September 9th, 2008
Kentaro Toyama: Introduction to Information and Communication Technologies for Development
Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my combined feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss a single post. Thanks for visiting!
(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.
