“We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” – From Winston Churchill’s address to the British Parliament that was reworked by the Marshall McLuhan movement into “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

Global Tensions in Digital Sustainable Development

This presentation will outline and explore economic and social development stages or phases utilizing information and communications technologies (ICT). The ICT acronym has emerged as a popular moniker, especially in international usage, for the digital technology revolution and is often combined with “development” to form ICT4D. Development is a contested term with currency in several areas. Still, in global political economy, it refers to building enabling environments and infrastructure needed to improve the quality of human life and bridge equity divides. Traditionally, this has meant enhancing a nation’s agriculture, education, health, and the production of other public goods that are not strictly economy-related but improve well-being and intellectual capital. Lately, it has referred to e-commerce and fintech applications as well.

ICT is increasingly tied to the successful attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), developed by the United Nations in 2015. Created during the time of Secretary-General Ban-Ki moon, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were approved by the General Assembly for completion by 2030. They replaced the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were designed for poor countries in the “South.” Now, SDGs recognize that all countries need to integrate ICT with sustainable development practices, especially countries in the “North” that are hindered by legacy infrastructure and policy frameworks. I teach a course called ICT for Sustainable Development.

Returning to the ICT4D acronym, Martin Hilbert presents a 3-D framework in the video below that is helpful for those unfamiliar with the topic. It does not provide a historical perspective, but the cube framework helps distinguish the development of ICT technologies, services, and skills, from how ICT is used for development, as well as how policy instruments can shape ICT implementation and regulation in a national action plan.

More attention to the historical depth can provide a richer analysis of global ICT4D. My experience in the area and research has shown me that information and communication issues have been at the forefront of international discussion and tension for decades. While technological convergence has changed how entertainment, news, and commercial content flow within and among countries, most nations have struggled with the cultural, economic, and political consequences of those flows for decades and sought collective protection. Understanding the significance of global ICT for development will be useful for shaping relevant governance and investment strategies.

Two major transformations are of particular interest in this study. One was the change of national telecommunications from analog transmission into digital networks based on Internet Protocols (IP). Domestic governments and populations did not often welcome the controversial change because it often involved unemployment and loss of ownership. However, It did supply the capital and motivation to allow national networks to implement digital data, video, and voice services, and eventually offer wireless mobile capabilities. All of which have become crucial technologies for ICT4D.[1] More recently, the processing power of devices and platforms at the network’s edge and the sophistication of algorithmic programs and neural networks have empowered a wide range of cloud services such as search and AI. The propagation speeds of networks and the processing speeds of devices at the edge are potent influences on economic and social development.

The hypertextual World Wide Web (WWW) became the foundation for the Internet and its “click-based” services. Innovative solutions emerged for web-based browsing and search capabilities based on the easy-to-use hyperlink – a word, set of words, or an image coded to access another webpage when “clicked” by a user. Also, the number of websites available expanded quickly because they were easy to create. A coding language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) could be learned quickly by non-computer scientists and it became remarkably easy to create new websites. The ability to point and click to initiate an action or retrieve specific information created an engaging and sometimes addicting interactive environment. Haptic feel on smartphones allowed users to click on “app” as well as a link. Furthermore, the opportunity to monitor and register data trails produced by users clicking on links enabled e-commerce, advertising-based web publishing, and later, social media.

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Information Technology Agreements (ITA) in the mid-1990s radically reduced tariffs on all types of ICT products and services and opened up commercial flows of hardware and software. It also helped internationalize supply chains. By fostering cross-border production and trade, it supported the integration of many developing countries into global supply networks, particularly in Asia, where countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan became major IT manufacturing hubs. On the other hand, the ITA exposed many domestic industries to increased global competition, as companies from different countries competed on price and innovation. While this led to cost reductions for consumers, some domestic industries struggled to adapt to the increased competition, which shifted more manufacturing operations to lower-cost countries.

Mobile broadband networks and devices have been instrumental in bypassing legacy ICT. Changes in radio spectrum and transmission standards, such as GSM, TDMA, and CDMA allowed new mobile devices and services to proliferate. The development of cellular networks enabled widespread connectivity and the opportunity to bypass traditional legacy network infrastructure. Each generation of mobile network technology improved speed, capacity, and the ability to handle more users and devices, making mobile phone services increasingly accessible globally.

Advancements in semiconductors and microchip technology led to smaller, more efficient, cheaper components that made mobile phones affordable to a broader range of consumers, especially in developing and “emerging” markets. Economies of scale in manufacturing, mainly driven by countries like China, brought down the costs of mobile devices, making them accessible to lower-income populations globally. Mobile devices have helped provide lower-cost communications, establish bank accounts and other financial services, and drive business and development activities in general.

ICT and Development over Time

The ICT4D stages or phases of economic and social development that have played out globally over time and addressed are categorized as:

1) Containment/Modernization;
2) New World Economic and Information Orders;
3) Financialization and Structural Adjustment,
4) Global ICT Integration,
5) Digital Borders and Authoritarianism, and
6) Cloud Capital/ICT for Sustainable Development.

Using a techno-structural approach, explicating these stages provide a historical and spatial context for understanding ICT innovation and implementation trends worldwide. This approach recognizes the reciprocal effects between technological developments and institutional power. ICT, in particular, can enhance both corporate and government power, as well as strengthen civil society and support the missions of NGOs. It is important to consider the “dual-effects hypothesis” to acknowledge the parallel potentials of digital technologies as both a disempowering and an enabling force. ICTs have often “played a dual role in the service of centralization and the dispersion of power.” [2] Research on ICT4D implementation and policy is being conducted worldwide under several terms, including ICT4G, ICT4SD, and digital development. An emerging area is AI4D, recognizing that artificial intelligence (AI) collects networked big data and produces new types cloud-based services that can assist sustainable development.

This research project differs from much of the ICT4D research by acknowledging its deeper roots. This includes a historical perspective that considers the implications of earlier versions of communications and computer technology and the analysis of national computerization policies. These considerations will provide insights into the trajectories and possibilities of ICT diffusion in developing environments.

1) Containment/Modernization

The US emerged as the primary economic and military power in the aftermath of World War II. Arms and materiel sales before and during the war had transferred much of England’s gold to the New York City, which was transferred inland to Fort Knox, Kentucky to avoid Nazi capture in the 1930s. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) had sought to limit finance in the aftermath of the “Crash of 1929” and the resultant Great Depression. It continued the strategy globally as the war was concluding with a meeting called the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in 1944. Over 700 delegates, representing 44 allied nations attended the summit, held at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.

“Bretton Woods” created the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the International Trade Organization (although rejected by Congress). It also instituted a dollar-gold standard that tied the US dollar to gold at $35 an ounce (oz) and other international currencies to the US dollar at set rates. This system was designed to enhance trade and “contain” international financial speculation. Individual nation-states would manage trade-based economies with Keynesian macroeconomic coordination. At the same time, the IMF would coordinate currency values and restrict financial speculation.

Another aspect of containment, more widely known, is the containment of the Communist agenda. The painful success of the USSR during World War II in countering the Nazis and their appropriation of German atomic and rocketry technology presented an ideological and military threat to the US and its allies. The US reaction to the USSR’s launch of Sputnik satellites in 1957, a pivotal moment that resulted in the formation of NASA and ARPA (who later developed packet-switching), underscored the urgency and importance of the emerging tensions. The Communist revolution in China in 1949 and their explosion of an atomic bomb on Oct. 16, 1964, spurred additional concerns, including US military intervention inUS Vietnam to contain Communism in Southeast Asia.

