Abstract
This chapter explores some of the ways ICT is likely to impact social and economic development and points to the strategic significance of ICT for enabling national development and poverty reduction strategies. ICT offers many promises and opportunities, even while posing serious risks and uncertainties. Its impact is likely to be pervasive. Countries must fashion their own responses. Ad hoc or passive postures are likely to lead to increasing digital and economic divides, marginalization of poor, and increasingly costly and burdensome government that erodes economic competiveness.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Knight (1998).
- 3.
Naisbitt and Barber, among others, show how subnational and global or regional institutions are gaining relative power vis-a-vis nation states.
- 4.
This “connect and develop” innovation strategy led to R&D productivity increase by nearly 60%, innovation success rate more than doubled, and the cost of innovation significantly fallen (Huston and Sakkab, 2006).
- 5.
Gordon Moore observed an exponential growth in the number of transistors per integrated circuit and predicted a continuation of this trend. This has been generalized into a continued exponential growth in ICT capacity.
- 6.
Network externalities are derived from the fact that the value of a telephone line increases with each new subscriber by the number of potential connections between users. This indicates substantial externalities and there may be a threshold effect through which ICT begins to have substantial impact only when at a certain penetration level in the economy.
- 7.
This could change with strategies to develop and produce low-cost ICT products that are adapted to local markets in poor countries.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hanna, N.K. (2010). Implications of the ICT Revolution. In: Transforming Government and Building the Information Society. Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1506-1_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1506-1_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1505-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-1506-1
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)