USAID RANKS LOW AS A PLACE TO WORK
The Partnership for Public Service provides a site on “The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government”.
The U.S. Agency for International Development ranks 22 out of 28 agencies rated. The study included survey responses from more than 100,000 feds on their satisfaction with their jobs. Four related questions ascertained that the USAID folk are not too happy with their organization as a place to work!
Thursday, November 13, 2003
FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL GRANTMAKING
The Foundation Center has published a new report on international grantmaking by U.S. foundations.
Some of the findings are:
· International giving grew faster than overall giving through 2001;
· International funding accounted for 15 percent of overall foundation grant dollars in 2001;
· Health programs received the largest share of international grant dollars in the 2001 sample;
· U.S.-based programs garnered a larger share of all international giving;
· Estimated international giving in 2002 by all U.S. foundations declined faster than estimated overall foundation giving.
The Foundation Center has published a new report on international grantmaking by U.S. foundations.
Some of the findings are:
· International giving grew faster than overall giving through 2001;
· International funding accounted for 15 percent of overall foundation grant dollars in 2001;
· Health programs received the largest share of international grant dollars in the 2001 sample;
· U.S.-based programs garnered a larger share of all international giving;
· Estimated international giving in 2002 by all U.S. foundations declined faster than estimated overall foundation giving.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
DEVELOPMENTS THIRD QUARTER 2003 EDITION
Check out the new edition of Developments. It focuses on science in development, with an article on “Digital Development”.
While you are at it, you might check out an article in the New York Times that deals with the complex role of science in an information society.
Check out the new edition of Developments. It focuses on science in development, with an article on “Digital Development”.
While you are at it, you might check out an article in the New York Times that deals with the complex role of science in an information society.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
IS CAPACITY BUILDING NECESSARY
My colleague Shashank Ohja and I were chatting about a recent project in which an Asian country had contracted for the implementation of an ICT project from a nearby country. I casually repeated a comment standard in the “development community” for several decades that I would prefer a project that built capacity in the country with the project. Shashank rightly said that that the country should find the best deal it could, getting the best benefit to cost return on its investment.
Of course he was right. The whole theory of international commerce is built on this approach. All countries should do better specializing in the goods and services in which they have comparative advantage, trading them for other goods and services produced in countries according to their own comparative advantages. Why should ICT goods and services be any different? Surely developing countries should often trade the things they produce obeying their own comparative advantage for ICT goods and services produced abroad.
No one would suggest that the Sahelian countries should seek to compete with Intel in the production of silicon chips, nor with Microsoft in the production of software. Since ICT services, including software development and consulting, are increasingly tradable, why should not countries with a comparative advantage in these services also specialize and export? Why should not developing countries with comparative advantages in other products trade those products for chips, Microsoft software, and other services?
Still, I feel there is a set of core ICT competencies that should exist in a country, and that it would be bad policy to seek to import those competencies from others. All countries need gatekeeping competencies, to identify ICT needs and select appropriate products from domestic or international sources. Some services are still not tradable, and the capacity is needed at home to provide those services. Countries would be expected to have a comparative advantage in adapting technology produced to international standards in order for it to meet the needs of their own institutions; the capacity to do so should be built and maintained.
This seems to me to be a tricky area, needing more work to define the specific areas in which capacity should be built, and those in which countries should trade for needed ICT goods and services.
My colleague Shashank Ohja and I were chatting about a recent project in which an Asian country had contracted for the implementation of an ICT project from a nearby country. I casually repeated a comment standard in the “development community” for several decades that I would prefer a project that built capacity in the country with the project. Shashank rightly said that that the country should find the best deal it could, getting the best benefit to cost return on its investment.
Of course he was right. The whole theory of international commerce is built on this approach. All countries should do better specializing in the goods and services in which they have comparative advantage, trading them for other goods and services produced in countries according to their own comparative advantages. Why should ICT goods and services be any different? Surely developing countries should often trade the things they produce obeying their own comparative advantage for ICT goods and services produced abroad.
No one would suggest that the Sahelian countries should seek to compete with Intel in the production of silicon chips, nor with Microsoft in the production of software. Since ICT services, including software development and consulting, are increasingly tradable, why should not countries with a comparative advantage in these services also specialize and export? Why should not developing countries with comparative advantages in other products trade those products for chips, Microsoft software, and other services?
Still, I feel there is a set of core ICT competencies that should exist in a country, and that it would be bad policy to seek to import those competencies from others. All countries need gatekeeping competencies, to identify ICT needs and select appropriate products from domestic or international sources. Some services are still not tradable, and the capacity is needed at home to provide those services. Countries would be expected to have a comparative advantage in adapting technology produced to international standards in order for it to meet the needs of their own institutions; the capacity to do so should be built and maintained.
This seems to me to be a tricky area, needing more work to define the specific areas in which capacity should be built, and those in which countries should trade for needed ICT goods and services.
DOES MOBILE BRIDGE OR EXPAND THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
The number of mobile phones in the world has apparently surpassed the number of fixed line phones. I think the rapid growth of mobile connectivity has generally been seen as reducing the digital divide. I wonder the degree to which this is so.
Surely there are many people (in developing countries) who have obtained telephone service for the first time using a cell phone. Indeed there are clearly people using wireless in rural areas that have not yet been wired.
Yet I see many people adding a cell phone to their collection of communication devices that already includes one or more fixed line phones in their offices, fixed lines to their homes, and cable and DSL connections. Indeed I would guess that far more mobile phones are acquired by those who are already connected, than by the disconnected.
Thus it seems quite possible that the major effect of the introduction of mobile phones has been to add to the connectivity of the already connected – complementing home and office phone services with personal phone services. The effect of connecting the unwired, important as it undoubtedly is, may well be less extensive than the effect of adding to the connectivity of the wired.
And thus, the mobile may be more adding to the digital divide than bridging it.
The number of mobile phones in the world has apparently surpassed the number of fixed line phones. I think the rapid growth of mobile connectivity has generally been seen as reducing the digital divide. I wonder the degree to which this is so.
Surely there are many people (in developing countries) who have obtained telephone service for the first time using a cell phone. Indeed there are clearly people using wireless in rural areas that have not yet been wired.
Yet I see many people adding a cell phone to their collection of communication devices that already includes one or more fixed line phones in their offices, fixed lines to their homes, and cable and DSL connections. Indeed I would guess that far more mobile phones are acquired by those who are already connected, than by the disconnected.
Thus it seems quite possible that the major effect of the introduction of mobile phones has been to add to the connectivity of the already connected – complementing home and office phone services with personal phone services. The effect of connecting the unwired, important as it undoubtedly is, may well be less extensive than the effect of adding to the connectivity of the wired.
And thus, the mobile may be more adding to the digital divide than bridging it.
THE PETERSBERG PRIZE
The Development Gateway, in collaboration with two German donors has announced a €100,000 prize for leadership in the field of ICT for Development. The first prize will be awarded next year (May?), nominations are open, and information is available on the Development Gateway website.
I hope this prize will be different than some of the others I have seen, not naming names. I have seen prizes go for what I can only consider the cuteness of the project, or the likelihood that the project will attract media attention and attention from the general public.
As I see it, the key element of the Petersberg Prize will be to acknowledge a major success in the reduction of poverty through ICT. In India, for example, the four billion dollar e-government program that I mentioned in a previous posting is likely to benefit millions of people. The ten billion dollar a year that the Indian ICT industry has injected into the countries economy will have endless repercussions, similarly benefiting millions.
There are likely to be key elements contributing to such successes. Thus changes in national government policy and the example of successful e-government efforts in Andra Pradesh and other sites – now being scaled up nationwide – contributed to the e-government interest and support. The liberalization of business policies seem clearly to have contributed to the rapid growth of ICT and knowledge businesses (and I was told that the liberalization often started with ICT and then moved to other sectors.
In turn, leadership by an organization or individual was often critical to getting these key elements in place.
I hope that by recognizing such leadership, attention can be directed to the key elements that lead to major successes, and that as a result similar successes will occur in many countries.
The Development Gateway, in collaboration with two German donors has announced a €100,000 prize for leadership in the field of ICT for Development. The first prize will be awarded next year (May?), nominations are open, and information is available on the Development Gateway website.
I hope this prize will be different than some of the others I have seen, not naming names. I have seen prizes go for what I can only consider the cuteness of the project, or the likelihood that the project will attract media attention and attention from the general public.
