March 1998 Insights Issue #25

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Net gains or Net dreams?

Never before has so much chatter been heard in policy and business circles as well as in citizens' and ethical interest groups about the impact of advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the global economy and the social order. For developing countries, these impacts are hard to track because of the rapidity of technical change and the unevenness of network and service availability. Education, training and skills development are failing to keep pace with the spread of the new ICTs, a growing source of anxiety for people in developing countries. Research is yielding contradictory evidence about who will benefit and how. The Global Information Infrastructure is penetrating the developing world and making claims on limited investment capital. Poverty, illiteracy, poor health, under-funded education, and worsening environmental conditions are also making big claims on public resources. Everyone hopes that digital ICTs and the arrival of the vast networking potential of the Internet will help remedy these ills.

The new ICTs are opening access to a flood of information from local and global sources. Converting this information into solutions to high priority development problems is the big challenge. The potential of ICTs must be harnessed to achieve major social and economic benefits. In principle, new digital networks and services could be used to communicate more quickly and cheaply, bringing the village to the world and the world to the village. The vision is one in which inclusion of people in developing countries in a more knowledge-intensive development process follows from access to services like the Internet.

'Net' visionaries portray a world in which access to the Internet and other information and communication services is all that matters. They acknowledge risks for people in developing countries, but they move on quickly to promote the use of new products and applications which, more often than not, have been designed in ignorance of development realities. The globalisation of markets for technologies and services, the rise of dominant firms like Microsoft, the emergence of a handful of global telecommunication operators, and increasing shortages of skills in key areas, mean that neither the benefits nor the risks of these technologies can simply be assumed. Harnessing networks and services to deliver benefits in developing countries means ensuring that those facilities are responsive to the poorest and most disadvantaged groups and communities. It means experimenting with new partnerships that boost equity, mobilise investment for building capacity and spur the harvesting and sharing of scientific and technical knowledge. It also often means pushing for national or regional participation in the global governance systems that steer trade, regulation, and intellectual property and privacy protection.

The new networks and services offer fresh opportunities for global and local change. But too much focus on the technical aspects of electronic commerce and new social applications means that organisational, social and cultural transformations are insufficiently heeded. Decision makers in developing countries need to take measures to ensure that ICTs can be used as 'tools' for social and economic development alike. Users need to accumulate new skills through formal and informal education, and learn how to use new sources of scientific and technical information to tackle problems creatively.

The articles that follow show that knowledge from ICTs can be converted into real social and economic benefits if new approaches like 'knowledge management' are effectively employed by governments and other stakeholders to overcome barriers. The Internet is enabling research results to be shared among community workers, businessmen and women, educators, and scientists worldwide. This exchange of knowledge is sparking novel ideas about how to harness ICTs to suit development purposes.

More research is urgently needed on the way ICTs are influencing the activities of women and men, on how skills and capabilities can be built up to tackle local and national problems, and on why some initiatives to use the new technologies and services succeed while others fail. It must draw upon the experiences of people in developing countries. Studies of global market trends and structures for ICT supply are needed, to gauge opportunities for people in developing countries to develop new services for strengthening their economies, creating jobs and reducing poverty.

This issue of Insights coincides with the publication of a major volume called Knowledge Societies: Information Technology for Sustainable Development (see box), prepared for the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development and steered by a Working Group co-chaired by Fernando Chaparro (Columbia) and Geoffrey Oldham (UK).

The Commission reached the verdict that, although there are substantial risks, potential gains from ICTs are far greater. Governments and other stakeholders should face up to the implications of the 'IT Revolution'. National or regional ICT strategies should be set in place, corresponding to each country's development goals. They acknowledged that the next decades are not likely to see the gap between rich and poor vanish. But they argued that if governments and other stakeholders could find ways to use ICTs creatively, the gap at least could be reduced.

The social and economic exclusion of people in developing countries will not be eliminated by 'technobabble' about the Global Information Society, nor by dreams of 'Cybertopia'. However, when people's creative efforts and financial resources are combined to use ICTs to encourage innovative forms of knowledge-based development, there are likely to be substantial benefits. Action must be taken to ensure that visions beget policies so that ICTs bring more gains than losses to people in developing countries.

INK is at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/ink/