ICTlogy

Manuel Castells is a scientific I admire. There are things I share — most of them — and things I don’t. Right now I’m working hard with two works of him:

which I find really interesting and a recommended reading for everyone.

This is why I find so disappointing when an author of his stature can so unexpectedly slip out of the road by writing:

the Internet is quickly becoming a medium of interactive communication beyond the cute, but scarcely relevant practice of chat rooms (increasingly made obsolete by SMSs and other wireless, instant communication systems)

[bold letters are mine]

Of course, I’m not questioning him for not foreseeing that SMS would not replace instant messaging — which is what he’s actually meaning by the general concept of chat rooms —, two technologies that now live together in perfect harmony, especially in teen environments. It’s about the scarcely relevant practice of chat rooms.

This is 0% evidence, 100% value judgment.

Evidence about the relevance of such practice is way easy to be checked. First of all, we should remember the origins of both e-mail and instant messaging: high-tech scientific laboratories — there’s plenty of literature about this issue. But once it went out of the scientific environment and got popular, there’s more and more evidence about the relevance of such tools: the Pew Internet & American Life Project issued in that same year, 2004, the report How Americans Use Instant Messaging about 53 million American adults using instant messaging programs. Well, this is quite a lot of people doing scarcely relevant practices. But just at the end of last year, 2007, Garrett and Danziger analyzed how instant messaging was used at work for work purposes in their article IM=Interruption Management? Instant Messaging and Disruption in the Workplace, finding positive uses — yes, you read right: positive. So, evidence absolutely shows that there are good, interesting, useful practices around instant messaging.

What about value judgment? Well, I’d personally agree on assessing as useful, effective, efficient, etc. the use instant messaging for criminal purposes: phishing and pharming, organizing terrorist attacks, seducing minors for sexual purposes, etc. Actually, the main security concerns nowadays about the Internet are precisely in this line: how to avoid the effectiveness of tools like instant messaging, social networking sites and e-mail for criminal purposes. Hence, what is to blame is the criminal who uses these tools, but the tools are working great — even if in bad hands, because tools know no ethics, no law (well, Lessig would complain about this last point).

Summing up: a tool is useful, efficient, effective or relevant besides the fact that we like or dislike the way it is used, but based on its performance.

Same with social networking sites. In a work I’ve already talked about by David Beer and Roger Burrows, they write about Facebook. Even if they are quite open minded, there’s a full chapter about the bad uses of Facebook concerning teachers’ privacy issues which, from my point of view, is almost a digression that really does not deal with the sense of ‘democratization’, as stated in the title of that chapter.

While the authors complain — more than criticize — about the fact of having some colleagues exposed to public dishonor, they lose focus on the subject of analysis: Facebook, social networking sites, shifting towards the (bad) education and practices of such students, which was (supposedly) not the matter of debate in the article.

Day after day I am surprised by the recurrent exercise to blame on the Internet things that belong to “real” life: Law, Education, Business Management… And, even worse, to state about Internet applications and uses things that are absolutely false, taking as evidence what, all in all, was just lack of deeper knowledge and prejudice. Even in the most brilliant scientists. We all have bad days everywhen.

infoDev has published the report of a survey about the state of ICTs implementation in the education sector in Africa.

Some highlights:

• Growing commitment to ICT in education on the part of government leaders across the continent. Leadership, leadership, leadership.
• Public-private partnerships are important mechanisms enabling the implementation of ICT in national education systems in Africa. Mark Davies also spoke about this at the Web2forDev Conference when he presented Tradenet, and it’s getting a subject on which everyone comes over again and again.
• The need for digital content development relevant to local curricula is becoming more
  urgent as ICT use becomes more widespread. Surprisingly, there’s few mentions to initiatives such as Creative Commons and no mentions at all about open access policies, strategies, debates and so.
• Interest in open source software and operating systems is growing rapidly in Africa, but this growth is constrained by a lack of sufficient human resource capacity to support such systems and applications. Once again, the problem is not only infrastructures, but capacity building, digital literacy at all levels — and a strong local ICT sector, strong local industry. A chance for endogenous development?
• Internet connectivity remains a major challenge, which is no surprise but becoming a major challenge as Web 2.0 demands more and more connectivity quality.
• Wireless networks are developing rapidly throughout the continent, and of increasing relevance to the education sector, something that projects like One Laptop per Child have turned as their main asset/bet
• e-Learning for Higher Education is still not widely adopted, despite efforts like the ones made by the African Virtual University, USAID’s DOT-COM, SchoolNet Africa, to mention a few. Lack of content, hardware and connectivity being some of the main barriers.