As I see it, the key element of the Petersberg Prize will be to acknowledge a major success in the reduction of poverty through ICT. In India, for example, the four billion dollar e-government program that I mentioned in a previous posting is likely to benefit millions of people. The ten billion dollar a year that the Indian ICT industry has injected into the countries economy will have endless repercussions, similarly benefiting millions.
There are likely to be key elements contributing to such successes. Thus changes in national government policy and the example of successful e-government efforts in Andra Pradesh and other sites – now being scaled up nationwide – contributed to the e-government interest and support. The liberalization of business policies seem clearly to have contributed to the rapid growth of ICT and knowledge businesses (and I was told that the liberalization often started with ICT and then moved to other sectors.
In turn, leadership by an organization or individual was often critical to getting these key elements in place.
I hope that by recognizing such leadership, attention can be directed to the key elements that lead to major successes, and that as a result similar successes will occur in many countries.
BACK FROM INDIA
I spent last week on a flying trip to Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. I had never before been to Bangalore nor Mumbai.
I can affirm that there are lots of ICT and knowledge based businesses in these cities. The facilities I saw were beautiful. Not only were there impressive building facades and gardens surrounding the facilities, but the interiors were luxurious, clean and functional. Computers were working, conference rooms fully equipped. (Indeed I saw a conference room in the Ministry of Information Technology equipped with GIS and communication technology that I hadn’t realized existed anywhere.) No wonder Indian-American ICT executives are returning to India in significant numbers, providing leadership to build its ICT industrial capacity.
I was told that the GDP of Bangalore was increasing at 30 percent a year, and while I recognize the problems of measuring this rate of increase, I certainly believe the place is booming. The city is extending up into the air and out into the surrounding countryside, driven by the growth of its ICT and knowledge industries.
I had a chance to see a university program, a government R&D lab program, and to visit a software company. People and progress in each were quite impressive. These folks appear to be able to hold their own professionally against competition from anywhere in the world, and to work at salaries only a fraction of those in the U.S. and Europe.
The industry has grown in size by an order of magnitude in the last decade, and seems in full course to continue rapid growth.
I was also impressed by the apparent resolve of the Indian government to develop e-government solutions. I was told that expenses this year on e-government will be equivalent to one billion U.S. dollars, and that a three billion dollar investment is planned for the next three years.
In a week no one becomes an expert on a country and its ICT industry, but this was a great visit.
I thank all the people who made it possible, and the folk who met me with such hospitality.
I spent last week on a flying trip to Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. I had never before been to Bangalore nor Mumbai.
I can affirm that there are lots of ICT and knowledge based businesses in these cities. The facilities I saw were beautiful. Not only were there impressive building facades and gardens surrounding the facilities, but the interiors were luxurious, clean and functional. Computers were working, conference rooms fully equipped. (Indeed I saw a conference room in the Ministry of Information Technology equipped with GIS and communication technology that I hadn’t realized existed anywhere.) No wonder Indian-American ICT executives are returning to India in significant numbers, providing leadership to build its ICT industrial capacity.
I was told that the GDP of Bangalore was increasing at 30 percent a year, and while I recognize the problems of measuring this rate of increase, I certainly believe the place is booming. The city is extending up into the air and out into the surrounding countryside, driven by the growth of its ICT and knowledge industries.
I had a chance to see a university program, a government R&D lab program, and to visit a software company. People and progress in each were quite impressive. These folks appear to be able to hold their own professionally against competition from anywhere in the world, and to work at salaries only a fraction of those in the U.S. and Europe.
The industry has grown in size by an order of magnitude in the last decade, and seems in full course to continue rapid growth.
I was also impressed by the apparent resolve of the Indian government to develop e-government solutions. I was told that expenses this year on e-government will be equivalent to one billion U.S. dollars, and that a three billion dollar investment is planned for the next three years.
In a week no one becomes an expert on a country and its ICT industry, but this was a great visit.
I thank all the people who made it possible, and the folk who met me with such hospitality.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
COMPLEXITY, EVOLUTION, AND KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS
I have been reading Homer-Dixon’s “Ingenuity Gap” again. The author makes the point that we are surrounded by systems that no one understands in their entirety.
I am on the way to India tomorrow (and will not be posting on the blog for a week). Now no one fully understands a modern jet airliner. The guys who understand the engines, if anyone has a grasp on so complicated a piece of machinery, don’t understand the detailed working of the automatic pilot. The pilots don’t understand either the engines or the electronics very thoroughly, but I am glad that they are flying rather than the engineers who designed the plane.
I am going on business of the World Bank, and have been reminded again as I tried to navigate their travel procedures, that no one fully understands that bureaucracy (that serves thousands of employees and consultants to the Bank). If no one fully understands the bureaucratic systems, full understanding of the program of the Bank is even further off. There are experts in mining, and medicine, and farming who work with lawyers, and engineers, and economists.
The larger society is more complex still, and growing more and more so every day. Think about how many experts in how many fields are involved to assure that the food we eat gets to our table every day.
As the recent electrical network failures in the United States and Europe have demonstrated, complex systems sometimes fail.
Working in international development, one of the imponderables is the speed with which development takes place. Communism failed more than a decade ago, and the rebuilding of different societies in Central and Eastern Europe has taken longer than many expected, and has differed in speed from country to country. The rebuilding of political and economic systems in Europe and Japan after World War II proved to be much faster than the development of such systems in the former colonies after decolonization.
American political leaders have not learned in the aftermath of a century’s experience in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Central America, and many other regions that “nation building” is a long term affair. They seem to be surprised that it is going to take a long time in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I think that complexity theory (see Mitch Waldrop’s book) holds some insights. Even while no one understands fully the workings of a modern society, communally the people of a society have huge amounts of knowledge and understanding. Millions of people working simultaneously, each on his or her local piece of the puzzle, can put together new institutions and rebuild a society.
The ants building large nests are perhaps the greatest example. Certainly no individual ant can be said to understand how to build a nest. So how do large numbers of insects, each perhaps 5 mm in length, build a nest that is a meter or more in diameter? The answer is that each does a piece of the work, using what it knows, and local information, and the complex structure develops without central planning.
So too, social institutions evolve out of the efforts of many more than they are planned. The work of evolutionary economists (cf. “Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change” by Nelson and Winters) suggests a way to understand such evolution. Of course we have to take into account both the macro-planning of leaders (and the knowledge and understanding that they apply to such planning), and the general factors that influence the institution building efforts of millions of people, each working with his or her own local problems and limited understanding of the whole.
A part of the explanation of the different rates of nation building in Europe after WWII and Africa after decolonization is cultural. The knowledge with which people attacked their local rebuilding in Europe was different than that with which people attacked the building of African nations. The cultural heritage of Europeans included a lot of understanding of “modern” institutions, while that of Africans included a lot of understanding of Africa’s traditional institutions, but less understanding of capitalism, national political institutions, rule of law, professionalism, etc.
Homer-Dixon also worries about the relatively few people who have broad understanding of society in general, and of specific institutions. He cites the case of the stock market and financial systems, in which young, computer-literate traders are more and more influential, while older, more experienced people who focused on large scale economic issues is decreasing. But he is concerned with the gap between the complexity of the social, economic, technological and environmental problems we face, and the ingenuity we can collectively bring to bear to solve them. His concern is importantly whether we have the social institutions to bring our best ingenuity to bear on the most critical problems.
This concern echoes that of Edward Said, whose book “Orientalism” also figured in a recent posting. Said is concerned (my words, not his) with the dominant position of people in American foreign policy with dangerously oversimplified and self-serving views of other societies, and the lack of influence of those with more scholarly, intimate, detailed and synoptic views of those societies.
Jeffrey Sachs on Sunday wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post, decrying the loss of expertise in USAID, and the loss of influence in U.S. international development policy of those with expertise in the complex societies of developing nations.
Right on, guys!
I have been reading Homer-Dixon’s “Ingenuity Gap” again. The author makes the point that we are surrounded by systems that no one understands in their entirety.
I am on the way to India tomorrow (and will not be posting on the blog for a week). Now no one fully understands a modern jet airliner. The guys who understand the engines, if anyone has a grasp on so complicated a piece of machinery, don’t understand the detailed working of the automatic pilot. The pilots don’t understand either the engines or the electronics very thoroughly, but I am glad that they are flying rather than the engineers who designed the plane.
