Nous Horitzons — the review of the Fundació Nous Horitzons — has released issue #204 with the quite explicit title of Democratizing communication, communicating democracy (original title: Democratitzar la comunicació, comunicar la democràcia).

I was asked to write a piece where to reflect about what can be done and what cannot be done on the Internet, in the sense of what is allowed, what is not, where are the boundaries of our civic rights, where do different rights collide (e.g. freedom of expression vs. intellectual property rights), etc.

My article, The conquest of Internet: new maps for new territories, is originally written in Catalan (La conquesta d’Internet: nous mapes per als nous territoris — Spanish translation also available) and takes its title from William Gibson’s documentary No Maps for These Territories!.

I ended writing what it looks like a slightly different thing: that there is not an actual collision of rights, but the dawn of a totally new model of society. And what looks like a collision of rights is, indeed, the fight to set up new institutions, appoint new leaders and shape up this new model according to each one’s own views. Thus, the apparent collision of rights is but the symptom of a higher level matter: what is the “global order” going to look like in the next decades after the actual order, based on the industrial paradigm, has become obsolete by Information and Communication Technologies.

I want to heartily thank Marc Rius for the invitation to write this piece, for his patience on my repeated delays and, most especially, for not changing a single comma on what I acknowledge is a dense text that goes way beyond the simple answer to what can and cannot be done on the Internet.

Downloads

Peña-López, I. (2012)
La conquesta d’Internet: nous mapes per als nous territoris

Peña-López, I. (2012)
La conquista de Internet: nuevos mapas para los nuevos territorios

Nous Horitzons (nº204)
Democratitzar la comunicació, comunicar la democràcia

• It is not a one-to-one laptop programme, but an inclusion through education programme. Laptops really come into the programme as a tool.
• The core of the programme is the community, the neighbourhood, the classroom, and not technology. It is social capital — and not technological capital ‐ what is built as a priority.
• They run a honest, thorough, yearly evaluation which highlights the best achievements, identifies the weaknesses and feeds the programme back with rich and useful information.

One of the main commitments of the programme is to create resources for the educators involved in it, including the yearly publication of a book. The latest edition of the “Ceibal book” has already been published as El modelo CEIBAL: Nuevas tendencias para el aprendizaje and I have contributed to the book with a chapter.

My chapter, Educación y Desarrollo en un mundo de redes (Education and development in a world of networks) is a reflection on how ICTs are radically changing what we understand by teachers, educational resources, and infrastructure. It actually is a slight adaptation of the homonymous materials that I had recently prepared for UNDP’s Virtual School.

The resulting chapter is the result of the contributions of some other people with which I am in much debt. Giovanni Guatibonza and Amagoia Salazar more than supervised the first edition for the UNDP, providing very good guidance and suggestions, which I all add to the text. Marion Ikwat is an astonishing editor and proofreader that did not rest until the final text was utterly spotless. Last, I want to thank Graciela Rabajoli not only for inviting me to be part of the book, but for all the information on the programme that she has always fed me with.

Downloads:

Peña-López, I. (2011).
Educación y Desarrollo en un mundo de redes.

Báez, M., García, J. M. & Rabajoli, G. (Comps.) (2011).
El modelo CEIBAL: Nuevas tendencias para el aprendizaje.

Bibliography used in Educación y Desarrollo en un mundo de redes

CEIBAL books

CEIBAL evaluation reports

Innovating Government – Normative, policy and technological dimensions of modern government, the book edited by Simone van der Hof and Marga M. Groothuis, has finally seen the light. Its abstract goes as follows:

The aim of this book is to analyze four dimensions of innovating government and the use of new technologies: legal, ethical, policy and technological dimensions. By joining authors from a diversity of backgrounds (law, ethics, public administration, political science, sociology, communications science, information science, and computer science) in one book, readers (academics, policy makers, legislators and others) are confronted with a variety of disciplinary perspectives on persistent themes, like privacy, biometrics, surveillance, e-democracy, electronic government, and identity management, that are central to today’s evolution of new modes of modern government.

I took part in this book with a chapter called Striving behind the shadow: the dawn of Spanish Politics 2.0 on the wake of Spain to Politics 2.0. Though the chapter was initially drafted in 2009 and then corrected and slightly updated in 2010, I am sad to acknowledge that things have not changed that much in Spain since then. Indeed, despite the recent upheavals in Spain around the so called “15M movement” (aka #spanishrevolution), online politics in general have evolved but very slightly, most of the times only in the field of political marketing rather than towards e-participation or e-democracy.

Following you can download a preprint version of the chapter and also scan through the bibliography I used. I am most grateful and definitely in debt with Simone van der Hof and Marga M. Groothuis for their patient endurance through the whole writing and editing progress. If you can read this lines they undoubtedly deserve much credit for it.

Peña-López, I. (2011)
Striving behind the shadow: the dawn of Spanish Politics 2.0

Bibliography

I am preparing a support material for a conference on Personal Learning Environments due in Barcelona next February 2011. The material is going to be based on a series of writings I recently made on the topic of the Personal Learning Environment and, more specifically, on the Hybrid Institutional Personal Learning Environment as a bridge between educational institutions and online informal/social learning.

That was the perfect excuse to test the possibilities of Anthologize with a practical exercise.

At first sight, Anthologize just saves you some of the old copy-and-paste by making it easier to merge several (WordPress) blog posts into one. After working with it, what it really does is making really easy to engage in a simple but real editorial process, which includes selecting the appropriate articles, make changes in them (without altering the originals!), and seeing how they best fit together by selecting their order or grouping them into sections or chapters. If you’re not happy with the result, the output can be exported to an RTF file which you can afterwords thoroughly edit in any text editor. Simple as it sounds, it’s an awesome and very useful tool for quickly making deliverables out of your blog.

Here’s what came out of my experiment:

Deinstitutionalizaing Education.
Personal Learning Environments:
blurring the edges of formal and informal learning

This final version was deeply edited after the Anthologize process was over. It was, nevertheless, a very personal decision and there was actually not a real need for it but a matter of taste.

To deepen in the characteristics of specific scenarios, the NMC engaged in 2009 in opening up the Horizon Report Series to thematic reports that addressed not the global landscape, but segments of the reality. Thus, there came the 2009 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition and 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition in the area of primary education; 2008 Horizon Report Australia-New Zealand Edition and 2009 Horizon Report: Economic Development Edition for these two countries in Oceania; or the 2009 Horizon Report: Economic Development Edition as related to small to medium-sized businesses.

In a joint effort with the eLearn Center of the Open University of Catalonia, a new issue of the Horizon Report Series has been published, the Horizon Report: Ibero-American Edition 2010, this time zeroing in the region comprised by Latin American countries, Spain and Portugal.

The report, as its sibling reports, begins with a brief analysis of key trends and critical challenges, and then lists six technologies to watch in the short-run, 2-3 years and long-term horizons:

• Collaborative environments;
• social media;
• open content;
• mobiles;
• augmented reality;
• semantic web.

Unlike previous reports, the authors considered the inclusion of a brand new section, Policy Recommendations, so to go one step forward and suggest action lines for the future. The report has been so far published in Spanish, but English, Catalan and Portuguese versions are on their way.

