UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES

SALAAM

COLLEGE OF ICT

CS336

Trends and Social-Cultural Implications of

Information Technology

Instructor: Dr. Herrieth Machiwa

 Objectives
The objectives of this course are
to:
Study how the social, cultural and
political background can affect the way
computers are used in a given society and
the possible societal, cultural and political
impact of the generalized use of
computers in a given society.

To review the state of the art in

computerization in our society.
 Learning Outcomes
 Upon the end of the course, students should be
able to:
o Explain the social, cultural and political background
that affect the way computer are used in a given
society.
o Explain trends in development of ICT and
application software in general
o Make use of computers in Agriculture, Medical and
Health care, Water supply, etc.
o Demonstrate an understanding of the current state
of art of computer technology and possible
integration of Artificial Intelligence.
 Content
 Introduction to Course
 Computer Information and Communication
Technologies
 Computer and Agriculture
 Computer and Health
 Computer and Water Supply
 General Impact of computers
 Trends in development of IT
 Future of Computer Technology with AI
 Course Info.
 Primary Text:
 Arnold Pacey (2007). Technology in World
Civilization: A Thousand-Year History. The MIT
Press Cambridge, Massachusetts USA

 Richard Silberglitt, Philip S. Anton, David R.

Howell, Anny Wong, (2006), The Global
Technology Revolution 2020, Executive
Summary: Bio/Nano/Materials/Information
Trends, Drivers, Barriers, and Social
Implications, RAND Corporation
Course Info.
 Course Assessment:
 Coursework: Accounts for 40%
 Assignments: 20%
 Mid-Term: 20% (one or two tests)
 Final Exam: Accounts for 60%

 N. B.: Slight modification might happen as we

progress
Scholarly discussion on
Computerization
 What are the effects of computerization on our society?
 For instance, what does it mean when people say that
the Internet will re-shape society?
 How much will people telecommunicate and how will
telecommucating practices change the way we work?
 Will the increased use of computers and the presence
of the Internet radically reduce the enrollments in
colleges and universities whose programs are “place-
based?”
Scholarly discussion on
Computerization
 How will the Web change the ways that people
search for and use medical information?

 These questions are a sample of the ongoing

and ever-increasing discussion about the ways
in which computer-based systems – more
broadly “information and communication
technologies (ICTs)” – are playing powerful roles
in reshaping organizations and social relations.
The disconnect between popular and
scholarly discussion
 These discussions take place in a variety of
arenas, including personal conversations,
newspaper articles, writings by pundits,
textbooks about designing and/or managing
ICTs, policy analyses, careful professional
accounts in professional magazines, and
systematic academic research.
 Social-cultural Factors
 Society and culture reflect social values of the people.
- Society: the group of people living together in an
organized community, making decisions about how to
do things and sharing the work that needs to be
done.
- Culture: the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a
particular people or society.
 Social values are a set of moral principles defined by
society dynamics, institutions, traditions and cultural
beliefs.
 Social-cultural Factors
 The key factors determine social values are:
1. Culture; ideas about what is good, right, fair, and
just.
2. Language; how language is used can determine
your social identity and interaction with others.
3. Religion; Religious beliefs also shape many kinds of
values that citizens hold.
4. Level of education;
5. Laws;
6. Politics;
7. The attitude of the society.
Social-cultural Factors
 How does social values in Tanzania affect
use of ICT
o Understand the topic
o Define research
o Gather relevant information
o Analyze gathered information
o Discuss results
o Conclude
ICTs
 The acronym “ICT” refers to information and
communication technology -- artifacts and
practices for recording, organizing, storing,
manipulating, and communicating information.

 Today, many people’s attention is focused on

new ICTs, such as those developed with
computer and telecommunication equipment.
ICTs
 But ICTs include a wider array of artifacts,
such as telephones, faxes, photocopiers,
movies, books and journal articles.

 They also include practices such as software

testing methods, approaches to cataloging
and indexing documents in a library, and
knowledge body on consequences of ICT in
society (Social informatics)
Social Informatics - Background
 Social informatics refers to the body of
systematic research about the social aspects
of ICTs.