The resultant “Cold War” and “Space Race” tensions between the and communism spurred technological development and competition for “developing countries” worldwide. This included rivalry over the appropriate “development” models for economic growth and the development of key sectors such as agriculture, education, and health.

“Modernization” characterized the US post-World War II prescription for economic development worldwide, especially in newly decolonized nation-states. Modernization referred to a transitional process of moving from “traditional” or “primitive” communities to modern societies based on scientific rationality, abstract thought, and the belief in progress. It included urbanization, democratization, economic growth, and “psychic mobility” that types of media could influence. Also, the free flow model of information was championed by modernists to counter state regulation and censorship of the press, especially propaganda by communist opponents.

The general view of modernization theories was that developing countries could be transformed from agricultural-subsistence economies to liberalized modern industrial countries. Inspired by the success of the Marshall Plan in the reconstruction of Europe, the North (both Western and Communist) studied strategies for transforming traditional societies into modern, industrialized economies. Economists and communication scholars in the West described the process as one of progressive developmental stages. They presumed a linear, evolutionary, and universal process of development. Change and capital could achieve higher levels of civil order and industrial development.

The leading proponent of this economic philosophy was Walter Whitman Rostow, whose Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960) outlined five stages that would lead to a modern nation. These were: 1) traditional society, 2) preconditions for takeoff, 3) takeoff, 4) drive towards maturity, and 5) age of high mass consumption. In a later book (1971) he would add, 6) the search for quality. Traditional societies needed to overcome their “resistances” to economic growth in order to achieve the all-important economic take-off stage that would lead them to the dream of economic and political modernization.

Scholars following Walter W. Rostow adopted the “stages” of economic development leading to an eventual “takeoff” into the realm of a modern society. If the proper regiment was followed, particularly the adoption of new agricultural techniques termed the “Green Revolution” that was heavily dependent on fertilizers and pesticides, developing countries could modernize.[3] Through the process of emulating the West, developing countries could attain increasing rates of economic growth and political democracy. Systems of bureaucracy and tradition, seen as endemic to developing countries, could be overcome through policies which liberalized markets, democratized politics, encouraged foreign trade and investment, and strove to break down traditional cultures.

Interestingly, orthodox communism also presumed a linear path for economic growth, but one based not on capital but on labor and the “forces of production.” Capitalism was merely one stage in their development schemata that would eventually lead to a communist apex, liberating the working classes. The highest level to be achieved would be one of socialist equality, not mass consumption. Communism proved a staunch competitor to the West, especially in Asia and South America. India, for example, while keeping its British legal system and adopting a parliamentary system of democracy, largely incorporated the Soviet mode of industrialization. Jawaharlal Nehru, newly decolonialized India’s first Prime Minister, split from his friend and mentor Mahatma Gandhi, who stressed self-sufficiency and domestic production. Nehru would follow a state-led form of economic development based on the Russian industrial model.

The South was influenced by both these ideologies but began to perceive their own conditions as a deformation or underdevelopment due to unequal relations between North and South countries. Raul Prebisch, former head of the Argentine Central Bank, started using the terms “center” and “periphery” in his lectures during the 1940s. He critiqued the influence of the most powerful countries on the international division of labor, the declining prices of commodity goods (agriculture, minerals, and forestry), and their negative impact on local industrialization.[i] Several forums became important for expressing these concerns, notably the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) formed after the 1964 meeting that sought to protect young industries in the Third World.

C4D to ICT4D

Daniel Lerner’s (1958) The Passing of Traditional Society, argued that the psychic mobility of “peasants” could be manipulated by mass media. As a result, it would transform traditional societies into modern consumer societies. It provided a crucial intellectual foundation for communication scholars such as Wilbur Schramm and Everett Rogers and was instrumental in the field known as “Communication for Development” (C4D) that was a precursor to ICT4D.

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) were rarely stressed in the early days of development communication, but “five communication revolutions” (print, film, radio, television, and later, satellites) were beginning to be recognized as contributing to national development.[4] The five mass media technologies were beginning to spread information and imagery about practices in agriculture, health, education, and national governance. The hope of social mobility was also enhanced by entertainment and advertising images of a modern consumer society in magazines and television.

Some early computerization projects continued population analysis, such as the census that had started with tabulation machines. Mainframes and minicomputers were increasingly utilized for statistical gathering by government agencies for development processes.

Telegraphy and telephones were strangely absent from much of the early discussion but were important for government activities as well as commercial operations such as large-scale plantations, mining operations, transportation coordination, and maritime shipping. Because of their large capital requirements and geographic expanse, countries uniformly developed state-controlled Post, Telephone, and Telegraph (PTTs) entities with the help and guidance of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The ITU is the oldest United Nations entity having been formed in the 1860s with the widespread adoption of the telegraph. PTTs struggled to provide basic voice and telegraphic services. However, they provided much needed jobs, technical resources, and currency for the national treasury.

International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) was a private company that transcended borders and sold electronic equipment to PTTs, laid undersea telecommunication cables, and bought into telephone and telegraph companies worldwide. However, ITT suffered from political complications and diversified its holdings in the 1960s and 1970s, diminishing its role in international telecommunications.

Wilbur Schramm’s (1964) book Mass Media and National Development made crucial links between media and national development and became very influential in developing countries. Published by Stanford University Press and UNESCO, it examined the role of newspapers, radio, and television. Its emphasis on the role of communication and information in development also laid the foundation for the analysis of computerization and ICT in the development process.

The East-West Center’s Institute of Culture and Communication

I had an office next to Schramm for many years while I worked on the National Computerization Policy project at the East-West Center’s Communication Institute that he founded. We were inspired by The Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France (1982), otherwise known as the Nora-Minc Report. Syed Rahim and I (as an intern) worked with the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in Singapore to produce Computerization and Development in Southeast Asia (1987), which proved to be a benchmark study on ICT4D. AMIC is an international, non-profit, non-government organization currently based in Manila that has been a major research hub for media and information technologies and their influence on development.

The Communication Insitute’s name was changed in 1984 to the Institute of Culture and Communication under the leadership of Mary Bitterman, the former Jimmy Carter appointee to head the Voice of America. It integrated the Culture Learning Institute at the EWC and reflected the growing concern with culture in C4D.

Herbert Dordick, Meheroo Jussawalla, and Deane Neubauer were other key scholars conducting research on the transition from Communication for Development (C4D) to ICT4D at the East-West Center in Honolulu. But others dealing with news flow were important as well and can give us insights into concerns that erupted in response to modernization.

2) New World Economic and Information Orders

In the early 1970s, Nixon ended the dollar-gold standard established at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, resulting in very volatile currency markets. Nixon administration had convinced Saudi Arabia to sell its oil only for dollars so countries needed to procure dollars for their energy needs. Oil prices increased, and dollars flowed into OPEC countries, only to be lent out to cash-poor developing countries in syndicated lending networks known as “petrodollar” markets. These instabilities created “stagflation” around the world and a general sense of “malaise” as President Jimmy Carter called it. It also brought concerns by the emerging South to the forefront of debates in international forums.