More information

• Official page and downloads.
• Blog of the Horizon Report: Ibero-American Edition project.
• Wiki of the Horizon Report: Ibero-American Edition project, with plenty of additional information and resources.
• The micro and macro approaches of ICTs in Education, my own reflections on the meeting of the advisory board in April 2010 (disclosure: I am both co-author of the report and member of the advisory board).
• Composition of the Advisory Board.
• The report in slides:

After that event, the director of the Review of University and the Knowledge Society (RUSC), Josep Maria Duart, asked me to coordinate a monograph on that same subject, the Digital Divide, but within the framework of Higher Education. This monograph has just been published: Framing the Digital Divide in Higher Education.

The monograph aims at giving an comprehensive overview to the topic of the Digital Divide, from infrastructures to the more philosophic concepts, and from mere access to impact, always related to Education and, most especially (though not exclusively) to Higher Education. Following are the abstracts and links to the full text articles. The introduction is not (only) your usual introduction, but also a sort of a roadmap that wants to explain the structure and rationale behind the monograph. Enjoy your reading and don’t stop you from sending your feedback to the authors. Last, but not least, I want to thank Matti Tedre, Fredrick Ngumbuke, Jyri Kemppainen, Neil Selwyn, Jonatan Castaño-Muñoz (and other persons that at last could not make it) for their support and contribution to this project. I cannot but also thank Elsa Corominas for her tireless editing effort, and Michael van Laake and Shirley Burgess for their empathy and understanding when reviewing and translating the manuscripts. Thank you all.

Framing the Digital Divide in Higher Education (Introduction)
Ismael Peña-López

This is the introductory article to the monograph “Redefining the Digital Divide in Higher Education”. The article describes a comprehensive approach to the phenomenon of the digital divide and digital access, based on Marc Raboy and Mark Warschauer’s research. This approach depicts the evolution from mere physical access to effective use of information and communication technologies in the field of higher education. Within this framework, the articles in the monograph are presented highlighting their role in contributing to a comprehensive approach and reflection on the digital divide in Higher Education.

Download the introduction ( 246 KB)

Infrastructure, Human Capacity, and High Hopes: A Decade of Development of e-Learning in a Tanzanian HEI
Matti Tedre, Fredrick Ngumbuke, Jyri Kemppainen

Tumaini University, Iringa University College in Tanzania began to develop technology-enhanced learning in 1999. At the beginning of the process, the college had no public computer laboratories. The e-learning capacity was gradually developed over the following 11 years: computer laboratories, a local area network, an electronic library collection, a dedicated IT support department, Internet connections, electronic presentations, a B.Sc. program in IT, video lectures, and online learning. In this article, we analyse the complex network of challenges that we faced during the development process. We discuss technical issues with ICT equipment, system administration, and networks, and we analyse socio-cultural issues with training, funding, and pedagogy.

Download the article ( 814 KB)

From Laptops to Competences: Bridging the Digital Divide in Education
Ismael Peña-López

Most of the existing literature that deals with the digital divide in the educational system focuses either on schools or universities, but rarely do we see a vertical approach where the system is considered as a whole. In this paper we relate initiatives that aim to bridge the digital divide in the current situation in higher education. We discuss why policies that focus on infrastructures (e.g. laptops) are not the answer, as they mostly leave digital competences unattended, leading to (or not helping to amend) the digital void in universities in matters of skills. We end by proposing a general framework to define digital skills so that they are included in syllabuses at all stages of the educational path.

Download the article ( 717 KB)

Degrees of Digital Division: Reconsidering Digital Inequalities and Contemporary Higher Education
Neil Selwyn

Whilst many authors are now confident to dismiss the notion of the digital divide, this paper argues that inequalities in ICT use in contemporary higher education are of growing rather than diminishing importance. In particular, it argues that there is an urgent need for the higher education community to develop more sophisticated understandings of the nature of the digital divisions that exist within current cohorts of university students – not least inequalities of ‘effective’ use of ICT to access information and knowledge. With these thoughts in mind, the paper presents a review of recent research and theoretical work in the area of digital exclusion and the digital divide, and considers a number of reasons why digital exclusion remains a complex and entrenched social problem within populations of higher education students.

Download the article ( 349 KB)

Digital Inequality Among University Students in Developed Countries and its Relation to Academic Performance
Jonatan Castaño-Muñoz

Research on the digital divide has shown that it is important to study more than just the differences between those who do or do not have Internet access. Other dimensions that should currently be studied are: Internet skills, time spent on the Internet and, in particular, the use people make of the Internet. For each of these it is important to study the determinants and social consequences. In this paper we first present an overview of these dimensions and their determinants, and secondly analyse the influence of the dimensions with respect to the academic performance of university students. The analysed data, in agreement with international research, demonstrate that a) the effects of the Internet on academic performance are not direct, but mediated by variables and, b) the positive effects of the Internet are more pronounced in those students whose background is already more favourable for achieving better academic results without using the Internet, in agreement with the knowldege gap hypothesis.

Download the article ( 356 KB)

Monograph: Framing the Digital Divide in Higher Education

Download the whole monograph ( 4,199 KB)

Below I’ve listed the bibliography that so far I’m using to structure and back my paper. Beyond the bibliography that follows, three events helped much in collecting insights, ideas and find many interesting references. My gratitude to the speakers at these events:

• 5th Internet, Law and Politics Conference: The Pros and Cons of Social Networking Sites
• Citizen Politics: Are the New Media Reshaping Political Engagement?
• 4th Internet, Law and Politics Congress: Towards citizenship 2.0?

Tag cloud of the bibliography

A bibliography on Spanish online politics and Politics 2.0

Hence, here come the questions and answers, which had always to parts: a closed question where one out of two options had to be chosen, and an open space where to elaborate your choice. In general, choosing was always difficult, as rarely in the issues raised had I a clear yes/no or black/white position. Of course, my doubts on my own answers are many, so by any means would I like to sound any categorical at all.

Just below the questions, more information about The Future of the Internet is provided.

Survey questions and answers

Will Google make us smart or stupid?

By 2020, people’s use of the internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information, they become smarter and make better choices. Nicholas Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google).

By 2020, people’s use of the internet has not enhanced human intelligence and it could even be lowering the IQs of most people who use it a lot. Nicholas Carr was right: Google makes us stupid.

Please explain your choice and share your view of the internet’s influence on the future of human intelligence in 2020 – what is likely to stay the same and what will be different in the way human intellect evolves?

The history of humankind is that of work substitution and human enhancement. The Neolithic revolution brought the substitution of some human physical work by animal work. The Industrial revolution brought more substitution of human physical work by machine work. The Digital revolution is implying a significant substitution of human brain work by computers and ICTs in general.

Whenever a substitution has taken place, men has been able to focus on more qualitative tasks, entering a virtuous cycle: the more qualitative the tasks, the more his intelligence develops; and the more intelligent he gets, more qualitative tasks he can perform.

In general, the Internet is implying the substitution of lower level brain work (e.g. memorization, routine and repetitive calculations) leaving more room for more complex and abstract thinking, which triggers the connection of more synapses and, thus, improves intelligence.

On the other hand, the ability to perform more complex and abstract thinking has to be backed with more and better information, which is also being provided by the increasing pervasiveness of the Internet, the availability of data which grows exponentially and, more important, the concurrence of more people (more human beings, more brains) in one’s personal network, thus enriching his knowledge sphere.

