Category: ICTD
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Sizing up Big Tech – IV
Out of the five usual suspects frequently fingered as Big Tech gang members, Microsoft (MS) takes the top spot, time-wise. Indeed, the company turned 50 last April, beating Apple by almost one full year. Many will associate such advanced age with dinosaurs, especially if we use Internet time as a benchmark. However, MS shows no…
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Sizing up Big Tech – III
In the early 1980s, when Apple was still an underdog facing stiff competition from larger and well-established tech companies, it masterfully used mass advertising to challenge their dominance. TV and paper news media were the only options available at the time. Perhaps Apple’s most famous ad was 1984, launched in 1983, announcing the upcoming Macintosh…
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Sizing up Big Tech – II
As the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) has acknowledged, Google operates in many markets, including operating systems, devices, email, browsers, broadcasting, cloud, mobile apps, advertising, and search. In some of these, like search engines and mobile operating systems provided for “free,” the company has disproportionate world market shares (90 and 73 percent, respectively), thus attracting…
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Sizing up Big Tech
Have you ever bought something from Google? Many will probably answer positively—maybe a tablet or a phone, or perhaps pay for a YouTube or Google One subscription. Back in the early 2000s, most would have responded negatively, though. At the time, the company was a synonym for powerful and mostly accurate web searches, and no…
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Sandbox Quicksand
Breathtaking digital technology innovation has been a hallmark of the past 30 years, triggering dramatic, albeit not always beneficial, social change that hardly anyone could have predicted or even imagined. Unlike previous technological or industrial revolutions, digital innovation unfolds endlessly, reaching most corners of the globe at nearly the speed of light. Indeed, no country…
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Internet Roots
An Intergalactic Computer Network (ICN). That was the first Internet Imaginary in the early 1960s, used to depict the endless possibilities of the then-emerging network of networks. The ICN Imaginary was thus born several years before the first four academic computer networks were interconnected in 1969, thanks to the pioneering groundwork of IPTO and the…
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AI in the Public Sector – III
Needless to say, digital technologies are not strangers to the public sector. Indeed, Digital Government (DG) has been the subject of extensive academic research showcasing frameworks, opportunities, and failures, the Global South included. Initially born as e-government, the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in and by the public sector has evolved substantially over…
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AI in the Public Sector – II
While competing theories on public services exist, two of the most relevant deserve special mention. In one corner is the French conception, which stems from the French Revolution and directly links public services to the state within a citizen rights context. It is thus very close to the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.…
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AI in the Public Sector – I
Historically, the public sector has not been a leader in deploying digital technologies. In fact, it is usually a step or two behind other sectors, including civil society organizations. Reasons for such a predicament go beyond bureaucracy and, in numerous instances, are linked to legitimacy, transparency, and accountability. After all, spending public resources responsibly demands…
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Measuring AI, Responsibly – II
Most reports presenting indices of any kind include a section or annex detailing its methodology and furnishing basic equations to replicate index calculations. Unfortunately, GIRAI does not follow such a pattern. The report has scant information on the topic. The website explains a bit more but falls short, too. However, the latter links to a…
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The Governance of AI Governance – III
As described in previous posts, governance has evolved historically, assuming different configurations depending on socio-economic and political contexts. In the Capitalist era, the nation-state emerged as the governance master. Still, alternative governance processes demanding the involvement of non-state actors have challenged it in the past 40 years or so. That has put pressure on existing…
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The Governance of AI Governance – II
The four governance components depicted in the previous post can have highly diverse configurations that depend to a large extent on the specific social characteristics of the groups harnessing to reach given outcomes. Given our core topic, AI governance, my main focus here at the macro level, that is, on specific socio-economic formations, particularly on…
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The Governance of AI Governance – I
A few years ago, before LLMs successfully colonized the digital world, I led a small team of experts contracted to assess public institutions in an emerging economy. Under the umbrella of government assessments, the job required evaluating the performance of over 20 institutions based on a methodology designed by international subject-matter experts working closely with…
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Cabbies in Mexico City and Beyond – II
Locals loudly complain about traffic in Mexico City, especially during peak hours. That is also less than ideal for app-driven cabbies. However, I usually tell both cohorts that, comparatively speaking, traffic in the City is not that bad. The situation in other large cities in the Global South I have visited is much worse. In…
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Cabbies in Mexico City and Beyond
Almost two decades ago, an army of green VW Beetles operating as taxis swarmed Mexico City like an ant colony in permanent search of the next meal—except cab drivers were not working in teams but competing intensively to get the next customer. Estimates suggest that half of the almost 100k taxis endlessly circulating the City…