ABSTRACT
Information and communication technologies are electronics, computers and software, satellites and modern mass media technologies form one of the most advanced, fastest growing and increasingly important parts of modern technology in general. Ambivalent as the spread of every new technology is, outline the challenge which information technologies may bring to the still rather ideologically rigid societies of the East. Increased liberalization, enhanced by the spread of information technologies, could bring an easing of East-West tensions and more democracy for the peoples in the East. Telecommunications services in the CMEA countries are provided exclusively by the State postal monopolies. The description of problems with production of personal computers in Czechoslovakia is a telling example, featuring the pitfalls which the new technology is facing under the centrally planned economic system. A promotion of the process started in Helsinki in 1975 is one of the crucial points since it deals with both dissemination of material technology and information proper.
