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2.6 Why ICT4D
The question is, why then has there been so much emphasis on the ICT4D for past few decades? The answer may seem obvious as it is difficult to imagine living without technologies and devices today. However, it may raise a complex issue and many debates when same question is asked whether it would be worthwhile to utilize ICT as means to development for developing regions or third world countries. In order to answer this question, it may be helpful to cover a new phenomenon that was introduced not too long ago, a digital divide.
2.6.1 Digital Divide
Digital divide refers to the digital illiteracy and the restrictions to the access to and use of ICT, caused by the economic and social inequality. As shown in fig 4.1, subscriber gap between the OECD and non-OECD countries have been narrowing for the past decade, which indicates a positive sign that we have slightly more equality in terms of access to the internet and the information itself. The ration nearly halves from 7 to 3.5, which means almost double the improvement during set time period. However when fig 4.2 is taken into the consideration, the data usage gap, sadly, diverges as time passes. This means that the non-OECD countries cannot fully enjoy as much rights, even though they are capable of them. On fig 4.3, the distribution is even more easily visible, we can spot that global south is definitely using less internet than the north.
Where infrastructures are established, knowledge of operating devices, using internet freely, accessing the right web pages and even usage of applications might have caused such phenomenon. Similar to earlier days where often uneducated citizens were unable to read and
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write, that has restricted them to the reading capabilities that restricted access to the information, digital illiteracy is often referred to digital divide. In other words, direct restrictions towards devices and availability of infrastructures may hinder individuals for convenience and greater efficiency, lack of education towards usage of them also play a big role. Therefore many projects and programs from various players such as mentioned above not only focus on aim to develop low-cost and high-performance devices, great amount of emphasis is on the education and exposing community to the ICT by introducing new platforms and systems.
<Figure 2.7>: Subscriptions for Fixed-line Internet per capita from 2000-2010
Source: Hilbert Martin, ITU, 2011
<Figure 2.8>: Data Usage for Fixed-line Internet per capita from 2000-2010
Source: Hilbert Martin, ITU, 2011
0 20 40 60 80
2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010
ubscriptions per Capita (%)
2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010
kbps per capita
Year
Fixed-line phone and Internet
Non-OECD OECD
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<Figure 2.9>: Internet Users in 2012 as a Percentage of a country’s population
Source: International Telecommunication Union, 2012
2.6.2 Attempts
Some significant attempts were made. First of all, as mentioned previously in E-Learning section, one could take a close look at the establishment of digital libraries. In Durban South Africa, low access to technology and a lack of documented cultural heritage has motivated the creation of an “online indigenous digital library as part of public library services.” This project has the potential to narrow the digital divide not only giving the people of the Durban area access to this digital resource, but also by incorporating the community members into the process of creating it.15
Another great example worth mentioning is One Laptop per Child project. Founded in 2005, the organization provides inexpensively produced so called “XO” laptops (the price is dubbed to be about 100 dollars) to children residing in poor and isolated regions within
15 Greyling, McNulty articulates the significance of community members’ involvement.
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developing countries. Each laptop belongs to an individual child and provides a gateway to digital learning and internet access. XO Laptops are specifically designed to endure more abuse than average laptops, and also they are constructed to use as little power as possible to meet the conditions of remote villages where power sources are extremely rare and scarce.16
Lastly there exist attempts on the software level as well. Microsoft has launched a cheaper version of Windows called “Windows Starter Edition” for developing countries, as well as actively engaged in providing free distributions to public institutes and sectors.
Although many open source operating systems such as Linux and Androids are used, for they are available for future application development stages as well, which will not only boost the capabilities or users, but also enrich the local software business and markets as well.17
2.6.3 Future Possibilities
Some of the latest trends in technology have drawn heavy world-wide attention, for its significance of not just advancement of technology, but due to its potential to becoming a revolutionary game-changer in industries.
The brightest spotlight shines upon 3D-printing. Where conventional printing technology was associated with imprinting pigments, mostly divided into Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, on loaded papers of various sizes, 3D printing allows users to “print” any products with given CAD design or related blueprints with prepared “elements” as toners.
Most materials used today is limited to ceramic or plastic based materials, it could very well
16 “Mission”, One Laptop Per Child, accessed Dec 21 2016, http://one.laptop.org/about/mission
17 “Micro Windows XP Starter Edition Fact Sheet”, Microsoft, accessed Nov 13 2016, https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/winxp/WinXPStarterFS.mspx
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vary from metallic substances or even organic components in future. This means any individual will be able to produce, which directly indicates a revolutionary change in the industry of production. Given that individuals are provided with equal opportunity to be trained in CAD designing, citizens from some of the poorest countries may very well be able to produce innovative and mind-breaking products without having to invest heavily on factories and other infrastructures for production. It will then eventually lead into almost completely closing the gaps between the production industries of developed and developing states.
Other good examples are the Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).
There is a difference in both technologies that VR focuses on some completely arbitrary and imaginary experiences, whereas AR heavily focuses its purpose to add in (augment) extra components to the reality. Development of Head-Mounted Displays (HMD) and other optical devices are strongly related to this, where most civilian users experience more joy in terms of gaming or watching movies, and most soldiers in precision attacks and combat skills. Where this may be viewed as visual extension or enhancement of human beings, endless possibilities are awaiting when other receptors and limbs are enhanced.
