ation Society Forum for "making the most of the Information Society in the European Union" and academic bodies such as MIT which put focus on human values when "Inventing the organizations for the 21st Century". An overview of these efforts will suit as a good starting point for a more specific investigation of these consequences from the perspective of PNOs and/or telecommunication service providers. The scope of the more specific investigations will include consequences telecommunication services may cause for: employment and job creation; demography; quality of work life; social and democratic values; "fragmentation" and "balkanisation"; sustainable development; public administrations and services, culture, and; life-long learning. Upcoming projects in this area will in addition increase individual and societal awareness, inform service providers about constraints and effects for the economical and social spheres. This will stimulate a reconsideration of certain developments to change the course in such a way that advantages and drawbacks may be better balanced or re-balanced and absolute negative effects might be avoided. Broader studies in the socio-economic area will discover and reveal both the attractive and the problematic aspects and negative effects of telecommunication services in the Information Society. An objective will be to consider whether or not certain products and services conceptually planned and foreseen to be pushed into the market, should be amended for achieving a better societal and individual (customer-related) fit for their harmonious and smooth introduction and diffusion in the market. With this latter goal the proposed exploration of societal conditions and constraints, effects and problems has a clear commercial dimension since any conditions which may create barriers for the acceptance of products and services are counter-productive to business. We believe that the choices our s...
