Apr 19, 2009

AnnaLee Saxenian on the Importance of ICTD

From the Imperial Valley News

Microsoft Research India Investigates How to Make Technology Work where Electricity is Scarce

Doha, Qatar - When Microsoft Research’s India lab was launched in 2005, assistant managing director Kentaro Toyama found himself far from his work in Redmond, Wash., where he had been researching computer vision and other highly technical projects.

Instead of pushing the boundaries of technology itself, part of his new charter at Microsoft Research India was to investigate the intersection of technology and society with India as a test bed. Toyama soon realized the importance and scale of the challenge....

Toyama has overseen dozens of research projects in that time, but one of his biggest accomplishments has been to co-found the tech industry’s seminal conference in this specialized field, the International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development (ICTD), which takes place this weekend in Doha, Qatar....

In contrast with traditional technology conferences, ICTD features a broad range of sociologists, economists, anthropologists and others seeking to understand how technology and humanity can interact for the greater good....

So what’s in all this for Microsoft? According to AnnaLee Saxenian, professor and dean of University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information — who co-founded ICTD along with Toyama and Carnegie Mellon University’s Raj Reddy — the one thing everyone agrees on is that the opportunity to combine technology and business with positive social change is an exciting one.

“The world has how many billion people, and there are four billion still living in poverty?” says Saxenian. “It’s not just a matter of the future of Microsoft, it’s really the future of the largest portion of humanity.”

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Last updated:

October 4, 2016