Internet, Mobile Phones and Globalization

For many, it is obvious that the advent of the Internet has made the production of knowledge a global enterprise, with unlimited possibilities for communication, collaboration, and data sharing across international boundaries.
In many places this happened quickly: the rollout of the Internet and mobile phones have changed the conditions under which interaction takes place. Like many rapid shifts, it is mostly studied in retrospect, but our project has examined communication in Ghana, Kenya and India since 1994.
But in much of the world, the Internet is merely one more unfulfilled promise. Most countries in Africa have minimal connectivity outside of Internet cafes in capital cities. Few agricultural researchers in West Africa make any regular use of the Internet--to do so means long distance phone charges to dial the nearest ISP in order to get a slow connection.

The reds and greens indicating teledensity on world maps are poor indicators of what is really happening in the diffusion of technology. One objective of our project is to assist research and educational institutions to build local area networks.
Our second objective is to understand what's happening "on the ground" in terms of the diffusion and use of modern information and communication technologies. We use a variety of methods-- including ethnography, film, interviews, and surveys--to follow the diffusion of the Internet. Since 1993 we have followed this process in Ghana, Kenya, and the State of Kerala in India. In 2003 South Africa was added, followed by Chile and the Phillipines in 2004.