Shaking up the faithful

In 2003, Harvard Business Review published an article by Nicholas Carr, "Does IT matter?"  He argued that PC and information systems were becoming a commodity and did not offer a competitive advantage--if they ever did. This caused a huge furor, especially among the hardward manufacturers and writers feeding at that trough. Carr is still heavily booked for speeches and debates (nothing like controversy to feed book sales!), and he has a newsletter called "Digital Renderings" of which the latest posting is "Rethinking the PC" which he argues is a "ridiculous device" in its present form.

This year the Economist had a lead article that is upsetting ICT for development advocates. In "The Real Digital Divide" the author argues that the cell phone is the right instrument to address this problem.  It is causing a great deal of furor (as did the Carr article) with responses from NGOs whose main efforts have been in computer networking and spreading access to ICT.

Comments

[Cordelia Salter-Nour]

Somalia has already proved the case for the mobile. A strategically placed satellite made it possible for expatriate Somalis to tell their families directly about money they were sending home. Before the mobiles they had to send instructions through middle-men who often stole it or tricked the recipients out of the money. All poor communities have expatriates but after they leave it is hard - if not impossible - for them to keep in touch and help out in times of difficulty

The majority of the poor are illiterate so before they could benefit from traditional ICTs they would have to learn to read, write and type - even if their language was digitized. Speaking is much more efficient

The mobile as it is now is still out of reach for the world's poor who have yet to benefit from such cutting edge technology as clean water and electricity. But a give-away, solar charged or wind up mobile that was free to use could be really useful...

[Steve Cisler]

The wind-up radios have not been that successful in Africa, but you are right that the price of cell phones still cuts out a lot of people. Entrepreneurs will rent out cell phones for single calls in some countries, and the pre-paid cards are a way that credit-poor users can budget for calls.

I was working in rural Uganda and staying in a modest hotel. The woman cleaning the floors near the checkout counter had a cell phone at her waist. I asked if she used it much, and she said, "yes, when I can afford air time to call my relatives in Kampala." Clearly it was also a status symbol as well as a useful tool.