Rising frustrations and concerns about “neo-colonialism” due to the power of transnational corporations (TNCs), especially news companies, resulted in a collective call by developing countries for various conceptions of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) “New World Information and Communication Order.” They were echoed by many NGOs in the wake of OPEC oil shocks and the pressures of the impending Third World debt crisis.

In the early 1960s, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was formed by several countries trying to negotiate the tensions between the US and its Western allies and a bloc of Soviet-led and aligned countries. In 1961, the Non-Aligned Movement was formally established in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, through an initiative forwarded by Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, and Indonesian President Sukarno, who had proposed its principles agreed upon at the Bandung Conference of 1955.

From 1964, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), along with the NAM and the the Group of 77, initiated forums for discussions about the New International and Economic Order (NIEO). Its motto was “trade, not aid” and major concerns involved:

• Commodity price stabilization.
• Restructuring international trade to reduce developed country tariff and non-tariff barriers.
• Diversifying developing economies through industrialization.
• Integrating developing countries’ economies into regional free trade blocs like the Caribbean Community.

These groups became a major voting bloc at the United Nations that adopted the “Declaration for the Establishment of a New International Economic Order” in May 1974.

These concerns would lead, in part, to the rise of Marxist-informed dependency and underdevelopment paradigms that saw global economic development in terms of power relationships between core geographic areas and weaker periphery areas. This had been discerned from intra-national conditions where major cities develop advantages over the countryside. The dynamic was ascribed to international conditions where developed countries had advantages over lesser developed countries. The periphery would develop dependencies on the core areas and the argument was expanded to propose that the center would impose underdevelopment on the outlying areas and countries.

Other important issues were news flow and the imbalanced flow of information. Developing countries were concerned about the selective flows of news and data from developing to developed countries. In part, it was the preponderance of journalism dealing with disasters, coups, and other calamities that many countries felt portrayed their countries in a negative light and restricted incoming foreign investment flows.[5] North to South news imbalances countries also meant that developing countries were bombarded with media content from developed countries many considered not appropriate or relevant to their development needs.

Transborder Data Flows (TDF) concerns the transfer of computer-readable information across national borders. It became a matter of concern for many countries that felt it was having a “trojan horse” effect as important development and national information bypassed domestic scrutiny. TDF included privacy protection, data security, national laws, data havens, and certification costs. Also, magnetic tape, conditioned leased telephone lines, and value-added networks were making computer-based information easier to transport and transmit.

The term, New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), sometimes shortened to New World Information Order (NWIO), also began circulating in international forums to address media and news concerns. It was picked up by the MacBride Commission, set up by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1977 and led by Nobel Prize winner Sean MacBride. Its October 1980 Many Voices, One World report called for the democratization of communication and news flow and strengthening national media and journalistic practices. Its recommendations included making global media representation more equitable and national media less dependent on external sources, particularly the news agencies such as Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and United Press International (UPI).

It was followed by concerns about obstacles hindering communications infrastructure development and how telecommunications access across the world could be stimulated. In 1983, UNESCO’s World Communication Year, an Independent Commission met several times to discuss the importance of communication infrastructure for social and economic development and to make recommendations for spurring its growth.

The Commission consisted of seventeen members – primarily communication elites from private and public sectors representing several countries. Spurred on by the growing optimism about the development potential of telecommunications, they investigated ways that Third World countries could be supported in this area. They published their recommendations in The Missing Link (1984) or what soon was to be called the “Maitland Report” after its Chair, Sir Donald Maitland from the United Kingdom. This report brought recognition to the role of telecommunications in development and opened up resources by international organizations such as the World Bank.

The transition from telegraph and telex machines to computers and data communications also resulted in concerns about information transcending national boundaries. As a result, the Intergovernmental Bureau for Informatics (IBI), which had been set up as the International Computation Centre (ICC) in 1951 to help countries access major computers, began to study national computerization policy issues in the mid-1970s. The IBI-ICC assisted its member countries to understand the impact of technology on society and take advantage of the opportunities they presented.

The IBI increasingly focused on transborder data flows (TDF) that moved sensitive corporate, government, and personal information across national boundaries. The first International Conference on Transborder Data Flows was organized in September 1980, followed by a second held in 1984; both were held in Rome (Italy). The increasing use of computers raised questions about accounting and economic data that avoided political and tax scrutiny. The concern was that these data movements could act like a “trojan horse” and compromise a country’s credit ratings, national sovereignty, and citizens’ privacy.

3) Financialization and Structural Adjustment

Instead of a New International Economic Order, a new era of “structural adjustment” enforced by the International Monetary Fund emerged that targeted government entities and restrictions on the flow of financial news, investment, and lending. A major target was State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), especially post, telephone, and telegraph (PTT) agencies and other aspects of government administration and commercial ownership.

The North–South Summit, officially the International Meeting on Cooperation and Development, was held in Cancun, Mexico at the end of October 1981. The summit was attended by representatives of 22 countries from 5 continents, including the leaders from Britain, France, and the US.[2] Newly elected US president Ronald Reagan told world leaders that in order to get foreign aid, developing nations needed to lower taxes, reduce government spending, pursue market-oriented economic policies and privatize government agencies. Development, he proclaimed, was not a question of “East versus West” but of “sense versus nonsense.” Development, he added, is created and sustained by private initiative and not coerced by governments. The sentiment was echoed by Prime Minister Margeret Thatcher who said developing countries needed to attract private investment and the “continuing flow of bank lending” with fair treatment for investment from abroad and the continual demonstration of creditworthiness.

This new system would require a higher level of news flow and transparency. Reagan ordered that financial support for UNESCO end in December 1983, citing the politicization of “a free market and a free press.” The move was applauded by the news companies who balked against the proposed licensing of journalists, and an international code of press ethics as well as increased government control over media content. It was opposed by many decolonized states in Africa and Asia that were leaning towards the Soviet bloc positions. But as the Space Race placed satellites in geosynchronous orbit and fiber optic cables began to traverse the ocean floors, a new paradigm of global information flow was emerging for data-enhanced supply chains and credit flows.

The Reagan administration retasked the IMF from harmonizing currency relationships to changing the political economy in debt-ridden countries. Petrodollars had circulated to international banks to be lent out to countries needing cash for energy purchases and infrastructure projects such as bridges and highways. The resultant “Third World Debt Crisis” provided the lever to force the Reagan-Thatcher agenda on countries as they needed IMF approval for additional loans. A primary target was the telecommunications infrastructure.

Long considered agents of national development and employment, PTTs came under increasing criticism for their antiquated technologies and lack of customer service. Thatcher aggressively pursued the sale of British Telecom shares to the public while the US broke up behemoth AT&T into regional Bell-operating companies (RBOCs). New Zealand adopted the privatization model citing the opportunity to retire 1/3 of its national debt as it sold it to 2 RBOCs who were required to sell 51 percent of the “Kiwi shares” to the domestic public. It was soon followed by Australia and other countries such as Singapore.

The flow of petrodollar lending and rising national debt in borrowing countries put pressure on PTTs to add new value-added data networks and undergo satellite deregulation. Global circuits of digital money and news emerged, such as Reuters Money Monitor Rates and SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunications). These networks, the first to use packet-switching, linked currency exchange markets worldwide in arguably the first virtual market. The volatility of financial markets due to the continual decontainment of finance added to the interest in telecommunications.

