When framing all the impact of ICTs in society — and not only at the economic level — it is unavoidable to speak of Manuel Castells’s work, maybe the most acknowledged scholar in this field. Summing up and focusing on what is of interest here, Castells presents a society structured in three layers — relationships of production, experience and power — that by acting over matter (i.e. nature) — the former — and establishing relationships amongst them three layers, end up shaping a culture in a specific configuration of time and space. As technology plays and important role in both the relationships amongst layers and in the creation of culture, Castells theorizes on how ICTs are actually shaping nowadays culture in a very broad sense. His thesis is that the Informational Paradigm leads to a globalized Network Society that pervades each and every aspect of human life. Besides the effect on the Economy, it affects all the way the society shaped, thus the way we work, how culture and communication take place, a redefinition of politics, and even the concepts of time and space.
We can summarize the preceding ideas in the following figure, which presents the three layered society structure in a drastically simplified way:
Concerning development, Welzel et al. (2003) describe in their work a framework that, to our appeal, is very interesting as it goes beyond economic development, overcoming the usual focus on infrastructures.
Their three tier approach is based on the three main trends in development studies. The first one is socioeconomic development, mainly based in Economy issues (translated into indicators) plus some others mainly measuring Health or Education. Socioeconomic development ends up measuring the resources the individual actually has, thus enhancing his objective means of choice. The second one is value change shifting to emancipative values. In this case, what is enhanced is not the objective but the subjective ability towards human choice. The third one is democratization that, if accompanied – as it would be expected – by an increase of freedom rights, would actually make possible the objective and subjective power of choice that the two former development trends explained.
Again, next figure tries and pictures these ideas:
If we add both frameworks, on one hand Castells’s Network Society and on the other Welzel et al.’s, we come up with the following figure, a figure that I have already presented here:
If we take Ferran Sabaté’s work (2007a, 2007b) after the World Economic Forum’s Networking Readiness Index 2006 for Spain, we clearly see that infrastructures are not the problem (they are undoubtedly and still a problem, but they are far from being the problem). As it it put clear in his two articles, as a quite e-developed country, Spain has reached a certain satisfactory degree of e-readiness based on a deep and wide development of infrastructures. What is lacking, and impedes a further e-development, is everything else that should accompany the deployment of infrastructures, namely a proper political strategy, digital literacy and, above all, a strong demand driven by private (mainly individual, but also corporate) interest — it is my opinion that, at the state we are in, lack of interest and digital illiteracy are almost the same thing and can be generalized as lack of e-Awareness.
What to do about it?
Let’s take the previous figure, let’s only keep the central column and let’s put two layers on top of it: first layer is how the web (we could actually speak of ICTs in general) has developed, from 1.0 — based on infrastructures and one-way information — to 2.0 — based on content and services and participation. Second layer is about two kinds of policies, one based on push strategies (wire cities, subsidize computer acquisition), the other one based on pull strategies (make people aware of their needs and how computers can help fulfill them, empower Administrations so citizens know they can ask for more public e-Services).
It is my opinion that Spain — as many other (almost) e-developed countries — is just at the hinge between an Information Society based on infrastructures and the creation of a strong ICT sector, and another one based on highly digitally literate people that demand high quality digital content and services in an adequate regulation framework (adequate not for incumbent carriers, but for digital content and services provision: privacy, intellectual property rights, cyberlaw, etc.).
Not to stay forever at that hinge, the transition from 1.0 to 2.0 must be boosted. And it is my believe that, after a successful push strategies to set up the basements of a first phase of the Information Society, what is needed is pull strategies so that the growth, both in depth and width, of the Information Society is made socially sustainable according to citizens’ needs and, at the same time, economically sustainable according to customers’ will to pay.
While I’m no unconditional defender of the OLPC initiative — i.e. there are things I like, things I don’t, so I still don’t have a strong position for or against — I believe there are some statements Leinonen makes in his post that, IMHO, are not absolutely fair with the project.
I share most of his arguments but I don’t agree with some of them:
On one hand, I don’t think the project pretends that children “own” (in the sense of exclusive ownership he talks about) a computer. I honestly think is a matter of identifying the main user. Actually, the reason — I guess — behind giving the child a laptop and not giving it to the school is so he can take it home. By doing this, it is the whole family that receives the computer, and not only the child, so there is — at least potentially — a multiplier effect. Considering that the project is intended to serve mainly rural, isolated areas, providing a household with such a tool makes sense to me. I personally find the point that in general children do not own things quite excessive.