I am going on business of the World Bank, and have been reminded again as I tried to navigate their travel procedures, that no one fully understands that bureaucracy (that serves thousands of employees and consultants to the Bank). If no one fully understands the bureaucratic systems, full understanding of the program of the Bank is even further off. There are experts in mining, and medicine, and farming who work with lawyers, and engineers, and economists.
The larger society is more complex still, and growing more and more so every day. Think about how many experts in how many fields are involved to assure that the food we eat gets to our table every day.
As the recent electrical network failures in the United States and Europe have demonstrated, complex systems sometimes fail.
Working in international development, one of the imponderables is the speed with which development takes place. Communism failed more than a decade ago, and the rebuilding of different societies in Central and Eastern Europe has taken longer than many expected, and has differed in speed from country to country. The rebuilding of political and economic systems in Europe and Japan after World War II proved to be much faster than the development of such systems in the former colonies after decolonization.
American political leaders have not learned in the aftermath of a century’s experience in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Central America, and many other regions that “nation building” is a long term affair. They seem to be surprised that it is going to take a long time in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I think that complexity theory (see Mitch Waldrop’s book) holds some insights. Even while no one understands fully the workings of a modern society, communally the people of a society have huge amounts of knowledge and understanding. Millions of people working simultaneously, each on his or her local piece of the puzzle, can put together new institutions and rebuild a society.
The ants building large nests are perhaps the greatest example. Certainly no individual ant can be said to understand how to build a nest. So how do large numbers of insects, each perhaps 5 mm in length, build a nest that is a meter or more in diameter? The answer is that each does a piece of the work, using what it knows, and local information, and the complex structure develops without central planning.
So too, social institutions evolve out of the efforts of many more than they are planned. The work of evolutionary economists (cf. “Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change” by Nelson and Winters) suggests a way to understand such evolution. Of course we have to take into account both the macro-planning of leaders (and the knowledge and understanding that they apply to such planning), and the general factors that influence the institution building efforts of millions of people, each working with his or her own local problems and limited understanding of the whole.
A part of the explanation of the different rates of nation building in Europe after WWII and Africa after decolonization is cultural. The knowledge with which people attacked their local rebuilding in Europe was different than that with which people attacked the building of African nations. The cultural heritage of Europeans included a lot of understanding of “modern” institutions, while that of Africans included a lot of understanding of Africa’s traditional institutions, but less understanding of capitalism, national political institutions, rule of law, professionalism, etc.
Homer-Dixon also worries about the relatively few people who have broad understanding of society in general, and of specific institutions. He cites the case of the stock market and financial systems, in which young, computer-literate traders are more and more influential, while older, more experienced people who focused on large scale economic issues is decreasing. But he is concerned with the gap between the complexity of the social, economic, technological and environmental problems we face, and the ingenuity we can collectively bring to bear to solve them. His concern is importantly whether we have the social institutions to bring our best ingenuity to bear on the most critical problems.
This concern echoes that of Edward Said, whose book “Orientalism” also figured in a recent posting. Said is concerned (my words, not his) with the dominant position of people in American foreign policy with dangerously oversimplified and self-serving views of other societies, and the lack of influence of those with more scholarly, intimate, detailed and synoptic views of those societies.
Jeffrey Sachs on Sunday wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post, decrying the loss of expertise in USAID, and the loss of influence in U.S. international development policy of those with expertise in the complex societies of developing nations.
Right on, guys!
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
ICT AND THE TRADABILITY OF KNOWLEDGE SERVICES
In any economy there are a number of services that can be classified as “knowledge services”. These might include education, medical diagnostic and prescriptive services, consulting services, programming, management services, etc.
Generally these have been seen as “non-tradable”. If you think of the model of the school as a log, with the teacher at one end and the student at the other, the teachers services were limited by the length of the log. Clearly developed nations have been selling educational services to developing nations since hundreds of thousands of developing nation students are in universities in Europe and the United States. But generally international sale of these services required international travel of the teacher or of the students. So too for many of the other knowledge service sectors.
The revolution in information and communications technology and the massive investments in ICT infrastructure have outmoded this limitation. Distance education allows student and teacher to be in different countries. Indeed, surgery has been conducted with the patient in Europe and the surgeon in the United States. Thus many formerly “non-tradable” knowledge services are now “tradable”.
The argument for international trade is based on the idea of “comparative advantage” (as distinct from “competitive advantage”). Essentially it benefits two countries to exchange services, where each is providing the service in which it has comparative advantage. Opening trade in formerly untraded “knowledge services”.
Thus one might find one Central American country trading graduate courses in civil engineering for graduate courses in electrical engineering, both delivered via computer conferencing. Or one might offer medical consultation in oncology in return for consultation in neurology, both done over the Internet. One might offer consulting services in management in exchange for consulting services in industrial engineering, all via electronic media.
This will not happen without a lot of work by a lot of people. The barriers to trade in knowledge services seem likely to be formidable. Still, the fundamental economics suggest that there would be large gains in the development of such trade. And the more important aspects of the trade might well be trade between and among developing nations themselves – South to South trade.
In any economy there are a number of services that can be classified as “knowledge services”. These might include education, medical diagnostic and prescriptive services, consulting services, programming, management services, etc.
Generally these have been seen as “non-tradable”. If you think of the model of the school as a log, with the teacher at one end and the student at the other, the teachers services were limited by the length of the log. Clearly developed nations have been selling educational services to developing nations since hundreds of thousands of developing nation students are in universities in Europe and the United States. But generally international sale of these services required international travel of the teacher or of the students. So too for many of the other knowledge service sectors.
The revolution in information and communications technology and the massive investments in ICT infrastructure have outmoded this limitation. Distance education allows student and teacher to be in different countries. Indeed, surgery has been conducted with the patient in Europe and the surgeon in the United States. Thus many formerly “non-tradable” knowledge services are now “tradable”.
The argument for international trade is based on the idea of “comparative advantage” (as distinct from “competitive advantage”). Essentially it benefits two countries to exchange services, where each is providing the service in which it has comparative advantage. Opening trade in formerly untraded “knowledge services”.
Thus one might find one Central American country trading graduate courses in civil engineering for graduate courses in electrical engineering, both delivered via computer conferencing. Or one might offer medical consultation in oncology in return for consultation in neurology, both done over the Internet. One might offer consulting services in management in exchange for consulting services in industrial engineering, all via electronic media.
This will not happen without a lot of work by a lot of people. The barriers to trade in knowledge services seem likely to be formidable. Still, the fundamental economics suggest that there would be large gains in the development of such trade. And the more important aspects of the trade might well be trade between and among developing nations themselves – South to South trade.
FINANCING OF TELECENTERS
Resources are required to run a telecenter, and those resources have to come from somewhere. So how does one finance a telecenter? I was just chatting with a colleague from the World Bank, who suggested that all of us who think about telecenters tend to view this question from the perspective provided by our own background. The following comes from my background, which is rather confused.
My guess is that mixed financing is appropriate for most telecenters in rural areas and poor urban areas in developing countries. That is, telecenters should probably usually be financed from several sources reflecting their varied client needs and social functions. Here are some sources of financing that might be considered:
· Integration of the telecenter with another, perhaps preexisting facility. There are many such models, including schools that offer access to ICT when not being used by students, teachers and administrators, to post offices that offer email services in addition to traditional postal services, to retail stores that add ICT services to their mix (as McDonalds is doing by putting computers in all their stores in Brazil), to agricultural cooperatives that offer ICT services to the local community using facilities acquired to serve their members, to community radio stations that offer public access to the Internet in addition to broadcasting.
· Fee for services:
1. Fees for use of the telecenter per se;
2. Fees for ancillary services, such as training or search activities.
· In kind contributions, e.g.;
1. Community construction of telecenter facilities,
2. Donated services to operate the telecenter;
3. Donated equipment.
· Cooperative mechanisms, as with a consumer cooperative;
· Cross-subsidies, as when telecommunications regulation make universal service requirements resulting in cross subsidies from highly profitable services, to marginally profitable services to the poor, or the E-rates used to finance school Internet access in the U.S.
· Public funding, justified by public goods aspects of telecenter services. Thus where the telecenter is serving public health, education, and other public goods needs, government financing may be appropriate, via:
1. direct government funding;
2. tax financing (as Internet e-commerce has been exempted from sales taxes in the United States, or the exemption from taxes of services to native American populations);
3. Governmental in-kind contributions would be a mixed form, as when a health center makes a room available without charge for a local telecenter.
