INFORMATION SOCIETIES
Annotated Bibliography
As discussed in the text, Europe and North America are awash with books, videos, computer files trying to make sense of the ‘information age’ and its links to both national economies and politics and the global ‘world order’ which is, allegedly, emerging.  One trend within this analysis is to try and understand reality not as an ordered whole but as the interaction of the component parts.  A number of books apply such methodology to specific branches of activity.  M.M Waldrop’s ‘Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos’ gives a general and quite reader-friendly description of some of the origins and applications of this trend.

Despite the mass of material published since, perhaps the most concise outline of the impact of ICT on the relations between government in society was written in 1978 by two French civil servants, S.Nora and A. Minc, reporting to their government.. The resulting book, ‘The Computerisation of Society’, was also published in English.  Chapters 9, ‘Will a computerized society be a society of cultural conflicts?’ and 10, ‘Planning for an uncertain future: socializing information’ are of most relevance to issues raised in this book.   'Communications for Progress: a guide to international e-mail'  by Graham Lane is no longer relevant for its technical content but, published in 1990, provides evidence of the extent to which the potential of e-mail to support development was identified and pioneered by small civil society organisations in various parts of the world. 

‘The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture - Volume One, The Rise of the Network Society, Volume Two, The Power of Identity and Volume Three, End of the Millennium’ by M. Castells makes an heroic attempt to explain the underlying economic and social changes which are producing ‘an information age’ and their impact.  It clearly illustrates issues like the increasing percentage of the workforce world wide classed as ‘information workers’ and the high levels of investment in ICT, analyses the social responses of groups both driving and being disempowered by this process.  It is not infallible and Castells himself continues to develop his thinking on these subjects, but it is arguably the key text on global changes to which other contributors both supporting or challenging his arguments need to refer.  His thesis was well summarised in a speech he presented to the UNRISD conference on ICT and social development in Geneva in 1998.   

An effort to sketch an agenda for research and debate about what the global information changes might mean for Africa was made by this author in an article in the Review of African Political Economy ''Knowledge, Culture and the Internet in Africa: a challenge for political economists".  This is being followed up with a full issue of the journal, 'Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy in Africa' being edited by Mike Powell and Reginald Cline-Cole for early 2003. It is unfortunate that R.A.O. Onyango’s PhD thesis, ‘Strategic national Information Management and technology Transfer: The Case of Kenya’, has not been published as it will be hard for readers outside of academic circles - and to recall the issue of access, U.K. academic circles at that -  to get hold of it.  Although it is a case study of two technology transfer projects related to industrial development, its conclusions on the centrality of information strategy to development policy have general relevance.  He situates his research in the context of theories of development, in particular dependency theory.  He argues that failure to acquire and use information is re-inforcing dependency.  This failure is partly one of actual resources but it is also one of failing to create institutions which use the knowledge they have.  It is based on a type of ‘cognitive dependence’ which ‘undermines the opportunity to autonomously arrive at optimum development decisions.’ (Onyango, p 41).

OCCURENCES
Summaries/overviews
Professional Intellectual Output
Ongoing Discussion/ Interaction/Debate

Operational experience
Manuals/Guidelines
 
Software Applications
Original Research Data
Related Subjects
Knowledge and Culture
Internet governance
E-government
National Strategies
Knowledge Societies
Intellectual property rights