It would be great but perhaps unrealistic to expect that any of those with responsibility in the Canadian Digital Economy policy consultation reading my earlier blogpost on that subject. But perhaps one could hope that the folks on Parliament Hill might take a look at a report by the very highly regard publication and research… [Read more…]
The recognition that a digitally enabled and effective economy is founded on a digitally enabled and effective society seems somewhere to have been lost. Lost as well seem to be the recognition that the greatest skill in a digital economy as in any other economy or in society overall is the capacity to learn and that learning how to learn, a function of a broader and more humanistic education rather than a “skills oriented” one, is probably a more important and useful preparation for a digital future overall. Equally lost is an understanding that economic innovation is a subset of broader social innovation which in turn comes from a critical yet practical immersion in prevailing cultures and practices.
The response then from a Community Informatics perspective to the questions posed by the Digital Economy Consultation would be as follows
Regulators, policy makers, access suppliers in Developed Countries have a considerable pre-occupation with how to bridge “the last mile” i.e. the gap between the common carrier and the end user’s premises. Here in Hong Kong, where I have been for the last few days at a conference, the concern on the part of regulators, policy… [Read more…]
I'm currently at the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum Meeting in Hong Kong where I presented this afternoon on a panel on "Access and the Digital Divide", which I'm presuming was meant to mirror in some fashion the discussion within the Internet Governance Forum concerning issues around Internet Governance and Development and more broadly the overall discussion of "Digital Divide/Access/"Development" issues in the context of the IGF.
To date NEPAD has operated primarily as a high-level talk shop for
politicians, government officials and the corporate sector. The ICT Summit
rather unexpectedly however, has included Community Informatics as among
four stakeholder groups (along with Health, Government, and Business
Informatics) which they are looking to "mobilise" and I, with African CI
colleagues, have been invited to manage and present this theme over the
course of the conference.
For me, and again on reflection, the challenge and promise of a “community informatics” is not achieved through collections of projects however successful they might be. Rather the real success would come when there was a real and equal partnership between ICTs and community enablement.
High speed Internet at relatively affordable prices is rapidly becoming available in large parts of both the developed and developing worlds. This means that the technical restrictions on high volume information access and transaction management, very high speed communications at a distance, and a highly expanded range of Internet and information management capabilities are rapidly… [Read more…]
July 3, 2010
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