Of course, drawbacks can also appear.

Firstly, we have assumed that freeing resources (brain work) automatically implies reallocating the resources in higher level tasks. It can happen, nevertheless, that what remains constant is not total effort, but total output, thus reducing total effort. As obesity might be the side-effect of physical work substitution my machines, mental laziness can become the watermark of mental work substitution by computers, thus having a negative effect instead of a positive one.

Secondly, performing higher levels of mental activity can imply a certain level of mental capacity and some specific skills (digital literacy, abstract thinking, a specific IQ, etc.). If weak men would not be welcome in ancient Sparta, it is very likely that intellectual skills will imply new drivers of social exclusion in the nearer future. Indeed, capacity building, education, training might well be one of the most difficult challenges in the years to come.

Will we live in the cloud or on the desktop?

By 2020, most people won’t do their work with software running on a general-purpose PC. Instead, they will work in Internet-based applications, like Google Docs, and in applications run from smartphones. Aspiring application developers will sign up to develop for smart-phone vendors and companies that provide Internet-based applications, because most innovative work will be done in that domain, instead of designing applications that run on a PC operating system.

By 2020, most people will still do their work with software running on a general-purpose PC. Internet-based applications like Google Docs and applications run from smartphones will have some functionality, but the most innovative and important applications will run on (and spring from) a PC operating system. Aspiring application designers will write mostly for PCs.

Please explain your choice and share your view about how major programs and applications will be designed, how they will function, and the role of cloud computing by 2020.

Though it will strongly depend on the path of new technology (hardware, connectivity) adoption, two powerful human (not technological) behaviours are pushing Internet access towards the “cloud”:

• Mobility: being commuting increasingly important in everyday’s life, and being access to information increasingly a major necessity for many purposes, being able to access this information independently from space (workplace, home, public transportation… the middle of the street, etc.) and time (working hours, weekend… whenever at night, etc.) will push people to acquire mobile devices with which access this information everywhen and everywhere;
• Ubiquity: tied to mobility, we (will) want to access the same information and in the same way independently of time and place and, more important, independently from the device used. This independence of usage is twofold: same type of device, but two different ones (computer at home, computer at workplace) and different type of device (desktop, smartphone or television).

Syncing amongst a growing number of devices and types of devices is not only difficult, but inefficient, as it requires multiplying computing power and storage power, replicating personal configurations and customizations, etc.

The “cloud” allows unity of data, avoids unnecessary investment in capacity and storage, and eases personal customization, as also configuration data can “live in the cloud”.

The barriers to this evolution are many, but mainly inertia (we’ve been living based on ownership for the whole life) and rights (privacy, security, intellectual property, etc.) are amongst the ones that could be considered as more relevant.

Summing up, I not a general shifting towards the “cloud”, but yes specific areas of software definitely doing so: personal diaries, notes on conferences and all that is related to blogging in general; photos, videos and bookmarks; data sharing, data plotting and graphics and data visualization in general; collaborative documents, especially spreadsheets and reports; etc.

Will social relations get better?

In 2020, when I look at the big picture and consider my personal friendships, marriage and other relationships, I see that the internet has mostly been a negative force on my social world. And this will only grow more true in the future.

In 2020, when I look at the big picture and consider my personal friendships, marriage and other relationships, I see that the internet has mostly been a positive force on my social world. And this will only grow more true in the future.

Please explain your choice and share your view of the internet’s influence on the future of human relationships in 2020 – what is likely to stay the same and what will be different in human and community relations?

Two major forces will push human beings towards using ICTs – and the Internet in particular – to enhance their social relationships and, thus, those will have a positive impact on these. In other words: ICTs won’t have an impact on socialization, as if they were an exogenous variable of the equation, but on the contrary: aim for socialization will have an impact on the usage of ICTs, being these the dependent or the endogenous variable of the system.

These forces are the following:

• Sociability itself: the Aristotelic zoon politikon has found a new, effective, efficient way to get in touch with others and, more important, to increase (their) Dunbar’s number, as the Internet allows for increased interactivity across time and space.
• The power of the Network Society: the Network Society will increasingly change the shape of social institutions (political parties, governments, schools, firms, associations, etc.), that will lose momentum favouring personal network-like relationships. Social engagement (of whatever kind: learning, working, being a citizen, etc.) will require an active weaving of one’s own web, to find one’s kindred souls, to collude with others to achieve common goals.

If the Internet is to have a negative force on one’s social world it will be due to people being disconnected and, thus, missing plenty of things happening online, things that enlarge and enhance the offline connections and their activities.

Will the state of reading and writing be improved?

By 2020, it will be clear that the internet has enhanced and improved reading, writing, and the rendering of knowledge.

By 2020, it will be clear that the internet has diminished and endangered reading, writing, and the intelligent rendering of knowledge.

Please explain your choice and share your view of the internet’s influence on the future of knowledge-sharing in 2020, especially when it comes to reading and writing and other displays of information – what is likely to stay the same and what will be different? What do you think is the future of books?

As the Internet still is intensive in textual information – though image, audio and video are certainly increasing their share – we believe that an improvement of reading should be a direct consequence of higher usage levels of the Internet, both in terms of access to content as in usage of online services.

On the other hand, the possibility – the enablement, actually – that anyone can upload any kind of content to the Internet is yet another way where creativity and all the skills that come with it – abstraction, synthesis, expression, etc – shall be boosted. Being the Internet a knowledge repository in itself, and managing the Internet a knowledge intensive activity, we believe that even the most passive or trivial uses of it can have a positive impact on knowledge processing by humans, that is, reading, writing and rendering of knowledge.

In the future, we might see more and more the integration of different media into multimedia pieces of information. This, of course, will be bound to higher requirements of digital competences. This shift, of course, will also push forward some digital supports in detriment of older ones, but we might see an increase in the total number of digital supports and in the consumption of content. In this sense, we believe it will be good times for the content creation industry and bad times for distribution.

Will the willingness of Generation Y / Millennials to share information change as they age?

By 2020, members of Generation Y (today’s “digital natives”) will continue to be ambient broadcasters who disclose a great deal of personal information in order to stay connected and take advantage of social, economic, and political opportunities. Even as they mature, have families, and take on more significant responsibilities, their enthusiasm for widespread information sharing will carry forward.

By 2020, members of Generation Y (today’s “digital natives”) will have “grown out” of much of their use of social networks, multiplayer online games and other time-consuming, transparency-engendering online tools. As they age and find new interests and commitments, their enthusiasm for widespread information sharing will abate.

Please explain your choice and share your view of the internet’s influence on the future of human lifestyles in 2020 – what is likely to stay the same and what will be different? Will the values and practices that characterize today’s younger internet users change over time?

We will see two (apparently) contradictory evolutions in today’s Generation Y’s behaviour. On the one hand, they might abandon some of their current practices of intensive personal content sharing on the Net and usage of some social networking sites and other “friend-focused” practices.

Nevertheless, we believe this will be more a qualitative than a quantitative evolution: quitting some of these activities will be more related to the evolution of their actual tastes – and socialization needs – rather than a matter of “growing out”. Instead, in quantitative terms, we think that the generations that were born with the Internet and, especially, the ones that grew with the Web 2.0 will have specific practices embedded in their social code.

