In my earlier post I was writing how ICT is an enabling tool which can support development goals e.g. in education or health. Furthermore, by analysing the existing information and communication needs (e.g. in communities or schools) we can find the I&C bottlenecks and see if ICT could help there. But does that mean that ICT is only making the existing information and communication flows work a bit more efficiently? The same ways of working with more speed? Or could ICTs have a transformative role or even become a goal of itself? It’s a tricky questions since much of the answer depends on how we define “an enabling tool” or “transformative”. Anyhow, here is a try:
One of the vivid examples of transformative role of ICTs has been the internet enabled social media starting to be boosted by mobile phones. Rather than supporting the existing I&C flows it has created a real paradigm shift from “one to many” to “many to many”. The fact that in increasing numbers people on this planet are able to become content producers fora global audience bears tremendous potential for development and human rights. We’ve seen glimpses of that e.g. during the Arab spring. All of this transformative potential is also increasingly available in communities with whom Plan works. One of the good examples is the Youth Empowerment Through Arts and Media project where youth have been able to voice out issues important for them and publish them in Youtube (and Virtual Villages site) in addition to using the material in local level advocacy. Although similar communities don’t yet have the technical capacity and skills to unleash this potential independently (e.g. without financial, technical and programmatic support of Plan), it might not take too many years before they do.
Ok, one could say that this is still doing the same things just quicker and easier. Earlier you could have sent paper letters around, recorded VHS video cassettes and distributed them to your contacts. But in reality that was just way too expensive and difficult to be compared to the spread of information though digital networks. I think here is one of those points where “more effective” becomes “transformative” or “paradigm shift”. At least potentially, since social change ultimately depends on people, not on technology.
