IDSB10H3 Knowledge and Communication for Development

 

Week Three: Discourse on ICT for Development and Emerging Models

 

Week Three: Discourse on ICT for Development and Emerging Models Overview: Key Learning Objectives: Key Terms and Concepts: Required Readings: Additional Resources: Discussion Questions: Online Activities

 

Google doc for collecting note taking for this week:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iMvljVRiJ9RlkNznj9kzUfr7saNstLVvWJU1sghy_YI/edit 

 

Overview:

Since the middle of the 1990s and for the following decade, there were a great deal of hype and optimism placed on the potential of ICT to transform the lives of people in the developing world. So much interests and funding from diverse agencies were poured into supporting ICT for development that a whole field - ICT4D - began to emerge. The One Laptop per Child initiative was a darling at the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003, a global event convened by the UN that brought together multiple stakeholders, including government officials, civil society organizations and the private telecommunication section, to debate and to come to a common vision of the global information society and the multiple roles ICT may play in development, from education reform, to improving health delivery, to promoting transparency in governance.

 

In recent years, however, there is increasingly the realization that much of the hype was unjustified, and driven by untested assumptions about the power of ICT as a driver of economic growth and therefore of development. This realization, along with the lack of appropriate measures and monitoring mechanisms for the effectiveness of ICT4D intervention, has led many donors to stop funding ICT driven initiatives. At the same time, the technocratic view of ICT for Development (ICT4D) has given way to a more nuanced approach to ICT and development based on an understanding of the design principles and the architecture of Web 2.0, as well as a culture of openness and a new economics/culture of co-production of knowledge (discussed last week).

 

This week we will be focusing on the changing discourse of the role of ICT in development and try to separate the reality from the hype. We will look closely at the assumptions about the contributions of ICT for development, and examine the limitations of technology-driven agendas. ICT also has the power to create new inequities, as well as exacerbating existing ones, even to structure and replicate marginality itself (see Thompson, reading this week).

 

We will then move beyond the discourse that centers on economic growth or modernization, to consider the capability approach championed by Amartya Sen. The capability approach focuses on the effective opportunities people have to achieve what they consider to be valuable in life with the use of ICT. We will also try to connect this approach with Mark Thompson's notion of Development 2.0, a framework inspired by the behaviour, practices, and social collaborations enabled by the deployment of Web 2.0 platforms. What are the assumptions of this emerging view, and is it likely to lead to new insights into traditional questions on development?

 

For the learning material for this week, we've created a page with relevant videos and questions to help you better understand the issues raised in the overview. Please try to view each video carefully, keeping in mind the questions and answers you should be looking for.

 

 

---

Key Learning Objectives:

Students will learn:

To question the development possibilities opened up by ICT. What ends are ICTs supposed to serve, and how and whether technological progress contributes to social development.
To articulate the conceptual role of emerging models of network collaboration and peer production and whether these ideas bring new insights and reflections on the purpose and practice of “development” itself.
To understand how Web 2.0 informs current debates around participation, development of civil society, economic inclusion, and institution building.

 

---

Key Terms and Concepts:

 

ICT4D, Technocratic worldview, Architecture of participation, Development 2.0, Web 2.0, Capability approach, Amartya Sen. 

Technical concepts:

TCP/IP, Internet Exchange Point (IEP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Internet Service Provider (ISP), Broadband

 

---

Required Readings:

Thompson, M. (2008). ICT and development studies: Towards development 2.0. Journal of International Development, 20(6), 821-835.

 

Zheng, Y. (2009). Different spaces for e-development: What can we learn from the capability approach? Information Technology for Development, 15(2), 66-82.

 

Additional readings:

Stiglitz, J. (1999). Knowledge as a Global Public Good. In I. Kaul, I. Grunberg, & M. A. Stern (Eds.), Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century (pp. 308-325). New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Schech, S. (2002). Wired for change: the links between ICTs and development discourses. Journal of International Development , 13-23.

 

 

---

Additional Resources:

 

Open ICT for Development
http://openict4d.wikidot.com/
"This wiki is an attempt to collaboratively build the theoretical and empirical understanding of Openness and its applicability to the field of human development, and ICT4D in general. It began as a think piece and has now been placed in wiki format hoping to take advantage of collective intelligence."

 

Smith, M., Elder, L., & Emdon, H. (2011). Open Development: A New Theory for ICT4D. Information Technologies & International Development, 7(1).  http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/692/290

 

Graham, M., & Haarstad, H. (2011). Transparency and Development: Ethical Consumption through Web 2.0 and the Internet of Things. Information Technologies & International Development, 7(1). http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/693

 

 

---

Discussion Questions:

Please post your answers on the course Forum

 

1. Investment in ICTs has often been justified for the purpose of economic growth and modernization. What are the assumptions and the associated theory associated with this perspective? What are the evidence in support of this approach?

 

2. Mark Thompson (2008, page 825) argues that "“Conceived as ‘Web 2.0’, a paradigm for technology-enabled social life comprising diversity, collaboration and multiple truths, ICT now poses a direct challenge to development studies itself. “ What is Web 2.0, and what are the challenges that Web 2.0 is bringing to debates on development? 

 

---

Online Activities

 

1. Web 2.0 is not a new concept anymore, though it is only just beginning to make its way into development debates and practices.

 

 “Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an ‘architecture of participation’, and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences (O’Reilly, 2005).”

 

For this week's online activity, we would like you to do some searching on the Web to find examples of Web 2.0 platforms in development related activities. Once you located the example(s), please provide the link and a paragraph description of the initiative and put it on this page: Web 2.0 and Development Examples

 

2. Continue with what we started last week with the Glossary page. Take some of the key words or concepts from this week and add your definition to the glossary page. I expect that over the course of the term, each of you would have contributed 2-3 definitions and also help refine or edit entries provided by other students.

---