 It is the interdisciplinary study of the design,

uses and consequences of ICT that takes into
account their interaction with institutional
and cultural contexts.
Social Informatics - Background
 Social informatics is the study of information
and communication tools in cultural or
institutional contexts.

 Unfortunately, the findings and theories from

most of the systematic research rarely appear
(in popularized form) in the popular media or
even in many of the textbooks and policy
analyses.
Social Informatics - Background
 The interested layperson or professional who
goes to a large chain bookstore would have
trouble finding these materials.

 Instead, they will more readily find materials

written by pundits and journalists who don’t
seem to read Social Informatics related
research.
Social Informatics - Background
 The broad public discourse on changes to
both organizational and societal life due to
the increased presence and use of ICTs is
being shaped in part by personal
experiences, journalists’ reporting, pundits’
predictions, technologically utopian and
dystopian accounts in a range of literatures,
and high-level policy discussions.
Social Informatics - Background
 This discourse on ICTs and social change pervades
our lives, even though many discussions of the
roles of ICTs focus primarily on technical features.

 Moreover, many of the popular discussions about

the roles and socio-economic effects of ICTs are
often based on vivid, compelling and well-
articulated, but essentially armchair or anecdotal,
speculation.
Social Informatics - Background
 Social informatics is a new name for this
body of knowledge.

 A serviceable working definition of social

informatics is the systematic study of the social
aspects of computerization
Defining social informatics
 Since the deployment of the first commercial
digital computers in the 1950s, their potential
power to extend human and organizational
capabilities has excited the imaginations of
many people.

 They also evoked fears that their uses would

lead to massive social problems, such as
widespread unemployment.
Defining social informatics
 In the late 1960s and early 1970s some social
scientists began empirical observational studies of
the consequences of computerization inside
organizations.
 During the 1970s and 1980s this body of research
expanded to cover topics such as the relationship
between computerization and changes in the ways
in which work was organized, organizations were
structured, distributions of power were altered, and
so on
Defining social informatics
 By the 1980s, research about the social aspects of ICTs was
conducted by academics in a number of different fields,
including information systems, information science,
computer science, sociology, political science, and
communications.

 These researchers used a number of different labels for

their specialty area, including “social analysis of
computing,” “social impacts of computing,” “information
systems research,” and “behavioral information systems
research.”
Working definition for social
informatics:
 Social informatics refers to the interdisciplinary
study of the design, uses and consequences of
ICTs that takes into account their interaction with
institutional and cultural contexts.

 Organizational informatics refers to those social

informatics analyses bounded within
organizations, where the primary participants are
located within a few identifiable organizations.
Working definition for social
informatics:
 The definition of social informatics helps to
emphasize a key idea:
o ICTs do not exist in social or technological isolation.

 Their “cultural and institutional contexts”

influence the ways in which they are developed,
the kinds of workable configurations that are
proposed, how they are implemented and used,
and the range of consequences that occur for
organizations and other social groupings.
Working definition for social
informatics:
 Social informatics is characterized by the
problems being examined rather than by the
theories or methods used in a research study.

 Social informatics research is empirically

focused and helps interpret the vexing issues
people face when they work and live with
systems in which advanced ICTs are important
and increasingly pervasive components.
Social Informatics Research
 Social informatics research comprises
o Normative orientations,
o Analytical orientations,, and
o Critical orientations.
Social Informatics Research
 The normative orientation refers to research
whose aim is to recommend alternatives for
professionals who design, implement, use, or make
policy about ICTs.

 Normative research has an explicit goal of

influencing practice by providing empirical
evidence illustrating the varied outcomes that
occur as people work with ICTs in a wide range of
organizational and social contexts.
Social Informatics Research
 For example, some early research (e.g., Lucas,
1973) showed that information systems were
much more effectively utilized when the people
who worked with them routinely had some voice in
their design (user-design).

