Full Circle Associates

Worth noting that the latest version of the Journal of Community Informatics is out (Vol. 2, No. 1) with some good looking articles. One caught my eye right away, A short movie about ICT, by Steve Cisler. Riffing off a recent Harper's magazine article about the making of the Iraq war movie, Jarhead, Cisler...

"began thinking about a documentary that would never be made: the life of an ICT project. It is of little interest to most people, any more than a movie about plumbing would capture a large audience. But we are a small, specialized audience so come into the viewing room. This is a rough cut...

The movie begins with an office scene: a few program officers sitting in a meeting room in Ottawa or Washington or London or The Hague or Geneva. It's getting near the end of the fiscal year, and there is some money left in their budget for another pilot project. They know that if it is not spent, it will be hard to justify an increase for their agency in the next budget cycle.

Read the whole thing. Cisler cuts to the heart of the problems of northern-led development efforts that live outside of the full context of the communities and countries being "helped." Politically motivated or well meaning, the type of aid described in this parody is troubling in that we really don't know what we are doing. It's not just one misstep. Read the whole thing. Think about the accumulation of inffective thinking and choices.

As Pogo said (and has been quoted many times) "we have met the enemy and he is us."

Categories: nptech, development, ICT