· Special loan facilities, insurance, etc. for telecenter operators;
· Special funds, such as lotteries run for the initiation of telecenters, or the donations of part of consumer purchases to schools for the purchase of ICT equipment.
I would point out that there are a lot of different things out there that could be considered a telecenter. They range from Grameenphone’s ladies offering fee for call services from a cell phone; to public fixed-line telephones; to cybercafes; to fully ICT equipped business centers; to multifunction telecenters offering telephone, fax, copying, computer rental, desktop publishing, Internet, community radio, and ancillary services. Compounding these services with the variety of mixes of financing results in a multitude of business models.
This is a topic that merits some research on options and best practices.
Resources are required to run a telecenter, and those resources have to come from somewhere. So how does one finance a telecenter? I was just chatting with a colleague from the World Bank, who suggested that all of us who think about telecenters tend to view this question from the perspective provided by our own background. The following comes from my background, which is rather confused.
My guess is that mixed financing is appropriate for most telecenters in rural areas and poor urban areas in developing countries. That is, telecenters should probably usually be financed from several sources reflecting their varied client needs and social functions. Here are some sources of financing that might be considered:
· Integration of the telecenter with another, perhaps preexisting facility. There are many such models, including schools that offer access to ICT when not being used by students, teachers and administrators, to post offices that offer email services in addition to traditional postal services, to retail stores that add ICT services to their mix (as McDonalds is doing by putting computers in all their stores in Brazil), to agricultural cooperatives that offer ICT services to the local community using facilities acquired to serve their members, to community radio stations that offer public access to the Internet in addition to broadcasting.
· Fee for services:
1. Fees for use of the telecenter per se;
2. Fees for ancillary services, such as training or search activities.
· In kind contributions, e.g.;
1. Community construction of telecenter facilities,
2. Donated services to operate the telecenter;
3. Donated equipment.
· Cooperative mechanisms, as with a consumer cooperative;
· Cross-subsidies, as when telecommunications regulation make universal service requirements resulting in cross subsidies from highly profitable services, to marginally profitable services to the poor, or the E-rates used to finance school Internet access in the U.S.
· Public funding, justified by public goods aspects of telecenter services. Thus where the telecenter is serving public health, education, and other public goods needs, government financing may be appropriate, via:
1. direct government funding;
2. tax financing (as Internet e-commerce has been exempted from sales taxes in the United States, or the exemption from taxes of services to native American populations);
3. Governmental in-kind contributions would be a mixed form, as when a health center makes a room available without charge for a local telecenter.
· Special loan facilities, insurance, etc. for telecenter operators;
· Special funds, such as lotteries run for the initiation of telecenters, or the donations of part of consumer purchases to schools for the purchase of ICT equipment.
I would point out that there are a lot of different things out there that could be considered a telecenter. They range from Grameenphone’s ladies offering fee for call services from a cell phone; to public fixed-line telephones; to cybercafes; to fully ICT equipped business centers; to multifunction telecenters offering telephone, fax, copying, computer rental, desktop publishing, Internet, community radio, and ancillary services. Compounding these services with the variety of mixes of financing results in a multitude of business models.
This is a topic that merits some research on options and best practices.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
TWO CATEGORIZING SEARCH ENGINES
My friend Julianne Gilmore made me aware of two search engines that not only search the World Wide Web and return content relevant to one’s query, but organize the returns into clusters of related links. Since taxonomy is the beginning of knowledge, it occurred to me that any readers out there interested in K4D might be interested in the search engines.
Vivisimo is an established search engine that provides links to folders of query responses on the left side of the response page. One of Vivisimo’s demonstrations sends a query to PubMed@NIH, and then organizes the results into folders. Here is PC Magazine’s take on Vivisimo.
Mooter is in Beta testing now, the product of an Australian born in Zambia and educated in South Africa. Here is an article about it from ZDNet.
My friend Julianne Gilmore made me aware of two search engines that not only search the World Wide Web and return content relevant to one’s query, but organize the returns into clusters of related links. Since taxonomy is the beginning of knowledge, it occurred to me that any readers out there interested in K4D might be interested in the search engines.
Vivisimo is an established search engine that provides links to folders of query responses on the left side of the response page. One of Vivisimo’s demonstrations sends a query to PubMed@NIH, and then organizes the results into folders. Here is PC Magazine’s take on Vivisimo.
Mooter is in Beta testing now, the product of an Australian born in Zambia and educated in South Africa. Here is an article about it from ZDNet.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“There is a difference between knowledge of other people and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge – if that is what it is – that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and outright war.
Edward Said, Orientalism, page xix.
Some thoughts occasioned by starting Said’s book:
A book, or any work of creativity, it seems to me should be able to stand alone. That is, it should reward the reader, or client, from its direct study. The logic should be strong, the exposition clear and forceful. The author seeking to publish should have put considerable thought and experience into the work created.
Still, any book must be understood within its historical, social, economic, political, and cultural context.
One may also consider that author of a work – who he is, what was he trying to achieve, what aspects of his background influenced the production of the work, and thus affect its appreciation.
What about the disciplinary paradigm that the author works from? The matrix of interlocking disciplinary paradigms that help define the discipline in which the author works.
One may also consider how the work has come to its current status. Thus it is art galaries and museums, in my opinion, that determine what we believe to be great art. Certainly there are many examples of artists lionized in one time, and relegated to the scrap-heap of history at another. Indeed, sometimes artists increase in stature (as recognized by various communities), and sometimes they decrease in stature.
Said points out (as I interpret him) that the various disciplinary paradigms of orientalism do not compete only, or even primarily, on the even playing field of descriptive, analytic and predictive power. Where the invader had superior firepower and achieved political and economic domination by conquest, the invaders view of the oriental country and its society gained a compelling advantage. Things were run as if the invader was right, and often people conformed to expectations of the well armed dominators so that the invader became right.
This question of knowledge becomes less obvious the more one thinks about it.
“There is a difference between knowledge of other people and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge – if that is what it is – that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and outright war.
Edward Said, Orientalism, page xix.
Some thoughts occasioned by starting Said’s book:
A book, or any work of creativity, it seems to me should be able to stand alone. That is, it should reward the reader, or client, from its direct study. The logic should be strong, the exposition clear and forceful. The author seeking to publish should have put considerable thought and experience into the work created.
Still, any book must be understood within its historical, social, economic, political, and cultural context.
One may also consider that author of a work – who he is, what was he trying to achieve, what aspects of his background influenced the production of the work, and thus affect its appreciation.
What about the disciplinary paradigm that the author works from? The matrix of interlocking disciplinary paradigms that help define the discipline in which the author works.
One may also consider how the work has come to its current status. Thus it is art galaries and museums, in my opinion, that determine what we believe to be great art. Certainly there are many examples of artists lionized in one time, and relegated to the scrap-heap of history at another. Indeed, sometimes artists increase in stature (as recognized by various communities), and sometimes they decrease in stature.
Said points out (as I interpret him) that the various disciplinary paradigms of orientalism do not compete only, or even primarily, on the even playing field of descriptive, analytic and predictive power. Where the invader had superior firepower and achieved political and economic domination by conquest, the invaders view of the oriental country and its society gained a compelling advantage. Things were run as if the invader was right, and often people conformed to expectations of the well armed dominators so that the invader became right.
This question of knowledge becomes less obvious the more one thinks about it.
Monday, October 27, 2003
SEARCH INSIDE THE BOOK
Amazon has inaugurated a new search engine that enables book shoppers to search within books. Currently 120,000 books are indexed and available online, totaling 33 million pages of searchable text. When you search for a book using the standard search engine, those books returned that are already indexed include in the returned information an excerpt from a page that includes the search term. You can ask to see excerpts for all pages that include the search term. You can also pull up the page itself. Thus Amazon has provided a Google-like search engine for books. With 33 million pages indexed, the engine should already by quite useful! What makes it much more useful is that you can page forward and back in the book, and thus read the book online!
Amazon has inaugurated a new search engine that enables book shoppers to search within books. Currently 120,000 books are indexed and available online, totaling 33 million pages of searchable text. When you search for a book using the standard search engine, those books returned that are already indexed include in the returned information an excerpt from a page that includes the search term. You can ask to see excerpts for all pages that include the search term. You can also pull up the page itself. Thus Amazon has provided a Google-like search engine for books. With 33 million pages indexed, the engine should already by quite useful! What makes it much more useful is that you can page forward and back in the book, and thus read the book online!