A new techno-economic imperative emerged that changed the relationship between government agencies and global capital. PC-based spreadsheet technologies were utilized to inventory, value, and privatize PTTs to be corporatized and listed on electronically linked share-market exchanges. Communications markets were liberalized to allow domestic and international competition for new telecommunications services. Sales of digital switches and fiber optic networks increased. Globalization was proceeding at an unprecedented scale.

Developing countries became “emerging markets,” consistently disciplined by what became known as the “Washington Consensus,” stressing a set of policy prescriptions to continue to open them up to transborder data flows and international investment.[6] Citicorp CEO Walther Wriston talked of the movement from the gold-dollar standard to an electronic “information standard,” coordinating the movement of capital to places that treated it well.

The gold-backed international currency framework that shaped the global economy after World War II was replaced by a new techno-financial system of computerized transactions, news flow, risk management, and technical analysis. US treasuries were the new foundation for the continuation of the Eurodollar as the US dollar strengthened its status as the global reserve currency and vehicle for transactions. Gold became just another dataset in the complex trading algorithms that shaped the prices and trades of the global financial system and consequently shaped the policy decisions of nations and the flows of investment capital.[7]

4) Global ICT Integration

The Internet became useful after Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in late 1992 and released in 1993. The NCSA was funded by the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, otherwise known as the “Gore Bill,” after its sponsor, Senator Al Gore Jr. Mosaic was developed by Marc Andreessen and other graduate students to take advantage of the hypertext protocols developed at CERN and the resource-sharing capabilities of the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET. They would go on to form Netscape, and its new web browser would be freely distributed to individuals and licensed to companies. When Congress altered NSFNET’s acceptable use policy in March 1991 to allow commercial traffic, the Internet was seen as the harbinger of a new economy.

Vice President Al Gore Jr. targeted national PTT monopolies and government regulatory agencies when he introduced the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) at the annual ITU meeting in Buenos Aires in March of 1994. There he proposed a new model of global telecommunications based on competition, instead of monopoly. He stressed the rule of law and the interconnection of new networks to existing networks at fair prices. In some ways he was echoing his father, the late Al Gore who had championed the interstate highway infrastructure across the US during the 1950s.

I am very proud to have the opportunity to address the first development conference of the ITU because the President of the United States and I believe that an essential prerequisite to sustainable development, for all members of the human family, is the creation of this network of networks. To accomplish this purpose, legislators, regulators, and business people must do this: build and operate a Global Information Infrastructure. This GII will circle the globe with information superhighways on which all people can travel.

Gore followed up the next month in Marrakesh, Morocco, at the closing meeting of the Uruguay Round of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations. The Marrakesh Agreement aimed to create an multilateral trading system encompassing the GATT as well as the results of all the previous trade rounds that had been conducted since 1947. Significantly, that included the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services). GATS included everything from circuses, education, radio, and television, to telephone and data services. This process led to prices becoming very cheap for international data-based services, including video. Also at Marrakesh, they called for the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) creation.

Formed in early 1995, with New Zealand’s former PM Michael Moore at the helm, the WTO had two meetings in 1996 and 1997 that created the new era of global communications and development. Members party to the new multilateral arrangement met quickly in Singapore in 1996 to reduce tariffs on the international sales of a wide variety of information technologies. The Information Technology Agreement (ITA) was signed by 29 participants in December 1996. The agreement was expanded at the Nairobi Ministerial Conference in December 2015, to cover an additional 201 products valued at over $1.3 trillion per year. The agreements allowed Korea to successfully market early CDMA mobile handsets and develop a trajectory of success in the global smartphone market.

In 1997 the WTO met in Geneva and established rules for the continued privatization of national telecommunications operations. Sixty-nine nations party to the WTO, including the US, signed the Agreement on Basic Telecommunications Services in 1997 that codified new rules for telecommunications deregulation where countries agreed to privatize and open their telecommunications infrastructures to foreign penetration and competition by other telcos.

The agreements came at a crucial technological time. The World Wide Web (WWW) was a working technology, but it would not have lived up to its namesake if the WTO had not: 1) negotiated and reduced tariffs for crucial networking technologies, and computer devices, and 2) negotiated a new services arrangement that reduced the prices on international communications, including video. The resultant liberalization of data and mobile services around the world made possible a new stage in global development.

Packet-switching technologies that had been standardized into the ITU’s X.25 and X.75 protocols for PTT data networks transformed into ubiquitous TCP/IP networks by the late 1990s. Cisco Systems became the principal enabler with multi-protocol routers designed for enterprises, governments, and telcos. However, Lucent, Northern Telecom, and other telecommunications equipment suppliers quickly lost market share as the Internet protocols, mandated by the US military’s ARPANET and later by the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET, were integrated into ISDN, ATM, and SONET telecommunications technologies around the world.

Hypertext, Ad Markets, and Search Engines

The online economy emerged with the Internet and its hypertext “click” environment. Starting with advertising and the keyword search and auctioning system, a new means of economic surveillance and political participation emerged. It was based on the wide-scale collection and rendition of behavioral data that emerged for prediction products and services.

As Shoshana Zuboff pointed out in Surveillance Capitalism (2019), the economy expands by finding new things to commodify, and the Internet provided a multitude of new products and services that could be sold. When the Internet was privatized in the early 1990s and the World Wide Web (WWW) established the protocols for hypertext and webpages, new virtual worlds of online media spaces were enabled. These were called “inventory.” This ad space was based on the amount of storage available and would be placed on a website, news site, or other web publication. The type of ad was based the information they had about the viewer based on registered clicks.

Behavioral data is the information produced as a result of actions that can be measured from a range of devices connected to the Internet, such as a PC, tablet, or smartphone. Behavioral data tracks the sites visited, downloaded apps, or played games. Cloud platforms claim human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Some of this data is applied to product or service improvements; the rest are declared proprietary behavioral surplus and fed into advanced algorithim processes known as ‘machine intelligence.’ Automated machine processes can capture knowledge about behaviors, but also shape behaviors.

Surplus behavioral and instrumental data is turned into prediction products such as recommendation engines for e-commerce and entertainment. These anticipate what people will do now, soon, and later. Prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace for behavioral predictions called behavioral futures markets. These are primarily used in advertising systems based on CTR, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), and real-time bidding auction systems.

While ICT has a long history in global affairs, digital technologies largely emerged from the commercialization of Cold War and Space Race technologies. They were deeply molded by financialization and globalization processes in the 1970s and 1980s. Shaping the global infrastructure for the Internet involved aggressive political stances in remaking telecommunications systems. Deep changes were needed to allow hypertext protocols and TCP/IP technologies to be standardized and implemented worldwide for economic and social uses.

6) Digital Borders and Authoritarianism

Despite cyberspace’s promise of a world without digital borders, nationalistic concerns started to re-emerge into the new millennium. In the post-colonial era, domestic powers were often keen to limit economic and financial information flows that may act as a type of “trojan horse” passing through national boundaries without scrutiny. Before the leverage of petro-dollar debt opened up the flows of information and capital that characterized neo-liberal financialization, nations policed telecommunications borders worldwide, both technologically and politically. PTTs operated as a type of electronic moat that would be nearly unrecognizable by the turn of the century. Other ministries restricted capital and news flows. However, the push to deregulate and privatize the telco environment liberalized transnational information flows.