Thus, once in the job market, they might get rid of some practices but translate the essence to their jobs: collaborative working, high exposure of professional portfolios online, working directly on digital and web platforms, or be present in professional (and also personal, of course) networking sites might become common ground and a driver of exclusion for those not being able to live in this landscape.

Will our relationship to institutions change?

By 2020, innovative forms of online cooperation will result in significantly more efficient and responsive governments, businesses, non-profits, and other mainstream institutions.

By 2020, governments, businesses, non-profits and other mainstream institutions will primarily retain familiar 20th century models for conduct of relationships with citizens and consumers online and offline.

Please explain your choice and share your view of the internet’s influence upon the future of institutional relationships with their patrons and customers between now and 2020. We are eager to hear what you think of how social, political, and commercial endeavors will form and the way people will cooperate in the future.

Institutions are in dire crisis. Most institutions (schools and universities, political parties and governments, enterprises, clubs and associations) were created to lower the costs of gathering information, engaging with our peers and taking decisions or perform some tasks.

When these costs drop because of digital technologies, many institutions have to re-think where are they adding value and where not, having to be able to get rid of the value-less activities they perform and concentrate in the ones that still make sense.

But two major risks may arise from this situation.

The first one is that to circumvent institutions, or to differently relate with them and the rest of the community, a new set of skills and, over all, time, will be highly required. Though new skills might be more or less easy to acquire (though they will certainly be a driver of exclusion), time will still be scarce and a major barrier for higher levels of participation and engagement.

The second, and related with the former, is that time-wealthy individuals (or the ones that can “buy” time by “externalizing” other time-consuming activities) will take up with the power to dialogue face-to-face with the (new) institutions. The danger, of course, will appear when these individuals are not representative of the majority of the citizenry and/or only representative of small elites and plutocracies.

Thus, lack of engagement by many and intense engagement by a few can lead up to the replacement of old institutions by new networks which will act as the previous institutions (i.e. concentrating power) but much less transparent and accountant because of their centralization.

Will online anonymity still be prevalent?

By 2020, the identification ID systems used online are tighter and more formal – fingerprints or DNA-scans or retina scans. The use of these systems is the gateway to most of the internet-enabled activity that users are able to perform such as shopping, communicating, creating content, and browsing. Anonymous online activity is sharply curtailed.

By 2020, internet users can do a lot of normal online activities anonymously even though the identification systems used on the internet have been applied to a wider range of activities. It is still relatively easy for internet users to create content, communicate, and browse without publicly disclosing who they are.

Please explain your choice and share your view about the future of anonymous activity online by the year 2020.

We expect opposite trends in matters of identification and anonymity on the Net.

On the one hand, as e-commerce, e-administration, e-democracy or e-learning grow (and we definitely think they will), robust and fool-proof identification systems will become more and more usual and even normal in everyday life. We will grow used to real identification in many places and will be happy to, as the user experience will benefit from it: more personalization in services, less hazard of being the victim of cybercrime, more efficiency in online transactions, etc.

The rise of the e-portfolio (academic or professional, personal or institutional) will have its multiplier effect in requiring more formal and frequent online identification.

On the other hand, better search engines (absolutely pervasive in their web scanning), augmented reality and the blurring of online and offline life, and more surveillance by governments and criminal organizations (and especially when both collude in corrupt or non-democratic regimes) will demand an increased need for anonymity just for the sake of personal security.

Will the Semantic Web have an impact?

By 2020, the Semantic Web envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee and his allies will have been achieved to a significant degree and have clearly made a difference to the average internet users.

By 2020, the Semantic Web envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee will not be as fully effective as its creators hoped and average users will not have noticed much of a difference.

Please explain your choice and share your view of the likelihood that the Semantic Web will have been implemented by 2020 and be a force for good in internet users’ eyes.

The Semantic Web is a liquid concept that has changed as technology – and socioeconomic – interests have evolved along time. In a broad sense, the Semantic Web is about machines understanding humans – their behaviour, their actions, their knowledge outcomes – without these having to tell or command them.

In this broad sense, the Semantic Web is likely to leap forward in the coming years. Augmented reality will begin to seriously bridge the offline and the online worlds or, better said, to bridge analogue and digital worlds.

This bridge will accelerate the already vertiginous path towards pouring immense amounts of data in digital format, which will definitely help search engines and all computing tasks in general in performing semantic activities. Of course, the evolution of hardware will also contribute in this, and we are likely to see an understandable “step back” in software design: it might become worth it to replace clever algorithms with brute force ones, where quantitative approaches (more data with more computing power) might be better than qualitative ones (related with efficiency based on metadata attached to data).

In any case, despite the state of evolution of the Semantic Web, a point of no return will by then have been reached in the way we understand the dichotomy of analogue and digital, and having entered a new paradigm where offline vs. online will no more make much sense.

Are the next takeoff technologies evident now?

The hot gadgets and applications that will capture the imagination of users in 2020 are pretty evident today and will not take many of today’s savviest innovators by surprise.

The hot gadgets and applications that will capture the imagination of users in 2020 will often come “out of the blue” and not have been anticipated by many of today’s savviest innovators.

Please explain your choice and share your view of its implications for the future. What do you think will be the hot gadgets, applications, technology tools in 2020?

There is always a temptation to think that everything has already been discovered and there is plenty of examples that any predictions in this sense have almost always failed.

Thus, more than a forecast, we would like to state a will that seems to be shared quite broadly amongst the society at last: consolidation instead of novelties.

The path of innovation in gadgets and online applications in the last years has been so incredibly accelerate that there seems to be a common voice towards leaving room for clever and useful adoption. We believe, hence, that this demand will resonate in suppliers, that might turn and look at how helping the user (the customer) in getting the best of innovation rather than in innovation per se.

This will, indeed, decrease cutting edge technology in favour of major and mass adoption.

Despite this “democratization” of cutting edge technology and “geekery” at large, ubiquity and the blurring of the lines that separate online from offline and analogue from digital will doubtlessly push forward innovations that will (hopefully) seem to come out of William Gibson’s novels.

Will the internet still be dominated by the end-to-end principle?

In the years between now and 2020, the internet will mostly remain a technology based on the end-to-end principle that was envisioned by the internet’s founders. Most disagreements over the way information flows online will be resolved in favor of a minimum number of restrictions over the information available online and the methods by which people access it.

In the years between now and 2020, the internet will mostly become a technology where intermediary institutions that control the architecture and significant amounts of content will be successful in gaining the right to manage information and the method by which people access and share it.

Please explain your choice, note organizations you expect to be most likely to influence the future of the internet and share your view of the effects of this between now and 2020.

There will be an increase in the will to monitor and control the Internet, but it will not take place in the carriers but in the ends. We believe that the Web 2.0 has reinforced the decentralized structure of the Internet, not only technologically, but also conceptually, where anyone can create a knowledge node in matters of minutes.

But this individual empowerment has also provided tools to people and institutions aiming at monitoring or controlling the Internet. Thus, it will be more efficient to, as in judo, gain momentum by benefiting from others’ energy rather than to fight it. E.g. it will be more effective to identify political dissidents by monitoring social networking sites rather than applying rough censorship on ISPs.

