Last summer, Craig R. Barrett, chairman of UN GAID and chairman of the board of Intel Corp., issued a list of "Recommendations from the UN GAID Chairman". A couple of the recommendations are worthy of a slightly raised eyebrow, and perhaps even a "wink wink nudge nudge" or two.
Barrett addresses education in his first recommendation. Conspicuously missing here is any mention of students. The gist of Barrett's first recommendation is "Train teachers to integrate technology into the classroom". This is pretty obvious, but he goes on to repeat the Intel mantra, "Computers aren't magic, teachers are." In light of recent spats between Intel and OLPC project (esp. Intel's teacher focus vs. OLPC's kids focus), one has to wonder whether this is coming from Barrett the UN GAID chairman or Barrett the Intel chairman. However, there is an abundance of research that gives ample reason to question the effectiveness of entrusting classroom teachers with the spread of ICTs. Numerous studies have shown that even after receiving special training many teachers are hesitant to fully integrate ICTs into their classroom activities. They are far less likely to attempt to do something innovative with ICTs, choosing rather to use familiar off the shelf products, the most common being word processors. Meanwhile, ICTs have been shown to be truly transformative in very unpredictable ways when put into the hands of users, even when those users have little previous experience with them. Put simply, there is plenty of evidence to support a claim that computers may be more magical than teachers.
Barrett's other point that raised my attention is his fourth recommendation, "Competitive telecommunications markets are necessary to allow for affordable Internet access." This makes sense up to a certain point. Competition certainly has brought the cost down, but only if there is a market to work with. Telecommunications markets have not seemed eager to seek out new markets where the most costly parts of the infrastructure are missing. East Africa remains the most poorly connected part of the world and it doesn't seem like the telecommunications market is exactly knocking at their doors with an adequate submarine cable in hand. We even have a rather dismal situation here in Iceland. Infrastructure within Iceland is very good (except for several rural areas) but the country is connected internationally by only two submarine cables, only one of which is for commercial use. Internet access outside of Iceland is metered (except for the most expensive services and even then there are limits) and quite expensive (not to mention the all too common outages that occur when something happens to that one cable). This will gradually get better, but still, it's a few years off. If Iceland's progress in this area is any indication of what can be expected for East Africa, there may be quite a wait for the telecommunications market to get around to delivering on the "free market" promise.
People over at the UNDP's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) have caught on to the brilliance of Wikis. They've released a bunch of their "e-Primers" under a GFDL license onto Wikibooks. What this means is that they are free to be edited by YOU, me and everyone else.
Somewhere I read that 1 ICT year is roughly equal to 3 real years. So, if an e-Primer was published 3 years ago, that means it's at least 9 years outdated! But, now we can all go and update them to our hearts' content with examples of good/bad practice, new developments, etc., and, of course, I expect us all to do exactly that. Obviously, you'll most likely find me hangin' out around the ICTs in Education primer, although I'm sure I can find some other topics of interest in the vast amount of material available.
It would be great to see some other organisations do this.
There seem to be so many things going on these days. Maybe it's just that time of year or maybe I'm finally awaking from semi-hiatus. Either way, I'm probably going to cover a lot of news in this post.
Two of the more promintent items "du jour" are, of course, the China-Africa Summit and the Internet Governance Forum. Intriguing happenings on both fronts. Both of these, along with other not-as-visible things, underline the types of changes we are seeing, and will continue to see in the near future.
The China-Africa Summit is one more embodiment of what has been talked about for some time now, i.e. the changing relations in the global sphere being brought about by the rise of "new" economic powers, especially China and India. This summit makes it quite clear that China is looking to build economic ties with African countries to strengthen their position (although not only - I was recently at a meeting here in Iceland with a delegation of 30-35 people from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education that were on a world tour stretching right around the globe to build educational and business ties. Talk about thinking big!). Hopefully this is good news for Africa, but there is a justified measure of scepticism concerning the reputation of the benefactor. For instance, it would be great of the budding relationship between Africa and China would result in better telecommunications connections for Africa, but hopefully their use would not be managed the same way China manages its own communications infrastructure.
