Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive

of Arabic content and its low rate ofcreation relative to other countries andlanguages.On the other hand, the statisticsindicate that the picture has begun tochange, albeit extremely slowly. AlthoughArabic content on the net remains stable,the number of Arabic sites and pages hasgrown markedly larger. The number ofweb pages containing content in Arabic–including those written in both Arabicand English–has risen from 114 millionpages in 2005 to 189 million pages in2006, an increase of 65.8 per cent. Thecorresponding increase in the numberof English language pages is 63 per cent.The number of Arabic language pages isexpected to reach 5.1 billion in 2012, onthe basis of a rise to 80 per cent growth inthe years to 2010 and 60 per cent growthsubsequently.It is no exaggeration to say that thefuture of Arabic depends on the extentof its use on global information networks.This will require great effort on thetechnical level to obtain all the necessarycapabilities to deal with the language itself.Ambitious targets on the national levelare also called for so that institutionsin the Arab countries–governmentministries, universities, schools, civilsociety organisations–use Arabic intheir operations. In this way, Arabic willbecome a language for the circulation andproduction of the various branches ofknowledge, as it was during the flowering ofArab-Islamic civilisation. (‘Abd al-‘Aziz bin‘Uthman al-Tuwayjiri, 2008, in Arabic).Internet use and the spread of Arabic onthe net present interrelated opportunitiesand challenges that call for unconventionalapproaches to broaden its user base andraise its status (see Chapter 1). Favourablepolicies and initiatives must be adopted;regional and international partnershipsmust be entered into. Digital contentrelated to the Arab countries should alsobe produced and distributed in foreignlanguages. 9 As the following paragraphs inthe section on Arabic digital content makeclear, creating advanced search engines,automatic translation systems, smartprocessing of scripts, semantic searching,and the deployment of interactive websitesto facilitate learning are among the toolsneeded to ensure the spread of a languageon the net.ANTICIPATED ADVANCESIN ICTOver the last few years key technologieshave converged so as to secure on asingle platform kinds of services–such asinternet access, video and audio telephony,and radio and television broadcasting–thatwere previously only available separately.In the last two decades great progress hasbeen made in providing plentiful and upto date information on the internet and viathe search engines operating on it. Itis now possible, by networking computersin educational institutions and researchinstitutes across the globe, to runsoftware that requires the supercomputingcapabilities used in models and simulationsof physical and natural processes.Microprocessor evolution is expectedto continue in the short term on the basisof many current technologies that areall subject to incremental improvementsaimed at limited performance upgrade.This development will help to increase thepower of personal computers and lessentheir cost. 10 This implies the continueddominance of the personal computer inaccessing knowledge resources. Use ofmulti-core processors will allow highperformance computing without a markedincrease in energy consumption. Currentprocessor design tends towardssimplification of the internal structurethrough use of multiple cores and parallelprogramming. Utilisation of the gains madeby microprocessor development requiresnew solutions for memory access, crosscorecommunication, and greater reliability.The term “next generation networks”describes all the anticipated keytechnologies in the backbone and accessnetworks expected to come into generaluse during the next five years. These willThe number of webpages containingcontent in Arabichas risen from 114million pages in 2005to 189 million pagesin 2006, an increaseof 65.8 per centIt is no exaggerationto say that the futureof Arabic dependson the extent ofits use on globalinformation networksINFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES IN THE ARAB COUNTRIES151