Dot Com Mantra

207 Pages·2010·2.93 MB·English

by  Payal Arora

Dot Com Mantra
Social Computing in the Central Himalayas
Payal Arora
Dot Com mantra
Voices in Development management
Series Editor:
margaret Grieco
napier University, Scotland
the Voices in Development management series provides a forum in which grass
roots organisations and development practitioners can voice their views and
present their perspectives along with the conventional development experts. many
of the volumes in the series will contain explicit debates between various voices in
development and permit the suite of neglected development issues such as gender
and transport or the microcredit needs of low income communities to receive
appropriate public and professional attention.
also in the series
Participatory Development in Kenya
Josephine Syokau mwanzia and robert Craig Strathdee
ISBn 978 0 7546 7877 9
The Dominance of Management
A Participatory Critique
Leonard Holmes
ISBn 978 0 7546 1184 4
Losing Paradise
The Water Crisis in the Mediterranean
Edited by Gail Holst-Warhaft and tammo Steenhuis
ISBn 978 0 7546 7573 0
Tourism, Development and Terrorism in Bali
michael Hitchcock and I nyoman Darma Putra
ISBn 978 0 7546 4866 6
Women Miners in Developing Countries
Pit Women and Others
Edited by Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and martha macintyre
ISBn 978 0 7546 4650 1
Africa’s Development in the Twenty-first Century
Pertinent Socio-Economic and Development Issues
Edited by Kwadwo Konadu-agyemang and Kwamina Panford
ISBn 978 0 7546 4478 1
Dot Com mantra
Social Computing in the Central Himalayas
PayaL arora
Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
© Payal arora 2010
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Payal arora has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be
identified as the author of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing Limited ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court East Suite 420
Union road 101 Cherry Street
Farnham Burlington
Surrey, GU9 7Pt Vt 05401-4405
England USa
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
arora, Payal.
Dot com mantra : social computing in the central Himalayas.
-- (Voices in development management)
1. Internet--Social aspects--Himalaya mountains region.
2. Internet--Economic aspects--Himalaya mountains region.
3. right to Internet access--Himalaya mountains region.
4. Computer users--Himalaya mountains region. 5. Internet
and the poor--Himalaya mountains region. 6. Education--
Effect of technological innovations on--Himalaya mountains
region. 7. rural poor--Education--technological
innovations--Himalaya mountains region.
I. title II. Series
303.4'834'095496-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
arora, Payal.
Dot com mantra : social computing in the Central Himalayas / by Payal arora.
p. cm. -- (Voices in development management)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBn 978-1-4094-0107-0 (hbk) -- ISBn 978-1-4094-0108-7 (ebk)
1. Internet--Social aspects--India--almora. 2. Computer networks--Social aspects--India--
almora. 3. Computer literacy--India--almora. 4. almora (India)--Social conditions. I. title.
Hn690.a455a76 2010
303.48'33095451--dc22
2010017056
ISBn 9781409401070 (hbk)
ISBn 9781409401087 (ebk)II
Contents
List of Figures vii
Foreword ix
by mark Warschauer
Preface xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
1 Introduction 1
Local as Celebrity 1
Social Learning with Computers 2
methodology 4
techno-revelations for Development Policy and Practice 7
organization of the argument 8
2 Frogs to Princes: Taking the Leap 13
the Pathway to Good Intentions: the Development Story 13
new technology and Social Change 16
anthropology of the artifact: Contexts – Communities – Conducts 21
Human Ingenuity, technology and Development in India 25
PArT I ALMOrA
3 This is India, Madam! 33
In Search of a Man-Eating Catfish 33
Here Comes Sonia Gandhi! 39
Swami Mafia 40
In God We trust, the rest is all Cash: the Simple Villager? 44
4 New Technology, Old Practices 55
It’s all in the Family 55
the Darling Child of Development: the Cellphone 59
Cashing in on technology 61
Playing Low Key 63
Chullah and the Pump: Gender and technology 66