 One approach, called participatory design, built on

this insight, and researchers tried to find different
ways that users could more effectively influence
the designs of systems that they use.
Social Informatics Research
 Further, some of these studies found that it was
important to change work practices and system
designs together, rather than to adapt work practices
to ICTs that were imposed in workplaces.

 The recommendations from this body of research are

rather direct: e.g. ICT specialists and managers
should not impose ICTs on workers without involving
them in shaping the new ICTs and the redesign of
their work practices.
Social Informatics Research
 The recommendations from this body of
research are rather direct: ICT specialists and
managers should not impose ICTs on workers
without involving them in shaping the new
ICTs and the redesign of their work practices.
Social Informatics Research
 The analytical orientation refers to studies that
develop theories about ICTs in institutional and
cultural contexts, or to empirical studies that are
organized to contribute to such theorizing.

 Analytical research develops concepts and theories

to help generalize from an understanding of ICT
use in a few particular settings to other ICTs and
their uses in other settings.
Social Informatics Research
 The critical orientation refers to examining ICTs
from perspectives that do not automatically and
uncritically accept the goals and beliefs of the groups
that commission, design, or implement specific ICTs.

 It encourages information professionals and

researchers to examine ICTs from multiple
perspectives and to examine possible failure modes
and service losses, as well as ideal or routine ICT
operations.
Social Informatics Research (Quiz – 2
Marks)
 Some lawyers wanted to develop an expert
system that would completely automate the
task of coding documents used as evidence in
civil litigation. The Social Informatician, Lucy
Suchman (1996), examined the work of clerks
who carried out this coding work and learned
that it often required much more complex
judgements than could be made by rule-based
expert systems. She recommended that
information systems be designed to help the
clerks with their work rather than to replace
them.

 Briefly explain what kind of social informatic

research was applied in this regard. Explain WHY?
The Value of Social Informatics
 One reason that many predictions about the social effects
of specific ICT consequences have proven inaccurate is
that they are based on oversimplified conceptual models
of specific kinds of ICTs or of the nature of the
relationship between technology and social change.

 For example, many analyses of computerization assume

that:
o ICTs have direct effects upon organizations and social life;
o these effects depend primarily upon the ICT's information
processing features.
The Value of Social Informatics
 The pervasiveness of computing in social life and
organizational work underscores the nuanced and
interwoven arrangements that arise between
people, what they do, and the ICTs they use.

 This increasing interconnection between the social

and the technical aspects of our worlds highlights
the potential value of conceptualizing such
arrangements as socio-technical networks.
The Socio‑technical Networks
 Socio-technical networks refer to the interactions
between people, organizations, institutions, and a
range of technologies in rather intricate
heterogeneous arrangements in which what is "social"
and what is "technical" cannot be readily isolated in
practice.

 Social-technical perspective considers two kinds of

traditional research approaches
o Social Shaping of Technology (SST) tradition;
o Socio-Technical Systems (STS) tradition.
The Socio‑technical Networks
 Social Shaping of Technology (SST) tradition
research refers to the social studies of science and
technology focuses on large-scale socio-technical
ensembles that examine the ways in which social
arrangements shape emergent technologies.

 For instance:
o The uses a socio-technical framework to discuss the
development of a wide range of dissimilar technologies,
such as bicycles, the origin of plastic (bakelite), and other
innovations.
The Socio‑technical Networks
 Socio-Technical Systems (STS) tradition
research emphasizes on workplace interactions with
various technologies with STS researchers focused on
developing socially sensitive, ethical, and humane
methods for technology design.

 For instance:
o The STS scholars have developed concepts and
evaluations for use in the analysis of organizational
structures and in the diagnosis of workplace
discontinuities.
Fundamental ideas of social informatics
 Theoretical Approaches
o Direct Effects Theories
 To identify the social consequences of
computerizing some activity, one must have, at
least implicitly, a theory of the causal powers
that computerized systems can exert upon
individuals, groups, organizations, institutions,
social networks, social worlds, and other social
entities.

