Has anyone ever noticed that the world community caters to the needy almost every commodity except for information? We have UNICEF, WFP, WHO, UNDP, MSF and so forth, but where is the WIP or perhaps even more ambitiously; the WKP?
Why is there no World Information Program or World Knowledge Program handing out much needed information and knowledge to the peoples of this world that are in need of it?

Although UNESCO and UNDP try they seem to be unable to do it on the scale that for instance the big health and peacekeeping programmes can. When governments ask for knowledge in the form of education and training, support seems to peter away. It seems it is easier to ask for a UN/EU/NATO/AU army of 20000 soldiers instead of an army of 20000 teachers. (By the way, only after a war or health crisis the world realizes that if the people involved had the knowledge before, the whole crisis wouldn’t have been on the scale it escalated to in the first place).

Is it because Sir Francis Bacon was right after all; knowledge is power, and the powerful do not want to share this expensive commodity. After all; information creates knowledge and knowledge creates innovation and the most innovative regions of this world are also the most powerful. The powers that be are scared enough as it is at the moment because the BRICs have proved that the above paradigm is the truth and that access to information and knowledge and the resulting technological, market and organizational innovations can lift developing countries out of their economic and social predicament. Suddenly world bodies like the WTO, WIPO and IMF have been used and funded for altogether different objectives; that is, to keep information and knowledge and the right to access it away from the needy.

As with the open access issue I believe there is a need for collective action on this, an opportunity for an NGO start up, which will champion the rights of the many. Open access is in need of collective action on the part of educational institutions such as universities, and learned societies. As nicely put by Paul Courant in his article in First Monday (although alas focussing apparently on the developed world) it is the academic duty to research, publish and make available to all the results of this research. Let us underline ALL here and make sure that the people that need it the most get access to information and knowledge without IP, trade and other strings attached. Is there a way to merge academic duty with big charitable vision. Is there a way to merge Stiglitz with Gates?

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