vi Dot Com Mantra
PArT II COMPuTErS AND rurAL DEvELOPMENT
5 Goodbye to the Patwaris 71
Peasant revolutions of the Past and Present 71
new Intermediaries in the making 73
E-agriculture Solutions Coming to town 76
Kisan Sangattans 78
Consensus, Contention and Circulation of Conversation 80
Learning to Decide 94
6 Excavating relics of an Educational Idea:
The romance of Free Learning 97
Ethnographer as archeologist 97
Digging Up the Past 100
School as you Go 102
Private Distance from Public Education 105
Playground Kiosk Democracy 106
a Beautiful Idea 109
PArT III COMPuTING AND CyBErCAFéS
7 Copycats and underdogs of the Himalayas 115
Cybercafés as after-School Centers 115
you Scratch my Back, I Scratch yours 118
Who’s the Boss? 124
the Perfect thesis 130
the “Epidemic” of Plagiarism 133
8 Let’s Go Shopping! 137
new Educational Consumers 137
Shop till you Drop 138
mona Lisa and Bathroom tiles 144
are Finders Keepers? 148
9 Leisure, Labor, Learning 149
orkut Saves the Day 149
Can the Poor Come out to Play? 151
the tale of two People 157
the Blasphemy of Leisure 162
10 Conclusion 167
Bibliography 173
Index 187
List of Figures
1.1 map of Uttarakhand, India 3
1.2 researcher with Balwadi teachers at USnPSS 6
3.1 House on the Hill in almora 34
3.2 View of Settlements in almora 35
3.3 Signs of Cybercafés on Entering almora town 37
3.4 Woman and Girl Carrying Firewood 47
4.1 a Balwadi (Pre-School) Gathering 55
4.2 a Village Home 56
4.3 Village Water Pump 66
5.1 Uttarakhand Seva nidhi 80
6.1 HiWEL Learning Station in almora town 97
6.2 HiWEL Learning Station in Hawalbagh Village 98
6.3 Boys at a Computer Kiosk in andhra Pradesh, India 108
7.1 Cybercafé in almora town 116
7.2 Signage outside Cybercafé 117
9.1 Matrix appropriated 150
9.2 Digital romance Fantasy 150
Table
9.1 Comparison of Intercolleges on Computers in almora 152
To
Padraig Seosamh Tobin
Foreword
mark Warschauer
Professor of Education and Informatics, University of California, Irvine
In a recent discussion of the one Laptop Per Child (oLPC) program’s desire to
place computers in the hands of every Indian child, one laptop enthusiast was
asked how he was so confident that rural children, who may have never been to
school, could make productive use of laptops for learning. “Well, after all,” he
replied, “they are digital natives.”
Deterministic views of the positive power of technology are seldom as extreme
as this; after all, how many people believe that simply being born in the information
era will endow certain capabilities on youth, even if they and their friends,
relatives, neighbors and teachers, may never have touched a computer? yet the
belief that new technology has some magical power to solve or bypass complex
social, educational, economic and political problems is certainly widespread, as
witnessed, for example, by the oLPC program itself (for one critique, see Kraemer,
Dedrick and Sharma, 2009).
Unfortunately, the most common counter to this naïve techno-optimism is a
narrow-sighted techno-pessimism that focuses solely on the problems associated
with new media and fails to recognize their potential value in individual and social
development. Techno-pessimists deny that those on the margins could benefit
from any use of computers, since presumably all other more pressing social and
economic problems would need to be solved before the poor could productively
deploy new technology.
Chris Dede succinctly foiled both the techno-optimists and pessimists with a
simple metaphor. as he explained in testimony to the US Congress:
Information technologies are more like clothes than like fire. Fire is a wonderful
technology because, without knowing anything about how it operates, you can
get warm just standing close by. People sometimes find computers, televisions
and telecommunications frustrating because they expect these devices to radiate
knowledge. But all information technologies are more like clothes; to get a
benefit, you must make them a part of your personal space, tailored to your
needs. new media complement existing approaches to widen our repertoire of
communication; properly designed, they do not eliminate choices or force us
into high tech, low touch situations. (Dede, 1995)