On the other hand, we are likely to see a definitive acknowledgement that some business models have changed forever and that controlling the Internet and the carriers will provide no positive results – on the contrary, loss of opportunities and revenues in benefit of competitors adapting more quickly.

More Information

• The Future of the Internet
• The 2004 Survey
• The Future of the Internet II
• The 2006 Survey
• The Future of the Internet III
• The 2008 Survey
• Imagining the Internet
• Future of the Internet topic at PEW’s website, with all related information
• Stephen Downes’s answers to the same survey

My reflections, though not explicitly stated, are more targeted towards researchers and knowledgeable people — to whom the Web 2.0 has at last provided a voice on their own despite their affiliation — and to knowledge workers and knowledge intensive institutions in general.

I here below translate my part into English and reproduce the full document and the “headlines” of all other contributors.

Social media will channel activity towards what is relevant: the portfolio

In the coming years we will be closing the circle and be back to personal and institutional websites, though these will in any way look like the ones we visited in the dawn of the World Wide Web.

We have performed a necessary initiation journey taken by the hand of social media, so that we could be introduced to the new and growing possibilities of the Web. Blogs and wikis showed us what was possible in a bi-directional Web, where content and even services creation could be decentralized and exit institutions. Social networking sites added the human factor to the network we had recently created: bi-directionality became multi-directionality, multi-diffusion. Blogs created the bourgeoisie of the Internet, and social networking sites opened it up and democratized it for the rest of the society.

But it is as easy to use social media as it is difficult to manage them and make them work for out benefit. It is likely that whoever wants or has to have a reputation on the Internet just cannot keep having tentacles without a visible head. Social media must be funnels that lead to us: we neither can manage chaor eternally, nor can we expect that whoever looks for us finds us or reconstruct us amongst this total maze of confusion.

This does not mean that we are not present in the relevant channels: it is there where we will mainly interact. But the critical mass of our digital persona must be as near as possible to our self.

What we do, what we are must be centralized. It is the image of what we do and become the one that has to be decentralized, not the essence.

I plead for the construction of the portfolio, for a return to the personal or institutional website, using social media as a game of mirrors that reflects us where we should also be present.

Predictions for Social Media in 2010

Alfonso Alcantara: Consultor y coach en desarrollo profesional y empleo 2.0
“En 2010 las redes sociales definitivamente serán las autopistas de las ideas.”

Jacobo Álvarez: Director Negocio Grupo Intercom y Socio en Multiplica
“El 2010 el año en el que, al menos en el móvil, la suma de geolocalización y redes personales y profesionales nos liberen del exceso de información y nos ayude a acceder a información más relevante de nuestro entorno”

Jose Luis Antúnez: Fundador de YouAre y Coorganizador de Evento Blog España
“El real-time es la extrapolación de la vida real a la web. Y en la vida real se hace dinero vendiendo y pagando cosas”.

Enrique Burgos: Responsable de Marketing Relacional de Unidad Editorial
“Solo demostrando el valor que aporta a las marcas (económico & imagen) se lograra una mayor comprensión por las altas direcciones de las empresas”

Cesar Calderón: Socio Director en Autoritas Consulting
“2010 será el año en el que las administraciones públicas descubran los Social Media y comiencen a conversar con los ciudadanos”

Marc Cortés: Socio-Director RocaSalvatella y Profesor Marketing Electrónico (ESADE)
“Dejaremos de hablar de Social Media y empezaremos a hablar de Social Business”.

Adolfo Corujo y todo el equipo de Llorente & Cuenca: Director Senior Llorente&Cuenca
“Para el usuario, 2010 será el año de… La explosión de la búsqueda en Tiempo Real”

Roberto Carreras: Consultor de Comunicación y RRPP
“La web en tiempo real, que durante 2009 dio sus primeros pasos como fenómeno, vivirá en 2010 su consolidación.”

Fernando de la Rosa: Socio y fundador de Seis Grados
“2010 es un año de re-invenciones: el principio de nuevos mercados y la agonía de otros”.

Roger Domingo: Director Editorial Deusto / Gestión 2000/ Alienta / CEAC
“La incorporación del mundo de la empresa a las redes sociales conllevará también un incremento de la publicidad en las mismas, lo cual pondrá en peligro la tan deseada “conversación cluetrainiania””

Fernado Fegido: Director de Negocio Digital de Caja Navarra
“El año 2010 será otro año en el que deberemos de seguir evangelizando y capacitando a muchos responsables de Márketing y Comunicación”

Tristán Elósegui: Responsable de Marketing Digital de Canal+ y Organizador del The Monday Reading Club
“La crisis va a favorecer el crecimiento de los medios sociales”

Ricard Espelt: Regidor de Nuevas Tecnologías de Copons
“La ciudadanía, cada vez más consciente del poder de las redes sociales, va a provocar pequeñas “revoluciones” en el devenir de la política española”

Marek Fodor: Emprendedor y Business Angel del sector tecnológico
“Bajará notablemente el crecimiento de twitter, comparado con el año 2009”.

Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez: Responsable de Comunidad del BBVA
“Se dará el caso de comunidades enteras que renuncian a las redes sociales, que se bautizarán como “Amish digitales””

Albert García Pujadas: CEO Nikodemo
“El video se impondrá como formato de comunicación habitual y como soporte publicitario de primer orden”

Xavier Guell: Weyoose y Coorganizador de Cava&Twitts
“Adiós humo, hola servicio”

Javier Martín: Blogger y emprendedor
Es la hora de vender!

Jose Antonio del Moral: CEO de Alianzo
“Volveremos a hablar de Web 2.0 y no tanto de social media. En el fondo todo es social y no sólo los media”

Ícaro Moyano: Director Comunicación tuenti
“¿GRPs? Mejor recomendaciones”

Sebastian Muriel: Director de red.es
“Será el año en el que no se dejará de hablar del Social Media en los medios tradicionales”

José Luis Orihuela: Profesor de la Universidad de Navarra
“La red y sus aplicaciones se vivirán cada vez más como una experiencia móvil”

Alberto Ortiz de Zárate: Director de Atención Ciudadana en Gobierno Vasco
“Empezaremos a hacer un uso inteligente de las redes sociales. En ese camino, la relevancia se desplazará de las herramientas hacia las estrategias de comunicación”

Ismael Peña-López: Profesor Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
“Abogo por una construcción del portafolio, por una vuelta a la web personal o institucional, utilizando los social media como un juego de espejos que nos refleje allí donde debamos estar también presentes”

Genis Roca: Socio Director RocaSalvatella
“En resumen, las palabras clave para este 2010 serán: Indicadores, Gestión y Resultados”.

Esteban Trigos: Marketing Innovator Director – Double You
“las marcas empezarán a incorporar en sus mensajes un nuevo giro a la hora de comportarse: serán más sociales

Marc vidal: CEO de Cink
“Será el momento de los Net estrategy por encima de los Managers de comunidad”.

