Skip to content
TechPlus+

TechPlus+

Technology and Development Redux

  • Home
  • About
  • Short Bio

Category: Social Innovation

Financial Inclusion and Democratizing Finance – I

30 May 202219 July 2022
Raul Zambrano
Blockchain, Economics, Human Development, ICTD, Social Innovation
From Noise to Signal A couple of weeks ago, El Salvador’s CryptoPopulist President shared on social media news about an international “Bitcoin” meeting his country was hosting starting May 16.  He also listed the names of the 44 entities participating Read more

Contesting Innovation

15 September 202124 January 2022
Raul Zambrano
Human Development, Innovation, Social Innovation
Innovation is always good. Innovation regulation is always wrong. These are the two innovation axioms we repeatedly hear in unison from mainstream media, innovators and innovative companies, big and small. Indeed, the two are connected. They are, in fact, two Read more

Innovation in the Public Sector

5 April 202015 October 2021
Raul Zambrano
e-governance, Governance, Human Development, ICTD, Inequality, Social Innovation
I. Introduction For the last 30 years, relentless technological innovation has seemingly conquered most, if not all, corners of the world. While the focus was on infrastructure and social networks in its early stages, the latest phase has set its Read more

A Glance at Carbon Dioxide Emissions Data

1 October 20196 December 2019
Raul Zambrano
Climate Change, Economics, Governance, Social Innovation
Lack of data is certainly not one of the issues at the table when discussing energy production and carbon emissions. Well-known sources for the former include the UN Statistics Division, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the U.S. Energy Information Administration Read more

Waste no time waiting for e-Waste data

31 October 20185 January 2019
Raul Zambrano
Blockchain, Climate Change, Human Development, Social Innovation
The town where I currently reside is planning to change its e-Waste collection policy starting next year. As it is today, town people can go downtown once a month and drop their old computers, laptops, monitors and the rest. This Read more

Chasing ICOs (away?)

7 February 201816 February 2021
Raul Zambrano
Blockchain, Economics, ICTD, Social Innovation
Recent events seem to suggest the cryptocurrency bubble is finally starting to deflate. Bitcoin, Ethereum and most of their crypto cousins are significantly down while regulators in several countries are finally beginning to take action on the ground. Nobel laureate economists Read more

Overall Perspectives on Technology

21 January 201825 May 2023
Raul Zambrano
Human Development, ICTD, Innovation, Social Innovation
Disruptive, transformative and revolutionary are some adjectives commonly used to describe the potential impact of new and emerging technologies on society. Joblessness, human decay, and the Singularity sit on the opposite side, constantly reminding us of the darker side of Read more

Social Innovation Redux

28 October 201714 October 2021
Raul Zambrano
Human Development, Social Innovation
Context I was invited to the Social Innovation – Driving Force for Social Change (SI-DRIVE) final conference, which took place earlier this week in Brussels. SI-DRIVE is a four-year project funded by the EU and launched in 2014. The project Read more

25 Years of the Sustainable Development Networking Programme, SDNP

13 June 201717 December 2017
Raul Zambrano
e-governance, Governance, ICTD, Innovation, Social Innovation
The Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) was a UNDP global program that ran between 1992 and 2004.  SDNP’s core goal was to enhance access to sustainable development information on a multi-stakeholder basis using new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Its Read more

Theories of the Mobile Internet: Book Review

7 August 201621 March 2019
Raul Zambrano
Book review, ICTD, Social Innovation
There is indeed no scarcity when it comes to books and articles dealing with the so-called mobile revolution. While most present the now usual techno-utopian perspective, only a few offer an adequate analytical framework to try to explain the rapid Read more

Innovation and Inequality in an Unequal World

9 September 201515 October 2021
Raul Zambrano
Book review, ICTD, Social Innovation
Innovation has taken the world by storm. More than a pure storm, it is now looking more like a stationary looping hurricane. No escape. Embrace or die. Only a few have opted for the latter. In any event, this is, Read more

ICTs and Inequality: An Overview

4 May 201518 January 2021
Raul Zambrano
Economics, ICTD, Social Innovation
Not without reason, Inequality seems to have taken command of most development, socio-economic and even political discussions. The fact that a supposedly “technical” and long (and excellent too!) book such as Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century became a best-seller of Read more

Women, empowerment and new technologies

9 March 201521 March 2019
Raul Zambrano
Gender, ICTD, Social Innovation
Yesterday we celebrated the International Women’s Day (IWD) for the 108th time.  The celebration first took place in 1908 in New York CIty. Back then it was called the International Working Women’s Day (IWWD), first organized by the Socialist Party Read more

Governments, Crowdsourcing and Innovation

2 March 201515 October 2021
Raul Zambrano
Crowdsourcing, Open Government, Social Innovation
The paper on the role of governments in crowdsourcing I presented at the last ICEGOV 2014 gathering in Guimaraes, Portugal, is now available here – in this blog. The paper was supposed to be published by ACM Press as part Read more

Pakistan Interview: e-governance and development

23 December 201430 July 2019
Raul Zambrano
e-governance, Open Government, Social Innovation
I gave the following interview to a local business newspaper during my mission to Pakistan. The interview was published on 15 December. BR Research: You have previously worked in Pakistan. How was the e-governance situation like back then, and how Read more

The Role of ICTs in Empowering People

28 November 201226 March 2019
Raul Zambrano
Crowdsourcing, e-governance, Social Innovation
In the last twenty years, we have witnessed a very rapid and dramatic evolution of ICTs, at a pace perhaps unprecedented in history. This evolution, however, has come in a series of waves. First, we saw the advent of the Read more
TechPlus+
© 2023
Powered by WordPress
Theme: Masonic by ThemeGrill