eColonization by Asia - The Global Civiliation Needs Asia 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5/6 - 7 - 8 - 9/10/11/12 - 13 - 14

'The 'ships' that enable this voyage' - eChannels/ Different means for the same ends/ Some natural advantages of Asia
There are no more Einstein's and even fewer universal geniuses like Da Vinci. Learning today is life-long and takes place wherever there is knowledge and whenever it is needed. Reputation is less important than real time experience and learning. Asian universities can start from scratch and offer educations that are built around students, rather than tutors or institutions. The Asian mindset and infrastructure is much more amenable to distance learning. It has masses waiting to teach and learn as well as the openness to new technologies and new concepts. eLearning might be only one way of doing distance education, certainly not yet available for masses since only roughly one percent of the whole world population has a computer and only about five percent has access to one. This shows clearly, that eLearning cannot be the immediate solution. But distance learning can and must be.

Nelson Mandela once said, "If we cannot ensure that this global revolution creates a world-wide information society in which everyone has a stake and can play a part, then it will not have been a revolution at all." We know that not everyone has the skills and resources to be involved in this technologic revolution. For example, Less than 1% of people in South Asia are online, even though it is home to one-fifth of the world's population. (UN human development report, 1999). Forty-one percent of North Americans have internet access compared to 3% of those in Latin America and 2% in Asia/Pacific (Jupiter Communications, 2000).

While the Internet is creating new ways of doing business and communicating, it unintentionally creates a disparity between the haves and the have-nots, perhaps faster and more significantly than any other movement in history. InterConnection's primary goal is to provide groups with the ability to join the Internet revolution by "getting online". Check more interesting statistics on the Web: http://www.interconnection.org/background/statistics.htm

The world does not need Harvard graduates so much as it does updated and knowledgeable working molecules that are able to work within a real-time digital and virtual environment, ready to share their knowledge and expertise rather than keep their expertise to themselves.
Once such an environment of open, molecularized, life-long and just-in-time learning has been successfully digested by Asia, the region will be ready much earlier than the rest of the world to spread beyond its own borders. This will be an even more significant voyage than the medieval journeys of Columbus and Da Gama. And it will have a much bigger influence on the world as a whole. Asia will get the voice it needs to spread its cultures. There are already many existing islands of global learning within Asia, among which the IGNOU Open University and the local Sukhothai University in Thailand. Actually 7 out of the 10 most successful distance learning solutions are in Asia.