See this chapter at Digital Borders and Authoritarianism

Competing Cloud Capital

7) Smart/Sustainable Development

We recently passed the halfway point for the sustainable development goals (SDGs) outlined by the United Nations in 2015. The SDGs are providing additional impetus for global ICT4D as it encourages infrastructure building and support for crucial development activities that ICT can assist, such as monitoring land and sea resources, encouraging entrepreneurship, and providing affordable health information and communication activities.

The aggressive trade negotiations and agreements in the 1990s significantly reduced the costs of ICT devices and communication exchanges worldwide, making possible a wide variety of new commercial and development activities based on ICT capabilities. Countries significantly reduced their tariffs on electronics and services imports, making possible their adoption and diffusion among broader populations. Now, smart technologies are produced from complex international supply chains that advance technology and reduce prices – but are subject to the vagaries of globalization.

ICT4D is highly reliant on affordable digital devices and network equipment. A key variable going forward is the value of the dollar, the world’s primary reserve and transacting currency. A global shortage of dollars due to higher interest rates and greater political risk means increased prices for imported goods, regardless of agreements that lower import tariffs. In addition, the post-Covid crisis and Ukrainian invasion have stressed supply chains of critical materials and raw Earth minerals, further adding to potential costs of ICT and geopolitical risk facing sustainable development.

But there are characteristics of ICT4D that can offset the potential problems of digital equipment. The near-zero marginal costs for digital products make information content and services more accessible for developing countries. Books, MOOCs, and other online services provide value to a vast population with minimal costs to reach each additional person. Platform-based services providing agricultural, health, and other development services provide low-cost accessibility and outreach. They allow new applications to scale significantly with low costs.

Incidentally and significantly, renewable energy sources like solar and wind also provide near-zero marginal costs for producing electricity. Like digital products, they require high initial investments but output continuous product at low costs once operational. Offshore windmills, for example, can figuratively print money once the facility is set up and operating.

Mobility, broadband, and cloud services are three significant technologies presenting positive prospects for ICT4D. Mobile broadband technologies that bypass traditional wireline “last mile” infrastructure have been a major boost for ICT4D. They provide significant connectivity across a wide range of the population and with key commercial and government entities. 4G LTE technologies currently provide the optimal service, as 5G towers consume nearly over 60% more power than LTE. They also require more base stations and antennas as their range is lower.

Enhanced connectivity strengthens network effects. Blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the proliferation of web platforms are some of the current conceptions of how reduced costs for communications and information analysis are enhancing network effects and creating value from the collection and processing of unstructured data.

Concluding Remarks

This project looks at the historical phases and international dynamics of ICT4D. The “five communication revolutions” (print, film, radio, television, and later, satellites) had a significant impact on the development of national identities within a global context. These technologies were often enlisted in the contest between the US and its allies and the Communist countries. The telegraph and telephone were powerful commercial technologies that often synchronized with tabulating machines to create information collection processes and the nascent data processing industry. They were also central to news agencies that were expanding and feeding newspaper worldwide.

These technologies provided a powerful edge for globalizing companies that many countries considered a new type of colonialism. Many countries joined in the “non-aligned movement” to protest the strong globalizing trends and call for a “New World Information and Communication Order” in UN forums that would address economic and information imbalances between the powerful “North” and the weaker “South” countries.

The North doubled down on the emerging technological imperatives and the markets they enabled. They stressed breaking up state-owned enterprises and especially government-owned telecommunications systems that impeded international data flows. PC-enabled spreadsheets helped investment banks and financial traders inventory and value SOEs to be sold off to investors. The accumulation of debt during the 1970s was a lever that opened up countries to flows of capital and associated news.

Fiber optics and digital switches enhanced national and international telecommunications. The development of Internet technologies brought additional pressures on national information systems. The WTO brought together services and technology concerns into a wide set of agreements to reduce tariffs on both to make ICT widely available and relatively cheap worldwide.

Mobile, broadband, and online platforms are currently deemed most useful for ICT4D. They have shown the potential, primarily in smaller-scale projects to assist health, education, and other sustainable development activities. But ICT is a global technology that is difficult to replicate at a national scale. Technologies cheaper than the leading-edge digital devices, such as Orange’s 4G Sanza Touch, are becoming more available but still have ties to more extensive economic interests. Orange, for example, is a French-based telecommunications provider that also operates in many African countries.

In further explanation of these phases, I will provide a context for a further investigation of ICT for development, drawing on historical and current research. Of particular concern is the implementation of policies and practices related to contemporary sustainable development practices, but commercial and monetization techniques are important as well.

Notes

[1] Dordick, Herbert S. and Neubauer, Deane. 1985. “Information as Currency: Organizational Restructuring Under the Impact of the Information Revolution.” Bulletin of the Institute for Communications Research, Keio University, No 25, 12–13. This journal article was particularly insightful into the dynamics of the PTTs that would lead to pressures on them to adapt IP technologies leading to the World Wide Web.
[2] The techno-structural approach in development can be attributed to a debate between Ithiel de Sola Pool and Majid Tehranian. Pool‘s Technologies of Freedom was written by the MIT professor, primarily at the University of Hawaii Law Library and put forward a strong libertarian thesis about communications technologies and how technical change in this dynamic area should be treated by the legal/regulatory system. Tehranian felt compelled to respond with his “technostructuralist” book Technologies of Power. emphasizing that new technologies are guided in their development and deployment along existing lines of corporate, governmental, and military power. Other scholars, especially Richard Heeks and Tim Unwin have reframed the Communications/Computerization/Development debate in terms of ICT4D but put its origins in the 1980s. Heeks, R. (2017) Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) (Routledge Perspectives on Development) 1st Edition. Also Unwin, T. (2017) Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Oxford University Press.
[3] Rostow, W.W. (1960) Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See also Rostow W.W., (1965) Stages of Political Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[4] Lerner, D. (1976). 16. Technology, Communication, and Change. In W. Schramm & D. Lerner (Ed.), Communication and Change: The Last Ten Years – and the Next (pp. 285-301). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824887100-017
[5] An excellent discussion of the various development and new world communication and economic order calls can be found in Vincent, R. C., Galtung, J. (1992). Global Glasnost: Toward a New World Information and Communication Order? United States: Hampton Press. Also, see Jussawalla, M. (1981) Bridging Global Barriers: Two New International Orders. Papers of the East-West Communications Institute. Honolulu, Hawaii.
[6] The Washington Consensus was a set of policy prescriptions involving fiscal discipline, liberalization of trade and the inflows of capital, privatization, tax reform, and the deregulation of a wide range of industries to allow competition and foreign ownership.
[7] Wriston, W.W. (1992) The Twilight of Sovereignty : How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our World.

[i] Chilote, R.H. (1984) Theories of Development and Underdevelopment. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
[ii] Rostow, W. W. (1960) The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge University Press.
[iii] Rostow, W. W. (1971) Politics and the Stages of Growth. Cambridge University Press.
[iv] FAO (2007) World Congress on Communication for Development
Lessons, Challenges and the Way Forward. Part of the debate was whether it was Communication for Development or Development Communication. Both terms refer to using communication to support development initiatives, but they emphasize different perspectives and methodologies. Development Communication was historically used to describe a more traditional, often top-down approach to using communication for informing or educating a population and to promote government-led development initiatives. Development communication aimed at information dissemination, public awareness, and persuasion to effect behaviorial change. This approach focused on using mass media (radio, print, later television) to spread or “diffuse” messages, primarily about modern agricultural practices, family planning, and literacy.

