Information Society and Development The Kerala Experience

by Palackal, Antony; Shrum, Wesley

• ISBN13: 9788131601525
• ISBN10: 8131601528
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-01-01
• Publisher: Rawat Publications

Summary

The digital revolution, a key feature of globalization, has extended the frontiers of the globe with a profound impact on how the world functions and interacts. Access to information and knowledge, facilitated by information and communication technologies (ICTs), has increasingly impacted patterns of learning, cultural expression, and social participation, and has provided opportunities for development. Paradoxically, the information and communication society today is characterized by imbalances and inequalities, christened as the 'digital divide.' There is a growing concern the world over about the world's technological haves and have-nots. At the epicenter of this alarm is the expanding chasm between those with and without access to the ICT revolution. In the backdrop of the "World Summit on Information Society" held in Tunisia in November 2005, this volume explores the nature and effects of information and communication technologies with particular emphasis on development programs. Approaching ICTs as tools for social development, the book illustrates the efforts at circumventing the digital divide in the state of Kerala, India, a distinctive developing region. The 'Kerala Model' of development, a much-debated topic in the academic circles, endows the state a unique position in the developmental map of the world. This study documents and analyzes the e-science initiatives in Kerala vis-� -vis development within the larger framework of the ongoing discourse on global structural changes in development and knowledge production, and will be of great interest to social scientists, development agencies/organizations/activists, e-professionals, and policy makers.

Table of Contents

Circumventing the digital divide
Diffusion and development : Kerala experience of ICT for the masses	p. 41
Akshaya : an experiment in 'ICT for all'	p. 52
ICT-enabled information systems in developing countries : a case study	p. 63
Free software in Kerala	p. 77
IT@School and free software in education : the Kerala model	p. 96
Development discourse
ICTs for governance and development : a critical review of Kerala's recent experiences	p. 109
Understanding concepts of 'development' and linkages to deployment strategies for ICT for development	p. 133
The globalization of science : is the Internet changing the careers of female researchers in Kerala?	p. 151
Who has the Internet empowered? : rethinking the relationship between women and ICTs in the developing world	p. 173
Knowledge production and developmental structures : e-science in a developing world	p. 200
Information technology for Kerala's development	p. 223
Index	p. 230
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