ICTlogy

Paolo Massa has managed somehow that the ICT International Doctorate School of the Università degli Studi Trento (Italy) invites me to impart a couple of seminars on May 25th, 2006. The following day I’ll stay in Trento to deal with ICT4D research and training issues with people from the University. While the second seminar is yet to be agreed the content, the first one will look, more or less, like this:

The Digital Divides or the third industrial revolution: concepts and figures

It is usual to think about the digital divide as a very concrete aspect of the impact of ICTs, mainly concerning whether there is an existence of infrastructures (sometimes computers, sometimes computers connected to the Internet).

It is usual to think about digital literacy as the ability of someone to switch on a computer and playing some cards game, sending an e-mail and, optimistically, run some word processor and type in a love letter.

It is usual to think about ICTs as something that won’t make disappear the hunger in the world or heal the thousands of people suffering from countless diseases, specially in places where citizens live with less than one dollar a day.

It is usual to think about the digital divide as something that does not affect me, as I live on the sunny side of the world, in a developed country that will last this way for centuries.

With the aim to dismantle all these (almost) false assumptions, the seminar will try and give "correct" definitions for concepts such as Digital Divide, Digital Literacy, eReadiness or eAwareness and show examples on how ICTs can help underdeveloped and developing countries to reach higher quotas of welfare… and how so-called developed countries can exchange places with the lesser developed ones in case they do not pay attention to what is happening in a global world.