Communication for Development (C4D) was a tern adopted by many international organizations, like UNICEF and the United Nations, and focused on communication strategies that emphasized the wider socio-political environment, including social norms, policies, and structures that influence communities and social groups. C4D aims to empower communities to address systemic issues, advocate for policy changes, and improve social equity. It is also about seeking change at different levels including listening, building trust, sharing knowledge and skills, building policies, debating and learning for sustained and meaningful change. Later, the 2006 World Congress on Communication for Development defined C4D as ‘a social process based on dialogue using a broad range of tools and methods.

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Anthony J. Pennings, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea where he manages an undergraduate program with a specialization in ICT4D. His background in ICT4D goes back to the Computerization Policy Project at the at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii in the mid-1980s as an undergraduate research intern. After getting his PhD from the University of Hawaii, he moved to New Zealand to teach at Victoria University in Wellington. There he saw the complex international pressures shaping the island nation. From 2002-2012 he was on the faculty of New York University. His US home is in Austin, Texas.

Category: creative cities, data analytics and meaning, democratic political economies, digital geography, digital media economics, digital monetarism, digital spreadsheets, educational innovations, enabling frameworks, financial news, financial technology, geopolitical risk, global communications, global e-commerce, health IT, how IT came to rule the world, journalism, mobile technologies, political economy of media, science and technology studies, smart new deal, space systems, sustainable development, technologies of meaning, telegraphic political economy, the cold war
Tags: ARPA > Deane Neubauer > Everett Rogers > ICT4D > IMF > Intergovernmental Bureau for Informatics (IBI) > ITU > Martin Hilbert > Meheroo Jussawalla > NASA > New Deal > PTT > Shoshana Zuboff > Syed Rahm > UNESCO > Wilbur Schramm > WTO agreement on basic telecommunication services

The Expanse: Cyberpunk in Space

Posted on | January 21, 2023 | No Comments

The cyberpunk movement emerged in the mid-1980s and has lingered on with occasional stories enticing the audience’s imaginations with their futuristic narratives and visions. Frances Bonner offered the 4 Cs of cyberpunk to examine various science fiction stories in visual media.[1] These four categories of computers, corporations, corporeality, and criminality provide a way to gauge if a narrative could be classified as part of the cyberpunk genre. I also use them as categories for socio-techical analysis of current conditions, but in this case I will conduct a more traditional genre analysis by examining a science fiction TV series.

In these posts, I use Bonner’s 4 Cs of cyberpunk to examine The Expanse, which premiered in 2015 on the Syfy network and has continued on Amazon Prime, completing its 6th season in 2022. The cyberpunk genre is interesting to me for its insights into social dynamics.

Recent examples of cyberpunk in visual media include the Blade Runner 2049 (2017), The Ghost in the Shell (2017) and several video games such as the controversial Cyberpunk 2077. Bonner considered the ABC Network show Max Headroom to be probably the most characteristic example of cyberpunk, although the goal was not to necessarily to create a canon of cyberpunk.

The Expanse (201) is based on the novels of James S. A. Corey, the joint pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Their first novel Leviathan Wakes won the famous science fiction Hugo Award in 2012. They wrote eight more books in the series, which centers around the crew of the Rocinante, a fusion-drive-powered space ship salvaged from the Mars Congressional Republic Navy (MCRN).

The Expanse is about the colonization and commercialization of our solar system and some exploration beyond. It focuses on the terraforming of Mars and mining the Asteroid Belt. Earth is under the governance of the United Nations and in conflict with Mars, and with another faction called the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA). The OPA is an organization consisting mainly of the “Belters,” who do most of the construction and mining and are bitter about their conditions and explotation. These workers colonialized the Asteroid Belt, the dwarf planet Ceres, and some moons around the outer planets. Belters have developed their own culture, most notably a creole “pidgin” language, but even their bodies have diverged from Earth and Mars, growing long and thin due to the reduced gravity.

The 4 Cs is a framework to conduct a genre inquiry and build knowledge by addressing the categories and letting them discipline the investigation. I’ve been using it more to develop a socio-technical analysis develop a socio-technical analysis of various tech products in areas such as AI, energy, biochemistry, nanotechnology, robotics, and even space travel. Still, in this case, I’m using it for traditional genre analysis to get a sense of where science fiction is guiding our imagination. What is it saying about who we are and where we are heading as a civilization?

In general, I’m more interested in applying insights provided by cyberpunk to the social analysis of various technologies and their interrelationship with culture, economics and politics.[2] This is an exercise I often do with students. Each category of the 4Cs is an opportunity to produce evidence towards a better understanding of the complex world we live in.

But its useful to stay in touch with stories and do the genre analysis. As I’m on winter break, I’m enjoying watching the series again. In the next post of this series, I will discuss of each of the 4 Cs: Corporations, Criminality, Corporeality, and Cyberspace relate to The Expanse.

Notes

[1] Bonner, F. (1992). Separate Development: Cyberpunk in Film and Television (1037673716794540726 T. Shippey, Ed.). In 1037673715 794540726 G. Slusser (Ed.), Fiction 2000:Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative (pp. 191-206). Athens, GA: The University of
Georgia Press

[2] See Pennings, A. (2018, August 13). The Cyberpunk Genre as Social And Technological Analysis. Retrieved December 08, 2022, from https://apennings.com/dystopian-economies/the-
cyberpunk-genre-as-social-analysis/

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea teaching sustainable development and visual rhetoric. From 2002-2012, he was on the faculty of New York University where he taught comparative political economy, digital economics, and media production. He also taught film and television production at Marist College in New York and Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. When not in the Republic of Korea he lives in Austin, Texas.

Category: books and films, cultural Industries, political economies in sf, space systems, visual literacy and rhetoric
Tags: 4 Cs > cyberpunk > Frances Bonner

ICT4D and Digital Development in a Changing World

Posted on | December 14, 2022 | No Comments

Prepared remarks as moderator for the 2nd Annual ICT4D Faculty Panel: Digital Development in a Changing World. Monday, Nov 28, 2022 at the State University of New York, Korea (SUNY Korea) in Songdo, Republic of Korea.

This year, 2022, marks the halfway point for the Agenda for Sustainable Development, aimed for completion by 2030. Created by the United Nations during the time of Secretary-General Ban-Ki moon, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were approved by the General Assembly for completion by 2030. SDGs were meant to create a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.“ At this halfway point, the SDGs face new challenges and opportunities.

This panel will address issues related to Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D) in the context of the SDGs. A pressing topic is some of the challenges coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, including geopolitical constraints on material supplies and its impact on digital technologies.

Another contemporary concern threatening digital and sustainable development is the strength of the US dollar, the primary global reserve currency and vehicle for over 80% of international transactions. A worldwide shortage of the dollar (except in the US, apparently) increased its nominal value and turned it into an appreciating investment instrument, raising the purchase price. A strong US dollar makes imports for most countries more expensive, including digital and renewable energy technologies.