The Internet Governance Forum is in my opinion very confused. Governance involves the the exercise of authority to manage a consistent societal structure. I don't see this as being applicable to the Internet as such. The issues that are increasingly being raised under the auspices of "Internet governance", eg. access,
diversity and basic rights, are not exclusive to the Internet. These are issues that need to be addressed outside of cyberspace. We are not nearly "virtual" yet. Therefore there is no sense in trying to govern a space that is not inhabited, per se. For the time being, Internet governance should focus on the things that we can hope to govern, i.e. technical issues such as interoperability and domain management.
Several different points of view on the Internet Governance Forum's inaugural meeting.
Another interesting thing worth mentioning:
Potential car of the future?
This is so cool! The sad thing is that it seems that each time one of these breakthrough ideas that will radically change energy consumption emerges, it seems to quietly disappear and things go on as before... (I remember reading about a revolutionary alternative to washing machines many years ago that was said to be on its way to the market shortly - never happened.) They can't all be bad ideas, can they?
An "Internet Bill of Rights" has been proposed at the inaugural meeting of the Internet Governance Forum. While I can see the rationality behind wanting to ensure some basic rights for Internet users, I just don't see what sort of impact a bill of rights is expected to have. And furthermore, introducing this under the auspices of "Internet governance" underlines how weird (in my opinion) the whole "Internet governance" thing has become.
If my memory serves me right, "Internet governance" became a prominent issue (i.e. if it was around before, not many people were aware of it) around the debate concerning the ICANN's management of top-level domains and a handful of other fairly obscure technical issues. Most of these issues remain unresolved. Meanwhile, the notion of "Internet governance" seems to have taken on the elasticity of a well chewed wad of bubble gum. All of a sudden "governance" is taken to refer to everything from freedom of speech to basic issues concerning access and multilingualism.
These certainly are real issues worthy of attention, but grouping them with the technical issues that "Internet governance" used to refer to is confusing. At least there are real forseeable ways to resolve the old "Internet governance" issues, i.e. management of top-level domains etc., but these new issues seem to require something of the Internet that just isn't there.
For example, let's say that we do draft an Internet Bill of Rights. It's not difficult to imagine what would be in it, basically the same stuff that's in the universal declaration of human rights. Maybe in slightly more techy language, or what? Then, who is going to monitor and/or enforce the protection of those rights? And how?
The thing is that, as yet, Internet societies (that's another problem, there's not just one) are not separate from terrestrial societies. Yes, individuals may be able to distance themselves to some extent from their terrestrial existence by going on the Internet. But, at the end of the day, they remain tethered to their terrestrial roots and are ultimately subject to the rules and regulations set by the relevant territorial authorities. If those authorities are not willing to acknowledge the political supremacy of an "Internet governance" body, an Internet Bill of Rights is likely to be little more than a noteworthy statement on a piece of paper (or a webpage).
Now here's an interesting development (in Icelandic). A player in the game Eve Online, which has a very economical bent, opened a bank and convinced players that they would receive interest on their virtual savings with the bank. After a few months the banker stole all of the money and took off. The amount stolen is 790 billion ISK (the currency in the game - happens to be the international abbreviation for the Icelandic Krona as well - needless to say the game is made by Icelandic company CCP), a very sizable sum of virtual cash.
I recently posted a lengthy blurb about globalization where I wrote about Scholte's notion of globalization as "supraterritoriality" and how it remains tied to traditional territoriality. But, I also suggested that this may be changing as we see more and more virtual valuables being exchanged. The interesting thing about the Eve Online case is that ISK's and other virtual valuables are exchanged in the real world. It has been estimated that the money stolen in the game may be worth up to 12 million real ISK (ca. US$175,000). Will the fraudulent banker try to cash in on the crime in the real world or will he/she keep the cash in its more valuable virtual form? If the latter, is there anything territorial about this supraterritoriality?
Update: I guess this news has been circulating on the web for a few days. For versions in english - Slashdot has something on it, as does ArsTechnica.
Things have been slow around here. I'm in the midst of a relocation from the US to my home in Iceland and though Iceland is supposedly a leader in terms of connectivity, it takes 2 weeks (!!!) to get my home Internet connection going (still waiting...).
Anyway, who else thinks it remarkable that the most popular blog according to technorati.com is a a chinese blog? (Haven't a clue what it's about, but I find it remarkable nonetheless. Here's the blog.)
