ICT for Development ICT4D: Theoretical Contexts

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ICT for DevelopmentICT4D Theoretical Contexts

• ICT4D Lecture 2
• Tim Unwin

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Outline

• The value of theory
• And its relevance to Geography
• Theoretical contexts
• Globalisation and space-time
• Technology
• Partnerships
• IPR and the digital commons
• Setting annotated bibliographies

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The Value of Theory (i)

• This is primarily an academic course
• Thus differs somewhat from others (such as
  Fillips http//www.knowledgefordevelopment.com/)
• But the course also has clear practical relevance
• But what makes it academic?
• Critical approach to enquiry
• Engagement with literatures to shape your own
  ideas
• Situated within the disciplinary framework of
  Geography
• Designed to shape new knowledges
• The key role of intellectual enquiry
• Thus closely integrated with theory

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The Value of Theory (ii)

• Different kinds of theory for different purposes
• Theory acts as context and shapes the limits of
  our intellectual exploration
• Habermass theory of cognitive interests
• Different types of science
• Each with its own cognitive interest
• Highly pertinent to our interests on ICT4D
• Concerns with technical interest
• How we communicate (his later theory of
  communicative action)

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Habermas (1978)
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Summary of implications for ICT4D

• Technical solutions usually allied with
  empirical-analytic science
• Serving the dominant and powerful
• Historical-hermeneutic science concerned with
  language and how we communicate
• Shared communicative competence
• Critical theory concerned with emancipation
• Helping people to make the world a better place
• But are there really three totally different
  kinds of science, or can we combine elements from
  all of them?

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ICT4D theoretical contexts

• Four particularly pertinent theoretical contexts
  for the course
• Globalisation and space-time
• Technology
• Partnerships
• IPR and the Digital Commons

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Globalisation

• Globalisation as product
• An account of what is there?
• The world has become globalised
• Globalisation as process
• Concerned with questions of how?
• Processes of space-time compression
• But why?
• In whose interests?
• Global capitals needs to increase market and to
  reduce production costs

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Globalisation and ICT

• ICT as an enabler of globalisation
• Spreading cultural traits
• Television and radio
• Internet
• ICTs themselves as commodities
• Labour, raw materials, markets
• The dot-com economic bubble in 2000
• But ICTs also enabling local identities
• The local becoming more visible
• The anarchic dimensions of the Web
• ICTs as process and products

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Technologies

• Science and technology in support of those in
  power (building on Habermas)
• ICTs transforming financial markets
• role of GIS in military hardware and software
• But there are also those who see technological
  change as having led to an entirely new kind of
  society
• Castells (1996) The Information Age
• Three stages in the use of technology in the late
  20th century (i) The automation of tasks, (ii)
  an experimentation of uses, (iii) reconfiguration
  of applications

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Technologies Castells

• What characterizes the current technological
  revolution is not the centrality of knowledge and
  information, but the application of such
  knowledge and information to knowledge generation
  and information processing/communication devices,
  in a cumulative feedback loop between innovation
  and the uses of innovation (Castells, 2000,
  p.31)
• Diffusion of technology endlessly amplifies the
  power of technology, as it becomes appropriated
  and redefined by its users (Castells, 2000,
  p.31)
• an over-arching conclusion as an historical
  trend, dominant functions and processes in the
  Information Age are increasingly organized around
  networks (Castells, 2000, p.500)
• information is the key ingredient in our
  social organization and flows of messages and
  images between networks constitute the basic
  thread of our social structure (Castells, 2000,
  p.508)

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Technologies

• Castells work provides a theoretical framework
  for thinking about technology and information,
  but
• Is technological change as significant a shift as
  he suggests?
• Are we really in a new paradigm?
• Is the network society really a qualitative
  change?
• Can technologies still be used to the benefit of
  the poor and marginalised?
• If so, how?
• Has humankind really found its liberation from
  natural forces, as Castells suggests?

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Partnerships

• Global geopolitical changes at the end of the
  1980s fundamentally restructured our ways of
  understanding societies
• Collapse of the Soviet Union
• Apparent victory of global capitalism
• Calls for a Third Way (e.g. Giddens, 1998)
• Combining public and private sectors
• But, negative commentary on much public-private
  partnership for example in the UK
• Seen as the renewal of social democracy

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Partnerships

• Partnerships now dominant also in development
  rhetorics
• Especially since the late 1990s, and the role of
  the Development Assistance Committee (DAC)
• Multi-stakeholder partnerships seen as the
  optimal way for delivering ICT programmes
• Partnerships between governments
• New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD)
• But these partnerships are often not well
  thought through

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IPR and the digital commons

• Enclosure in 17th Century England
• Converted communal land to individual private
  property
• Thereby enabling private profit to replace common
  shared risk and benefit
• At the origins of capitalism
• A tension between private and public benefit and
  responsibility
• At the heart of 21st century debate
• What should be the relationships between the
  private and the public?
• Reclaiming the Commons campaigns

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IPR and the digital commons

• Application to knowledge and education
• In early modern times, education was a privilege
  and had to be paid for
• Knowledge enabled profit during 16th and 17th
  century explorations
• Second half of the 20th century emergence of free
  state education systems
• Knowledge as a free common good
• For the benefit of society
• Universities were thus state funded, and
  generated knowledge that was then made freely
  available
• Late 20th century, the privatisation of knowledge

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IPR and the digital commons

• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
• Long tradition of patents, permitting inventors
  to benefit from their ideas
• Long heritage of concern over intellectual rights
• Hence issues over plagiarism
• But now IPR is increasingly hotly contested
• Universities claim to own the IPR of staff and
  students
• IPR of indigenous peoples
• Tensions
• Universities pay the salaries of staff, and want
  to gain the benefits for recruitment of students
• Many staff believe that knowledge should be free

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IPR and the Digital Commons

• Of particular interest in field of ICT4D
• Internet permits ready access to much information
  rapidly across the world
• Who owns or has rights in such information?
• Possibility of creation of shared knowledges in
  new ways
• Who controls access to information
• Hence concerns about Microsofts dominance
• Digital Commons
• Open Source alternatives to proprietary software
• Need to differentiate between software and content

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Annotated Bibliography assignment

• The task
• Produce an annotated bibliography on a subject of
  your choice in both digital format and hard copy
• Title to be confirmed with me by 26th October
  2005
• Containing at least 30 references with c.100 word
  annotation
• At least half of references should not be
  mentioned on course handouts
• Should do a few every week
• To be submitted by 7th December 2005
• Do keep a copy for your own revision!

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Annotated Bibliography assignment

• The purpose
• To encourage you to read around the course
• To enhance your skills at discriminating
  resources
• To develop your powers of critical thinking
• To encourage you to share information amongst the
  group
• The outcome
• All bibliographies graded at 2(i) or above will
  be disseminated via www.ict4d.org.uk for use by
  people all over the world
• Sharing of information amongst the group should
  lead to enhanced knowledge

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Conclusion

• The importance of theory
• Four key theoretical contexts
• Globalisation and space-time
• Technology
• Partnerships
• IPR and the digital commons
• These provide the context for our explorations of
  ICT4D

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• Opportunity for Questions
• and discussion of seminars and timings