The Star Tribune last week included a piece from The Economist that addresses the problem of the digital divide ("Which comes first, cellular or the net?" Tuesday, March 15, 2005). Some interesting points mentioned in the article include the UN's new "Digital Solidarity Fund" to fight exclusion from the information society. The article goes on to suggest that mobile phones are emerging as the technology with the greatest impact on development. Mobile telephony is a cheap and flexible technology that greatly improves communications and does not require that users necessarily be able to read or write. But, is that all there is? The article seems to conveniently ignore the fact that the digital divide is not only about being able to "reach out and touch someone". Mobile telephony certainly is a step forward but it's still a long way from being able to take part and benefit from the "information society". The real purpose of the article is revealed in the last paragraph - "Rather than trying to close the digital divide through top-down IT infrastructure projects, governments in the developing world should open their telecom markets. Then firms and customers, on their own and even in the poorest countries, will close the divide themselves." Does this mean that if Vodafone and T-Mobile are let in that they'll take care of "the problem"?
Leapfrogging has been suggested as a means of accelerating development by bypassing the "stages" implied by traditional modernisation theories of development by adoption "off the shelf" technologies...
The notion of "leapfrogging" as it has been formulated focuses on adoption of ICT's as a quick way forward for developing countries. One of the problems with this is that there is a hint of a "build it and they will come" mentality. It ignores the reality that the development of ICTs in "developed" regions has introduced a wide range of ways of working and communicating and even affected the way we define concepts such as knowledge and information. I am reminded of a story I once heard: A university in an Eastern European country had received a grant from the EU Commission to purchase state-of-the-art computer equipment. When an observer from the Commission went to monitor the progress of the project for which the equipment was intended, officials of the university proudly showed the observer the equipment, still in boxes and entirely unused. They viewed this as protection of a significant investment while they figured out how they would actually use the equipment!
I recently discovered a dissertation available online that echoes some of my concerns.