Technologies of Choice? - 9780262018203

Information and communication technologies (ICTs)--especially the Internet and themobile phone--have changed the lives of people all over the world. These changes affect not just theaffluent populations of income-rich countries but also disadvantaged people in both global North andSouth, who may use free Internet access in telecenters and public libraries, chat in cybercafes withdistant family members, and receive information by text message or email on their mobile phones.Drawing on Amartya Sen's capabilities approach to development--which shifts the focus from economicgrowth to a more holistic, freedom-based idea of human development--Dorothea Kleine inTechnologies of Choice? examines the relationship between ICTs, choice, anddevelopment.

Kleine proposes a conceptual framework, the Choice Framework, thatcan be used to analyze the role of technologies in development processes. She applies the ChoiceFramework to a case study of microentrepreneurs in a rural community in Chile. Kleine combinesethnographic research at the local level with interviews with national policy makers, to contrastthe high ambitions of Chile's pioneering ICT policies with the country's complex social and economicrealities. She examines three key policies of Chile's groundbreaking Agenda Digital: public access,digital literacy, and an online procurement system. The policy lesson we can learn from Chile'sexperience, Kleine concludes, is the necessity of measuring ICT policies against a people-centeredunderstanding of development that has individual and collective choice at its heart.