More information

• Predicciones para Social Media en 2010 (documento colaborativo), original post by Marc Cortés
• Social Media Predictions 2010, the document in Scribd
• Social Media Predictions 2010, the document for download (, 571 KB)
• Preddiciones sobre Social Media para 2009, the predictions for 2009, Scribd document

The concept gathered both technological and philosophical (in the sense of behaviours and attitudes) issues. At the technological level, it dealt about the importance of the web as a delivery (of content and services) platform by excellence; data as the core component of all kind of communications and interchanges; software as a service and not a product, then becoming more important access to software than its “physical” purchase; predominance to RSS and associated procedures for the exchange of content; or (while keeping the importance of the web as a platform) the need to create technologies that were portable across devices. At the philosophical level, and both cause and consequence of the technological advances, the spread (and enabling) of a contribution and participation culture by the society at large (and not only by institutions or organized associations); the acknowledgement that anyone could actually contribute with their knowledge and opinion (the “wisdom of crowds”); the raise of a culture of mixing, assembling and aggregating content; and the will to have rich user experiences when interacting online (vs. A passive, unidirectional, monotonous approach which had been common ground in the previous years).

Besides the “formal” definition of the Web 2.0, it has more often been described through some tools and the new and characteristic ways of using them: the blog and the nanoblog, the wiki, social bookmarking, photo and video sharing websites, tagging and “folksonomies”, syndication and aggregation, etc.

After this philosophical approach – boosted by the technological advancements – many have adapted some of the core definitions to many aspects of life. Thus, for instance, Education 2.0 often referred to as a shift from unidirectional lecturing towards a more participatory approach of learning, based in collaboratively creating learning materials, an intensive usage of web 2.0 tools, or openness and sharing of the process of learning, just to name a few. And along with Education, we can find debates around Research 2.0, Culture 2.0, Government 2.0, Journalism 2.0, Enterprise 2.0… and Politics 2.0.

But, quite often, we do not find specific definitions for such concepts, taking for granted that the reader will be able to do the translation from the Web 2.0 to the Whatever 2.0. I here provide my own definition of Politics 2.0, which I needed for a paper I am preparing about Politics 2.0 in Spain:

• Ideas: not closed and packaged propaganda. Ideas that can be spread, shared and transformed by members of the party and partisans, sympathizers and supporter, and the society at large;
• Open data: ideas are backed by incredible amounts of data and information made openly available to the general public, and most time provided with open licenses that allow their reuse and remix;
• Participation: of all and every kind of people and institutions, blurring the edges of the “structures” and permeating the walls of institutions, making communication more horizontal and plural;
• Loss of control of the emission of the message, that now can be transferred outside of mainstream media and diffused on a peer-to-peer and many-to-many basis by means of web 2.0 tools;
• Loss of control of the creation itself of the message: being data and participation available, web 2.0 tools at anyone’s reach, and with minimum digital competences, the message can even be created and spread bottom up;
• Acknowledgement, hence, of the citizen as some who can be trusted (and used) as a one-man think-tank and a one-man communication-media;
• Reversely, possibility to reach each and every opinion, target personal individuals with customized messages, by means of rich data and web 2.0 tools, thus accessing a long tail of voters that are far from the median voter;
• Construction of an ideology, building of a discourse, setting up goals, campaigning and government become a continuum that feedbacks in real time.

I admit that this is neither a usual or a formal description, nor a comprehensive set of characteristics. I believe, though, that it could serve in providing a fair framework to contextualize and explain what’s happening at the intersection of Politics and the Web 2.0.

PS: dedico aquesta entrada al José Antonio Donaire, l’Ernest Benach, el Carlos Guadián, i el Ricard Espelt, en qui no he deixat de pensar mentre l’escrivia.

On September 8th, 2009, at 18:00h, in Barcelona, I’m doing the defence of my PhD thesis Measuring digital development for policy-making: models, stages, characteristics and causes, which deals about the digital economy and whether governments should help in its development for it might have a positive impact on the real economy and on the society at large (say “aye” to everything).

Scholar orthodoxy does not allow me (yet) to upload here the original manuscript, though some teasers can be found at my notes on the seminar I did at the Catalan Government Department for the Information Society (Measuring digital development for policy-making: Models, stages, characteristics and causes. The role of the government) and the presentation I did to my colleagues of the i2TIC research group (Measuring digital development for policy-making: Models, stages, characteristics and causes. The role of the government) — same titles: the former with notes, the later with some more information.

Thus, so far there’s only room for waiting… and acknowledgements. This is how my PhD thesis begins:

Dedication

To the people that pushed, that pulled and that accompanied me on the way:

To my parents, Ismael and Mª del Pilar, for having always stayed behind me and pushing me ahead with the best of gifts ever: education.

To Pere Fabra Abat, for staying in front of me by committing to my project and making out of me a scholar.

To Mercè, for staying besides me by grace of a Benedettian deal; for letting me know, every day, that I could count “con usted / es tan lindo / saber que usted existe / uno se siente vivo”.

Acknowledgements

My first thoughts in this section necessarily go to Tim Kelly. I will never find the words to thank him for his time, the only thing in the world we (still) cannot buy, and I much regret the fact that I will have little chance to pay him back for all his personal dedication. Of all the things I owe to him, I will just mention confidence, almost blind confidence, when he accepted to supervise my dissertation. Confidence, almost as scarce as time.

This dissertation somehow has its roots planted in 2001, when I first took the path of ICT4D. Hanne Engelstad and Yolanda Franco, Joan Fuster and Carles Esquerré were there to join me in to build an audacious project that made of me a professional. Remei Camps joined shortly afterwards, followed by Mónica Choclán, and Josep Salvatella came in and out with most valuable advice. Thank you so much.

Joan Torrent, Francisco Lupiáñez, and Pilar Ficapal were crucial in the third part of the dissertation – and, personally, at many other stages. They deserve a lot of credit for many of the successes that might be in the quantitative part of the dissertation: I am glad I did follow their advice. Joan gave me extra advice in some formal aspects of the dissertation which I highly highly appreciate.

To Agustí Cerrillo, David Martínez, Miquel Peguera – especially for taking it very personal –, Diana Amigó and my other colleagues at the School of Law and Political Science of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya for endless and friendly support when I needed it most (i.e. throughout the whole process).

I owe big gratitude to the anonymous reviewers that sent feedback with most interesting suggestions about the original manuscript.

I am in debt to Tim Unwin (ICT4D Collective, Royal Holloway University of London) for – amongst other things – trying to build a discipline out of the blue and coming up with the Annual ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium and for his commitment and support for novices in the field. The three editions (so far) of the symposium have been amazing learning places. Besides Tim, thanks go to other faculty that thought the project was interesting enough to take part in it: Erkki Sutinen, Khalid Rabayah, Seugnet Blignaut. A special thought goes to Gudrun Wicander, Florence Nameere Kivunike, Isabella Rega, Marcus Duveskog, Annika Andersson, Mathias Hatakka, Marije Geldof, David Hollow, Peter Rawsthorne, Paolo Brunello, Evelyn Kigozi Kahiigi, Ugo Vallauri, Clint Rogers, Mikko Vesisenaho and all other participants for making it possible and unselfishly sharing their knowledge and warmth.

I have enormous gratitude to John Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain, Urs Gasser, Marcus Foth, Amar Ashar, Mike Best, Ethan Zuckerman and the rest of the faculty and participants in the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme 2007, held at the Harvard University’s Berkman Center in July that year. There have been few times when I have worked so hard and even fewer times when it was so worthwhile.

