Classic Questions, New Context: Development in an Era of Bits and Bytes

Abstract

S of development have long granted a privileged role to technological change. For classical political economists such as Smith and Marx, technological advancement provided the ultimate driver of changes in the division of labor, with all of its economic, social, and political consequences. Modernization theory also accorded technology a central role: Rostow’s (1960) famous five stages of growth were largely about increasing technological mastery over the environment, and scholars such as Lerner (1958) and Pye (1963) considered communication technology an essential engine of economic progress. For theorists of the global product cycle (Vernon, 1971), dependency (Cardoso and Falleto, 1979), and other schools of thought, the mode of technology transfer from rich to poor countries either constituted a limitation on national economic development in the South or significantly shaped the character and internal distribution of resulting economic growth (Evans, 1979). No matter what the theoretical perspective, one would be hard-pressed to give a comprehensive account of any episode of long-run economic development, political conquest, or social change without reference to the role of technology. The recent rise of the “digital economy” therefore presents today’s development scholars with important opportunities and challenges. Digitization, or the ability to store and transmit data in binary form as a series of 1s and 0s, is the common denominator that underlies such trends as greater interconnectivity and data replicability, increases in the speed and decreases in the cost of communication, and the rise of new industries such as the Internet and mobile telephony. With respect to the history of information and communication technologies (ICTs), digitization clearly constitutes a revolution, enabling people to connect with each other