Communication and Technology

Lorenzo Cantoni, James A. Danowski, Lorenzo Cantoni, James A. Danowski

• Editore: De Gruyter Mouton
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9783110393446
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Filología
• Categoria: Estudios de comunicación

The primary goal of the Communication and Technology volume (5th within the series "Handbooks of Communication Science") is to provide the reader with a comprehensive compilation of key scholarly literature, identifying theoretical issues, emerging concepts, current research, specialized methods, and directions for future investigations. The internet and web have become the backbone of many new communication technologies, often transforming older communication media, through digitization, to make them compatible with the net. Accordingly, this volume focuses on internet/web technologies. The essays cover various infrastructure technologies, ranging from different kinds of hard-wired elements to a range of wireless technologies such as WiFi, mobile telephony, and satellite technologies. Audio/visual communication is discussed with reference to large-format motion pictures, medium-sized television and video formats, and the small-screen mobile smartphone. There is also coverage of audio-only media, such as radio, music, and voice telephony; text media, in such venues as online newspapers, blogs, discussion forums and mobile texting; and multi-media technologies, such as games and virtual reality.

II. Communication technologies and their enviroment

Tim Unwin

10 ICTs and the dialectics of development

Abstract: This chapter is an exploration of recent research and practice in the use of ICTs for ‘development’. It begins with an overview of some of the challenges that need to be considered in defining the notions of both ICTs and ‘development’, arguing that both must be seen as contested terms that serve specific interests. In particular, the notion of ‘development’ depends very much on the political and social agendas of those espousing its usage; the interests behind development seen as ‘economic growth’ or ‘social equity’ are thus fundamentally different. The chapter adopts an overtly dialectical approach that first seeks to identify the main grounds for a thesis of the ‘good’ in the use of ICTs in development practice. It then develops an antithesis that proposes that the use of ICTs has actually increased inequality at a range of scales, and has thus worked against a definition of ‘development’ based on social equity. The conclusion seeks to explore what a synthesis of these two diametrically opposed positions might look like, and suggests first that the role of the state is crucial in ensuring effective and appropriate development, and second that well crafted multi-stakeholder approaches might indeed offer one way through which the poorest and most marginalised might indeed make effective use of ICTs to enhance their life experiences.

Keywords: ICTs, development, information, communication, technology, dialectic, inequality, mobile devices, multi-stakeholder partnerships

This chapter provides an overview of research and practice at the interface between “information and communication technologies” (ICTs) and “development”. In line with the other contributions in this handbook, it explores some of the more interesting recent literature in the field, but it seeks to do so from a very specific theoretical standpoint that adopts an overtly dialectic and “critical” stance concerned with improving practice.

Over the last decade there has been a very rapid increase in the amount of research in the field of ICTs and development, closely matching the increasing pervasiveness of digital technologies in everyone’s lives (see for example, Castells et al. 2009; Dodson et al. 2013; Dutton 2013a; Gomez 2013). Most of this literature adopts a positive stance, seeing and applauding the potential of ICTs to contribute to economic growth and better governance in poorer countries of the world (see for example, OECD 2009; Pélissié du Rausas et al. 2011; Dalberg 2013). Such arguments undoubtedly have some traction (Walsham 2001) and hence are taken in this chapter as the dominant thesis. However, as the middle of the second decade of this century approaches, increasing numbers of scholars and practitioners are questioning the value of many of the interventions that have sought to use ICTs to contribute to development (see Nisbet et al. 2012; Unwin 2013). As Dodson et al. (2013: 29) have recently argued, for example, “top-down, technology-centric, goal diffuse approaches to ICTD contribute to unsatisfactory development results”. Such views are represented as the antithesis, and by seeking to engage with these two very different perspectives, the aim of the chapter is to develop a more nuanced understanding of how ICTs and “development” intersect. In so doing the chapter concludes with a synthesis of practical recommendations for how the current use of ICTs in “development” may be restructured in the interests of the poorest and most marginalised communities.

Both of the terms “ICTs” and “development” are commonly used, yet neither are simple to understand or agree on. Indeed, the very different ways in which these concepts are perceived represents one of the greatest challenges in grappling with the complexity of their relationship. Hence, the chapter begins with a brief introduction to the contrasting meanings attributed to these concepts, before elements of the thesis and the antithesis are each addressed in turn.

