"Chance leads wise people and drags the fool"

Foreword

We devoted this book, "e-Ukraine" ("Electronic Ukraine") not as much to entering the new Millennium by our country as to joining by Ukraine the world-wide process of formation of the new Information Society.

Realities of the Information Society are further more tangibly affecting living of our State. Therefore we decided, that it is time to get to study and forecast the process in order to have an opportunity of affecting it with providing maximum advantages for Ukraine. In the book, we mention most of the basic terms, notions, names, theoretic leads and technological trends, etc. One should notice, that the work is one of the first studies in the sphere of the Information Society research in Ukraine. Later, there will undoubtedly be a whole Ukrainian library devoted to this issue, expert groups, institutes: It is what is going on all over the world, and very soon it will surely come to Ukraine.

So, let us start. First of all, we have to answer some fair enough questions. And the first of them will be: "Why 'e-Ukraine', where did we get it from?" We introduce this term by analogy with e-Europe (Electronic Europe), e-commerce (Electronic commerce), after all - e-being (electronic being).

An e- prefix stands for "electronic" and means entire or partial transference of a phenomenon, a subject or a process to virtual reality. Virtual reality, according to Britannica, is a result of modelling and simulation to enable a person to interact with an artificial three-dimensional visual or other sensory environment.

In practice it is nothing neither more nor less than expansion of microchips - the most efficient tools for information resources operations - in all the spheres of life. Tools and processes are getting further more sophisticated due to electronics; the extent of these improvements is increasing. So, from some moment, the entire industries gain electronic characteristics. Thus, commercial transactions are made exclusively in "electronic way" - and electronic commerce emerges; education transfers from a classroom to electronic network -- and electronic education emerges. And so on, with regard to all aspects of life.

Today, we are witnessing a significant acceleration of related processes in our country. Changes, observed now, are not just quantitative, as it was during first years of "microchip progress". Now, these are qualitative transformations not only on the industry-level, but on the level of the State policy. This is why we believe, that the situation has given us a right to talk about "Electronic Ukraine".

In no case we claim, that Informatization in Ukraine has been completed. We just state the fact, that our State has chosen this way of development, following all developed countries of the world.

True, that many think, that creation of the Information Society in Ukraine is Utopia - because even the most basic problems have not been solved. They ask: why should we in Ukraine be interested in a phenomenon, that in reality now relates only to the world leading economies? These countries enjoy widely accessible telephony, extremely widespread mobile communications, significant extent of computers owned by business, households, available in institutions. After all, majority of population there enjoy such level of prosperity, that really allows to choose the most effective lifestyle, to demand the highest level of service in any sphere of activity. Ukraine has a long way to go to reach all that, to be honest. So, why would we care about their problems, actually?

Some people would really reproach us for wasting time to explore ephemeral projects. But let us sort it out, whether issues of the Information Society development are really just "theirs".

Our starting point is, that Ukraine today is a free, open country. There is no longer a boundary line drawn between our country and the other world, world community, other cultures and ideas; there is no longer an iron curtain of ideological pressing, violence and fear. Endless variety of ideas, lifestyles, mistakes, thoughts, achievements are available. We entered the free world, but this world entered us, too. Today, such expression as "in an isolated country" has definitively lost any meaning.

Road system and navigation development during Middle Ages lead to establishing a common market throughout Eurasia; invention of radio telephone and other means of communication made transcontinental industrial economy possible. Today the process that started in Middle Ages is reaching the peak. Information networks are means for unification of not only continents, corporations or economies. They are the means for uniting people and their worldviews.

A common intellectual and emotional space is being created. The principle of its existence is accessibility for everyone and a possibility - at least a potential - to include all members of society and its institutions. This is the very feature, expanding the new space to Africa and remote islands. So, such country as Ukraine, located in the geographic centre of Europe, can not stay apart from the new space. The new, Information world, needs Information Ukraine -because the world network would not be able to maintain its integrity without us; and the network's functioning would be limited and inefficient - so, there would no longer be a notion of the Global Information Society, unlimited and omnipercipient.

One more important point. Most people in Ukraine now experience difficulties. And the State is here to take care not only about today, but of what is going to be with us and with our children tomorrow. And as the leading analysts predict cardinal changes in the world economy to be caused precisely by the information technologies, - so, wouldn't it be logical, or even necessary to choose this particular sector of national science, economy, education as a strategic one and to make it the State priority?

Yes, we can leave information technology in the same group with other industries and to gradually draw all them up to the level of developed countries. But with such a scenario these countries will always be developed as compared to us, and we will stay as ever developing country - to them. We believe that Ukraine should choose different, more productive way to create the best possible perspectives for us in the nearest future.

We are certain: in no case should we chase the rest of the world., diligently jogging along the same route the world was going a hundred, fifty or five years ago, making the same mistakes. The same mistakes are no reason to make declarations about the same achievements. So much the more because in such a manner we would have to chase them for the rest of our life and a little more for they are not going to stay in the same point either.