 One common theoretical approach is to

conceptualize ICTs as a collection of equipment,
artifacts or techniques which provide specifiable
information processing capabilities and which
have identifiable costs, physical characteristics,
and skill requirements.
 Direct effects theories underlay the earliest
efforts to anticipate the social
consequences of computerization in
organizations.
 Laudon and Marr (1996) argue that the direct
effects model has a strong appeal to researchers
because of the seemingly “natural” causality that
is implied by the effects of computerization on
organizational structure and process. They point
to researchers who have argued that, for example,
the introduction of computers into organizations
will lead directly to the massive elimination of
some jobs, such as middle managers, because
their information handling roles will be taken over
by the machines.
 As one example, Huber (1990:95) concluded that “use
of computer‑assisted information processing and
communication technologies would lead to elimination
of human nodes in the information processing network
 However these direct effects arguments
that link the use of new ICTs to
organizational and social change have not
generalized very well
 As a body of research develops about possible
direct effects of ICTs, such as computerization
reducing hierarchy in organizations or the
Internet improving the public’s access to
medical information, the collection of studies
usually shows “mixed effects.”
 Sometimes the expected consequence happens
(i.e., hierarchies flatten in some organizations;
some groups improve their access to medication
information via the Internet).
 At other times, there is no significant impact.
 And, in some cases, ICT use seems to lead to
effects that are opposite to those that were
anticipated. The intriguing case made in the
1980s for the rise of paperless offices is worth
recounting as an accessible example of this
variety of “impacts” from ICT use.
 Davenport (1988) observed that the direct
effects of large scale organizational information
systems, such as enterprise resource planning
systems, were often relatively minor because so
many organization-specific contingencies
influenced how they were actually configured
and used.
 In general, there is no universal pattern found
in work groups or in organizations (see Fulk and
DeSanctis, 1998). ICT use has also been shown
to have different consequences for the way that
work is organized, and the extent to which jobs
are deskilled (as in the case of telephone
operators) or enriched (as in the case of
accountants) (See Kling and Jewett, 1994)
Varied Effects Of ICT Use
 In general, there is no universal pattern found in work
groups or in organizations (see Fulk and DeSanctis, 1998).

 ICT use has also been shown to have different

consequences for the way that work is organized, and the
extent to which jobs are deskilled (as in the case of
telephone operators) or enriched (as in the case of
accountants) (See Kling and Jewett, 1994) .
The Socio‑technical Character of ICTs
 ICT is a "socio‑technical network" that brings together
diverse resources, including:
o people in various roles and relationships with each other and
with other system elements;
o hardware (computer mainframes, workstations, peripherals,
telecommunications equipment);
o software (operating systems, utilities and application
programs);
o techniques (management science models, voting schemes);
o support resources (training/support/help); and
o information structures (content and content providers,
rules/norms/regulations, such as those that authorize people
to use systems and information in specific ways, access
controls)
The Socio‑technical Character of ICTs
 Tasks for the social systems analyst might include:
o “Shadowing” managers and workers to determine likely
uses of the planned system;
o Participating in system design efforts to ensure that the
system fits the organizational structure and culture;
o Facilitating user participation in the design activity;
o Assessing current work practices and creating new ones;
o Planning the implementation, including education and
training; and
o observing the system in use and making appropriate
changes.
The Socio‑technical Character of ICTs
 The design and deployment of ICTs is influenced by the
interests and orientations of some groups
o Stakeholders for an ICT design differ depending on the nature of
the ICT and the designing organizations e.g. the design team
itself, people who will actually utilize the ICT, and the designing
organizations.

o The development of ICT applications requires involvement of

variety of distinct communities e.g. composed of workers with
different skills using different representational frameworks. This
necessary heterogeneity poses a number of problems which
cannot be removed simply by ensuring good communication
between the differing groups.

 Earlier, we indicated why direct effects theories
of the consequences of computerization have not
been very effective.

 Similar to direct effects models, technological

determinism treats ICTs as information
processing systems whose technical
characteristics cause specific social changes
when they are adopted and used.
 While technological determinism can be applicable and
useful in situations that are characterized by high
degrees of control and short time frames, it has limited
value in dynamic and complex situations that unfold
over longer periods of time.

