Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.95q.970828064645.25876B-100000@library.wustl.edu> Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 06:47:45 -0500 From: Jeff Huestis <mailto:Jeff-Huestis@library.wustl.edu> Subject: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (fwd) To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 05:25:14 GMT From: "Gerald R. Brown" <mailto:browner@cyberspc.mb.ca> Subject: [IASL-LINK]: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIESFORWARDED: Date: Sat, 23 Aug 1997 12:10:18 -0300 From: Michael Gurstein <mailto:mgurst@CCEN.UCCB.NS.CA> Reply-To: "African Network of IT Experts and Professionals (ANITEP) List" <mailto:AFRIK-IT@LISTSERV.HEA.IE>
ICT-4-LED is an open unmoderated forum for the discussion of issues related to the application of Information and Communications Technology for Local Economic/Entrepreneurial Development. It is also a place to network and to share experiences and case studies.
To subscribe send the following command in the SUBJECT of the email to: mailto:ICT-4-LED@chatsubo.com
subject: subscribe
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Owner: Mike Gurstein mailto:mgurst@ccen.uccb.ns.ca:
My thoughts when I set up the non-met-dev list was that I would like the list to address the broad base for development in the Non-metropolitan areas of the world..
My own interests have become somewhat more focussed in the 18 months or so since the list has been in operation. I am now much more interested in how Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) might become a "motor" for local economic development in non-metropolitan areas. My own sense, and this is the direction of my current research and practical work through the Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C\CEN) is that ICT presents the possibility for a significant rebalancing of structures of opportunity as between Metropolitan and Non-metropolitan. ICT allows for "presence at a distance", for remote management and administration, for information anywhere, and so on.
What all of this means, I think is that there is the even greater risk for non-met regions that productive and particularly information intensive productive activity will be increasingly centralized/metropolitanized. Equally though, the technology presents the opportunity for productive activity to be decentralized and de-metropolitanized to areas where there is a work shortage; where as a consequence, labour and overhead costs may be less; and where not incidentally the demands placed on an overstretched urban environment may be reduced.
We are, I think on the cusp of this opportunity point and in what direction it might flow may depend on political will and administrative imagination as much as any other factor.
All of this is a preamble to an announcement that the non-met-dev list is being segued over to a list entitled ICT-4-LED (ICT for Local Economic Development).
Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. ECBC/NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change Associate Professor Organizational Management and Director: Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking University College of Cape Breton PO Box 5300 Sydney, NS, CANADA B1P 6L2
Tel. 902-562-1055 (h) 902-563-1369 (o) 902-562-0119 (fax)
Email mailto:Mgurst@ccen.uccb.ns.ca WWW Http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca
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