IDIA2009 Conference
Toward principles to appreciate, explore and interrogate the future of the Internet in South Africa and the likely impact on Human Development
Kosheek Sewchurran
Department of Information Systems, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Abstract
The internet is popular because it allows people to embrace existential needs they have, to participate, to contribute to societal causes, acquire understanding, communicate and interact in order to accentuate the type of human being they are aspiring to be. People in under-developed communities also have these existential needs and the internet can provide the context for them to embrace a better life. The un-even proliferation of internet adoption is undesirable and is the cause of much concern. The concerns are related to the growing levels of inequality and under-development that is emerging in South Africa and other developing countries. While inequality and under-development are related and influence each other, both growing poverty and under-development can be mediated by the internet despite the internet being implicated as a cause of the under-development. This paper explores these assertions and attempts to create coherence between the concepts of development, human development and economic development because all these are mediated by innovation as a social process. Two key points are made in this paper. Firstly, the paper makes a case for comparing the phenomena of business intelligence, executive information systems and decision support systems to development informatics initiatives. The profound similarities that emerge, point to an ethos that should drive community informatics projects. Secondly the paper shows how humanity has become subjected to controlling discourse in the information and knowledge age that the internet affords. Overall the paper makes arguments to allow for the appreciation of the overall phenomenon of developmental informatics from principles of existence, learning, cultural evolution, human development and social innovation with the aim of establishing principles to accelerate initiatives unapologetically.