The only feasible way for us to join the avant-garde is to choose advance strategy. Our fundamental science, technology and software development have to get a few steps ahead in relation to contemporary world's achievements. Our potential will be sufficient to endure this race while possible competitors work on the nearer tasks. When the future progress begins to require principally new solutions, then we will win a decent place under the Sun.

There may be an objection again: "Till a fat one gets thinner, a thin one will die". Perhaps, today's problems are going to disappear on their own? We insist, though: it is necessary to tackle the issues, which are going to arise before the whole world only tomorrow. And then questions to be solved with titanic efforts today, the ones running out of the budget, leading to a dead end - such questions will be solved tomorrow in one step, for new circumstances will change their dimension and content.

No one is blessed with a gift to stop a moment and to rearrange things there to one's heart content, until everything is finally in order. Motion goes on even in the worst of times, and it is really worthwhile for us to make a few shortcuts to get on the straight road to be on a level with the very first ones. Don't forget, stability is not stagnation. It is a stable development and changes, continual renewal of each and everything. With changing environment we should change as well - change in order to survive. Because circumstances are renewing indeed no matter whether we want it or not, or even whether we are aware about that. And even the most developed countries are seriously concerned about the place they are going to get in the new Millennium, and whether there will be any place for them at all unless they make efforts to get it.

Now, let us ask you, citizens of the country, that is just developing: Can we afford inertia, or even more so - can we afford to ignore the issue per se? If it is so difficult for us today - then where are we going to find ourselves tomorrow, as we don't want even to hear about this "tomorrow"?

Ron Sommer, the Head of the Board of Directors of "Deutsche Telecom AG", in his presentation for CeBIT 2000 in Hannover asked: "What the new age is going to bring us? Will we have to face old unsolved problems again, or will we be catapulted toward new ideas and innovations? Will we form the world economy, or will it crash us down?".

If such questions disturb successful entities, doesn't it mean, that we should pay a hundred times more attention to solving them? And if we put aside any indulging idealism, let us think about what follows: who will need us as partners, if we exclude ourselves from the space of the future, from the Information Space? Who will be interested in our opinion, an opinion of losers who could not manage to find their way? We will be just pulled along someone else's streamline of events.

We do not think, that such a scenario may satisfy anyone from you. Nor do we think that there will be so naive persons among our audience, who believe that things will settle one way or another, and this scenario will never come true. This is by no means pessimism. This is just informed optimism, that encourages energetic actions and does not allow to relax.

A little more about the development strategy for Ukraine. We do not object to opinions of those, who insists on renewal of industry or renewal of social security and guarantees created by the Soviet system; nor do we object to those who refers to the classics of American economics and insists on the soonest development of service sector. All these proposals are integral components of a healthy society. However, are they not the priorities of the 20th century?

Here we would like to cite an opinion, that quite closely depicts a line connecting 1900s with 2000, as it seems to us: "The 20th century had many definitions. Among them were the following: the Age of electricity, industrialisation, nuclear power, cybernetics. On the other hand, it was called the Age of revolutions, world wars, collapse of empires, repartition of the world and formation of the modern geopolitical system, of local wars and counter-revolutions. It was also called the Age of industrial society, socialist development, consumer society and post-industrial society. The last decade of the century gets the name of a threshold of the Information Society ".

Throughout this time, social and economic development have come down the long and winding road. Every step had its own achievements, but none of them was ideal. And probably none of them should be replicated in the new century. A new day demands new solutions, new approaches and - new priorities. Experience of the 20th century will always be at our disposal. But new realities shift our life and change the rules of the game too dramatically to just ignore them, while laying the foundation of the house we are going to live in tomorrow.

This book is for you, people of the 21st century, citizens of Ukraine, who does not want to be outsiders in anything concerning this life. In the book, we attempted to outline the main trends, characteristic of the global social system, which is forming today. But we would warn you against taking this book too seriously: everything changes too quickly in the new world. So, what was "a hundred percent true" in the morning, may become outdated and viewed as something like old superstition far in the day.

This was our starting point for writing this book: a little of humour, a little of general assumptions, that can hold true within more or less long time, and a lot of examples - since experience can never lose significance. Experience can just alter its significance with time (i. e. to transform from positive experience to an example of "how one shouldn't do in any case", and vice versa).

We also ventured to accompany each chapter with some recommendations for Ukraine; however, let us emphasise one more time - these are by no means imperatives, but proposals, which may prove useful to apply.

So, please don't forget to smile from time to time while reading. And don't lose connection with plain reality: its Procrustean bed very often breaks ample theoretic schemes, whatever perfect they would be. We discuss how anyone of you might do, but by no means has to do just so. Thank you for your interest to our book; hopefully, it will be useful.

With best wishes, authors