A second derivative (critique) of assigning not an institution but an individual — the child — the computer is that it goes against all values that foster sharing, community building and so. I would fully agree with such a critique if the XO computer had not a strong bet on mesh networking. I absolutely believe this does make a difference. By mesh networking sharing is boosted to the maximum — at least potentially, of course — and what could be seen as an individual tool becomes a networking node with many implications, including educational implications in both the field of knowledge and values.
Thus, the knowledge exchange that can take place in such an open and collaborative network is only enhanced by the huge amount of content embedded in the computer by default. Besides the fact that, as the software, this content can be localized — and this is a (soft) countercritique to the project’s (supposed lack of) sensibility towards different cultures and traditions — by bringing such content home, at least two things happen: the first one, as stated before, the whole family benefits from having that laptop home and not at the school; the second one is that that content stays with the student. If this student lives away from the school and spends there little time — specially compared to developed countries — it is not trivial that the more time he has access to content, the better. And just a remainder: if he is connected with other students wirelessly, the sense of “classroom” still exists, even if virtual.
There’s a last statement on Leinonen’s article that caught me by surprise and might be due to my ignorance on the project: the OLPC seems to believe that learning programming is the key to all other learning. I must confess it’s the first time I read this argument. If it were true, I’d be sharing most of the criticism around it. Nevertheless, I’d rather add some clarifications about this issue. Regardless if coding is a key issue in one’s education, digital literacy absolutely is. And besides my own thoughts on how literacy will evolve in the future closely tied to digital literacy until they both become “just” literacy, evidence shows that skilled individuals — and this includes by large digital literacy — will have it much better to work and socialize in a Network Society. Just in economic terms, employability and productivity will rely very much in digital skills in a world where ICT-based services will be the locomotive of development, above all in emerging economies.
I want to insist that I share and find most of Leinonen’s critiques really relevant, but I also believe that most of the buzz around the One Laptop per Child project has taken place in geek environments, thus shifting the debate towards technological aspects, and hence infringing a technological bias to the project that, in its origin — and this is my own, personal opinion — the project had not.
As in a pendulum movement, the reflections about the impact of ICTs in the Economy have swung from enthusiasm to realism and back to optimism, being each of these states really subjective and implying a wide range of shades within.
After a first period of cyberoptimism, people that “wanted to see” and people that thought “waiting to see” was a bad strategy because “it will then be too late”, followed a timespan where scientists — mainly economists — stuck to strict evidence from reality, being their main conclusion that the more you spend/invest in ICTs the more they affect both the share and the growth of the GDP — an obvious conclusion to many, I’d dare say, as it’ll happen with sweets if you spent half your national budget in candy.
In the last years, due to more data available and more and better analyses, we have been seeing new findings that, at last, seem to bring more light to the issue of the impact of ICTs on the Economy. In the following table I present a summary of a good bunch of such positive impacts. One caveat is due: as it is clarified in most of the documents listed below, evidence is not always subject to generalization. While sometimes it actually is, some findings apply only to specific contexts such as countries, economies, moments of time, constellations of conditions and so forth. I nevertheless believe that these impacts are worth listing because some were predicted — or expected — ten years or more before they could be measured. On the other hand, some caveats about the applicability of these findings are mainly based on (non) availability of data. Last, but not least, because even if some results only apply, as we have said, to specific economic setups, some of these setups could be reproduced in other contexts — e.g. in developing countries — in order to try to provide the same results.
Economic Benefits of ICTs
Growth
ICTs, in general, facilitate economic growth, having a positive impact in national GDP growth
Specifically, the greater the size of the ICT sector (products and services), the larger the positive impact of ICT on growth.
