Bridge Across Saskatchewan: Equal Access to Information for all Residents

Abstract

The information decade of the 1990s is dependent upon the successful interface of information providers with information users via telecommunications. Insistence that we are on the threshold of the ‘Information Age’ has persisted through the last quarter century. More than half of those working in North America are employed in creating, processing, distributing, storing, and using information. People, information, and telecommunications are being brought together in Saskatchewan in a unique and exciting development based upon a state‐of‐the‐art telecommunications system guided by a user‐created infrastructure called SCAN. This paper looks at the special nature of Saskatchewan's information delivery system in respect to the high degree of public input during its creation, the unique technical configuration of the network, and the participatory nature of programming to be carried on the network.