“ ICT4D Has to Be about Human Development Every Step of the Way”
Jul 22 2010, Japan [JP], Netherlands [NL], United States [US]
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- Japan [JP], Netherlands [NL], United States [US]
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“ It’s completely pointless to give the internet to everyone. Unless it’s integrated with a programme that is about how people can achieve their own aspirations,” says University of California Berkeley researcher Kentaro Toyama in a video interview with IICD.
The future of ICT4D will be less focused on ICT for it’s own sake and more about how human development happens, Toyama thinks. “Going through devices and technologies, we’ll come to realise that technology doesn’t matter as much. What matters more is how you organise human beings around it.”
Although Toyama has a vision on what tools will be used five years from now (“we’ll get tired of mobile phones and find another tool to be excited about”), he focuses more on people. “ICT4D has to be about human development every step of the way.”
Kentaro Toyama is a researcher at the School of Information of the University of California Berkeley. He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of IICD. Toyama previously worked as an assistant managing director for Microsoft Research India. The video of the interview with Toyama can be viewed on YouTube .