This is just very, very sad: CNN.com - Official: Africans pay $1,800 for 1GB of data - May 18, 2006.
This article on BBC News considers how perceptions of the media are changing in an information age. Interesting read. BBC NEWS | Technology | Media holds its own in trust poll
Things have been very quiet around here lately. I'm hard at work on my thesis and finishing up the semester, so things are probably going to stay fairly quiet for the time being.
But, there's always something. I came across this interesting article on open source software in the development context. Pay special attention to the last two paragraphs about linking the open source community with IT people in developing countries. This captures my opinion exactly - open source is not just (and not most importantly) cheap software for developing countries, it also has the potential to raise awareness among a huge and influential global community of developers of the needs of developing countries to make sure that the tools needed are available and appropriate.
Make sure you visit the link to UNU-IIST to get the whole picture.
They managed to sweep the issue under the chair at WSIS, but that doesn't mean it went away: BBC NEWS | Technology | Unease over how the net is run.
This years report has been published:
World Economic Forum - Global Information Technology Report
There's an incredible amount of movement over the years in the Network Readiness Index. It's not entirely clear to me what of these changes are due to actual progress in the area, changes in the way the index is formulated, or both. Nevertheless, there is some very interesting information in this generally optimistic report that specifically highlights the transformative power of ICTs.
Also check out the interactive map that comes with it. Mac users will need to use a browser other than Safari to view it because the Flash compatibility check doesn't catch the relevant info on Safari.
World Information Access Project - 2006 Briefing Booklet - See also the main web site here.
This report is based on existing data from a variety of sources, so don't expect anything too earth shattering. I think some of the assumption might be stretching it a bit. For instance, finding #4 of the five that are mentioned concludes that "developing countries - especially countries in Latin America - are putting more cultural content online than they are pouring into books." As far as I can tell, the internet part of this claim is based entirely on the number of web hosts in each country. Going from there to cultural content seems a bit of a leap to me.
It's Sunday - time for a big post! A few days ago I posted a couple of things about Negroponte's $100 laptop. One of the things that I mentioned was the common criticism, which extends to ICTs for development in general, that there are more pressing problems in developing countries than the lack of ICTs. This got me thinking about how we justify the ICT4D agenda and sent me back to the Millennium Declaration in a quest for answers. What follows is a fairly lengthy analysis of the Millennium Declaration, what it says about ICTs for development and how this relates to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). What it boils down to is that the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs do make it clear that ICTs should be leveraged in whatever way possible to facilitate development efforts. But, to get a complete picture of how they are to do this and what are the intended outcomes, we have to look beyond both the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs. Click below to read on...
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It's fairly widely recognized that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important for developing countries, although there are always a few who differ in their opinions. One of the primary defining documents for current development efforts is the UN's Millennium Declaration (UNMD) on which the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are based. What I want to do here is to analyze the UNMD to determine what it actually says, or suggests, regarding ICTs and development, and especially, education. As I've mentioned in the past, documents of this nature are sometimes criticized for being rather vague in terms of their descriptive and prescriptive function. This is not entirely a fair criticism because these types of documents need to be regarded as living documents that can continue to serve their function even though the issues that they aim to address change over time. Therefore what is perceived as vagueness or ambiguity, is better described as a necessary openness to allow for different interpretations in a rapidly changing world.
The primary aim of the UNMD, as stated in the document itself, is to acknowledge globalization and promote it in a positive light. It is claimed that the central challenge for development is to ensure that the benefits of globalization are evenly shared and distributed. The implications of these claims are that development efforts must focus on the need to create a shared future and that this requires that policies and measures that affect the global population must correspond to the needs of all, especially developing countries.
So what is the view of globalization that is being promoted here? Well, the UNMD doesn't tell us that, but I think we do have to be clear about it. Obviously, globalization means different things to different people at different times. But, in a general sense, I would say that what we refer to as globalization concerns the increasing interconnectedness of social institutions due to growth in international trade and internationalization of production processes, fueled by the increased speed at which information is transferred across the world. The key words here are "interconnectedness", "international trade and production processes", and "information". Hence, globalization is an economic trend that transcends borders by making use of information technologies. If we accept this definition, I don't see how we can discuss globalization, as it presents itself today, without acknowledging the central importance of ICTs to the concept itself. So, we see, right at the outset, that although ICTs are have not been explicitly mentioned yet, they are of central importance to the primary aims of the UNMD.
