WSIS Review

Key Statements On NGOs/multistakeholders in UN proceedings: PrepCom chair opening/1.doc opening/1.doc President of Conference of NGOs (CONGO) Vivendi vivendi/1.dochttp:// vivendi/1.doc World Bank world-bank/1.dochttp:// world-bank/1.doc Civil Society Orgs in West Asia & Middle East/ IRAN International Federation of Journalists:

Key Statements on IG India india/1.dochttp:// india/1.doc Cuba cuba/1.pdfhttp:// cuba/1.pdf China china/1.dochttp:// china/1.doc

Internet Governance Claudia Rosett, Journalist, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Ang Peng Hwa, WGIG member, Singapore

Review of Wilson’s Aims in IRDC To develop the strategic restructuring framework To explain interactions between structure & agency in the information revolution in developing countries through comparative analysis of 3 cases

Strategic Restructuring Model technology diffusion involve multiple factors: What is the main cause of global diffusion patterns– economic structure, govt policies, or tech? What mechanisms allow these technologies to diffuse? Do diffusion dynamics portend greater equality or inequality? Why do countries with similar structural and economic features have divergent patterns of ICT distribution? (p. 37)

Strategic Restructuring Model Dependent variable: technology diffusion Independent variables: Structures (social, political, economic) Institutions (persistent patterns of roles and incentives) Politics (esp. elite individual’s strategic behaviors) Govt. Policies (a mix of 4 policy balances: priv-pub initiative, competition-monopoly, foreign-domestic, centralized-decentralized)

Key Findings on ICT Diffusion solicit examples for each finding from Wilson & WSIS countries Remarkable similarities across countries Individual ICT champions: major influence MNCs: modest influence on ICTD Structures & their links to institutions play a determining role in ICTD Social networks determine technical networks ICTD: a global process of sequential local innovation and restructuring

Key Findings on ICT Diffusion (Cont.) Effective access to ICTs is more difficult than formal access International Computer Driving License ICTD requires leadership, policies, and $$ ICTs’ effects to date On LDCs as a whole: limited On small cadres of national elites: very significant LDCs vary widely in capacity to create an indigenous culture of knowledge innovation

Key Finding on SRS Framework The strategic restructuring model is a robust characterization of the complex causal processes of political, institutional, and policy changes that have occurred across the ICT sectors.  It works empirically as Wilson theorized it would

Manuel Castells’ “Making Sense of Our World” Castells: a leading theorist of globalization work_Society work_Society Published in 1998 as the concluding chapter to a 3 volume (1000 page) trilogy on globalization, ICTs, and identity Touches on many of the course topics and themes Addresses social, economic, and political shifts in the “Information Age”

Castells’ concept of Informationalism Definition: “a technological paradigm based on the augmentation of the human capacity of information processing and communication made possible by the revolutions in microelectronics, software, and genetic engineering” Informationalism has become the material foundation of core-zone society Generation of wealth Exercise of power Creation of cultural codes ->now depend on ICT capacity

Sites of Change in the Information Society Relationships of production Social class relationships ->Who are the producers now, and who appropriates the products of their labor? Power relations Crisis of the nation-state as sovereign entity Crisis of political democracy

Sites of Change (cont.) Globalization of capital Multilateralization of power institutions Decentralization of authority to regional and local governments  induce a new geometry of power, and perhaps a new form of state: the “network state”

Sites of Change (cont.) “Cultural battles are the power battles of the Information Age” Fought primarily in and by the media Power lies in networks of information exchange & symbolic manipulation Network society: the new social structure of the Info Age