NCVO ICT Foresight

Members of my expert panel have recently been discussing issues around ICT and accountability for one of our future reports. A big question, which has been posed here before, emerged. David Wilcox summarised it as ‘is technology essentially a tool within a (relatively) unchanging system, or is it likely to change the system(s)?’

This was in response to Eleanor Burt, who wrote:

Many of the assumptions about ICT as the main ‘driving’ force in how these are shaped and managed can be shown to be invalid (Lewis and Madon, 2004). I have concerns that technology is seen as driving/determing/forcing us down a particular trajectory. Technology is an enabler, but there is nothing inherent in the technology, no ‘essential’ characteristic (Grint and Woolgar, 1997) that leads inevitably to a particular outcome. Technology is a tool. And it is a tool that is embedded within powerful economic, political, regulatory, and social macro-structures. It’s this macro-context that I’d suggest we need to keep foremost, as these structural regimes will powerfully influence the ways in which technologies are taken up and used.

Seattle is a good example. One view of this is that ICT generated spontaneous mass mobilisation on an international scale. But other research (eg Smith’s ‘Globalising Resistance’ paper) shows Seattle and social movements more generally to be underpinned by NGOs operating at transnational, national, and local levels and with much of the ‘mobilisation’ coming through their organisational memberships at local level.

This question is central to the ICT Foresight work, which begun by asking how ICT was changing the world, and what would be the impact on VCOs. So, to what extent is ICT a driving force?

Update: John Taylor joins the debate:

1. Social shaping. This term can be used in 2 ways and only one of them can be sustained in respect of ICT. The one that is sustainable is that which acts in counterpoise to the implicit assumption about the autonomy of technological development. Thus the discourse on technological development tends to assume the ‘scientific autonomy model’. Science develops artefacts [technologies] in ways that are separable from society. Many studies have shown the futility of this assumption. Technologies emerge from highly interactive human settings and are developed in response to the perceived issues and problems of a specific point in time ie they are a scientific response to a particular paradigm or climate, each of which can only be explained in terms of social shaping. The second, unsustainable, way in which the term social shaping is used is as a synonym for ‘technological determinism’ ie that technologies shape human conditions at macro, meso and micro levels. However, most social scientists who have studied social shaping from this perspective conclude that the use of new technologies is mediated and shaped by social, political and economic phenomena ie there is an iterative process between newly developed technologies and social, economic and political action. Thus society shapes the use of technology, leading to the use of technologies in ways that are often not anticipated.
2. Affordance. As a consequence of the above it is better to use this term, affordance, in coming at the technology/society debate. Thus here technology is seen as affording a set of possible social applications rather than as determining any one of them. And the important point about affordance is that it is a socio-psychological concept. Thus affordances are what we perceive the technologies might offer. As we know affordances can change over time. Thus the affordances of the mobile phone that were perceived 5 years ago are hugely different from what we now perceive them to be. And what has changed those affordances? Answer: the unanticipated ways in which users of the mobile phone have come to use them. Affordances are socially derived and determine the use of technology, therefore.
3. ICT is different. All the above leads me to conclude that ICT is a technological paradigm that can be separated from non ICT technologies. Why? Because ICT is primarily about creating, managing and shipping around networks that most human artefact of all – information. The affordances of ICT are infinite therefore. We can perceive the use of information in so many new and useful ways. Just imagine a VolOrg with highly developed info systems. Of course the systems may be programmed to constrict the ways in which info is used at any point in time. But opportunities to innovate around info remain enormous. Look at ways in which the retail sector uses its info to gain competitive advantages. Look at the ways in which organisations in all sectors shape info to their advantages. Look at the ways in which criminals are desperate to capture personal info and use it nefariously. Look at what Gov [whether 1.0 or 2.0!] will want from its Vol sector partners as they deliver its services. I f only I could get you to talk about information – innovation, management, use – then my life’s work would be complete!! But I know that it is much simpler to talk about technology – that piece of kit in the corner, that software system. So my pleadings will fall on stoney ground, I fear

And another example from Eleanor Burt:

Every year in my university a number of academic staff from across the various Schools spend several days sitting together in front of PCs, in a communal space within the library area. Our task is to advise (register) students into their degree courses and module choices. The students have already gone through this process themselves on-line (from all parts of the world) and for most students it is a straightforward process and does not require a face-to-face meeting with their ‘advisor of studies’. The university, though, prides itself on ‘knowing’ its students as individuals and on cultivating a friendly and supportive atmosphere, and so it is has decided that irrespective of registering on-line all students will still be required to come along to the advising area at the library at a pre-arranged time to meet their advisor of studies, who then ‘checks’ their on-line registration. The students queue outside the library as they wait their turn to meet their advisor and there are, of course, substantial costs to the university in staff time. Clearly, here, the university is making strategic and operational choices based upon its mission, values, aims, objectives, and resource availability. And then it’s deciding to what extent and how it wants to utilise ICT in support of these. (And, interestingly, the Web 2.0 generation of students seems happy with the
approach.)

I’d add to this that when students feel the need to discuss an issue with a member of academic staff my experience is that they will request a personal meeting in preference to an on-line discussion. So, students also seem to be making choices about how (and indeed whether) they wish to take up technological ‘affordances’.

Finally, in addressing technology issues it seems to me that we need to start from what it is that nonprofits are seeking to achieve…in terms of mission, values, aims, objectives. And then we can start looking at what role ICTs have in their achievement. This is, of course, considerably more difficult and complex than moving forward from the position of technology as ‘driving’ change, because it forces us away from ‘a one size fits all’
position to dealing with the diversity of the voluntary sector, the complex and shifting environment in which these organisations operate, and the positing of strategic options. I would argue, though, that for those leading and managing these organisations it is a more valuable aproach to take.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 8:49 am and is filed under Admin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.