1 Boundaries of the dialectic

1.1 Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)

There is nothing new about ICTs. In one sense, prehistoric people used the products of their empirical practices to identify the best ways to communicate through carvings and rock art. More recently, the development of movable type in China in the 11th century, and then the evolution of mechanical printing technology in Europe in the 15th century transformed communication, and for the first time created opportunities for a much more rapid expansion in the dissemination of ideas. Indeed, Francis Bacon in the early 17th century commented that along with gunpowder and the magnets used in compasses, printing was one of the three mechanical discoveries unknown to the “ancients” that had transformed “the whole face of things throughout the world” (Bacon 1620: Book I, CXXIX). The rapid expansion of modern ICTs, and particularly the Internet has often likewise been seen as transforming the whole face of the world (Castells 1996).

The creation of the first modern computers in the 20th century laid the foundations for the emergence of modern ICTs, but it is important to recall that the idea of a physical calculating machine can be traced back in origin some 4,500 years to the earliest abacus developed in ancient Sumer. This historical context is important, because it emphasises that technologies are not simply autonomous material products with some kind of inherent power within themselves, but are rather developed by individuals and communities to solve particular problems. They are inherently bound up with the societies that produce them, and this is as true today as it was in the past. Very specific interests underlie the development of new technologies. It is critically important to think of modern ICTs in this light if their interaction with “development” is to be understood. An instrumental view that ICTs are somehow autonomous, value free, “things” that can automatically do good, or be seen as a “silver bullet” to “fight” poverty, is fundamentally problematic. Moreover, the whole gamut of processes associated with the notion of globalisation (Wallerstein 1983, 2000; Harvey 2000; Stiglitz 2002) have always been closely related to technology, be it with the development of the nautical compass in the medieval period, or the use of the Internet for financial transfers instantaneously across the world today.

Most definitions of modern ICTs have tended to concentrate primarily on the material products that enable new forms of information sharing and communication to take place, dominated by computers and, more recently, mobile-‘phones (‘phones is an abbreviation for telephones, and thus the use of <’> indicates the loss of the <tele> in a contraction). A decade ago, Weigel and Waldburger (2004: 19) thus used the term to refer to “technologies designed to access, process and transmit information. ICT encompass a full rage of technologies – from traditional, widely used devices such as radios, telephones or TV, to more sophisticated tools like computers of the Internet”. Their book, entitled ICT4D – Connecting People for a Better World, captured the very essence of the exciting modern millennial vision that technology could indeed be utilised to make the world a better place for everyone to live in. As this chapter goes on to highlight, though, this dream is far from yet being realised. Indeed, depending on how “development” is seen, the vision could turn instead be a nightmare where ICTs may actually lead to the exact opposite of what development as human betterment might be conceived as.

Recent definitions of ICTs have tended to be more nuanced and reflect a much more complex world that includes not only the hardware and devices, such as laptops, tablets, and televisions, but also the software needed to run them, the content that they enable, the infrastructure that connects them over wireless or fixed networks, and even the regulatory environments that allocate spectra. In his helpful overview of Internet studies, Dutton (2013b) thus separates out three distinct objects of study: the technology, its use in different contexts, and the laws and policies that shape and design its use.

The very rapid growth and spread of ICTs during the 21st century, as well as the burgeoning amount of funding available to researchers to work in this area, has also meant that academics from many different backgrounds have tended to approach the field from their own particular disciplinary contexts (Walsham 2012; Dutton 2013a). This not only means that there has been much duplication and overlap, with academics from one discipline often being blithely unaware of what those in other disciplines are doing, but also that it is extremely difficult to map out the entire field. The same is also very true of notions of “development” to which attention now turns.

In essence, those who tend to see technologies as being neutral instruments which that can be used for “good” support the dominant thesis; those who see them as being constructed primarily to serve the interest of the powerful support the antithesis.

1.2 Understanding and delivering “development”

The notion of “development” has long been contested and controversial, not only in terms of academic understandings of the concept (see for example Easterley 2006; Kothari 2006; Pieterse 2010), but also in terms of what is seen at any one time as being good practice in its implementation (Sachs 2005). Interestingly, there is often a marked divide between those who write about development, frequently from a critical perspective, and those who actually engage in development practices (Karlan and Appel 2012). Indeed, there are those building on the work of Escobar (2005) who reject the entire development project and focus instead on postdevelopmentalism.

Most definitions of “development” imply some notion of “progress” and “growth”, and are usually seen as being derived from the European Enlightenment of the 18th century (Gay 1996; Bronner 2004; Sachs 2005). Whilst such a view has undoubtedly been challenged (Easterley 2006; Unwin 2009), it has had lasting impact. Ever since the 17th century, technology and science have generally been used by those in power to implement a particular kind of progress, be it in the industrial “revolution” of the 19th century, or the information and communication “revolution” of the late 20th century. Most frequently, this progress is measured in terms of economic growth, which despite numerous criticisms remains the dominant leitmotif of development practice across the world today. Accordingly, development has largely been seen as the reduction...