Sunday, October 26, 2003
ARAB HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT, 2003
Arab Human Development Report 2003: Building a Knowledge Society
From the Summary: "The Report affirms that knowledge can help the region to expand the scope of human freedoms, enhance the capacity to guarantee those freedoms through good governance and achieve the higher moral human goals of justice and human dignity. It also underlines the importance of knowledge to Arab countries as a powerful driver of economic growth through higher productivity. Its closing section puts forward a strategic vision for creating knowledge societies in the Arab world based on five pillars: Guaranteeing key freedoms; Disseminating quality education; Embedding science; Shifting towards knowledge based production; and Developing an enlightened Arab knowledge model. AHDR 2003 makes it clear that, in the Arab civilization, the pursuit of knowledge is prompted by religion, culture, history and the human will to achieve success. Obstructions to this quest are the defective structures created by human beings- social, economic and above all political. Arabs must remove or reform these structures in order to take the place they deserve in the world of knowledge at the beginning of the knowledge millennium." United Nations Development Program 2003. The report is available in Arabic as well as English. It can be downloaded in one PDF document or by chapters.
Arab Human Development Report 2003: Building a Knowledge Society
From the Summary: "The Report affirms that knowledge can help the region to expand the scope of human freedoms, enhance the capacity to guarantee those freedoms through good governance and achieve the higher moral human goals of justice and human dignity. It also underlines the importance of knowledge to Arab countries as a powerful driver of economic growth through higher productivity. Its closing section puts forward a strategic vision for creating knowledge societies in the Arab world based on five pillars: Guaranteeing key freedoms; Disseminating quality education; Embedding science; Shifting towards knowledge based production; and Developing an enlightened Arab knowledge model. AHDR 2003 makes it clear that, in the Arab civilization, the pursuit of knowledge is prompted by religion, culture, history and the human will to achieve success. Obstructions to this quest are the defective structures created by human beings- social, economic and above all political. Arabs must remove or reform these structures in order to take the place they deserve in the world of knowledge at the beginning of the knowledge millennium." United Nations Development Program 2003. The report is available in Arabic as well as English. It can be downloaded in one PDF document or by chapters.
TODAYS WASHINGTON POST
Bolivia: Jeff Sachs writes a blistering opinion piece, occasioned by the fall of President Sanchez de Lozada last week, critical of U.S. foreign assistance policy (or lack thereof). I was especially taken by his statement about the U.S. Agency for International Development. Sachs says USAID has been turned “into a service-delivery agency that undertakes specific projects in poor countries…. rather than a strategic agency that analyzes complex development challenges and helps lead a suitable U.S. foreign policy response.” I have not had enough contact with USAID since I left seven years ago to judge whether he is right about that, but the statement has some face validity. USAID has focused a large part of its budget on programs, such as those in Israel and Egypt, that are essentially entitlements to the governments of those countries based on geo-political concerns, and only secondarily development programs. The very small programs it runs in many other countries are unlikely to provide much policy leverage, or to affect overall national conditions. The initiatives of this administration, such as its US$15 billion AIDS effort and the Millennium Challenge Account, are apparently to be administered via other bureaucratic channels. Turning USAID into a cabinet agency, as Sachs proposes, would appear unlikely to accomplish much if the Agency’s missions and budgets are unchanged.
Iraq: In a front page story, the Post says that no evidence has been uncovered of a reconstituted nuclear weapons program, and strongly implies no such evidence will be forthcoming, and indeed that the administration has not prosecuted the search for nuclear weapons very vigorously. (The story does not imply that no evidence will be found of stockpiles or programs to produce chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction.) Lack of a post-1991 nuclear weapons program would seem to challenge statements made by the Administration in the build up to the war. The Post seems likely to have investigated this story forcefully prior to making so strong a charge.
And CSPAN
Chile: I heard Peter Kornbluh on a CSPAN book show this morning talking about a recently published book that he edited: “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability”. His apparently well informed perception is that the U.S. Administration in the early and mid 1970’s was telling the public one story, the U.S. Congress another, and the right wing dictator of Chile still another story. The serious human rights abuses of the Pinochet government were apparently quite acceptable to the U.S. Administration of the time, if the alternative was a public opinion debacle of a freely elected Marxist government functioning in the Americas. This willingness to ignore human rights and democratic processes was in spite of the recognition by Henry Kissinger that “Chile was a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica,” posing no economic nor military danger to the United States.
All three of these stories can be seen from a Knowledge for Development standpoint. Sachs, a frequent and powerful spokesman on international development issues, suggests that the U.S. government has lost capacity to develop and utilize the detailed, substantive knowledge to make good development policy. I have heard suggested that in the buildup for the Iraq war, the U.S. government made organizational changes that severely limited its ability to analyze and understand information on Iraq, and that the resulting lack of knowledge lead to bad decisions and continuing problems. The Chilean and Iraqi examples suggest that Administrations have limited the knowledge available to the legislative body and the public by the choice of the information it shares publicly. Needless to say, none of these possibilities is comforting!
Bolivia: Jeff Sachs writes a blistering opinion piece, occasioned by the fall of President Sanchez de Lozada last week, critical of U.S. foreign assistance policy (or lack thereof). I was especially taken by his statement about the U.S. Agency for International Development. Sachs says USAID has been turned “into a service-delivery agency that undertakes specific projects in poor countries…. rather than a strategic agency that analyzes complex development challenges and helps lead a suitable U.S. foreign policy response.” I have not had enough contact with USAID since I left seven years ago to judge whether he is right about that, but the statement has some face validity. USAID has focused a large part of its budget on programs, such as those in Israel and Egypt, that are essentially entitlements to the governments of those countries based on geo-political concerns, and only secondarily development programs. The very small programs it runs in many other countries are unlikely to provide much policy leverage, or to affect overall national conditions. The initiatives of this administration, such as its US$15 billion AIDS effort and the Millennium Challenge Account, are apparently to be administered via other bureaucratic channels. Turning USAID into a cabinet agency, as Sachs proposes, would appear unlikely to accomplish much if the Agency’s missions and budgets are unchanged.
Iraq: In a front page story, the Post says that no evidence has been uncovered of a reconstituted nuclear weapons program, and strongly implies no such evidence will be forthcoming, and indeed that the administration has not prosecuted the search for nuclear weapons very vigorously. (The story does not imply that no evidence will be found of stockpiles or programs to produce chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction.) Lack of a post-1991 nuclear weapons program would seem to challenge statements made by the Administration in the build up to the war. The Post seems likely to have investigated this story forcefully prior to making so strong a charge.
And CSPAN
Chile: I heard Peter Kornbluh on a CSPAN book show this morning talking about a recently published book that he edited: “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability”. His apparently well informed perception is that the U.S. Administration in the early and mid 1970’s was telling the public one story, the U.S. Congress another, and the right wing dictator of Chile still another story. The serious human rights abuses of the Pinochet government were apparently quite acceptable to the U.S. Administration of the time, if the alternative was a public opinion debacle of a freely elected Marxist government functioning in the Americas. This willingness to ignore human rights and democratic processes was in spite of the recognition by Henry Kissinger that “Chile was a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica,” posing no economic nor military danger to the United States.
All three of these stories can be seen from a Knowledge for Development standpoint. Sachs, a frequent and powerful spokesman on international development issues, suggests that the U.S. government has lost capacity to develop and utilize the detailed, substantive knowledge to make good development policy. I have heard suggested that in the buildup for the Iraq war, the U.S. government made organizational changes that severely limited its ability to analyze and understand information on Iraq, and that the resulting lack of knowledge lead to bad decisions and continuing problems. The Chilean and Iraqi examples suggest that Administrations have limited the knowledge available to the legislative body and the public by the choice of the information it shares publicly. Needless to say, none of these possibilities is comforting!
DOES ICT CONTRIBUTE TO GROWTH?
While it seems to be widely agreed that ICTs have contributed to increase the rate of economic growth in the United States in the last decade, there has been some doubt that the effect was felt (as strongly) in Europe and Japan. Professor Dale Jorgenson's recent work, based on a reconsideration of economic statistics in the different nations, suggests that Europe and Japan also saw an quickening of economic growth in the late 1990's as a result of investments in ICTs. Note especially his paper "Information Technology and the G7 Economies" and the related article from the Economist magazine: "Computing the gains". The website also includes articles from Japan, and consideration of the role of higher education in economic growth.
