Internet and the Developing World
Very interesting report, for a couple of different reasons - it called forth for action steps governments around the world should take, just like a couple of us are doing in our projects, and it assumed that the reader is already a supporter of the Sustainable Development Goals. That second one is non-trivial, I think. Probably all of us in the class agree with them as worthy goals for 2030, but it’s not too hard to think of a couple of governments that don’t want to support SDG # 5: Gender Equality, at all (Saudi Arabia, for instance). And the priority list seems a little off to me, could definitely be argued over.
I had a couple of real problems with the methodology of the report, especially the ridiculous graph showing the “Business As Usual” path (what does that even mean?) and how it wouldn’t be good enough to achieve the “Sustainable Development Goals” path. That chart was completely meaningless and there was nothing to back it up. I also didn’t like how the report called for action steps without any serious mention of the funding required to achieve them. It’s a major oversimplification of the situation. If governments spend money on the action steps called for by the report, that means that there is less money to spend on other projects. Those opportunity costs need to be taken into account.
The biggest red flag for me was the potential conflict between SDG #s 7, 11, and 13 and the rest. The Information and Communication Technology recommendations put forth by the report would, at least in the short term, drastically increase the carbon emissions and other environmental problems of the nations that adopted them. Sure, the report points out that eventually fast technology sharing leads to increased efficiency in systems. We’re about at that point in Europe and the United States, where appliances and automobiles are getting ever more efficient. But there are problems that we haven’t even come close to solving yet, like what in the world are we going to do with these lithium ion batteries that are too toxic to safely put in landfills and that are quickly becoming one of the most ubiquitous items in our waste stream.
I enjoyed one of the later links, the one to the State Department’s Technology Salon, a lot more. Articles on that page (when I read it) were about African women having access to broadband, and how that can be accomplished. There was also an advertisement for a talk hosted by Wayan Vota on which medium to invest in for sustainable development, mobile phones or cheap laptops. The headline, “Mobile Phones vs. Computers: a False ICT4D Choice?” implies that it doesn’t really matter, but I think that’s a straw man argument. It’s gotta be laptops or desktops all the way, because laptops can be used for creation whereas mobile phones are designed for consumption. I’m not much of a coder, but I know enough that it would be excrutiating to consider designing any piece of software, or even a web page, on a phone. Remember that one of the theses of the ICT report is that greater access to communications technology helps everyone through sharing of ideas. But women in Africa or any other developing region will need to be able to create their own content as well as access others. To say otherwise, I think, is to risk devaluing their own potential contributions and propping up existing thoughts.
Also! A little bit of a tangent here, but I thought you all would enjoy reading this article about social media ranking in China: http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-china-wants-to-rate-its-citizens?intcid=mod-yml
Sample quote:
“Alibaba, the world’s biggest online shopping platform, creates an incentive for customers to use its own payment service (also part of Alipay) by raising the Sesame scores of those who do. The company makes no secret of its interest in accessing the payment history of its four hundred million users, to make judgments about their creditworthiness and character. “Someone who plays video games for ten hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person, and someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility,” Li Yingyun, Sesame’s technology director, told Caixin, a Chinese magazine. In some ways, Tencent’s credit system goes further, tapping into users’ social networks and mining data about their contacts, for example, in order to determine their social-credit score.”
I think you raise some interesting points in your post. First, I think your observation about the potential conflict between the climate change-oriented goals and the other stated goals (particularly, as I see it, #8: “Decent Work and Economic Growth” and #9: “Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure”) is a good one. China comes to mind when thinking about rapid industrialization and the possible side-effects thereof, and as we probably all know, environmental issues are certainly a challenge that is being faced there. Really, unless we see major breakthroughs in battery, wind, and/or solar power over the next 15 years, I’m not sure I see any path around this potential conflict. I hadn’t really thought about this dimension of the issue previously, so I’m glad you brought it up.
I also appreciated your perspective on the question of investing in mobile phones or laptops in the developing world. I think your comment about the consumer/producer divide between these two technologies is on point, and I agree that possessing the devices with easily utilizable “creative” potential is an important step in helping to foster innovation. If mobile phones continue to be the dominant source of connectivity, however, it will be interesting to see whether new creative platforms begin to emerge in unexpected ways in spite of this constraint. Granted, I have a hard time imagining how an activity such as coding could ever be made as efficient (or enjoyable) on a small device like a mobile phone as it is on a laptop or desktop, but perhaps there is the potential for some “hack” or paradigm for the mobile environment that will help foster creative applications such as coding that we have just not yet unearthed due to a lack of necessity. And who knows, perhaps cellularly connected tablets will end up winning the day by presenting a compromise between the benefits of phones and laptops.