Purchasing smart devices, even the less expensive ones like Orange’s Sanza Touch, a 4G Android device, can become much more expensive. Solar panels, windmills, and other renewable technologies are also likely to be imported and additional dollars are needed for those as well. It may be that an alternate to the dollar emerges in the next several decades, maybe even a crypto version, but that doesn’t seem likely right now.[1]

Another issue is the looming limitation on material supplies, particularly on valuable elements and metals needed for ICTs and renewable energy technologies. A sustainable revolution needs massive shifts toward infrastructure development, and that means higher demand for a wide range of resources that need to be mined, refined, and distributed. The loss of crucial materials from Russia and Ukraine means energy and natural resource shortages that will influence green development. Steel, nickel, aluminum, copper, bauxite, neon, palladium, etc., critical elements of modern technologies, have suffered heavy supply shocks.

Food supplies are also increasingly insecure with potash and nitrogren-based fertilizers produced from natural gas becoming more scarce. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to interupt food production and flows, disadvantaged popultions, particularly wheat-eating people, will feel the shortages and price hikes.

Constraints on ICTs, natural resources, and renewable energies will present significant challenges for meeting the objectives and targets of the SDGs. Relentless pollution and atmospheric changes affecting climate security also drive strategic questions affecting digital development. At stake are biodiversity, ocean acidification, and human habitats prone to droughts, floods, and wildfires. ICT solutions have been identified for their potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 15 percent by 2030.[2]

Greenhouse gases increase the atmosphere’s temperature, allowing it to absorb more water. More moisture in the air means more weather volatility leading to droughts in some areas while increasing the intensity of hurricanes/typhoons along ocean coasts. For example, Hurricane Ida in late August of 2021 was extremely intense. After it came out of the Gulf of Mexico to hit Louisana, it had enough energy and moisture to travel north across the US mainland and drop in on New York City and surrounding areas, killing an additional 50 people.

Meanwhile, a number of factors present hope for a sustainable future and the role of ICT. Green funding has increased, particularly with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the US, and hopefully, recent commitments at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27) will be fruitful for climate justice and well as continued reductions in air pollution. Green New Deals are spreading worldwide, particularly in the stressed EU that had counted too much on Russian imports of hydrocarbons.

Korea has also envisaged a Green New Deal along with a Digital New Deal under the previous Moon administration, stressing its “fast follower” strategy to capitalize on its export industries to solve world problems while providing a protective safety net at home. Japan even recently voted Hyundai Motor’s all-electric Ioniq 5 SUV as its “Import Car of the Year.”

Technological innovations have also been striking. Battery innovations, especially for long-term storage by companies like Ambri, can soothe the shortages of intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar. While many battery materials are scarce, spent cobalt, lead, and lithium in batteries can be successfully recycled.

Most significantly, the economics of renewables, with admittedly huge upfront investment requirements, have near-zero marginal costs over medium and long-term time frames. For example, once a windmill is constructed and operating, the subsequent costs are minimal, and as it produces electricity, wind “prints” money.

Climate awareness offers hope and motivation. Many climate deniers are still questioning the basic science and physical evidence, but the political will is growing to take impactful action to mitigate weather-related disasters and adapt to the changes.

What is the continuing role of ICT for Development (ICT4D) in this emerging post-COVID-19 environment? The Earth Institute has identified three key ICT (Information and Communications Technology) accelerators of the SDGs. These are mobility, broadband, and cloud services, such as platforms using AI and “big data.” These technologies can often “leapfrog” legacy communication and database systems to provide new efficiencies and opportunities in agriculture, education, energy, and healthcare. For example, while needing to be monitored with data justice precepts, digital ID programs can provide new eligibilities for financial inclusion, personal ownership, and social programs such as health services.

These key accelerators were woven into the BS in Technological Systems Management (TSM) specialization in ICT4D (Formerly ICT4SD) at SUNY Korea. This forum brings together a panel of faculty that teach these courses, including EST 371 – Data Science Management, EST 372 – The Mobile Revolution in Development, and EST 320 – Communication System Technologies, as well as today’s audience from EST 230 – ICT for Sustainable Development. We also cover related topics in our MS degree in Technological Systems Management, which includes a specialization in Digital Technologies in Disaster Risk Reduction. And, of course, several of our Ph.D. students in the Technology, Policy, and Innovation (TPI) program have pursued related research topics for their dissertations. All our degrees are conferred by Stony Brook University in New York.

Please welcome our faculty to today’s panel discussion.

James Larson
Suzana Brown 
Sira Maliphol
Jinsang Lee
Joseph Cabuay
Sangchan Park

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[1] The US dollar has been global since the 1950s as eurodollars, and had electronic versions since the late 1860s.
[2] Sachs, J. D. (n.d.). ICT and SDGs: How Information and Communications Technology Can Accelerate Action on the Sustainable Development Goals. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/e-agriculture/news/ict-and-sdgs-how-information-and-communications-technology-can-accelerate-action-sustainable

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a professor at the State University of New York (SUNY), Korea where he teaches broadband policy and sustainable development. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas and was on the faculty of New York University from 2002-2012. He also taught at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and was a Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii in the 1990s.

Category: crisis communications, digital geography, digital media management, food policy and security, geopolitical risk, sustainable development
Tags: 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27) > COP 27 > ICT4D > ICT4SD > MS degree in Technological Systems Management > Orange Sanza Touch > Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

VisiCalc and the Rise of the PC Spreadsheet

Posted on | December 7, 2022 | No Comments

Although the computer-based spreadsheet was conceptualized more than a decade before its mass release in 1979, overall conditions were not right for its technological and commercial development. Richard Mattessich conceived the digital spreadsheet when he wrote about the electronic simulation of business accounting techniques in his Simulation of the Firm through a Budget Computer Program (1964). Computers at the time did not have the type of immediate interactivity that made the later microcomputer-based spreadsheet so popular.[1]

The big computer mainframes of the 1960s and even the minicomputers of the time were not accessible enough to provide the type of direct experience needed to play with the numbers by making multiple changes and producing various scenarios that would make the spreadsheets so valuable later on. It was the microprocessor-enabled PCs that made possible the successive lineage of major digital spreadsheet applications – VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft’s Excel, and Google Sheets that would transform modern organizational practices.

It was only after government-sponsored miniaturization projects delivered the microprocessor and the counter-culture delivered the Apple computer that the technology developed to the point where it could provide a platform for the interactive spreadsheet. The Cold War’s “Space Race” and associated nuclear strategy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) provided the needed investments to transform vacuum tubes into solid-state circuits that continued the miniaturization of transistor technology into the 1970s.

Intel eventually developed the microprocessor, a digital switching device on a silicon “chip.” Apple and then IBM provided the smaller, more accessible “micro”-computing platforms that both demystified and democratized computing power needed for the successful use of digital spreadsheets. The first Apple II computers went on sale in June, 1977 with VisiCalc using the MOS 6502 (later Synertek) microprocessor.

The Microcomputer’s First “Killer App”

While spreadsheets were, in many ways, old technology, they emerged in a new way when a Harvard business student designed an electronic version. Drawing on standard paper-based accounting ledgers, Dan Bricklin, with his friend Bob Frankston, created a number processor on a microcomputer where figures could be displayed and calculated instantaneously and refigured each time a change needed to be made. Frankston called it “VisiCalc” as a shortened version of Visible Calculator.

