β Scribed by Lyn M. Holley
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
This book is an excellent resource for international policymakers and practitioners who seek to understand the global digital divide or to take action to diminish it. The book also will be useful to scholars. The book provides an important critique of the applicability of established theories, using available evidence to challenge appropriateness of their assumptions in relation to information and communication technology (ICT) in developing countries. It is well referenced, with excellent expositions and examples of some older theories, and convincing arguments for their current applicability.
The book constitutes a quick "next step" in Jeffrey James' development of the themes that have emerged from his many studies. Another recent book by James, Technology, Globalization and Poverty (also published by Elgar, 2002, 145 pp.), describes the mechanisms through which information technology influences globalization with disparate effects. In that book, the emergent themes are introduced and a context is provided for the arguments presented in Bridging the Global Digital Divide. Both books are rich in case examples of practices that illustrate these points, along with suggestions for general policy or practice approaches to support convergence. In each book, early chapters on theory provide a framework for the illustrations in subsequent chapters; each book also includes many chapters that have been published as journal articles. The two books complement each other. Although there is some overlap, within each book and between the books, taken together they provide a rough guide to the frontier of thought and experience relevant for pro-poor interventions to address the digital divide.
Themes that have emerged from James' years of study of the unfolding of IT technology in the world are clarified in Bridging the Global Digital Divide. The themes are (1) the Internet is more usefully considered as a type of technology rather than as an unique phenomenon; (2) accepted theories used to explain information technology (IT) generation, diffusion, or utilization are not consistent with the experience of many developing nations;
(3) absent deliberate and effective pro-poor intervention, IT development tends toward divergence of the rich from the poor among nations as well as within nations; (4) pro-poor interventions should utilize the full range of IT (e.g., computers, the Internet, and telephony) as appropriate; (5) there is need of an institution to collect and make accessible the scattered
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