 Technological determinism cannot adequately account

for the interactions between ICTs, the people who
design, implement and use them, and the social and
organizational contexts in which the technologies and
people are embedded.
The social design of ICTs
 A growing number of researchers and practitioners
are working to develop methodologies that take
into account peoples’ everyday work practices and
activities (e.g., Davenport, 1996; Denning &
Dargan, 1994, Sachs, 1995).
o Davenport (1996) believes that system developers
need specialists in the field (called “social systems
analysts”) who will be responsible for communicating
with technologists and managing organizational
change efforts.
Systems rationalism
 Systems rationalism is a perspective that conceptualizes
ICTs as rule-bound and carefully structured and then
generalizes these characteristics to people, groups, and
organizations.

 From this perspective, organizations and the people who

work in them constitute rational systems, with formal
common goals and work practices carefully designed to
meet these goals; these systems can be analyzed at
varying levels of granularity, in terms of the costs and
benefits of alternative sets of goals and practices.
Systems rationalism
 Systems rationalism can be useful as a starting point to help
understand the value of ICTs in organizational practices,
social activities, and work life, but it is not a good endpoint for
analysis.

 Like all analytical models, systems rationalism simplifies the

nature of technologies, the nature of people and their
relationships, and the ways in which people interact with
technologies.

 However, the problem with systems rationalism is not only

that it represents a simplification, but rather that it represents
a simplification that tends to emphasize formalities.
Systems rationalism
 The vast discrepancy between a formal listing of
job tasks and how employees actually spend
their time also includes the issue of how formal
job descriptions overlook the amount of
dependency that workers have on other people.

 Systems rationalism depicts as streamlined

processes that are much more messy and
complex.
Consequences of ICTs
1. Communicative and computational
roles of computer systems
One important aspect of the direct effects and
systems rationalist theories of computerization is that
their proponents tend to emphasize only some of a
computer systems’ information processing features,
such as the size and contents of the corpus of a
digital library or the mathematical approach of a
forecasting model. However, computerized systems
usually play communicative roles as well.
Consequences of ICTs
2. There are important temporal and
spatial dimensions of ICT consequences

 Some of the popular conceptions of the

consequences of ICTs for space and time are
misleading. For example, it is an advertising cliche
to say that “computer networks eliminate space
and time.”

 It is also hyperbole, when in practice organizations

have been able to reduce some temporal and
spatial barriers for work, communicating with their
clients, and so on.
Consequences of ICTs

 An ICT that eliminated space and time might

seem to offer tremendous convenience for
individual users; however, since they could
also be continually accessible to others -
regardless of their locations or time zones -
people who are working with many other
people could be easily inundated with
communications and demands.

 ICTs are enabling people and organizations

to reduce some of the communicational
restrictions of space and time -- in ways that
we do not understand very well.
Consequences of ICTs
3. ICTs are interpreted and used in
different ways by different people.

 The simplest conception of an ICT (or service),

such as e-mail, a specific digital library, a project
scheduling system, etc. is that it embodies the
same meanings for everyone who uses it.
However, social informatics researchers have
found that people frequently interpret and interact
with ICTs in more complex and varied ways.
Consequences of ICTs

 One key idea of social informatics research is that

the “social context” of ICT development and use
plays a significant role in influencing the ways that
people use information and technologies, and thus
influences their consequences for work,
organizations, and other social relationships.

 Social context does not refer to some abstracted

“cloud” that hovers above people and ICT; it refers
to a specific matrix of social relationships. For
example, social context may be characterized by
particular incentive systems for organizing and
sharing information at work.
Consequences of ICTs

 The use of the WWW in university instruction today

is another interesting example.
 A small fraction of university faculty are eager to explore
the WWW as a way to enhance some aspect of their
teaching -- whether it is making class materials more
readily available to their students, developing on-line
discussions or devising new forms of interactive activities.