For instance, when remotely-controllable hands are produced that can be synced with operator’s hands with precise feelings and control; it may be used to offer remote-operations or surgery in medical fields. In fact a device called Vein Viewer18 that films, processes and projects the image of subcutaneous veins onto the skins to locate veins has been invented. AR has already taken part, and with future development, it may bring another revolutionary game-changer in terms of closing the gaps between service industries.
18 “VeinViewer Flex”, Christie, accessed Dec 15 2016,
https://www.christiemed.com/products/veinviewer-models/veinviewer-flex
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Though the debate that interconnects the relationship between communication technology and economic development has always been a popular research list on the table dating back from decades ago, the research on relationship between ICT development and socio-economic development is arguably a new area.19 Two main reasons are that the shift of axis in terms of the significance of communication was moved from voice to data, which accounts for the reason why we must disregard the conventional communication technologies and change the independent variable and this very phenomenon itself regarding data
revolution is relatively new, indicating the fact that not enough time has passed to perform any accurate analysis.
Conventional communication technology, which mainly focuses on the prosperity of 2G technology dealing with cellular calls and SMS, was a disruptive technology that changed the way we communicated, surely introducing a socio-economic reform in many aspects.
Despite the fact that this mobile communication brought socio-economic advancement it is difficult to find those who utilize mobile phones and its infrastructure merely to communicate with one another and exchange texts or voice based information. Vast majority of population focus the usage of their mobile devices on internet-based activities, which introduces
completely different variables to come into consideration: This is not simple matter of interconnectivity among people anymore, we also need to consider how they interact with what kind of tools. This is why two distinguished industries, IT and CT, have converged into
19 The introduction of smartphone was recent, and its impact and changes in industries and everyday life pattern was enormous; that there has been heavy reliance on data traffic rather than conventional phone calls and short messages. Therefore if the previous researches focused on the access to cellphones towards the development of a country, there are multiple aspects to consider in today’s researches: Wireless internet coverage, data usage, access to smartphones and tablets,
e-transformations, and the subscription numbers.
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ICT and using mobile phones is completely different today than 20 years ago, which is why a new study and research must be introduced.
Also as for the time that has been concerned for the introduction of this new technology, ICT development is not an area which would produce an instant result: It will take years to smudge into society after launching and produce visible outputs from them.
iPhone, which indubitably initiated the beginning of smartphone era, was introduced in 2009, and the VoLTE that grants users to sorely rely on data communication (4G Infrastructure) without using voice networks (3G Infrastructure) was recently introduced in 2014. Hence there are not many previous researches or studies that specifically target the linkage between the data communication and economic growth. Furthermore the major arguments of those few past studies almost represent unilateral voice, that the two variables are positively interconnected. Kala Seetharam Sridhar and Varadharajan Sridhar argue that
“A number of researchers (Norton, 1992) have hypothesized that ICT infrastructure lowers both the fixed costs of acquiring information and the variable costs of participating in markets. They point out that as the ICT infrastructure improves, transaction costs reduce, and output increases for firms in various sectors of the economy (Roller & Waverman, 2001). Thus investment in ICT infrastructure and derived services provide significant benefits to the economy. Few relevant studies on the topic” (pg. 7)
Also a joint report by Deloitte, GSMA and Cisco, What is the impact of mobile telephony on economic growth, claims that “A doubling of mobile data use leads to an increase in GDP per
capita growth of 0.5 percentage points” (pp. 7). Kvochko argues “10% increase in broadband penetration is associated with a 1.4% increase in GDP growth in emerging markets” in her article in World Economic Forum.20 Senior economist in World Bank, Qiang, also states that
20 Kvochko, Elena. “Five ways technology can help the economy”, World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2013/04/five-ways-technology-can-help-the-economy/
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“With 10 percent increase in high speed Internet connections, economic growth increases by 1.3 percent”.21 Although it is impossible to quote a statement from every article published regarding ICT development and its impact, it is not too far to presume that vast majority of the voices converge to a single argument: Better the ICT, higher the development. However most research are performed from perspectives of IGO, OECD/Developed countries and MNCs, and the voices from developing or least developed states are rarely heard of. This is problematic, because there is no way to prove that positive relationship between ICT4D and socio-economic development is merely an argument from advanced economies to expand their power rather than purely development concerns. Furthermore, even if the ICT4D is somehow determined as a guaranteed catalyst for promotion of development, it is impossible to determine whether the impact of the ICT investment kicks in momentarily after the
construction is complete: It might take decades for educated personnel to play role in society for economic and industrial performances and productions of tangible outcomes, as well as all the system (that could include electronic government, health, tax, and education systems) to adapt into the given states: After all, it has not even been a decade since the data revolution sprung. Therefore it is not easy to provide fair judgment that outlines the general voice that explains the relationship between two variables, there are multiple other factors to consider and it is too soon to draw a single solid conclusion out of the obtainable data today. Therefore it is easily questionable and challenged that the ICT development is directly related to socio-economic development.
21 Christine Z., Qiang. “Information Communications Technology for Development”, The World Bank, http://live.worldbank.org/information-communications-technology-development
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