It is especially relevant to me what the preface states:

Despite widespread beliefs that ICTs can be important potential levers to introduce and sustain education reform efforts in Africa [and] much rhetoric related to the ‘digital divide’; there has been no consolidated documentation of what is actually happening in Africa in this area, nor comprehensive baseline data on the state of ICT use in education in Africa against which future developments can be compared.
A lack of information impacts planning […]
A need for coordination […]
No consolidated information resource […]

which I honestly think could be transposed to many many other areas of the ICT4D field. Hence, the need to establish a methodological framework for ICT4D and pursue more research, analysis, indicators, raise datasets, etc.

More info

• Piece of news and main findings
• Survey web page
• Farrell, G. and Isaacs, S. (2007). Survey of ICT and Education in Africa: A Summary Report, Based on 53 Country Surveys. Washington, DC: infoDev / World Bank. (569 Kb)

(Thanks Michael)

The OECD has released its Communications Outlook for year 2007

The main conclusions are as follows:

• Voice continues to be the key driver in OECD telecommunication markets
• Mobile subscribers outnumber fixed subscribers by a
  ratio of 3 to 1
• Rise of importance of Voice over Internet Protocolo (VoIP), mainly due to rise of broadband adoption, and pressing down prizes on voice services
• Blurring of market barriers: e.g. voice no more tied to fixed analogue lines, but can be accessed through fixed analogue lines, but also through broadband, mobile lines, etc.
• Blurring of market barriers, multiplicity of offers, blurring of regulation.
• Rise of local wireless networks fostered by local administrations.
• Shift from paying for voice to paying for data; shift from paying for data to flat-rate pricing based on bandwidth quality instead of data traffic.
• Trend to lower broadband prizes for better quality.
• Shift of subscription of communication services provided outside the boundaries of a citizen’s country and delivered over the Internet: more pressure on regulation changes.
• Telecommunication trade continues to grow in the OECD area
  and now accounts for 2.2% of all trade.
• China is one of the five emerging countries in the group known as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
  India, China and South Africa). ICT spending in the BRICS economies increased by more than 19% a year

Summing up:

• The importance of broadband — the new leading factor of the digital divide.
• The pressure on sector and international regulation — the new arena of the debate to achieve harmonization, inside and outside boundaries.

The Web2forDev – Participatory Web for Development Conference is taking place at FAO Headquarters in Rome, organized by FAO, CTA, IICD, GTZ, UBC, IFAD, CGIAR, euforic, UCAD, APC, ACP and the European Commission. Here come my notes.

Presentation: Anton Mangstl

It’s the first time that the revolution is not about the development of systems, but empowerment.

Presentation: Hansjörg Neun

Holidays for me is getting no internet and no GSM. It is important not to get drowned by technologies, but to master them.

Jacques Diouf, Director-General Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Keynote Speech: Anriette Esterhuysen

The importance of ICTs in leapfrogging.

Skilled development, that can be enhanced/fostered by ICTs, and has traditionally been forgotten from the (cooperation for) development agendas.

The focus of ICT4D can be focused into mainstream.

Proliferation of online content, along with language/translation tools, bringing in new users that do not come from the developed world.

Web 2.0 removes the barriers on the consumers, creators of content.

Partnerships are crucial, collaboration is critical for cooperation for development, but most especially engagement, which is widely enhanced by Web 2.0, a perfect platform for this multilayer commitment, response.

Sharing is a main challenge.

We need to rethink (cooperation for) development deeply. We have to provide access to the tools, and to let/help people use them effectively.

Participation, decision making, human rights… are new dimensions on development that the Web 2.0 can include on the development debate.

Online participation should be ways to promote a more inclusive society.

More info

• Web2forDev – Participatory Web for Development at internet.artizans
• Website of the conference
• Blog of the conference
• Wiki of the conference
• Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, by Michael Wesh
• Pages tagged with "web2fordev" on del.icio.us
• Flickr Photos tagged with web2fordev

Student research seminar: Chintan Viashnav

In a highly abstracted conceptualization, both the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and the Internet consist of two components: the end-devices and the network that connects them. Traditional telecommunications regulation has assumed the presence of a network core that could be engineered to fulfill regulatory goals as well as a vertically-integrated industry structure that could meet regulatory obligations. In my dissertation, I propose to take the case of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the technology that enables voice communications over the Internet, and argue that disruptive trends in technology are eroding the control in the core that was traditionally possessed by network designers and owners. This eroding control in the core has the potential to render the current VoIP regulation inadequate and unsustainable, requiring that future regulatory response be discontinuous from that of the past. This study uses a system dynamics model to study the dynamic complexity surrounding the current VoIP regulation and to understand policy options for preventing undesirable outcomes. The model consists of four sectors: the consumer adoption sector for modeling demand, the industry structure sector for modeling supply, the regulatory compliance sector for modeling the level of compliance, and the innovation sector for modeling innovation trends.

