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INTRODUCTION
The nineties in Poland was a period of dynamic change in all spheres of life.
After fifty years of autocratic rule, the Polish state regained its sovereignty.
Fundamental changes also took place in the sphere of information. With the return
of democracy in 1989, the possibility of unlimited freedom of speech opened
up and censorship disappeared almost overnight. A competitive mass media market
started to develop in the place vacated by the previous mass media that had
been monopolised by the state authorities. At the same time, Poles also gained
access to foreign media and new technologies. In the place of the old one-channel
television set and the single state broadcaster with the whole of society as
its sole recipient, countless information channels started to function. The
average Pole was suddenly swamped with a mass of messages and information.
However, by the time this all happened Poland was lagging many years behind
in terms of telecommunications infrastructure. To create even the foundations
for a modern information society, it was necessary to deal with some of the
effects of the ineffective planned economy, which had failed to value real human
needs and had not changed because, on its own terms, it did not need to. At
the beginning of the 1990s, fixed-line telephones were a rare and controlled
item and the quality of inter-city and international connections left much to
be desired.
During the subsequent decade, most of the gaps have been mostly filled and
the process of liberalisation of the telecommunications market continues. The
telephone has ceased to be the main - inaccessible - object of desire. Today,
this doesn't apply even to the popular 'mobile' phone. The average Pole cannot
function in everyday life without a mobile. The Internet is increasingly widely
used and has been annexed by the youngest generation of Poles as 'their' means
of communication. The market reforms of the 1990s, combined with acceleration
of economic growth (the rate of GDP growth in Poland at that time reached 7%
a year), made Poles hope they would not remain sitting on the margins of modernity
and would take an active part in this great adventure of the evolving modern
world.
Let's look back just one more time - the world of the 1990s in fast motion.
Poles were faced almost overnight with market rules and a flood of information,
new participants in the emerging global village. They seem to feel pretty good
in this new role.
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