While it seems to be widely agreed that ICTs have contributed to increase the rate of economic growth in the United States in the last decade, there has been some doubt that the effect was felt (as strongly) in Europe and Japan. Professor Dale Jorgenson's recent work, based on a reconsideration of economic statistics in the different nations, suggests that Europe and Japan also saw an quickening of economic growth in the late 1990's as a result of investments in ICTs. Note especially his paper "Information Technology and the G7 Economies" and the related article from the Economist magazine: "Computing the gains". The website also includes articles from Japan, and consideration of the role of higher education in economic growth.
Friday, October 24, 2003
THE MAGICAL, MIRACULOUS BELIEF IN ICT4D
Magic: “the use of means (as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces,”
Miracle: “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Some years ago I compared the faith some people have in the power of ICT to promote development to that of the Cargo Cults of the Pacific, in which people believed that it they built landing fields on Pacific islands, huge metal birds would come from sky and deliver them wonderful gifts (as the cargo planes did for the U.S. troops in the Second World War). The faith in the magical power of computers, or the miraculous effects of the Internet seems still to be with us.
My last posting focused on the complexity of many of the social, economic, political and environmental systems that surround us. Most people don’t understand these systems, but have a touching faith, sustained by the unflagging efforts of political leaders and the media, that someone up there does. I suspect even the scientists, who generally understand the limitations of their own understanding of the specific systems with which they work, assume that others better understand the complex systems on which we all depend.
Perhaps it is not too surprising, therefore, that people believe that ICT will surely contribute to social and economic development and to the eradication of poverty, although the mechanisms by which such contributions will occur are not clear to them.
What is surprising is that this faith seems to persist in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. There are so many poor countries with failed governments, endemic and epidemic corruption, catastrophic public health conditions, engulfed by war, buffeted by famines and natural disasters, shackled by the ignorance of their peoples, and facing disastrous environmental problems -- countries where government officials can’t create adequate policies, and institutions are too weak for such policies to succeed even were they to be in place -- for us to believe that the information revolution will sweep the world and solve all our problems! These countries have failed to take full advantage of a wealth of technological opportunities in the past, and I see little reason to believe that they will fully benefit from computers or the Internet.
Rich countries are investing hundreds of times as much per person in information and communications technology than are the poorest countries. They are doing so in part because the rich have more resources to do so, but in part because they are better able to benefit from the ICTs that they buy. Some developing countries are able to get their policies and institutions in line in order to achieve rapid economic and social development, and these countries too tend to spend a lot on ICT, and to reap benefits commensurate with their investments. But many poor countries are still not developing, and telephones and computers are unlikely to prove a miraculous cure for their ills.
Magic: “the use of means (as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces,”
Miracle: “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Some years ago I compared the faith some people have in the power of ICT to promote development to that of the Cargo Cults of the Pacific, in which people believed that it they built landing fields on Pacific islands, huge metal birds would come from sky and deliver them wonderful gifts (as the cargo planes did for the U.S. troops in the Second World War). The faith in the magical power of computers, or the miraculous effects of the Internet seems still to be with us.
My last posting focused on the complexity of many of the social, economic, political and environmental systems that surround us. Most people don’t understand these systems, but have a touching faith, sustained by the unflagging efforts of political leaders and the media, that someone up there does. I suspect even the scientists, who generally understand the limitations of their own understanding of the specific systems with which they work, assume that others better understand the complex systems on which we all depend.
Perhaps it is not too surprising, therefore, that people believe that ICT will surely contribute to social and economic development and to the eradication of poverty, although the mechanisms by which such contributions will occur are not clear to them.
What is surprising is that this faith seems to persist in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. There are so many poor countries with failed governments, endemic and epidemic corruption, catastrophic public health conditions, engulfed by war, buffeted by famines and natural disasters, shackled by the ignorance of their peoples, and facing disastrous environmental problems -- countries where government officials can’t create adequate policies, and institutions are too weak for such policies to succeed even were they to be in place -- for us to believe that the information revolution will sweep the world and solve all our problems! These countries have failed to take full advantage of a wealth of technological opportunities in the past, and I see little reason to believe that they will fully benefit from computers or the Internet.
Rich countries are investing hundreds of times as much per person in information and communications technology than are the poorest countries. They are doing so in part because the rich have more resources to do so, but in part because they are better able to benefit from the ICTs that they buy. Some developing countries are able to get their policies and institutions in line in order to achieve rapid economic and social development, and these countries too tend to spend a lot on ICT, and to reap benefits commensurate with their investments. But many poor countries are still not developing, and telephones and computers are unlikely to prove a miraculous cure for their ills.
KNOWLEDGE OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS
“Climate is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks.”
Wally Broecker (quoted inThomas Homer-Dixon’s “The Ingenuity Gap”).
Broekner is a scientist who has raised the question of the stability of the water cycle in the Atlantic Ocean. There is a huge northward flow of surface water in the Atlantic from the tropics toward the Arctic. As the water flows north, surface evaporation increases its salinity. As the cold air of the northern winter blows over the ocean, the temperature of the water drops. The cold, salty water in the vicinity of Iceland and Greenland is dense, and flows downward, creating a counter-flow toward the south. The deep ocean flow to the south eventually results in an upflow in the tropics, and thus there is a north south circulation in the Atlantic.
The heat and moisture dumped into the atmosphere by the north-flowing surface waters dramatically affect the climate of Europe. My ancestors from Devon and Cornwall in England and the west of Ireland were blessed with a relatively warm and rainy climate as a result of this current. But it affects all of Europe. Moreover, the downflow of water in the north Atlantic carries huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the deep ocean, sequestering it from the atmosphere. Since carbon dioxide is an important greenhouse gas, the effect is to reduce the rate of global warming.
In recent decades, relatively warm weather has resulted in melting of glaciers, and increased flows of fresh water into the northern Atlantic. If global warming continues as predicted, the effect will be increased. Moreover, as there is more heat energy in the atmosphere, more water should evaporate from the sea and rainfall should increase. The fresh water dilutes the sea water, reducing its density. Broekner suggests that eventually the density of the northern surface water might no longer be sufficient to drive it into the depth of the ocean, and the circulation of the ocean might stop. It appears that this has happened in the past. The result would be catastrophic climate change in Europe, and probably over most of the globe. (Or not, the theory is still controversial.)
The key issue that concerns Homer-Dixon is that the effect would be to switch from one quasi-stable state to a different one. We all know that the weather is variable. In the last generation scientists have learned that the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon and a few others affect climates. Weather is significantly different in El Niño years than in La Niña years over many areas of the globe. We are used to these short term fluctuations. But were the Atlantic ocean circulation to be cut off, there would be a much larger, more permanent change. That is an “angry beast” we are poking with the global warming “stick”.
Homer-Dixon is writing about this and a number of similar situations. There are lots of systems that fluctuate in known ranges, but that have the potential for sudden, larger fluctuations into unknown territory. We deal with known health problems, and then a pandemic arrives such as AIDS. We see stock market fluctuations from day to day, and then there comes a drop such as triggered the depression of the 1930’s or the more than 20% drop on one day in 1987. Economic development occurs, but then there is a financial crisis such as have occurred in Argentina, Mexico, and Asia in recent years. Relations between superpowers fluctuate, but then there comes a “Cuban Missile Crisis” that reaches the brink of thermo-nuclear war. The Soviet Union political and economic systems fluctuate within fairly limited grounds until communism falls abruptly.
We have evolved procedures to control and limit change within such systems, and we generally assume that those procedures work adequately. The sudden shift from one quasi-stable state to another invariably illuminates the limitations of such control procedures. Homer-Dixon points out that all the systems involved are very complex, and that while we may understand their operation adequately to affect behavior within a quasi-stable state, we seldom understand well enough to do much in the transition between such quasi-stable states.
I was especially struck by Homer-Dixon’s comment on watching the news on October 19, 1987 – the day of precipitous decline in the Wall Street and other stock markets. The façade cracked. The newscasters expressions showed that they did not understand what was happening, nor where it would lead. Indeed, it appeared that their confidence that someone, somewhere understood and could step in to stop the crisis was shaken; perhaps the economy was beyond our understanding and control.
