Information Society Watch

October 25, 2007, Sally Whittle, The Guardian

The article focuses on the story of the South Pacific islands of Tokelau, where an entrepreneur bought the rights to sell the Internet addresses with the Tokelauan .tk domain. The report discusses the positive impact that this has had on a community encountering the harsh and detrimental effects of climate change on their local economies. The revenues to emerge from the deal, in part negotiated by ICANN, have grown rapidly and now account for 10% of the islands' total GDP.

August 1995, Richard Barbrook & Andy Cameron, Alamut

The California ideology describes the development of the technocratic political inclinations that have shaped dominant ICT discourse to date. Through a hybridisation of radical, anti-corporate activism and entrepreneurial, free-market spirit, with a solid dose of technological determinism and faith in the potential of ICTs, the California Ideology has emerged as the ruling philosophy of the information society.

William J. McIver, Jr., William F. Birdsall, and Merrilee Rasmussen

The traditional understanding of human rights faces several challenges with the development of the Internet. There is a very urgent and specific need to address information rights within a comprehensive human rights framework, specifically a right to communicate.

2003, Swasti Mitter, United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development

This paper is an agenda for research and action for advancing women's employment and livelihood opportunities in developing countries in the ICT-related sectors. The objective is to identify areas of policy intervention that will allow women to participate in the globalised digital economy on a par with men. It will explore the possibility and potential of ICT in bringing gender equality in the world of work, be that in employment or in trade and commerce.

June 2001, Nancy Hafkin and Nancy Taggart, Learn Link

This detailed study provides an in-depth look into the current situation of gender and ICTs in developing countries in terms of obstacles and opportunities. The authors discuss in detail the changes wrought to women's labour by globalisation, as well as chances for women's economic and political empowerment through IT.

January 2004, Anita Gurumurthy, Women in Action

This paper was presented during the panel on globalised media and ICT systems and structures and their interrelationship with fundamentalism and militarism organised by Isis International-Manila during the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India in January 2004. The author contends that the global economy supported by ICTs stands upon the intersection of the crumbling proletariat of the North and the off-shore proletariat of the South, as seen in issues of labour, media and militarism.

2006, Penporn Pagram and Jeremy Pagram, The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC)

This paper discusses at the topic of e-learning from a Thai perspective, examining the links between culture and education in Thailand and looks at the way Thai students are taught to learn. The paper reports on one author's research into this area and includes suggestions for designers of Thai e-learning.

2003, Mayuri Odedra-Straub, The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries

The author of this short article provides a critical commentary on the UNCTAD report titled 'E-Commerce and Development Report 2002', citing it as having a misleading title and as lacking in focus on the majority of developing countries, or on development as such. The author critiques the kind of ‘opportunities for growth’ being considered by the report, and notes that such opportunities are rarely accomplished even in developed countries, let alone in developing ones.

November 2002, Jennifer Gibbs, Kenneth L. Kraemer, and Jason Dedrick, Centre for Research on Information Technology and Organizations

This article examines the key global, environmental and policy factors that act as determinants of e-commerce diffusion. It is based on a systematic comparison of case studies from 10 countries--Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United States.

September 2005, Anita Gurumurthy, World Economy and Development in Brief

The author contends that even as the IT revolution did open up new job avenues, and IT-enabled outsourcing harked in the promise of a level playing field of a globalised world, the experience of many developing countries can at best be described as mixed. Most of the benefits accrued through technology have been concentrated in pockets of the North and even in countries of the South, like India, geographic concentration of benefits has occurred.