This spreadsheet program was made in response to a task Bricklin had been assigned in an MBA class to determine the financial consequences of the acquisition of one company by another company. This process usually required long hours of tediously writing in numbers on paper ledgers and then doing the calculations. Then, the results often had to be entered into another spreadsheet. If a variable needed to be changed, the entire process would be repeated with the new figures. Bricklin, though, had extensive experience in the computer industry. He had an intuition that the process could be computerized and that numbers could be changed quickly like a word processor, so he sought out Frankston to pursue an idea he had to automate the process.

Bricklin and Frankston had computer science degrees from MIT and extensive experience in the industry. They met in the late 1960s while working for the Multics group at Project Mac, the first timesharing program. Bricklin went on to DEC where he was the project manager for WPS-8, one of the first word processing programs. In 1976, he left for a job with FasFax who made microprocessor-based cash registers. The next year he began his MBA studies where, faced with tedious calculations on green ledger sheets, he developed his ideas for an electronic spreadsheet. After getting a Masters degree in Engineering at MIT in 1974, Frankston went to work for Financial Information Service (later called Interactive Data Corporation or IDC) and later worked as a computer consultant. They would soon team up to create one of the most innovative programs in computer history.

As the story goes, Bricklin had two choices in 1978 for a homework assignment, either do it by hand or use a timesharing system; but he dreamed of another option: “Imagine if my calculator had a ball in its back, like a mouse, and imagine if I had a heads-up display, like in a fighter plane, where I could see the virtual image hanging in the air in front of me. I could just move my mouse/keyboard calculator around, punch in a few numbers, circle them to get a sum, do some calculations, and the answer 10% will be fine!”[5] Although the technology needed for this type of computer environment was many years away, excitement was building over the potential of the newly released microcomputer.

Bricklin and Franston renewed their friendship and started to work on their “visible calculator” with an Apple II lent to them by a third collaborator, Dan Fylstra, who had started a small software company called Personal Software after graduating from Harvard Business School a couple of years before Bricklin.

Bricklin conceived of his computerized approach to complex calculations by studying a matrix used for production planning. In one of his business classes that dealt with production techniques, Bricklin discovered how “some companies used long blackboards (sometimes stretching across several rooms) that were divided into a matrix of rows and columns. Each row and column had a specific definition, and calculations were made based on the contents of each cell (the intersection of a row and a column). If the value of one cell changed, the values of any cell that made use of the first cell’s value also had to be changed. Because this was all written on a blackboard, the results had to be checked and re-checked to make sure that something hadn’t been missed when changes were made during a planning session.”

Even though the computer could not display the entire matrix at once, the video screen could be used as a window on a part of the matrix, and this window could be moved at will to view any part of it. Best of all, the computer could keep track of all the calculations between the various cells, making sure that a change made in one place would be adequately reflected in the result of a calculation in another place.

Steven Levy. in an astute (1984) article called “A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge” suggested that the digital spreadsheet was a social innovation comparable to the development of bookkeeping’s double entry accounting formula. This system of books used in early accounting raised the status of merchants and began to solidify the status of capitalism as it provided a structured narrative that testified to the honesty of merchants. It separated debits and credits and allowed merchants to get a new understanding of their business in a way that could assist decision-making and be audited and evaluated for investment.

The spreadsheet offered an even more sophisticated view of the business or organization by presenting a “numerical reality” that combined accounting with a more sophisticated way of managing resources: inventory, accounts receivables, or expenses such as salaries, rent payments, interest on loans, etc.

Spreadsheets allow a computer user to perform specific types of analyses to observe, rank, and explore new types of financial relationships along with possible ‘what-if’ scenarios. For the spreadsheet to help test various scenarios, it must recalculate the entire table each time a single change is made, allowing for multiple calculations within a short time period. Accounting activities that previously were tedious and required numerous hours of writing and calculating were reduced to mere minutes. The computerized spreadsheet helped spark a new economic dynamism, a versatile and easily figural electronic money that set off an explosion of new “paper” wealth.

Notes

[1] Mattessich and Galassi credit assistants Tom Schneider and Paul Zitlau with the development of the first actual computerized spreadsheet based on an algebraic model written by Mattessich. It was reported in “The History of Spreadsheet: From Matrix Accounting to Budget Simulation and Computerization”, a paper presented at the 8th World Congress of Accounting Historians in Madrid, August 2000. See Mattessich, Richard, and Giuseppe Galassi. “History of the Spreadsheet: From Matrix Accounting to Budget Simulation and Computerization.” Accounting and History: A Selection of Papers Presented at the 8th World Congress of Accounting Historians: Madrid-Spain, 19–21 July 2000. Asociación Española de Contabilidad y Administración de Empresas, AECA, 2000.See also George J. Murphy’s “Mattessich, Richard V. (1922-),” in Michael Chatfield and Richard Vangermeersch, eds., The History of Accounting–An International Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing Co., Inc, 1997): 405.
[2] Levy, S. (1989) “A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge,” in Computers in the Human Context: Information Technology, Productivity, and People. Tom Forester (ed.) Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
[2] There is to some extent a poverty of language to describe the functions of the spreadsheet, although volumes have been written on the how-to of individual programs, a type of social theorization is sorely lacking. This quote was obtained off the Internet and cited to Hugh Legg’s “Ricco Mattessich: Acclaimed Researcher,” VIEWPOINTS (Summer 1988) p. 15.
[3] Mattessich and Galassi credit assistants Tom Schneider and Paul Zitlau with the development of the first actual computerized spreadsheet based on an algebraic model written by Mattessich. It was reported in “The History of Spreadsheet: From Matrix Accounting to Budget Simulation and Computerization”, a paper presented at the 8th World Congress of Accounting Historians in Madrid, August 2000.
[4] Levy, S. (1989) “A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge,” in Computers in the Human Context: Information Technology, Productivity, and People. Tom Forester (ed) Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
[5] Bricklin quote from (2002) Computing Encyclopedia. Volume 5: People. Smart Computing Reference Series. p. 30.
[6] Weyhrich, Steven. Sophistication & Simplicity: the Life and Times of the Apple II Computer. Variant Press, 2013. Originally in the Apple II History website at
[7] Interview with Dan Bricklin by Michael Fitzgerald, in RED HERRING, October 15, 2001, p 40.
[8] There is to some extent a poverty of language to describe the functions of the spreadsheet, although volumes have been written on the how-to of individual programs, a type of social theorization is sorely lacking. This quote was obtained off the Internet and cited to Hugh Legg’s “Ricco Mattessich: Acclaimed Researcher,” VIEWPOINTS (Summer 1988) p. 15.
Levy, S. (1989) “A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge,” in Computers in the Human Context: Information Technology, Productivity, and People. Tom Forester (ed) Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.

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Pennings, A.J. (2022, Dec 7) VisiCalc and the Rise of the PC Spreadsheet. apennings.com https://apennings.com/how-it-came-to-rule-the-world/digital-monetarism/visicalc-and-the-rise-of-the-pc-spreadsheet/

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and Research Professor at Stony Brook University. He teaches digital economics and sustainable development. Previously, he taught macroeconomics and digital media management at New York University. He also taught in the MBA program at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in South Korea.

Category: data analytics and meaning, digital monetarism, digital spreadsheets
Tags: Google Sheets > Lotus 1-2-3 > Microsoft's Excel > Richard Mattessich > VisiCalc

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