It made me think about the difference between politicians and media pundits on the one hand, and scientists on the other. The former always seem to present a façade of perfect knowledge. There is always someone on the news to explain exactly why the Dow Jones average moved a fraction of a percent one way or the other yesterday. On the other hand, scientists, who have spent lifetimes studying specific phenomena, generally are quite modest about the understanding they have achieved, and their ability to predict. No wonder the public tends to have a comforting, and largely erroneous belief that someone in control really understands, since the pronouncements that reach the public are usually those of the media and the politician, not the scientist.
“Climate is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks.”
Wally Broecker (quoted inThomas Homer-Dixon’s “The Ingenuity Gap”).
Broekner is a scientist who has raised the question of the stability of the water cycle in the Atlantic Ocean. There is a huge northward flow of surface water in the Atlantic from the tropics toward the Arctic. As the water flows north, surface evaporation increases its salinity. As the cold air of the northern winter blows over the ocean, the temperature of the water drops. The cold, salty water in the vicinity of Iceland and Greenland is dense, and flows downward, creating a counter-flow toward the south. The deep ocean flow to the south eventually results in an upflow in the tropics, and thus there is a north south circulation in the Atlantic.
The heat and moisture dumped into the atmosphere by the north-flowing surface waters dramatically affect the climate of Europe. My ancestors from Devon and Cornwall in England and the west of Ireland were blessed with a relatively warm and rainy climate as a result of this current. But it affects all of Europe. Moreover, the downflow of water in the north Atlantic carries huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the deep ocean, sequestering it from the atmosphere. Since carbon dioxide is an important greenhouse gas, the effect is to reduce the rate of global warming.
In recent decades, relatively warm weather has resulted in melting of glaciers, and increased flows of fresh water into the northern Atlantic. If global warming continues as predicted, the effect will be increased. Moreover, as there is more heat energy in the atmosphere, more water should evaporate from the sea and rainfall should increase. The fresh water dilutes the sea water, reducing its density. Broekner suggests that eventually the density of the northern surface water might no longer be sufficient to drive it into the depth of the ocean, and the circulation of the ocean might stop. It appears that this has happened in the past. The result would be catastrophic climate change in Europe, and probably over most of the globe. (Or not, the theory is still controversial.)
The key issue that concerns Homer-Dixon is that the effect would be to switch from one quasi-stable state to a different one. We all know that the weather is variable. In the last generation scientists have learned that the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon and a few others affect climates. Weather is significantly different in El Niño years than in La Niña years over many areas of the globe. We are used to these short term fluctuations. But were the Atlantic ocean circulation to be cut off, there would be a much larger, more permanent change. That is an “angry beast” we are poking with the global warming “stick”.
Homer-Dixon is writing about this and a number of similar situations. There are lots of systems that fluctuate in known ranges, but that have the potential for sudden, larger fluctuations into unknown territory. We deal with known health problems, and then a pandemic arrives such as AIDS. We see stock market fluctuations from day to day, and then there comes a drop such as triggered the depression of the 1930’s or the more than 20% drop on one day in 1987. Economic development occurs, but then there is a financial crisis such as have occurred in Argentina, Mexico, and Asia in recent years. Relations between superpowers fluctuate, but then there comes a “Cuban Missile Crisis” that reaches the brink of thermo-nuclear war. The Soviet Union political and economic systems fluctuate within fairly limited grounds until communism falls abruptly.
We have evolved procedures to control and limit change within such systems, and we generally assume that those procedures work adequately. The sudden shift from one quasi-stable state to another invariably illuminates the limitations of such control procedures. Homer-Dixon points out that all the systems involved are very complex, and that while we may understand their operation adequately to affect behavior within a quasi-stable state, we seldom understand well enough to do much in the transition between such quasi-stable states.
I was especially struck by Homer-Dixon’s comment on watching the news on October 19, 1987 – the day of precipitous decline in the Wall Street and other stock markets. The façade cracked. The newscasters expressions showed that they did not understand what was happening, nor where it would lead. Indeed, it appeared that their confidence that someone, somewhere understood and could step in to stop the crisis was shaken; perhaps the economy was beyond our understanding and control.
It made me think about the difference between politicians and media pundits on the one hand, and scientists on the other. The former always seem to present a façade of perfect knowledge. There is always someone on the news to explain exactly why the Dow Jones average moved a fraction of a percent one way or the other yesterday. On the other hand, scientists, who have spent lifetimes studying specific phenomena, generally are quite modest about the understanding they have achieved, and their ability to predict. No wonder the public tends to have a comforting, and largely erroneous belief that someone in control really understands, since the pronouncements that reach the public are usually those of the media and the politician, not the scientist.
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
MEASURES OF THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
I have been thinking about whether the Digital Divide is opening or closing. Some of my friends focusing on access to radios and televisions feel that it is closing. I look at orders of magnitude more spending on ICT in rich counties as compared with poor countries, and feel it must be opening. I suppose “where you stand depends on where you sit.”
Mass Media
In terms of mass media, let me suggest that a figure of merit might be useful. One element would be the portion of the waking day that one has access to the media. In the United States, people listen to the radio in their cars and while walking or jogging. They sometimes have access to TVs in their cars and offices as well as in their homes. In developing countries, people may only have access to a fixed radio (shared with other people). And indeed, that access may be reduced by power outages, or by broadcasts that are only available for limited periods of the day.
The figure of merit should also take into account the quality of the medium access. More credit should be given for access to visual media (TV, video cassette, DVD) than to just audio (radio, audio cassette, CD). Perhaps marginally more credit should be given for color than for black and white TV. For the deaf, credit would be given for access to captioned video.
It seems likely that there would be decreasing returns to scale. The increment in value of going from 15 to 16 hours a day would be less than that going from no access to one hour per day, of from a half hour to one and a half hours per day.
Credit would be given only for access to content in a language the user understands.
A second facet of the figure of merit would be the range of choice available in programming. Cable TV, and 100 channels would be valued more highly than broadcast TV, with five or ten channels. Satellite digital radio, with 100 stations would be valued more highly that broadcast AM radio with only a few stations. It seems likely that here too there would be diminishing returns to scale. The benefit of going from one to two radio stations would presumably be greater on the average than that of going from 100 to 101 stations.
Ideally, a figure of merit would also take into account the quality, diversity and relevance of programming available. If all that is available is a government propaganda station, having a radio won’t do much good. If all the stations focus on music for the urban audience, they will have less development relevance than having also stations oriented to a farming audience providing programming targeted to the needs of that audience.
Telephone Service
A figure of merit for telephone services might also be constructed, and indeed, the ITU has gone a long way in this direction with the indicators it collects worldwide now. Still, as telephone services expand with the convergence of technologies, more complex telephone indices might be developed.
The first element of such a figure of merit seems obviously to be connectivity – how many fixed line and mobile telephone connections are there. One might modify the indicator to take into account line failures and bandwidth. Where mobile phones don’t support Internet service and fixed-line telephones support DSL, there is obviously a difference in the service.
One might also seek to differentiate between personal telephones, fixed telephones serving a family or office, and community phones serving a village or neighborhood.
In the case of telephones, there are well known network economies. For each added person to the network, the people who benefit are the n existing members of the network. The benefits from extension of the network will tend to increase with increasing size of the network. In poor countries, with sparse telephone networks, per phone benefits for new lines may well be less than in rich, fully connected networks. One the other hand, the benefits to a rich family of having one more phone added to the several it already has may be much less than the benefits to a village of providing its first public telephone.
One could, and I may go on to think about personal computers and more complex and expensive ICTs, but this is enough for now!
I have been thinking about whether the Digital Divide is opening or closing. Some of my friends focusing on access to radios and televisions feel that it is closing. I look at orders of magnitude more spending on ICT in rich counties as compared with poor countries, and feel it must be opening. I suppose “where you stand depends on where you sit.”
Mass Media
In terms of mass media, let me suggest that a figure of merit might be useful. One element would be the portion of the waking day that one has access to the media. In the United States, people listen to the radio in their cars and while walking or jogging. They sometimes have access to TVs in their cars and offices as well as in their homes. In developing countries, people may only have access to a fixed radio (shared with other people). And indeed, that access may be reduced by power outages, or by broadcasts that are only available for limited periods of the day.
The figure of merit should also take into account the quality of the medium access. More credit should be given for access to visual media (TV, video cassette, DVD) than to just audio (radio, audio cassette, CD). Perhaps marginally more credit should be given for color than for black and white TV. For the deaf, credit would be given for access to captioned video.