Current regulatory response to VoIP (goals)

• Public Safety
• Law Enforcement Capability
• Equal opportunity
• Economic Development
• Competition

Of those five traditional aspects, just the two first are really developed. Disruptive trends such as VoIP erode assumed control in the core. With eroding control in the core meeting regulatory objetives will increasingly require regulatory responses discontinous from the past.

The functionality is dispersing to the end-deivde,k at the ownership of the Core (who’s in charge of guaranteeing the procedure of the communication) is fragmenting.

The End of Core can cause

• Regulatory misalignment, and thus
• Inefficiency in achieving regulatory compliance
• Regulatory capture by new players
• And may require discontinuing access-centric regulatory thinking… and understanding the value chain
• Circum-innovation, and thus
• arms race between proponents of compliance and non-compliance
• And may require discontinuing command-and-control regulatory thinking… and understanding a collaborative model of regulation

System Dynamics Model: when a desired regulatory compliance takes place, circumvention actinos seem to wider the existing compliance gap. How to control the whole system?

More Info

• Vaishnav On VoIP, by Daithí Mac Síthigh

We’ll never thank Chintan Vaishnav enough for arranging our visit to the MIT Media Lab and OLPC Foundation, impressive places where to work (or study, of course: actually, a place to learn, either official role you get there with), really interdisciplinary.

MIT Media Lab

We visited Lifelong Kindergarden research group, which has Lego as main founder, and Lego Mindstorms as one of Lego-MIT Media Lab most interesting outcomes.

Jay Silver

We there were presented a couple of very interesting projects:

Scratch

Jay Silver kindly introduced us to the rudiments of Scratch and how to get started on this tool. Actually, I still wonder whether it is a game, a multimedia design and production tool, an educational technology, a collaborative web 2.0 networking social software or all of them.

I’m pretty sure that Jay Silver was right when he said that tools the like of Scratch actually fit on what Ivan Illich wanted to state on Deschooling Society.

What’s Up

It then was turn for Leo Burd’s thesis Technological Initiatives for Social Empowerment: Design Experiments in Technology-Supported Youth Participation and Local Civic Engagement, most commonly known as What’s Up.

The project joins best of both worlds in VoIP, mobile telephony and social software for community building. The idea is that while the Web is quite spread, in most developing countries the ICT revolution is clearly led by mobile phones. Thus, What’s Up presents the usual community site but empowered with VoIP and all kinds of mobile enhanced features, just like SMS posted text and vodcasts.

One Laptop per Child Foundation

XO Laptop (AKA “OLPC” Laptop)

It is actually relevant that our visit at One Laptop per Child Foundation was lead by Samuel Klein, director of content of the One Laptop per Child Project.

A year and a half ago I wrote Negroponte and the Web 2.0 or the Four Classes of the Digital Divide to state that Nicholas Negroponte’s effort to bridge the digital divide will be worthless if digital literacy and provision of content and services did not accompany the infrastructures revolution and diffusion. Having Samuel Klein as spokesman or PR representative makes a tacit statement on what the One Laptop per Child Project is about: it is not about delivering laptops to children, is about opening them the gates of content, which is the real issue.

As he himself explained, every activity has comunity around it, being the goal to build education networks, an example of it the installation of Moodle for some community projects, being the management and coordination of this free software LMS done by the same educational institutions that provide wireless connectivity to the laptops.

The commitment with content can be on the other hand exemplified with the Summer of Content 2007 initiative to provide content to be packeted with the XO laptop.

Samuel Klein strongly encouraged the audience and anyone interested to both contribute to the OLPC Project Wiki and subscribe to the OLPC Project Wiki mailing lists.

More info

• MIT: Media Lab, Stata Center, Press, by Daithí Mac Síthigh
• MIT: One Laptop Per Child, by Daisy Pignetti
• ‘$100 laptop’ production begins