Introduction

The arrival of the Internet has revolutionized the way people live, work and communicate. Today, more than 1.8 billion people around the world are connected to the world of cyberspace and do various kinds of activities online. Each day, they “create”, “use” and “share” a large amount of information so much that information generated and transported over the network grows faster than anyone could imagine.

According to a survey by International Data Corporation (IDC), the total amount of digital information worldwide reached 281,000 gigabytes in 2007, accounting for 45 gigabytes per one population. The amount was 10 per cent larger than IDC earlier expected.

IDC predicted that digital in formation would grow at 60 percent annually. With this rate, the amount of information on cyberspace will hit 1,800 exabytes in 2011.

The growth of worldwide digital information is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Growth of Digital Information Worldwide (2006-2011)

Source: International Data Corporation (IDC)

In Thailand, the annual growth of digital information increases around 30 per cent in average. A report by www.sansarn.com estimated that the total amount of digital information including documents, images and videos would reach 3,170 gigabytes in 2010 and the figure is expected to rise to 5,560 gigabytes in 2011. Details of digital information growth in Thailand are shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3 as below.

Figure 2: The Total Amount of Digital Documents (2006-2011)

Figure 3: The Total Amount of Digital Images and Digital Videos (2006-2011)

In this new era, information is vital asset for the country’ s development. Nonetheless, information available in digital and analog form is still unstructured data so it’ s difficult for people to extract information for best utilization.

To move the country forwards, it’ s a challenge for Thailand to transform information into digital assets so that people and businesses can utilize the digital resources to leverage their life, work, education and business and eventually bring Thailand towards the knowledge-based society as planned.

Contact

For more information:
http://www.digitized-thailand.org/