It seems likely that there would be decreasing returns to scale. The increment in value of going from 15 to 16 hours a day would be less than that going from no access to one hour per day, of from a half hour to one and a half hours per day.
Credit would be given only for access to content in a language the user understands.
A second facet of the figure of merit would be the range of choice available in programming. Cable TV, and 100 channels would be valued more highly than broadcast TV, with five or ten channels. Satellite digital radio, with 100 stations would be valued more highly that broadcast AM radio with only a few stations. It seems likely that here too there would be diminishing returns to scale. The benefit of going from one to two radio stations would presumably be greater on the average than that of going from 100 to 101 stations.
Ideally, a figure of merit would also take into account the quality, diversity and relevance of programming available. If all that is available is a government propaganda station, having a radio won’t do much good. If all the stations focus on music for the urban audience, they will have less development relevance than having also stations oriented to a farming audience providing programming targeted to the needs of that audience.
Telephone Service
A figure of merit for telephone services might also be constructed, and indeed, the ITU has gone a long way in this direction with the indicators it collects worldwide now. Still, as telephone services expand with the convergence of technologies, more complex telephone indices might be developed.
The first element of such a figure of merit seems obviously to be connectivity – how many fixed line and mobile telephone connections are there. One might modify the indicator to take into account line failures and bandwidth. Where mobile phones don’t support Internet service and fixed-line telephones support DSL, there is obviously a difference in the service.
One might also seek to differentiate between personal telephones, fixed telephones serving a family or office, and community phones serving a village or neighborhood.
In the case of telephones, there are well known network economies. For each added person to the network, the people who benefit are the n existing members of the network. The benefits from extension of the network will tend to increase with increasing size of the network. In poor countries, with sparse telephone networks, per phone benefits for new lines may well be less than in rich, fully connected networks. One the other hand, the benefits to a rich family of having one more phone added to the several it already has may be much less than the benefits to a village of providing its first public telephone.
One could, and I may go on to think about personal computers and more complex and expensive ICTs, but this is enough for now!
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
PUTATIVE FACTOIDS ON TELECOMS FROM THE ECONOMIST
The Economist of October 11, 2003 includes a “Survey of Telecoms”. Here are some snippets of information gathered from the issue.
From 1998 to 2002 the amount of fibre in the ground increased fivefold and the transmission capacity of each strand of fibre increased 100-fold, so total transmission capacity increased 500-fold. Over the same period demand for transmission capacity quadrupled.
Household spending on communications in OECD countries increased by 50% in the 1990’s, while household spending on food and clothing actually went down.
“The most visible growth area is the continuing rise of mobile phones, which have overtaken fixed-line phones to become the most widespread communications devices on earth. Their number is expected to rise from 1.3 billion today to 2 billion by 2007, and they are being increasingly used to do much more than make phone calls, providing new opportunities for wireless operators and equipment makers.”
Some 450million new handsets are bought every year.
Broadband is the second growth area, and telecom operators with fixed line networks are moving to increase broadband service (and income) to make up for losses in traditional voice service.
The best performing of the stocks of large Telecom firms is selling at less than half the price at the beginning of 2000.
“According to Telecompetition, a market-research firm, China and India will account for 60% of new mobile subscribers between now and 2010.”
"Whereas 3G has so far proved an expensive mistake, text-messaging has been a spectacular success.”
A survey of 5,600 mobile users in 15 countries “found that 43% of users now have an internet or WAP-enabled phone, and 34% have accessed internet content on their phones, up from 27% in June 2002.”
Vonage VoIP telephone service illustrates a potentially disruptive technology, allowing great convenience and low costs for the international set.
“The true significance of Wi-Fi is that it provides a glimpse of the potential of wide-area wireless-broadband technologies.”
“Perhaps the best illustration of this convergence of telecoms and IT is the growing practice of carrying voice calls over corporate data networks, using voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) technology.”
“Customers are more likely to give a telecoms operator the lead role in a network-specific task (such as network management), but favor a systems integrator in a computing-specific task (such as setting up a customer-service website). Call centers are right on the boundary, because they involve both networking and computing components.”
“Operators are now concentrating their spending mainly on three areas: equipment to provide services, such as high-speed internet connections, that can provide new sources of revenue; ways of simplifying their tangled networks and reducing running costs; and software and other operating support systems that allow them to implement new services more quickly and efficiently.”
“Operators' capital expenditure as a percentage of their revenues will stay in the low teens, he predicts, far short of the 30-50% of the boom years.”
“How best to promote competition over the local loop is by far the most controversial topic in telecoms regulation. Ideally, competitors would put an end to the incumbents' local-loop monopoly by building their own networks. But building a competing network with the same reach is hugely expensive and time-consuming. Cable networks generally provide coverage only in some areas, and mobile-phone networks cannot yet offer broadband internet access. So, over the past few years, most of the developed world has been asking incumbents to share their networks with rivals—technically known as “local loop unbundling” (LLU). This means treating the incumbents as a special case and regulating them in an “asymmetric” way, at least until competing networks have been constructed. By allowing competitors to lease or resell lines, regulators have been able to foster competition in both telephony and broadband access.”
“At the heart of the telecoms industry, internet technology continues to sweep all before it.”
I recommend that you read the Survey!
The Economist of October 11, 2003 includes a “Survey of Telecoms”. Here are some snippets of information gathered from the issue.
From 1998 to 2002 the amount of fibre in the ground increased fivefold and the transmission capacity of each strand of fibre increased 100-fold, so total transmission capacity increased 500-fold. Over the same period demand for transmission capacity quadrupled.
Household spending on communications in OECD countries increased by 50% in the 1990’s, while household spending on food and clothing actually went down.
“The most visible growth area is the continuing rise of mobile phones, which have overtaken fixed-line phones to become the most widespread communications devices on earth. Their number is expected to rise from 1.3 billion today to 2 billion by 2007, and they are being increasingly used to do much more than make phone calls, providing new opportunities for wireless operators and equipment makers.”
Some 450million new handsets are bought every year.
Broadband is the second growth area, and telecom operators with fixed line networks are moving to increase broadband service (and income) to make up for losses in traditional voice service.
The best performing of the stocks of large Telecom firms is selling at less than half the price at the beginning of 2000.
“According to Telecompetition, a market-research firm, China and India will account for 60% of new mobile subscribers between now and 2010.”
"Whereas 3G has so far proved an expensive mistake, text-messaging has been a spectacular success.”
A survey of 5,600 mobile users in 15 countries “found that 43% of users now have an internet or WAP-enabled phone, and 34% have accessed internet content on their phones, up from 27% in June 2002.”
Vonage VoIP telephone service illustrates a potentially disruptive technology, allowing great convenience and low costs for the international set.
“The true significance of Wi-Fi is that it provides a glimpse of the potential of wide-area wireless-broadband technologies.”
“Perhaps the best illustration of this convergence of telecoms and IT is the growing practice of carrying voice calls over corporate data networks, using voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) technology.”
“Customers are more likely to give a telecoms operator the lead role in a network-specific task (such as network management), but favor a systems integrator in a computing-specific task (such as setting up a customer-service website). Call centers are right on the boundary, because they involve both networking and computing components.”
“Operators are now concentrating their spending mainly on three areas: equipment to provide services, such as high-speed internet connections, that can provide new sources of revenue; ways of simplifying their tangled networks and reducing running costs; and software and other operating support systems that allow them to implement new services more quickly and efficiently.”
“Operators' capital expenditure as a percentage of their revenues will stay in the low teens, he predicts, far short of the 30-50% of the boom years.”
“How best to promote competition over the local loop is by far the most controversial topic in telecoms regulation. Ideally, competitors would put an end to the incumbents' local-loop monopoly by building their own networks. But building a competing network with the same reach is hugely expensive and time-consuming. Cable networks generally provide coverage only in some areas, and mobile-phone networks cannot yet offer broadband internet access. So, over the past few years, most of the developed world has been asking incumbents to share their networks with rivals—technically known as “local loop unbundling” (LLU). This means treating the incumbents as a special case and regulating them in an “asymmetric” way, at least until competing networks have been constructed. By allowing competitors to lease or resell lines, regulators have been able to foster competition in both telephony and broadband access.”
“At the heart of the telecoms industry, internet technology continues to sweep all before it.”
I recommend that you read the Survey!
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