ICTs are not mentioned in the UNMD until in section 20, and then only in a very vague context. There it is stated that we need "To ensure that the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies, in conformity with recommendations contained in the ECOSOC 2000 Ministerial Declaration (ECOSOC2K), are available to all." Hence, ICTs should be available to all, but to find out why, we have to look at the ECOSOC2K. This is important, because, while the UNMD is vague about the purpose of ICTs, the ECOSOC2K is not. It specifically address the relationship between ICTs, the knowledge-based economy and development as is made quite clear in the subtitle of the document, "Development and international cooperation in the twenty-first century: the role of information technology in the context of a knowledge-based global economy." Paragraph 2. clarifies this position, where it states that "... [ICTs] are central to the creation of the emerging global knowledge-based economy and can play an important role in accelerating growth, in promoting sustainable development and eradicating poverty in developing countries as well as countries with economies in transition and in facilitating their effective integration into the global economy."
The ECOSOC2K goes on to make a very good case for ICTs for development in terms of capacity building and providing opportunities for change. Furthermore, it associates goals with economical prospects that are consistent with a global society that values all kinds of knowledge. It places great emphasis on the importance of harnessing the potential of ICTs in education to increase human and institutional capacity to access, utilize and generate knowledge. This is seen as necessary to create a conducive environment for participation in international markets. What is especially interesting about these recommendations, is that these last few points are stated in general terms and may be taken to apply equally to developed and developing countries. Though this is not explicitly stated, we can surmise that it is the authors' belief that the goals being promoted are of equal value to everyone. That is to say, that developed countries will benefit from the inclusion of developing countries in the knowledge-based society, not only the other way around, because we are creating an "emerging global knowledge-based economy" that requires input from diverse sources.
The overall language of ECOSOC2K and how the knowledge-based economy is construed, suggests certain approaches to education. The knowledge-based economy is considered to be based on widespread generation and utilization of knowledge. The goal then for human resource development is to strengthen "... the production, acquisition, absorption and dissemination of knowledge products." Integration in the knowledge-based economy is therefore based on specific processes, with which we can associate certain key skills:
knowledge production: the ability to use and generate knowledge,
knowledge acquisition: the ability to locate and evaluate relevant knowledge,
knowledge absorption: the ability to learn from others' knowledge,
knowledge dissemination: the ability to produce reflections of one's own knowledge, i.e. information, to share with others for their learning benefit (see here for why I say "reflections of knowledge").
It would be absurd to deny the importance of literacy and computer skills, and it is by no means my intention to do so. What I wish to highlight is that this view of the knowledge-based economy suggests additional skills that are central to the need for "capacity building" and a "conducive environment" described in the ECOSOC2K. These are the skills that are not necessarily directly related to the use of ICTs, but are indirectly related, and necessary, as they constitute the key skills related to an ICT driven knowledge-based economy. Hence, the justification for ICTs in development education is clear - these are the tools that define the knowledge-based economy, just as machines were the tools that defined the industrial age. But it is not enough that people are able to use the tools, they have to be able to use them in a way that is consistent with the values of the society that they are meant to serve. In this instance, that means being able to engage in knowledge work and to be able to use ICTs to maximize the outcomes of that work.
It is very clear that this is the thinking behind the ECOSOC2K. Since the UNMD references the ECOSOC2K to clarify the role of ICTs in development efforts, the cultivation of skills related to the knowledge-based economy are encompassed by the MDGs. Since ICTs are only mentioned in target 7 of goal 8, which states, "In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies - especially information and communications technologies", we have to assume that this goal is related to section 20 of the UNMD, and therefore, further defined by the ECOSOC2K. The alternative is to concede that this important section of the UNMD simply didn't make it into the MDGs. In any case, it is clearly stated in the UNMD and therefore a concrete resolution of the UN General Assembly, and I think that WSIS was intended to illustrate the development community's commitment to ICTs for development.
