Challenges of the Knowledge Society (Apr 2011)
THE ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN REDUCING OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN THE PROCESS OF KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY AND THE SAMPLE OF CALL CENTERS IN TURKEY
Abstract
The emerging of knowledge societies brought about a lot of transformations in societies in the last decades. At first, these effects have been appeared in the developed and then in the developing world not only urban area also rural. The diffusion of the technologies that is invented on the mentality of knowledge society, have been effecting all life and promising to have major changes by providing access the opportunities for training and education, media and social networks and remodeling the way we do business, the nature of work and economy. In this concept, the internet, as a tool of the knowledge society, has also been regarded an important instrument in developing the rural regions around the globe. By connecting different parts of the world, the internet and other tools of information technologies create new job opportunities for individuals and companies. There are many people who cannot have and reach to the good education as well as the job opportunities in the rural areas as much as there is in urban areas. Many state institutions and companies have easily been investing to the rural area because of information technologies’ low level entry costs. Especially, many of them open new call centers in the poor areas of countries. the purpose of this paper is that the role of information technologies in the rural area is going to be evaluated on the call centers sample in Turkey. First part of the study, the literature is reviewed about knowledge society and information technologies. In the second part, the benefits of information technologies for individuals who live in the rural areas and some model applications are explained. In the final part, call centers that established by state and private companies are investigated according to their employment and training effects for the poor in the rural areas.
