September 9th, 2008
Kentaro Toyama: Introduction to Information and Communication Technologies for Development
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(Cross-posted at my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies)
Kentaro Toyama, who leads the Technology for Emerging Markets research group at Microsoft Research India, writes a precise introduction to ICT for development as a guest editor for IEEE’s Computer June 2008 edition (via James Utzschneider) –
On a planet with 1.2 billion Internet users, a far less fortunate 1.2 billion people survive on less than a dollar a day. The same technology that has transformed our lives—the lives of the wealthiest people on the planet—remains out of reach and irrelevant for the poorest.
Often dubbed “information and communication technologies for development” and abbreviated ICTD or ICT4D, this field involves multiple sectors—governments, academia, small start-ups, large corporations, intergovernmental organizations, nonprofits, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—and draws interest from multiple disciplines: anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, design, engineering, and computer science to name a few.
With themes as broad as computing and socioeconomic development, the ICTD field is naturally highly interdisciplinary… Many projects explore how to extend the state of the art in computing to meet the challenges of the developing world. For example, networking must work in circumstances with low bandwidth, intermittent bandwidth, or no bandwidth at all. Equally important are elements that concern the target populations—for example, cultural practices and beliefs, traditions, languages, literacy, and so on. Therefore, ICTD also involves social scientists in their capacities as observers of how people interact with technology, as well as designers of social systems that work alongside technology.
ICTD has, therefore, become a truly global undertaking, bringing together north and south, rich and poor, rural and urban, researcher and practitioner, technologist and social scientist—all striving to work toward a better life for the least privileged.
Kentaro Toyoma is also the co-founder of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD). ICTD 2009 will be held in Doha Qatar on April 17-19 2009 in Doha Qatar and I totally want to attend it. One way to attend ICDT 2009 is to present a paper at the conference (the last day for submission of papers for ICDT 2009 is September 22, 2008). Given that I’ll spend the next week in New York (without a laptop) writing an 8000 page paper may not be possible, but I’m an optimist and a lot can happen in two weeks.
[...] Original Gaurav Mishra [...]