Canada's International Development Research Center and Harvard's Berkman Center are convening a conversation today and tomorrow at Harvard on the future of information and communication technology and development (ICT4D). Global Voices will be participating in the event as a media partner, and I and Jen Brea will be twittering and live-blogging the event. You can find out far more about who's around the table and what we're planning on talking about on the Global Voices special coverage page, which includes links to the background papers prepared by participants. We're here in part so that you can have a voice in the discussions. Please feel free to post questions on Twitter, using the #idrc09 tag, or as comments on Global Voices posts – we'll try hard to work those questions into the coversation here at Harvard. You may also want to use Berkman's “question tool“, which will be used to put questions to the panelists at a public event this evening. The Harvard Forum event is convened by Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen and Michael Spence along with Randy Spence and Matthew Smith, who developed IDRC's position paper, framing the discussion. Professor Sen reminds us of the long history of ICT and international development with the story of a gift made to the Dehli School of Economics in the 1960s. Someone asked him, “Would you like to have an IBM 1620?” He didn't know whether this was a personal gift, perhaps to put on his desk. So he asked, “How big is it?” The answer: “You'll need a couple of rooms.” The computer was transformational for his students, he tells us, because theywere mathematically skilled but had no access to technology. At the same time, he wonders whether technology can function as a replacement for schooling. “Anything that keeps you at home in front of a box doesn't put you in front of the children from other families that don't share the prejudices your family had.” Michael Spence outlines two critical factors that have transformed many developing economies, leading to 7-10% economic growth in some societies, poverty reduction at astonishing rates – though not everywhere – but prospectively for 3.5 billion people. These inputs are political leadership that establishes inclusive governance, and access to a global economy. This global economy includes the influence of entrepreneurship, bottom-up and market based innovation, as well as a gigantic global market where businesses can expand, and most critically, knowledge. Michael offers us a choice – would we rather see a society face complete destruction of its infrastructure while retaining its knowledge, or face some sort of massive amnesia which destroyed accumulated knowledge but left the buildings standing? His answer – it's easy: choose to lose your buildings. “The state of an economy is what it knows how to do.” Countries that are engaging in very rapid growth, like China and India, have found ways to learn very quickly as well. Prior to our event, participants have submitted two-page papers (you can read them here), and Randy Spence offers a quick overview of the themes identified, focused on the question of “What's changed?” in the past six years of ICT and development. His highlights: - We've seen a dramatic increase in mobile phone usage. Usage is up to 90% in some developing economies, and there doesn't seem to be large gender or income gaps in usage. That's the good news. But we're seeing monopolization and increasing prices. And there's no guarantee that mobile phones are a smooth path towards full inclusion in the internet. - Issues of digital rights raise key questions about openness of knowledge. There are open questions about what needs to be done in terms of policy to ensure expansion of apropriate access and protection of the ability to participate. - We're starting to see the benefits of increased access to ICT. There's more evidence and these benefits seem to be substantial, even if they are uneven. The ability to communicate and organize is particularly important in political terms. - ICT has become holistically integrated into other development and community action projects, recognizing that ICT is a critical part of development strategies, not a stand-alone activity. - We need to be careful about cybercrime and other vulnerabilities associated with our digital age and need to minimize these negative impacts. Michael Spence offers the observation that what's important is not just access, but “access to capability services… what we used to call ‘applications.'” He wonders what the obstacles are to building these useful applications – what's really getting in the way. Bill Melody offers his diagnosis.