I have a big sense of gratitude to Dennis McCauley (The Economist Intelligence Unit) and Irene Mia (World Economic Forum) for the time they spent with me and the patient answers to my questions on their respective indices.

A special thought goes to Amy K. Mahan. I’d really love it if you could have read these lines. Thank you so much for the information you sent and the warmth with which you sent it.

Justin Smith (Inside Facebook) and Linda Collard (Synovate) sent, respectively, valuable data on Facebook and Social Networking Site: I really appreciated that.

To Ben Compaine (Boston University), Mike Jensen (IT Consultant) and Phillippa Biggs (International Telecommunication Union) and Divakar Goswami (LIRNEasia): thanks for the dialogue.

To María Rosalía Vicente Cuervo (Universidad de Oviedo): thanks for your own dissertation and kindness.

Very very… very special words to Alison Gillwald, Charley Lewis, Christoph Stork, Khaled Fourati, Alex Comninos, Steve Esselaaar and all the people at the LINK Center: your work rocks. Everybody should recognise about its value and, most important, its relevance and the difficulty of doing it in the most challenging continent. You deserve my deepest admiration.

I deeply admire George Sciadas for his work represents a turning point in the debate about e-Readiness and the measuring of the Information Society. I also do want to thank you for writing back after the confusion: that was really kind.

Richard Heeks (Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester) deserves my deepest admiration too for also contributing to build a discipline out of the blue and, indeed, for sharing the making of it online.

Teresa Peters and people behind Bridges.org have my deepest recognition for, in my opinion, having drawn the blueprints of e-Readiness.

Manuel Acevedo, ICT4D Consultant and another brother in arms at the PhD programme, is able to mix cleverness and kindness in unprecedented ways. Thanks for Madrid, Sevilla, Bonn, Gijón and those still to come.

To the Italian cluster: Paolo Massa (Scientific and Technological Research Centre of Bruno Kessler Foundation), Marco Zennaro, Enrique Canessa and Carlo Fonda (Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics): Thanks for just being great.

John Daly (Development Gateway) edited one of the first – if not the first one – ICT4D blogs I ever read, always coming up with interesting news and insights. I am also in debt to other ICT4D and Information Society experts who shared their knowledge through their blogs (and other digital platforms): Christian Kreutz; Mikhail Doroshevich; Florian Sturm, Martin Konzet and all the people at ICT4D.at, Jon Camfield, Ricard Ruiz de Querol, Tryggvi Thayer, Enrique Dans, Jaume Albaigès and Olga Berrios.

Same as above, but at the institutional level: LIRNEasia, i4d journal, TIER, CIS Washington, PEW Internet Project: please do keep on publishing your stuff.

The ivory tower wouldn’t have crashed down without the friendship of the Spanish ICT4D and NPTECH community, to whom I owe the unquestionable honour to be always kept in their minds José Antonio “Tito” Niño (Spanish Red Cross); Agustí Pérez Foguet and Enginyeria Sense Fronteres Catalunya; Yolanda Rueda, Adrien Mangin and the people at Fundación Cibervoluntarios; Paco Prieto, Jimena Pascual, Josema Alonso and the people at Fundación CTIC; Jordi Duran, Ramon Bartomeus & the people at iWith.org; Frederic Cusí, Cesk Gasulla and the people at Fundación Esplai; Xavi Capdevila and Guillermo Rojo at Fundació FIAS; Valentín Villarroel and Ingeniería Sin Fronteras Madrid; Carlota Franco, Mar Vallecillos, Elena Acín, Paloma Ortega, Marta Reina, Marisol García, Paloma Fundación Chandra; Mai Escobar and Fundación Bip-Bip; Àlex Garcia-Albà and Alexandra Haglund-Petitbó at Agència Catalana de Cooperació al Desenvolupament; Rafael Ruipérez Palmero at AECI Colombia; Gemma Xarles at the Escuela Virtual para América Latina y el Caribe.

Robert Guerra (formerly ICANN and TakingITGlobal, now Freedom House) and Michael Trucano (infoDev at The World Bank): thanks for counting me in.

I want to thank Karin Deutsch Karlekar and Sarah Cook for letting me participate in the reviewing of the questionnaire for the first edition of the Freedom on the Net report. That was a thrilling thing to be in from the start.

A thank you, and a big kudos to the organizers and participants of the Web2fordev conference in Rome, for making of it a milestone in several senses.

I owe César Córcoles (School of Computer Science and Multimedia Studies, UOC) an explanation (or an apology) about communicating vessels and non-reciprocity (or imbalance, to be fair) in knowledge exchange. Stop it, so I can pay you back.

Enric Senabre, a brother in arms at the PhD Programme, might be surprised to find himself here. This is the price you pay for humbleness.

Julià Minguillón and Josep Maria Duart, (UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning – the both of them – and RUSC Review of ICTs and Education – the latter), Agustí Cerrillo (Master in e-Administration) and Rosa Borge (Master in e-Governance) have a curious way of helping people out by giving them more work. It’s insane, but it’s fun, especially when it is related to one’s own research interests.

Mercè wants to appear in the acknowledgements section too – despite already appearing in the dedication which I tell her is better –, so here you are.

There is some supporting people that I might have forgotten: exhaustion plays havoc on memory. My humblest apologies to those who consider having earned for themselves being cited amongst these lines.

À Evite A.: “Perdono tutti e a tutti chiedo perdono. Va bene? Non fate troppi pettegolezzi”.

Though I had previously presented part of my phd research in public, this is officially the first time that I present final results.

The presentation only shows a brief introduction to Part II (quantitative analysis) and partial highlights from Part III (quantitative/statistical analysis), which makes most slides quite cryptic without a speaker (more cryptic, I mean).

Put short — very short —, after defining a conceptual framework (the 360º digital framework) the research draws 4 stages of digital development (after cluster analysis), the three of which are but different levels of a similar digital development path, and the fourth of them a completely different digital development model: leapfroggers.

These stages of digital development are characterized (a profile for each of them is described), and some determinants (causes) for this digital development (or underdevelopment) are calculated by means of logistic regressions.

Main ideas/findings

The research shows the huge importance of governments in framing and fostering digital development, which is more important and should be more direct the less digitally developed is a specific economy.

It is important to note that government action should be, firstly, focused in framing and give incentives to the real economy, entrepreneurship and innovation; and secondly, to foster the digital economy by means of providing it with an appropriate policy and regulatory framework but also by means of “pull” strategies.

Thus said, the findings show that digital development is compatible with both liberal and Keynesian policies, and that supply-side policies and direct intervention are only worth applying below a minimum threshold of infrastructures. After some infrastructure is installed, policies should especially focus to trigger demand (not to increase the aggregate demand, which is a completely different thing).

This goes against the belief that the government should subsidise computers or content; but it also goes against the belief that the government should just care for the regulatory framework: public policies are a determinant of digital development.

What policies then? Fostering digital services, both private supplied as public e-services, as these services will pull de demand more effectively than other kind of policies.

Two caveats:

• Basic development (income, health, education, equality) accompanies any other kind of digital development, which means that it has to be addressed first hand and, indeed, be the target itself where to apply the benefits of digital development.
• Leapfroggers show that another model from the previous one is possible. It is my concern, nevertheless, how a model based in a powerful ICT Sector aimed towards international trade will impact the domestic economy beyond an eminently direct level. In other words, policies fostering a domestic digital development will have both direct and indirect multiplier effects, the latter being the most powerful ones and, maybe, absent in a leapfrogger model.

