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Technologies of Choice? – ICTs, development and the capabilities approach

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Upcoming Events / Digital Media
May 22nd, 2013
berkman luncheon series/book launch

Technologies of Choice? – ICTs, development and the capabilities approach

Tuesday, May 28, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.

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ICT for development (ICT4D) scholars claim that the internet, radio and mobile phones can support development. Yet the dominant paradigm of development as economic growth is too limiting to understand the full potential of these technologies. One key rival to such econocentric understandings is Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to development – focusing on a pluralistic understanding of people’s values and the lives they want to lead.

In her book, Technologies of Choice? (MIT Press 2013), Dorothea Kleine translates Sen’s approach into policy analysis and ethnographic work on technology adaptation. She shows how technologies are not neutral, but imbued with values that may or may not coincide with the values of users. The case study analyses Chile’s pioneering ICT policies in the areas of public access, digital literacy, and online procurement and the sobering reality of one of the most marginalised communities in the country where these policies play out. The book shows how both neoliberal and egalitarian ideologies are written into technologies as they permeate the everyday lives and livelihoods of women and men in the town.

Technologies of Choice? examines the relationship between ICTs, choice, and development. It argues for a people-centred view of development that has individual and collective choice at its heart.

Discussant: Dr Nancy Hafkin (formerly UN Economic Commission for Africa)

Dorothea Kleine is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and Director of the interdisciplinary ICT4D Centre at Royal Holloway, University of London. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

video/audio

Justin Reich on Personalized Learning, Backpacks Full of Cash, Rockstar Teachers, and MOOC Madness

berkman

For decades, policymakers and futurists have heralded digital tools as essential to the the future of learning. Has the moment of disruptive transformational revolution finally arrived? If we are at a watershed moment, what futures are available to us? Justin Reich -- visiting lecturer at MIT, Berkman fellow, and educational researcher -- discusses the intersection of technology, free-market ideology, and media hype in U.S. education reform. video/audio on our website>

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