ICT4D and us

Why create a blog for your master thesis you might ask? Properly a good idea if you are writing about blogging but we're not. We are writing about people who most likely doesn't even know what a blog is. Well, from our point of view it's actually very simple. First of all we want to document our process of writing the master thesis. It is common practice to include documentation of your work process with the written master thesis and we think this blog will be a good collection of data to write a summary later on.

Secondly we want to keep family, friends, colleagues etc. posted on our progress and our well being, ups and downs, happiness, sadness, confusion, anger and so on.

Thirdly we hope this blog will enable us to engage in an enriching dialogue with all of you. We will have a lot of crazy ideas, questions etc. as we go along and feedback will be much appreciated. Feel free to ask questions in Danish.

Now, what are we really studying and writing our master thesis about? Well, it all started in the fall of 2007 when both of us signed up for the cand. merc. dat. course "IT, Institutions and Development" with the Indian professor Dr. Sudhanshu Rai.

Most people think that development (not to be mistaken as software development!) and information and communications technology (ICT) has no linkage. A poor Tanzanian, Vietnamese, Bhutanese man, woman, boy or girl don't have a computer and they don't need it. They need food, shelter and so on. But what if ICT somehow actually can be an enabler for this? Today there has proven to be a considerable linkage between economic growth and ICT. Economic growth is usually also linked to development. Of course it's not just as simple as that but ICT for Development (ICT4D) is being taken more serious now than ever.

The course really opened our eyes for a completely different perspective on ICT and that have stuck with us ever since. It was therefore very naturally to continue with this topic for our master thesis combined with our interest in philosophy, sociology, strategic planning and business management.

So what is our approach right now? As mentioned ICT is already applied as an instrument to development. India has a long tradition for software development already and new places like Vietnam is coming along. Here ICT have already made an impact on development. Most of this is unfortunately limited to urban development. In remote villages in the Bhutanese highland the population is far from everything and most of them are illiterate. They have no usage of ICT, as ICT today requires literary skill such a reading and writing. But is ICT really limited to this? Can ICT be applied differently to empower illiterate people in developing countries with knowledge gain and transfer, democratic participation and more. This is what our master thesis will be about!

Are we the utterly philanthropic in our approach? No, ICT4D is not only charity but also business. Business for everybody hopefully.

So are we just going to read tons of articles and academic papers and write 120 pages about that and our own ideas? No! A large part of our master thesis will hopefully be a field study in India and/or Bhutan early next year for three till six weeks. It all depends on the funding we will raise. So if you know of any contributors please let us know :-)

Why in English? We have decided to write our blog mainly in English even though it might bring on more typos, weird language etc. and complains from family. But interest from abroad for our master thesis have weighted higher. In the pipeline we also envision some pod casting with Thomas on cam presenting much exciting stuff about our daily progress. That will properly be in denglish :-) Make sure to return for some of this fun.

We will end this long post with a quote:

"The potential of the modern information age seems overshadowed at every turn by the ancient forces that separate the rich from the poor." (Dertouzos 1999)