Enabling of larger markets coverage
Increase of reach of businesses
Reduction of economic downturns and dampens business cycles
Boost of economic output thanks to employment creation
Allowing of diversified growth strategies, especially due to changes in trade
Market
Promote integration of isolated communities into the global economy
New information-based products, new business niches
Scaling-up of international competition thanks to more transparency and trade
Energizing of the market due to shortening of product life cycles and
Investment
Growth in global investment
Positive impact on system development cost, risk and timescale effects
Reduction of information asymmetries, especially in banking and finance, thus improving market behavior due to more transparency
Positive confidence and risk assessment effects
Impact of ICT-related capital investments on overall capital deepening
Developmental gains from investing in ICT consumption
Developmental gains from investing in ICT production (even greater than for investment in ICT consumption)
High returns on investment in telecommunications equipment and, more generally, in the telecommunications sector
Efficiency
Facilitation of cost-effective public and private services
Enabling of more efficient goods and services allocation
Cost savings, in general, for industry
Fostering of effective use of development resources: capital and natural resources
Improvement of inventory management, better flow control, better integration between sales and production and, therefore, enhancing management of production
Increased transport efficiency
Reduction of transaction and search costs and information asymmetries in product, services and factor markets
Improved performance in firms, increasing efficiency in combining capital and labor (multifactor productivity)
Reduction of site dependency of data processing
Enabling of higher quality products and services
Improvement of quality monitoring
Fostering of mass customization
Enabling of dis-intermediation
Creation of new intermediaries, new business niches
Better access to knowledge and information by enabling of rich information flow
Improved decision-making
Greater flexibility on the part of firms in catering to a diversified customer base
Network externality effects
Innovation
Lowering of technology cost
Increase in the volume and innovation effects
Benefits from international standardization
Positive impact of rapid technological progress
Impact on skills and organizational change
Productivity
Productivity in Firms
Productivity in Industries
Productivity in Economies
Increase of labor productivity, especially in more skilled workers and/or after an initial period of adoption/training
Increase of multifactor productivity
Significant contribution to value-added by ICT skilled jobs
Greater impact of broadband on productivity
Contribution to the increase of capital input per worker (capital deepening) thus increasing efficiency and productivity
Trade
Growth in global trade
Intensification of trade
Growing trade in ICT goods and ICT-enabled services, increasing its share in total goods and services exports
Emergence of a global information infrastructure
Enabling of outsourcing, thus reducing costs – on one side – and creating business – on the other one.
Increase of foreign investment
Employment
Positive effects on employment creation
ICT-producing enable better paid ICT-related jobs
Energizing of occupational structure and changing demand for competencies
Positive impact on high-skilled workers’ wages
Increased transparency and efficiency in labor markets, allowing better allocation of workers and skills
Compensation of deficient growth of employment opportunities in manufacturing by significant increases in ICT business employment
Creation of new kind of jobs
Improved social development
Demand
Increase of user expectations
Strengthening of ICT-products and -services demand
Enabling of new forms of interaction between firms and other parties such as consumers thanks to networking
Surprisingly — or not — there are few papers stating the negative impact of ICTs in the Economy. Some of them do not dare talking about negative impacts but of changes in the Economy: change of paradigm, organizational changes, turbulences in international markets, etc. and speak of them quite neutrally: they are neither positive nor negative on their own, but it will depend on a firm or a sector strength and position to benefit from them or to suffer them.
To be true, the only potential negative impact I have been able to find in economic papers — and also in sociological papers — is about employment. Again, a caveat: as I have shown before, most authors predict that the net effect on employment will be positive, and will be in the lines shown in the table. Nevertheless, some — among them Greenwood (1999) and Castells (2000) — picture some drawbacks of ICTs entering workers’ life. While the first one describes an impasse scenario where skilled workers will benefit while non-skilled will have to adapt to new technologies — losing productivity, competitiveness and earnings in the meanwhile — Castells is certainly more frightening, as he depicts the segmentation of workers in two axes: networked vs. switched-off labor, and self-programmable vs. generic labour. The conclusions are similar to Greenwood’s, but presumably to stay in the long run and with deeper consequences that spill from the labor market over the social and cultural arenas in a not really promising future for the switched-off and/or generic kind of workers.
