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WSIS Review. Key Statements. On NGOs/multistakeholders in UN proceedings: PrepCom chair http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/prepcom-opening/1.doc President of Conference of NGOs (CONGO) http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/cs-congo/1.pdf
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Key Statements On NGOs/multistakeholders in UN proceedings: PrepCom chair http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/prepcom-opening/1.doc President of Conference of NGOs (CONGO) http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/cs-congo/1.pdf Vivendi http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/ps-vivendi/1.doc World Bank http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/io-world-bank/1.doc Civil Society Orgs in West Asia & Middle East/ IRAN http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/cs-ictrc/1.doc International Federation of Journalists: http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/cs-ifj/1.doc
Key Statements on IG India http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/g-india/1.doc Cuba http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/g-cuba/1.pdf China http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/g-china/1.doc
Internet Governance Claudia Rosett, Journalist, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies http://osm.org/site/articles/20051130rosettinternet/ Ang Peng Hwa, WGIG member, Singapore http://osm.org/site/articles/20051204angpenghwa
Review of Wilson’s Aims in IRDC • To develop the strategic restructuring framework • To explain interactions between structure & agency in the information revolution in developing countries through comparative analysis of 3 cases
Strategic Restructuring Model Questions @ technology diffusion involve multiple factors: • What is the main cause of global diffusion patterns– economic structure, govt policies, or tech? • What mechanisms allow these technologies to diffuse? • Do diffusion dynamics portend greater equality or inequality? • Why do countries with similar structural and economic features have divergent patterns of ICT distribution? (p. 37)
Strategic Restructuring Model • Dependent variable: technology diffusion • Independent variables: • Structures (social, political, economic) • Institutions (persistent patterns of roles and incentives) • Politics (esp. elite individual’s strategic behaviors) • Govt. Policies (a mix of 4 policy balances: priv-pub initiative, competition-monopoly, foreign-domestic, centralized-decentralized)
Key Findings on ICT Diffusionsolicit examples for each finding from Wilson & WSIS countries • Remarkable similarities across countries • Individual ICT champions: major influence • MNCs: modest influence on ICTD • Structures & their links to institutions play a determining role in ICTD • Social networks determine technical networks • ICTD: a global process of sequential local innovation and restructuring
Key Findings on ICT Diffusion(Cont.) • Effective access to ICTs is more difficult than formal access • International Computer Driving License • ICTD requires leadership, policies, and $$ • ICTs’ effects to date • On LDCs as a whole: limited • On small cadres of national elites: very significant • LDCs vary widely in capacity to create an indigenous culture of knowledge innovation
Key Finding on SRS Framework The strategic restructuring model is a robust characterization of the complex causal processes of political, institutional, and policy changes that have occurred across the ICT sectors. • It works empirically as Wilson theorized it would
Manuel Castells’ “Making Sense of Our World” • Castells: a leading theorist of globalization http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Communication_Theory/Network_Society • Published in 1998 as the concluding chapter to a 3 volume (1000 page) trilogy on globalization, ICTs, and identity • Touches on many of the course topics and themes • Addresses social, economic, and political shifts in the “Information Age”
Castells’ concept of Informationalism • Definition: • “a technological paradigm based on the augmentation of the human capacity of information processing and communication made possible by the revolutions in microelectronics, software, and genetic engineering” • Informationalism has become the material foundation of core-zone society • Generation of wealth • Exercise of power • Creation of cultural codes ->now depend on ICT capacity
Sites of Change inthe Information Society • Relationships of production • Social class relationships ->Who are the producers now, and who appropriates the products of their labor? • Power relations • Crisis of the nation-state as sovereign entity • Crisis of political democracy
Sites of Change (cont.) • Globalization of capital • Multilateralization of power institutions • Decentralization of authority to regional and local governments induce a new geometry of power, and perhaps a new form of state: the “network state”
Sites of Change (cont.) • “Cultural battles are the power battles of the Information Age” • Fought primarily in and by the media • Power lies in networks of information exchange & symbolic manipulation • Network society: the new social structure of the Info Age