The BBC news website has a collection of brief reports about ways that ICT use is being spread and used in poverty stricken areas in South Africa. Everything from mesh networking with tin cans to free open source software.
While you’re on BBC’s site you may want to check out Bill Thompson’s recent article about computer use in exams (or lack thereof). I couldn’t agree with him more.
I had an interesting phone call this evening. It was from someone in the US who was preparing a piece for a morning radio show on the impact of Skype in China and was interested in the “leapfrogging” aspect. As I’m sure will always be the case, one comes up with the best responses after the actual interview. That, and I was thawing some chicken at the time and thinking about what I was going to do with it for dinner. Things like that can be a little distracting.
My response was along the lines that I don’t see Skype as such being a major leapfrogging development for a few reasons. Firstly, the old criticism against the technocentric view of leapfrogging applies. Adopting Skype, or any other such ICT for that matter, doesn’t really constitute leapfrogging in and of itself because it merely entails adopting current technology. That isn’t a step beyond anything, as the leapfrogging concept suggests. Secondly, to function acceptably, Skype requires a fairly stable and up-to-date ICT infrastructure. So, Skype functionality is more a result of ICT adoption rather than a major step forward.
The big question then is how would Skype be used once it achieves widespread adoption in China? This is a question that I cannot answer and I would be surprised if anyone could at this point. But, judging from the way it’s been used in places where there already is widespread adoption, I wouldn’t expect anything too remarkable. As far as I’m concerned, Skype just makes it cheaper and easier to do things that we already do, i.e. communicate. Obviously that does impact the potential level of integration between regions with all the benefits that may have, but so do a lot of other things and any assumption in this regard would be highly speculative.
On top of this is the issue of Internet censorship in China. I don’t know how things stand today but I do know that Skype was initially blocked in China. Given Chinese authorities’ track record in these matters I would be quite surprised to learn that Skype can currently be freely used in China to facilitate communications with other Skype users or traditional telephones outside of China. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
The thing that came to me after the interview, that I should have said about leapfrogging (although I got the impression that the focus was more on China) actually regards Skype itself. Skype has had a significant impact on Estonia, where the program was initially developed although the idea was brought over by a Swede and a Dane, and this may be regarded as far more illustrative of the leapfrogging concept than the diffusion of the application. Skype (and Kazaa which came from the same place) have given Estonia a lot of credibility in a new IT sector that is exceptionally innovative. This example underlines the fact that leapfrogging doesn’t necessarily entail a move forward (“leapfrogging” might be a bit of a misnomer). In fact, it’s far more effective when it moves to the side, so to speak. Estonia is creating a market that is unique and where it is an undisputed leader. This has contributed considerably to Estonia’s being the dynamic EU hotspot that it is at the moment. That’s leapfrogging!
That last version was a bit lame. Completely lacked that engaging spark of passion and discovery.
Click here to read it.
Another draft related to my thesis. This one follows the previously posted drafts and discusses the theoretical foundations of the concepts of “knowledge” and “learning” in a globalized knowledge-based economy with special emphasis on ICTs. Links to the previous chapters are at the top of the left navigation column on the front page of the blog under the heading “The Millennium Declaration analysis series: drafts & excerpts from my thesis.”
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The European Commission (DG Enterprise and Industry, I suppose) has made available a comprehensive report on the significance of free/libre and open source (FLOSS) applications for economic and innovation development. The report is titled “Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU” and the principle author is Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, founder of the online journal, FirstMonday, and a prolific researcher on FLOSS.
The report is HUGE, nearly 300 pages, and, as I mentioned, quite comprehensive. I actually wonder whether it would have made sense to divvy it up but a case can also be made for presenting it in one piece.
What’s most interesting to me is Ghosh’s focus on FLOSS communities as learning communities and their significance for development. He’s done a lot of work in this area in the past. See especially pg. 171, in the conclusions to chapter 8.5, Modeling the economic impact of FLOSS on innovation and growth. There the authors say (take a deep breath, looong sentence),
“Our results are suggestive of the overriding importance of human capital formation in this set-up, and especially the way in which FLOSS can directly and positively influence the speed at which contributors to FLOSS communities can pick-up new knowledge and put that to good learning use, for themselves but also for the more down to earth users of FLOSS software, certainly if the latter would be geared at the design of free access ICT-based learning environments.”
Same thing I was trying to get across here, where I do indeed refer to Ghosh’s past work. Not as sophisticated as in this new report, but we’re thinking along the same lines.
The OECD has an interesting peer review programme for assessing member states development policies and activities. This unique programme will be the subject of an ASEAN/OECD meeting later this month.
Under the peer review programme each country is reviewed every four years, resulting in 5-6 reviews each year. The latest review is of the United States, published shortly before last Christmas. Given the perceived leadership role of the US in international affairs and the global economy, it’s quite a revealing report. Briefly, the conclusions reveal that:
– Development aid as a percentage of Gross National Income (GNI) is among the lowest in OECD countries (nevertheless, since the US has the largest GNI in the world, the total amount of their contribution is higher than that of any other country)
– The bulk of recent assistance has been for debt cancellation in Iraq and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, i.e. cleaning up their own mess!
– There is a lack of coherence in policy
– Policy is not oriented toward poverty reduction, i.e. the Millennium Development Goals
– Policy tends to reflect specific US policy priorities, i.e. development assistance seems oriented toward benefiting the US, not necessarily developing countries
– There is no coherent tracking system, i.e. vague ideas about what is being achieved, therefore little to build on
All of this is very reminiscent of Niall Ferguson’s portrayal of the US in Colossus: the Rise and Fall of the American Empire, as a global force with imperialistic tendencies, although always in denial, but a lack of the committment required to make some actual good come out of it. The US report is in stark contrast to the UK report and the Netherlands report (one of very few countries that actually exceeds the United Nations ODA/GNI target of 0.7%), also from last year. There we see evidence of a concerted effort to make development aid work to the benefit of the recipients of aid. And this from two countries that were in the past blatantly imperialistic.
