ITID Special Issue: Harvard Forum II
Along with Matthew Smith and Randy Spence, I had the pleasure of co-editing a special edition of Information Technologies & International Development (ITID) that features selected papers from the Harvard Forum II on ICTs for development (ICT4D). ITID’s regular editors-in-chief are François Bar and Mike Best, who we work with on the Global Impact Study. And Arelene Luck does a wonderful job as Managing Editor.
The Harvard Forum II gathered Nobel laureates and eminent technologists, economists, and communications researchers and practitioners from across the globe at Harvard University in September 2009. Sponsored by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, the conference offered an opportunity to reassess ICT4D in the years since the first Harvard Forum in 2003, while focusing on a forward-looking discussion of ICTs, human development, growth, and poverty reduction.
The submissions in the ITID special edition come from the world’s foremost thinkers on ICT4D, and, like the landmark publications from Harvard Forum I, they chart a course for innovative and important work in the field.
Selections include:
- Nobel laureate Michael Spence on the growth goals ICTs may be able to put in reach
- Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on the balance between the mobile’s positive and dangerous potentials
- William Melody on enacting openness through telecom reform
- Alison Gillwald on the urgent need for indigenous ICT research in Africa
- Ethan Zuckerman on decentralizing the mobile phone
- Anita Gurumurthy on moving ICT4D efforts beyond neo-liberalism
- Yochai Benkler on continuing decentralization through ICTs after the mobile phone
Visit the ITID website, issue 6, to download our introduction and see the entire selection of papers presented at the forum.