Citation and downloads

The book is called Innovación para el empoderamiento de la ciudadanía a través de las TIC (Innovation for the empowerment of the citizenry through ICTs) and features an article of mine entitled La red de las personas: cómo Internet puede empoderar a la ciudadanía (The Network of people: how can the Internet empower the citizenry).

The paper is a slightly evolved — a generalized — version of a former reflection, Cooperation for Development 2.0, that then became a position paper for the first edition of Development Cooperation 2.0: Reticulando la Cooperación — hacia la Cooperación Red: Materiales para un debate (Networking Cooperation — towards a networked cooperation: materials for a debate), and that also served as a kick off point for the second edition of Development Cooperation 2.0.

The abstract reads:

La acción ciudadana depende, en gran medida, de la concurrencia de dos factores. Por una parte, la identificación y difusión de una necesidad de amplio interés y, en la medida de lo posible, en poder reclutar apoyo para dar respuesta a dicha necesidad. Por otra parte, por la capacidad para acceder a los recursos necesarios para cubrir, de forma efectiva, dicha necesidad. En la medida que la información y la comunicación juegan un papel cada vez más importante en ambas cuestiones, las nuevas tecnologías se posicionan como la herramienta por excelencia para el empoderamiento de la ciudadanía.

More information and downloads

• La red de las personas: cómo Internet puede empoderar a la ciudadanía (bibliographic information)
• La red de las personas: cómo Internet puede empoderar a la ciudadanía (download, 155 KB)
• Innovación para el empoderamiento de la ciudadanía a través de las TIC

This book chapter is the last one of a series of writings and speeches around the concept of the Personal Research Portal that began its journey in 2006. As the (so far) last from the series, I think it is the most accurate one, benefiting from the reviewers observations (thank you). I am grateful to the editors for having given me the opportunity to think over some concepts and polish them up. On the other hand, the book is full of very interesting chapters by authors that are actually paving the path of digital skills, online communities, etc.

Abstract and editors’ notes

We here propose the concept of the Personal Research Portal (PRP) – a mesh of social software applications to manage knowledge acquisition and diffusion – as a means to create a digital identity for the researcher – tied to their digital public notebook and personal repository – and a virtual network of colleagues working in the same field. Complementary to formal publishing or taking part in congresses, and based on the concept of the e-portfolio, the PRP is a knowledge management system that enhances reading, storing and creating at both the private and public levels. Relying heavily on Web 2.0 applications – easy to use, freely available – the PRP automatically implies a public exposure and a digital presence that enables conversations and network weaving without time and space boundaries.

[...]

Peña-López proposes the concept of the Personal Research Portal (PRP) – a mesh of social software applications to manage knowledge acquisition and diffusion. This is premised on the belief that there is a place for individual initiatives to try and bridge the biases and unbalances in the weight that researchers and research topics have in the international arena. The chapter highlights the main perceived benefits of a PRP that include building a digital identity, information sharing, the creation of an effective e-portfolio, and the sharing of personal and professional networks. He concludes that the main challenges that need to be addressed include access to technology and developing appropriate skills, problems that are recognised as stemming from the digital divide.

Citation and preprint download

Related information

• The Personal Research Portal, a collection of related writings and speeches
• Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies, official site of the book

How do we go forward in the field of ICT4D R+D+i?

Florencio Ceballos, telecentre.org

• ICT4D are a clear niche that can grow outside the circuit of development issues
• Capacity building happens locally, and this means building confidence, trust.
• Institutional independence has to be promoted to enable real capacity building.
• Focus on networking: promoting open networks for capacity exchange

It’s not as much as how you design agendas, but how you make them evolve, how to shift the paradigm. And this shift of paradigm is towards openness.

Caroline Figueres, International Institute for Communication and Development

There is a need for a research to ground some “evidences”, and showcase successes in the field of ICT4D under the rigour of scientific analysis.

People in the South should be put in the agenda of ICT4D research, as most of the output is targetted to developing countries.

Co-creation (e.g. in the sense of Don Tapscott’s Wikinomics) is a very powerful concept. Capacity building can be enabled this way by means of knowledge workers co-creating together.

Kentaro Toyama, Microsoft Research India (MSR India)

How to do formal research in ICT4D? Several steps:

1. Immersion. Ethnography
2. Design, involving people, where technology is just one component and a cost-effective one
3. Evaluation, including finding statistical significance on the impact of a specific project or action

It’s a good idea to break the link between funding and the research agenda. The researcher should be able to pursue their own interests and not be tied (or upset) to the need for funding.

Experience in research might be as important as (or even more) than experience in development. Accuracy of the scientific process is crucial.

Andrés Martínez, EHAS Foundation.

Evidence has to be demonstrated to convince policy-makers and funding institutions that some actions are to be taken and deserve being supported (politically or economically).

• Research is needed in the impact of ICTs in welfare, health, education
• But also, research is needed on how to provide appropriate and cost-effective infrastructures, as most communities just do not have access to either hardware or connectivity
• Sometimes the context is unknown. Thus, research should focus not only on the impact of a specific project, but on what the context (sociocultural, health, education, economic) is.
• Research on services.
• How to measure empowerment and mainstreaming of technologies in specific communities and sectors (e.g. the Health sector)

The only way to promote research in the field of Development and ICT4D is to foster publication of research results in indexed publications. Despite the interest of the topic, if the work is “well done”, then it can be published. It is highly relevant to find the problem you want to deal with your research, more important than finding “the” solution.

And diffussion is absolutely worth doing it. On the one hand, results of the projects and the research undertaken. On the other hand, not only information about the results, but knowledge transfer through assistance, direct training, formal education, especially to achieve multiplier effects.

Merryl Ford, Emerging Innovations Group of the Meraka Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

There’s sometimes resilience to empowerment. Capacity building is not only about specific (digital) skills, but also about changing mindsets.

• Slogan on disabilities in SouthAfrica: Nothing about us, without us. We need to make sure that we don’t do things “for” people but “with” people. Africa should take ownership of its development agenda.
• Interventions should be simple
• The cellphone is the PC of Africa
• Sustainability, replication, massification. A pilot needs to be scaled at any stage.

Q & A

Q: research on impact… is a real need or an imposed “need” of the inner structure of development cooperation, projects, agencies and so? Ceballos: The need to measure impact is real. Many policies are put into practice based on intuition, on vision. So we do need to evaluate these policies to support or reject such intuitions. Martínez: short-run projects are difficult to analyze accurately, as there’s no time to do it properly. A solution would be that everyone involved in the projects collected data and helped to analyze it.

Q: How do we cope about the cost of maintenance of cellphones in rural areas? A: There are alternatives (e.g. via radio) that do not charge per call… but the maintenance of the whole network does have a cost. Certainly, it’s not a matter of absolute costs, but a matter of cost-benefit analysis, seeing whether the project is worth running it and find out how to support the overall costs.

Q: How do we put social research together with tecnology research in development related research? A: The problems that research has to face have to be far ahead enough. And they require plenty of time. In this sense, everyone involved in ICT4D should be in a same conversation, to gather all sensibilities and be able to look far in the horizon.