Trade liberalization and digital divide : an analysis of the Information Technology Agreement of WTO

This article reflects on the effectiveness of trade liberalization, as envisaged in the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) of the WTO, for promoting ICT use and production in developing countries. Based on empirical evidence on global exports of ITA goods, and the performance of different groups of ITA member countries and nonmember countries a case has been made for complementing trade liberalization with capacity building so that ITA becomes more attractive to developing countries as an additional strategy to bridge the digital divide. It has also been argued that substantial capabilities in ICT production and use have been developed over the years by select developing countries, which provide fresh opportunities for new ICT policy for social and economic development. Against this background the article makes the case for an e-South Framework Agreement that facilitates the harnessing of southern capabilities through building new system of ICT innovation, as a complement to ongoing North-South initiatives, inter alia involving trade liberalization along with capacity building to promote ICT use and production in developing countries. Key Words: Trade liberalisation, Digital Divide, Information Technology Agreement, WTO JEL Classification: F 13, L 86, F 5

The persistent nucleus: atoms, power and energy policy discourse in the anthropocene

Despite economic debacles, recurring “accidents”, reactor core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima and the cautious academic reflection it has engendered, civilian nuclear power continues to enjoy legitimacy in energy policy discourse. This may not be the case in all countries. But it is so in a number of influential states, such as, prominently, all the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Why does nuclear power persist in these and other key countries, such as India or Iran and Japan? How is it that economic costs, technology risks and weapons proliferation concerns point in one direction while energy policy and technology choice moves in the other? We suggest that for an important set of select countries this divergence can be ascribed to a “discourse of power” that is pegged to domestic concerns and, more importantly, to international relations. This discursive process constructs energy and material abundance as the cornerstone of social stability, political power and ultimately national sovereignty and geopolitical influence. The atom’s energy remains prominent in such imaginaries of abundance, more so in contexts of fossil energy insecurity and climate change. The questioning then of nuclear power by environmental and social concerns has to also question this discourse of power. The latter’s sanguinity vis-a-vis abundant energy needs to be problematised. This is not the case today in international relations. Practitioners focus on the consequences of environmental deterioration. The problem of climate refugees, for example. This paper argues that realist frames of power and self-interest in international relations be acknowledged explicitly as drivers of the discourse of power and in turn the socio-ecological consequences that ensue from this pursuit of cheap and abundant energy. To challenge nuclear power ultimately is to also challenge this medieval yet dominant norm of power play that pervades large swathes of international relations

Innovation Systems and Economic Development in the Knowledge Economy: the Global and the Local Nexus

Proceedings of the Second Globelics Academy, Lisbon, Portugal, 23 May - 3 June 2005

Mapping the Technological Trajectories and Innovation Systems in Biotechnology from Modernization to Globalization

Proceedings of the Second Globelics Academy, Lisbon, Portugal, 23 May - 3 June 2005

The "revealing" and "concealing" of technology

The “essence” or effect of technological change is more than technological from an agency point of view. But Heidegger argued that the “question” concerning technology is its “revealing.” By revealing he meant the setting upon humans to reveal the “real” as a model of ordering nature (including human) to reveal the “truth.” However, from the point of view of the oppressed and the exploited in an iniquitous political economic order, technological change conceals more than what it reveals. The literary critic Pierre Macherey pointed out that a literary work’s ideological bias often should be judged from not what it says but in what it does not say. The concealing of technology could be the ideological bias or intentions of its promoters or protagonists which is more often concealed than revealed in social theories and analysis of technological change. Using the poison gas explosion at the Union Carbide pesticide plant at Bhopal as a case in point, I will argue that this technological massacre of a city population can be read only as the concealing of the “real” nature of the technology of the so-called “Green Revolution” in India’s agricultural modernization program

Transcending technological pessimism : reflections on an alternative technological order

The universalist hope attributed to modern technology as the best means to free humanity from poverty and deprivation, particularly in the wake of the numerous technological disasters occurred in the third world, has been seriously challenged. It is argued that the original hope associated with modern technology may still be redeemable by proposing an anti-essentialist project for constructing an alternative technological network. In order to achieve this it is necessary to have a decentered view of modern technology from being the icon of a flawed modernization project. The autonomizaton of modern technological systems has to be resisted to bring back the non-modern conception of tools as the continuum of humans. This alternative social-technological order needs to obliterate the modernist machine-animal or human-nonhuman dichotomy in order to deliver the benefits latent in many modern technological advances in a democratic-egalitarian framework. The new social order envisaged has possibilities of being incorporated into an inclusive technological discourse by simultaneously building and re-building the socio-technological networks of the disadvantaged other. A useful strategy to achieve this network building is to enlist technology by reconfiguring it as the material and cognitive foundations of a social movement for worldmaking

More than Electronic Toll Booths: Singapore’s Electronic Road Pricing Innovation

This paper explores the dynamics of the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) innovation in Singapore, tracing its implementation to subsequent diffusion to delineate the links between technology and society. The ERP system, introduced in 1998, is an elaborate and sophisticated toll collecting system using ICTs to regulate road usage. We use the actor-network theory (ANT) as a conceptual tool to analyse the dynamics of this innovation. Through a detailed examination of both human and non-human actors, we are able to analyse how interests of heterogeneous members of a societal network can be aligned to introduce a technological innovation. In the process, we have observed issues arising from the differential power relationship that exists between road users and government planners as well as the integration of the social and technical aspects of this emerging socio-technological system. As an emergent technology, the ERP innovation system reflects the social morphology of Singapore as it plays out its part in the making of this nascent nation.Electronic Road Pricing (ERP), ICTs, technology and society, technological innovation, diffusion of innovation, actor-network theory,