Meeting 3 Notes

Co-ordinator = Tony Gill

PARTICIPANTS

• Let us consider the initial statement again. It talks about the massive use of ICTs so in principle it suppose that most of the people are using them, so what we have is a problem of quantity and quality. About quantity I think there are two main driving forces in use, they are market forces and governmental forces. The latter refer to the support of using ICT in different ways, for example the use of computers in public schools in developing countries.
• These two forces are extending the use of ICT. Regarding quality issues we are referring to a large amount of people that have suffered from getting access to ICT. We could divide them into three groups: economically disadvantaged people, physically and educationally disadvantaged people and the ageing population. To my mind offering access to the physically, educationally and ageing population is a technical problem. But with the economically disadvantaged people the problem is how to extend for them the use of ICT.
• I still believe that there is always going to be social exclusion and we cannot avoid that. So the issue we have here, in technological terms, is the rate of diffusion of technology that at the present rate can take about thirty years to cover the majority of the population. ICT and social exclusion doesn't necessarily follow on each other.
• It seems to me that we might be able to say that the language is very important to access and to use ICTS. The idea of language may be a new way of looking at how complex the system is. My view is that in the year 2020 all software will be available in Internet and everything will be voice activated. If we look from this perspective, if we are going to make significant investment for socially excluded people, the problem we are facing is massive cost for a shorter period of time.
• I would like to see what is the intention of our group now. In other words, what is what the group would like to produce?

CRITICS & PARTICIPANTS

• I really believe that what you should do is to create a model of the process of technology diffusion. You create a model, like Stafford did with the global economic system model, and you may realise why this process of diffusion is excluding and how can we compensate that system to ameliorate this.
• Someone made the point that ICTs is enabling the dominance of supermarket in such a way that small shops are disappearing and this is producing problems to some people to get food because they have to find way to go to the supermarkets usually located on the peripheral of the cities. This phenomenon has occurred here in the UK and in other developed countries as well, however, if we look at it form the global perspective, ICT has nothing to do with the movement of the food in the supply and distribution chain.
• I think it is very useful to realise that the linguistic competence produce social exclusion; there is an asymmetry between exclusion and inclusion here. Exclusion in society is mainly structural but the structural factors can be solved at the individual level.
• Notice that if you want to develop a model you should take into account various aspects. One is related to the language itself. Be aware that models are formulated in language and some of the languages in which you may formulate the model do not allow have easy access, so the model itself can become a mechanism of exclusion. The other point is that it is useful to make a distinction between models-of and models-for. What I understand you are saying is that you want to build a model of, which I think is a mistake. If you want to build a model-for, I would agree entirely.
• What about making a distinction between models-for inclusion and models-of exclusion?