 Many faculty, especially non-technical faculty at research

universities, are much less interested in working with the
WWW because they believe that using it would require a
lot of time to learn HTML and other ICTs, to develop and
maintain materials, and so on.
Consequences of ICTs
4. ICTs enable and constrain social
actions and social relationships

 ICTs are sometimes called “technologies of

freedom” because they extend the abilities of
people and organizations to access data,
communicate, etc.

 It is common for many technology-centered

accounts of new ICTs to emphasizes the ways that
they enable new kinds of action that were
previously more costly, difficult or impossible.
However, many of ICTs’ freedoms come with some
less visible constraints.
Consequences of ICTs

 The shift from paper to electronic documents offers

some interesting examples. People who work with
paper documents often face the constraints of
needing to travel to a library to obtain them.

 However, once they are in hand, they can be read

virtually anywhere.

 In contrast, digital libraries open the possibility of

having documents accessible on one’s desktop.
 However, unless they are then printed out, people
can’t easily read them on planes, in bed, at the beach,
etc.
Consequences of ICTs

 Researchers frequently find that ICTs, in use, do

not simply “open new possibilities” for
organizational action, for organizing work, for
professional communication, for supporting
education, and so on. Rather, they restructure
information processing (and social relationships).
Consequences of ICTs
5. ICTs and the control of users

 When they are first introduced into social settings,

the relationship between ICT use and social
structures is reciprocal.

 Organizational informatics researchers have found

that ICTs can restructure workplaces through the
ways in which they are incorporated into the
everyday lives of those who use them.

 Technologies are also shaped by the everyday

actions of those who routinely use them and the
social settings within which they have been
implemented.
Consequences of ICTs

 However, organizations usually stabilize around

some configurations of work practices and ICT
configurations.

 Thereafter, changes are incremental until there is

some substantial “outside change” - such as
changing physical locations, a shift to a new kind
of ICT, a major shift in the mix of work or services
being produced, etc.
Consequences of ICTs

 Once organizations stabilize around some technological

configurations (especially standards for complex
infrastructures such as networking protocols, operating
system families, and databases), they become taken
for granted and institutionalized in ways that impede
other subsequent innovations.

 Today, for example, PCs are commonplace forms of

workstations in virtually any kind of organization.
However, in the early 1980s, mainframes or
minicomputers running large DBMS and analytical
programs and connected to workers via “dumb
terminals” dominated the organizational computing
landscape.
Consequences of ICTs
6. ICTs often have important political
consequences

 In scientific communities, the term “politics” has

an ambiguous status. When analysts use it to
refer to governance processes in the larger
society, such as the election of public officials,
debate on public policies, development of
legislation, etc, it can have a positive valence.

 However, some scientists view the term

“organizational politics” with some distaste, as if
political processes are necessarily dysfunctional
and inappropriate.
Consequences of ICTs

 Researchers who study organizations have found that

organizations do not function simply as task systems.

 In practice, a view of organizations as political networks

has added an important dimension to the study of
organizations generally and to understanding the roles of
ICTs in organizational change in particular.

 When viewed as political networks, organizations can be

seen to have governance structures, ways of allocating
important resources, and ways of legitimizing their
actions.
Consequences of ICTs
7. There can be negative consequences of
ICT developments for some stakeholders
 New ICT developments are usually promoted by their
sponsors in terms of their foreseeable, direct benefits to
some groups. However, it is common when mobilizing
support for them to downplay or ignore their
disadvantages. For example:
o Many large business firms have introduced Enterprise Resource
Planning systems that can help them to streamline their
information flows,and save support costs by having a common
systems infrastructure. However, deploying these systems has
led to significant centralization in some firms, as well as
disruption.
o Many business firms, large and small, are encouraged to
develop WWW sites as a way of enhancing their marketing and
increasing their sales. However, many are losing significant
amounts of money on their efforts at electronic commerce.
Consequences of ICTs
8. ICTs rarely cause social
transformations
 Much of the popular literature about ICTs and social
change emphasize “social transformations” and the
ways in which ICTs create new social worlds.
Empirically-oriented social informatics researchers
who carefully study ICTs and social change find that
the pace of change is relatively slow, and that there
are usually important continuities in social life in
addition to the discontinuities.