This interpretation raises the question of whether efforts to monitor and measure the impact of initiatives related to the UNMD and the MDGs are measuring what has been outlined above, i.e. the promotion of skills related to the knowledge-based economy. There are some good examples, such as infoDev's "Monitoring and evaluation of ICT in education projects", which includes an excellent chapter on indicators that specifically discusses the "Learning of “21st century� skills". There are also rather dismal examples, like "Core ICT indicators" which was produced by the UN's "Partnership on measuring ICT for development" project. This publication that was presented at last years WSIS Phase II does little more than measure access to ICTs, and a limited number of ICT related activities that focus more on the information consumer aspects of ICT use, rather than knowledge production use. ECOSOC2K repeatedly mentions the need for synergy and coherence in development strategies. There is clearly a gap in that regard as far as knowledge work skills are concerned. Providing accurate and relevant indicators is extremely important because, not only do they provide a picture of what has been done, they also reflect the priorities of the development community, have an impact on what types of projects are funded and they affect policy and decision making.
Another interesting twist that ECOSOC2K puts on ICTs in development work is that, because the goals are specifically related to the knowledge-based economy, pedagogy becomes an inherent overarching concept throughout the ICT for development agenda. The concept of lifelong learning, in the "Delors" sense, i.e. "lifelong, lifewide and lifedeep", is central to the view of the knowledge-based economy that is presented in ECOSOC2K, i.e. an open and democratic environment where knowledge is continuously generated, shared and utilized. Therefore, when considering the impact of ICT for development initiatives, we should also consider their potential to foster learning environments consistent with the concept of lifelong learning. This would include the ability to critically analyze and utilize existing information for personal and institutional benefit, and the ability and self-confidence to generate and share existing and new knowledge.
The nature of ICTs and the way that they allow us to work with information and knowledge can be both revealing and deceiving. On the one hand, we can think of ICTs as tools that augment our natural capacities for processing and generating information and knowledge, and as such highlight the processes involved so that we can gain a better understanding of those processes. But ICTs can also appear to be automation devices, sort of a layover way of thinking from the industrial age, and this can easily deceive us into thinking that ICTs constitute an end in and of themselves. If we focus on the revealing aspects of ICTs and consider how these relate to our increasingly knowledge-centric society, we stand to gain considerably by expanding the knowledge-base to which we have access and which form the building blocks of the emerging knowledge-based society. But, to achieve this, it will not be enough to provide access to, and the basic skills needed for, the technology, or even the existing information and knowledge made available by the technology, for that matter. These will be needed, but they are not enough. We need to think of this in terms of the greater knowledge-based society and the types of activities that individuals will need to perform to benefit from that society.
A recent interview with Tim Berners-Lee: Isn't it semantic? : Articles : Internet : BCS.
There are some interesting points there, but the real significant stuff is towards the end, about the "Semantic Web". People familiar with Berners-Lee's Book, Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web, will know that this has been his pet project for many years now. I think that for the development community it's an especially important project. If things work out as planned, the development of the semantic web and web savvy ontologies will make it possible to tie together, by various levels of association, a wide range of electronic resources, no matter what the language or context. For example, this could increase the accessibility of indigenous knowledge. It could also increase researchers' accessibility to resource from other fields, where a different terminology may be used to describe similar things. Lots of potential, lots of uses.
I posted on the original study, so I figure I have to post on the follow-up: BBC NEWS | Technology | Wikipedia study 'fatally flawed'.
Encyclopaedia Brittanica has posted a rejection of Nature's evaluation of Brittanica and Wikipedia, calling for a retraction of the original article. Nature has rejected Brittanica's rejection and says that they will not retract.
And I ask, but which one is more of a knowledge development tool? (Hint: I think transparency is necessary for the knowledge development process.) Evaluating something like Wikipedia based solely on content sort of misses the point, in my view.
Outrageous, if you ask me: CNN.com - Tolls could dot the Internet highway - Feb 27, 2006
These are the types of things I like. An "open source-like" book titled Wireless Networking in the Developing World. The book is authored by known and respected professionals. It is released under a ShareAlike Creative Commons license. The book is available for free electronically or a printed copy can be ordered. It is supported by the website, where the authors have set up a wiki for commenting on the book, making corrections, translating and providing concrete examples of projects. Impressive stuff. Check it out.