Castells, M. (2000). “Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society”. In British Journal of Sociology, Jan-Mar 2000, 51(1), 5-24. London: Routledge. Retrieved January 29, 2007 from http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2000.00005.x/enhancedabs/
Primo Braga, C. A., Kenny, C. J., Qiang, C., Crisafulli, D., Di Martino, D., Eskinazi, R., Schware, R. & Kerr-Smith, W. (2000). The Networking Revolution. Opportunities and Challenges for Developing Countries. Washington, DC: infoDev. Retrieved October 26, 2007 from http://www.schoolnetafrica.net/fileadmin/resources/The_Networking_Revolution.pdf
Talero, E. & Gaudette, P. (1996). Harnessing Information for Development. A proposal for a World Bank group strategy. World Bank Discussion Papers no. 313. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Retrieved November 14, 2007 from http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1999/08/15/000009265_3961219093624/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf
UNCTAD. (2006). Using ICTs to Achieve Growth and Development. Background paper by the UNCTAD secretariat. Geneva: UNCTAD. Retrieved February 28, 2007 from http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/c3em29d2_en.pdf
Colle’s thesis is quite simple, which does not mean that it is hence less true: reflection and practice, practice and reflection, must go hand in hand. Colle states that telecenters can function in at least three ways for universities:
A means for reaching beyond their “ivory tower” to extend their knowledge and learning resources
A laboratory for faculty and researchers
A learning environment for students
The first point is interestingly ambiguous: on one hand, it means that universities should open their output, content, knowledge outside of their academic environments and revert or bring back the investment that society makes in universities. On the other hand, it also means that faculty should open their minds and realize there’s a real world outside and not just statistics and survey reports.
Reversely, telecenters could benefit from universities in many ways:
Research about ICTs and information needs
Local and relevant content, especially tailored for telecenters’ users
Training and Learning resources — obvious
ICT skilled human resources
Again, the corollary for the University is that it should (once more) get out of the ivory tower, disclose its practices and, over all, open its outputs, in the line of what open access, open science, open content initiatives promote.
My own conclusion is twofold: engage in the conversation, in the projects and in reality and, to do so, open and disclose your procedures, your findings, your networks to the limit.
Straightforward? Not really. In a world of web 2.0 philosophy and applications, it took 13 pages to David Beer and Roger Burrows to state (demostrate?) that you have to run your own blog, or have 100 friends in Facebook, to be able to write — with grounded arguments and evidence — about blogging or social networks. And I wonder if they succeeded in convincing anyone but the already convinced.
It is beyond question that development and education are tightly bound one to each other. And if Information and Communication Technologies are quickly becoming an important vector for development too, having the three concepts under the same roof — Development, Education and ICTs — really does make a lot of sense.
On the other hand, I have been honored to be admitted in the Conference Committee. Among other things this means I’ll be in Birmingham next April 15th and 16th, 2008. Whoever interested in meeting there, or in London, around these dates, let me know.
More information
Dates: 9 to 11 September 2008
Venue: University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom.
I have been invited to chair one of the four workgroups of the event, actually the one that is more focused on Cooperation for Development 2.0, the one called Networking Cooperation – towards the networked Cooperation.
I have also been asked to write an article, a position paper to start up the debate. It will be coming in the next days, but in the meanwhile, I’m working on the following concepts/keywords:
Network: Everything will be networked or won’t be. Institutions will be nodes of a grid or isolated, disconnected, starving islands in their way towards disappearance.
Gift economy: You’re in a network and what you give is what you get
Open access (open source, open content): If you’re a nonprofit, it absolutely does not make (even less) sense to rediscover the wheel, not to disclose your capital
Presence: Be on the Web or be not. Networks and networking, accountability, transparency, advocacy will be web based or, at least, begin on the Web.
Citizen engagement: The rising importance of media (remember the “C” in ICT) shifts the focus from charity, direct cooperation to advocacy, and the power to mobilize the citizens to lobby internationally.
Online Volunteering: For the most engaged ones, online volunteering makes possible distributed, high quality and highly granular engagement
Long Tail: Nonprofits, volunteers, minority groups have the potential to find and be found more than ever.
Networking + Long Tail + Online Volunteering: The evolution of aid big funders (international and national governmental agencies, big foundations) in the last days has shifted from ‘coffee for all’ to ‘big impact on concentrated clusters’. As in firms, I wonder if there is a trend towards big knowledge hubs where multinational nonprofits receive big funding, having the most operational tasks outsourced to smallest onsite nonprofits and online volunteers that gather around a project and dismantle once it is done.
North-South vs. South-North: No more people traveling around: knowledge workers collaborate online, funders wire funds and target communities from cooperation work on an endogenous development basis.
Comments really welcome.
Update:
Final version of my position paper, in Spanish, already available:
