This issue highlights the importance of promoting the knowledge society and the culture of knowledge exchange in the region through the information and communications technology (ICT) which contributes to generating, treating, classifying and exchanging information. It presents a number of regional projects and systems for building a knowledge society, including the establishment of knowledge networks in deprived communities based on information technology, the project launched by ESCWA to promote the development of Arabic digital content, the global system for sustainable development, and others. This issue also presents the ICT activities implemented by ESCWA in the second half of 2008 and the ICT impact on daily life.