{"id":33,"date":"2004-05-21T00:24:48","date_gmt":"2004-05-21T04:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/2004\/05\/21\/the-creaky-adaptation-of-internationa"},"modified":"2004-05-21T00:24:48","modified_gmt":"2004-05-21T04:24:48","slug":"the-creaky-adaptation-of-international-development-to-technological","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/2004\/05\/21\/the-creaky-adaptation-of-international-development-to-technological\/","title":{"rendered":"The creaky adaptation of international development to technological change"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks to a recent post by <\/span>Tomas Krag<\/a>, one of the most creative, inventive and intense people I have met in the ICT for Development space, I stumbled across the <\/span>“i4d: information for development”<\/a> site, whose masthead and contributors’ list name a number of people I either know or respect.  Tomas’ and <\/span><\/font>Sebastian
\nBiittrich’s (who in the past have cheerfully and willingly been
\ninvaluable resources,
\nalong with Michael Best<\/a>, for me in clarifying the capabilities of
\ndiffent wireless technologies and in offering blunt criticism)
\ninvolvement makes me believe that this journalistic endeavor merits
\nfurther attention.  <\/p>\n

What Michael Best, Tomas and Sebastian (and many others too many to
\nmention here) bring to the international development
\ncommunity is something that lamentably is still underappreciated even
\ntoday, which is deep and serious knowledge of how technologies
\n(wireless, computational, community-oriented and other) work. 
\nAfter a number of years of serious consideration of how IT
\ncan transform development, the field still remains dominated by
\nbureaucrats, well-meaning economists and others who really do not
\nunderstand the technology, and
\nwho hold at arm’s length a lot of very talented individuals with very
\nadvanced technology skills who are looking for ways to help the
\nworld.  <\/p>\n

The esprit de corps<\/span> of a global brigade of geeks has been institutionalized and scrappily pushed forth by my colleague Ethan Zuckerman<\/a>,
\nbut unfortunately, international development as a profession remains a dinosaur with little room for true entrepreneurship and
\nrisk-taking with the exploration of new technologies.  In a
\nlimited way, the field continues to creakily adapt to the realities of
\ntechnological change, but unfortunately, the structure and culture of
\nthe global aid institutions are anathema to the acceptance of
\nfast-moving, technological saavy crusaders.<\/p>\n

There remains a lot of room in the international development space for
\na major institution to emerge to lead with money, creativity,
\ntechnological savviness and connections that will sweep clean much of
\nthe aged detritus of bureaucracy and inertia that dominate what should
\nbe the most important and impacting sector in the world.
\n<\/span> <\/font><\/font>
\n<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to a recent post by Tomas Krag, one of the most creative, inventive and intense people I have met in the ICT for Development space, I stumbled across the “i4d: information for development” site, whose masthead and contributors’ list name a number of people I either know or respect.  Tomas’ and Sebastian Biittrich’s (who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-icts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}