incommunicado

I am currently working on my master thesis on ICT for development, currently based at the University of Cape Town. This entry is taken from my own web site http://www.jakobp.dk. I don't reference articles for this entry, but if interested, please feel free to send me an e-mail.

When it comes to the analysis of ICTs in a development context sustainability and digital divide appear as main concepts. They do, however, involve a number of problems as analytical concepts, which I’ll try to outline here.

Divide: with the increasing focus on information and communication technologies during the 90’ies and the introduction of the Digital Divide concept the notion of Gaps and Divides between the rich and poor world were underlined. The interesting thing in divide thinking is, that al though developing countries already at an early stage were constructed as poor/underdeveloped, mainly due to the lack of industrialization, it seems as if it wasn’t until the rise of the information society in the western countries (United States/Europe) that the Divide notion took its binary shape (have/have not). It is particularly interesting, since technology has had a key role since the establishment of the international development agencies shortly after WWII. In short when it comes to ICTs in developing countries, this means: We have ICTs, they don’t, ergo they need to posses this in order to make it to ‘the other side’ of this divide. There’s a strong dichotomy in this.

Sustainability: inspired by a recent article I’ve decided to look further into this key concept in development theory. The concept of sustainability origins in the environmental debate; according to an article I read recently the term was coined and introduced to the world forum through the Brundtland report. However, a quick search on Google shows that the actual meaning of the term is highly contested; a web site notes that gathering adults and have them to define the term Sustainability is like trying to nail jelly to a tree. But the definition of sustainability generally accepted by researchers of telecentres, is that the centers should be financially self-sustaining, meaning that they should run by own financial means. What’s contested in this context is whether other factors should be involved in the sustainability concept, other than economical matters (which I argue in my thesis, but more about that later). In this sense Sustainability appears as a regenerative circular process, where use is covering the running costs of the centre, so that outside financing would not be necessary. Once again, there is a logic in sustainability, implying what is put in, also comes back and that’s without negative implications for the surroundings.


Analytically I think that both concepts are problematic in the sense that they don’t really say much. Let’s start with the Digital Divide: First of all, as discussed the binary definition of the Digital Divide is difficult to work with. I know that the divide notion has been contested and is often regarded as a bad metaphor for representing the lack of digital infrastructure in a developing country. When examining exposure to technologies DD totally excludes the idea of exposure that does not involve physical access to computers; during my field work I’ve found there’s generally a good knowledge about especially the Internet and what opportunities it offers as media. However, this kind of knowledge would not be represented, when looking at as a DD matter. I think that an unfortunate consequence of only focusing on these ‘have/have nots’, when it comes to digital technology is that the importance of knowledge about ICTs would not be represented. Reality is a lot more complex as such. Exposure-wise I’ve found that knowledge about ICTs (promoted by ICTs, like TV and Radio) is rarely considered as exposure, leaving people with a well-developed knowledge about ICT on the wrong side of the so-called Divide, just like other people whose possibilities for being online are not at the same level as the typical European/American. I just read an article by Arjun Appadurai, who lists the fear of cyber proletarianzation along side with the other fears of globalisation, that a large part of world’s population will be left without access to ICTs. I think that’s a nice way to put it as an explanation of the occurrence of the concept. When looking at sustainability the concept implies a circular mono-causal logic. In order to maintain sustainability, the conditions would have to be static, which is a problematic way of seeing it when the conditions are being constantly negotiated. From what I’ve read so far, it seems as if the conditions for sustainability are rarely discussed. Also, the partial perspective should be taken into account, since sustainability is also a constructing process, that’s constructing a certain process as sustainable; in a constructing process there’s always a perspective and a process of negotiation. Looking at it from an ANT perspective the conditioning networks for sustainability are under constant change. Therefore I’d rather like to approach these two concepts as constructed in discourse.