 Bold claims have been made about how ICTs have

“transformed work.” Guzdial and Ord’s (1996) claim
that: “The nature of work is currently undergoing a
complete transformation. . . .
Consequences of ICTs

Information technology is underpinning this

transformation” typifies a commonplace claim in the
business and technology press.

Some pundits go further in emphasizing the rise of

virtual offices, the replacement of jobs with project-
level assignments, the demise of large organizations,
and so on.
ICT convergence theory
 ICT convergence theory serves as a basis for analysis of
ongoing changes and evolution in the present networks
of the computer technology in relation to its interaction
to social and human.
 The theory emphasizes research on interaction between
objective and subjective environmental factors
commonly entitled as ‘Interplay between ICT – Humans
– Society’.
 The objective environment refers to acting entities in
the area of concern out of large groups of population.
 The subjective environment refers to perceptions and
attitudes of the acting entities towards the environment.
 Factors of subjective environment are therefore related
to corresponding sets of factors in the objective
environment.
ICT convergence theory
 The interplay/interaction between objective
and subjective is normally mapped by
convergence model.

 The convergence model is primarily

graphical illustration of changes in interplay
between and within objects affected by
focused social informatics network.

 The illustration use four circles with dotted

lines referred to as virtual reality, which
surrounding the set of converging objects.
ICT convergence theory
 The four circles of objective environmental
factors, virtual reality, can be connected
through subjective environmental factors to
lead to effects on humans.

 The connection/network of social-related

subjective factors can be arranged in
different orders depends on how objective
factors interact with humans in particular
society.

 There are currently three known orders of

network between the factors to effects on
human being.
ICT convergence theory
1. Bus convergence theory
 The four objective environment factors forms
bus-like interaction.
 The subjective factors of individual object can
independently drive effect of the object on
human.
 The factors can also complement each other
depends on interaction between subjective
factors of different objects.
ICT convergence theory
2. Star convergence theory
 The four objective environment factors forms
star-like interaction.
 The subjective factors of objects balance
interactions for impact on human to reach
equilibrium (positive diffusion).
 The factors supplement each other depends on
interaction between subjective factors of
different objects.
ICT convergence theory
3. Mesh convergence theory
 The four objective environment factors forms
mesh-like interaction.
 The subjective factors of objects interact on
crosscut manner for impact on human to reach
equilibrium.
 The factors subsidize one another depends on
interaction between subjective factors of
different objects.
ICT convergence theory
 The four objective factors that represent
virtual reality groups are:
o ICT factors,
o life environment factors,
o life role factors,
o Globalization factors.

 Each factor is deduced into sub-factors

depending on behavior of focused
community

 The subjective environment factors are

derived based on interactions of objects for
impact on human.
Project: ICT convergence theory on
Agriculture
 Each student is given sub-factor of objective
environment factors to deduce respective
subjective factors that impact diffusion of
technology in agricultural practices in Tanzania:
o More understanding of relationship and interaction
among factors and sub-factors can be established from
given readings (e-books).
o Perform desk research on how assigned sub-factor affect
diffusion of ICT into agricultural practices in Tanzania.

o Use relevant publications and references to deduce

subjective environment factors.

o Create diagrammatic representation of possible

interaction (subjective factors) between assigned sub-
factor and other objective factors for impact on human.
Project: ICT convergence theory on
Agriculture
o Draw conclusion and recommendation on best way on which
assigned sub-factor can lead to positive diffusion of ICT in
agriculture (equilibrium)

o Assignment of sub-factors to each student is given in excel

file submitted to you through CR.

o Compose a word document whose body comprise of at least

1250 words (i.e. 5 pages excluding cover or reference page)

o Font-size = 12, Font-type = Times New Romans, Spacing =

1.5

 Submission Deadline: January 26, 2019

(1600hrs)
 This assignment accounts for 20 Marks of
Coursework