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Bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb continues his exploration of randomness in his fascinating new book, The Black Swan, in which he examines the influence of highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact. Engaging and enlightening, The Black Swan is a book that may change the way you think about the world, a book that Chris Anderson calls, "a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature." See Anderson's entire guest review below.
Guest Reviewer: Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.
Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." Now consider the typical stock market report: "Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production." Sigh. We're still doing it.
Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't--and, most importantly, can't--know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but it's something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt.
The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, "all swans are white" had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia.
Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, "History does not crawl, it jumps." Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan," while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of "Extremistan."
In full disclosure, I'm a long admirer of Taleb's work and a few of my comments on drafts found their way into the book. I, too, look at the world through the powerlaw lens, and I too find that it reveals how many of our assumptions are wrong. But Taleb takes this to a new level with a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature. --Chris Anderson
Book Description
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”
For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan.
Customer Reviews:
Black Swan CEOs.......2007-10-23
This book really helped me to understand why some companies and some CEOs are not only outliers, but SPECIAL CAUSE outliers. It explains Google, Warren Buffett, and other superperforming phenomenon. Black Swan CEOs are rare, have tremendous impact, and their astonishingly successful companies always seem predictable when you look back. Makes a great case for change if you are stuck in "Mediocristan"
also read Superperformance
Expect the Unexpected..........2007-10-23
Taleb takes aim at those (especially in the financial markets) who predict the likely outcome and how we in society rarely examine the unpredicted. He argues that knowing the future is unknowable. He has covered this topic before in his 2001 best-seller, "Fooled by Randomness." Overall an interesting book.
I also highly recommend the book Understanding: Train of Thought; you won't be disappointed.
The Black Swan - An Epistemic Fowl.......2007-10-22
The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable could have been titled The Black Swan - An Epistemic Fowl, but this might have impaired sales. Nassim Nicholas Taleb arrives at his erudite but not arrogant story after a childhood in war torn Lebanon, obtaining a Wharton MBA and years trading on Wall Street. He makes abundant use of these experiences as he weaves a complex story about the importance of these inadequately appreciated rare events to our increasingly quantified and specialized world.
His journey takes us from Plato to Popper, from Gauss to Mandelbrot and from errors of induction to errors of confirmation. An appreciation of epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge) is not required but will make the journey more enjoyable. He sets up a straw horse by showing the inadequacy of the Gaussian distribution to account for events which are several standard deviations from the mean and, therefore, are the events in which we have the least confidence. He offers some hope by using a fractal (power series) model which allows him to transform some of his black swan intractable problems to tractable gray swan problems. However, his analysis is non exhaustive and he does not consider non Gaussian models or discontinuous distributions.
We are left with an adequate argument against Gaussian quantitative models but with no replacement except the traditional qualitative narrative of boom and bust, creation and destruction which has been part of human culture for thousands of years.
A Distortion of History.......2007-10-22
Mr. Taleb's book is quite entertaining with the wealth of anecdotal situations he addresses. He focuses his analysis on particular examples that confirm the theory that random events control the course of history. Nevertheless, the little history he quotes is his autobiographical reference is inaccurate. On page four he states, "Both sides of my family came from the Greco-Syrian community, the last Byzantine outpost in northern Syria, which is now called Lebanon...We originate from the olive-growing area at the base of Mount Lebanon--we chased the Maronite Christians into the mountains in the famous battle of Amioun, my ancestral village." All historical records, including one written by a man from Amioun, Mr. Chedid Al-Azar, describe the battle of Amioun as a victory of the Maronites over the Byzantine troops in which the two Byzantine generals, Murik and Murikian, were killed. How did this battle become a chase of the Maronites into the mountains? Mr. Taleb is not doing himself or the reader a favor by bringing to historical facts his tortured soul about his identity. Lebanon has been a country since 1943, and Mr. Taleb, who was born in it and educated by it, seems not to accept its presence. If similar distortions run into his chosen arguments and quotes from authorities, I have trouble believing the veracity of his conclusions. It is also disconcerting to observe his incessant bashing of the French education he received in a French lycee which has been the foundation for his erudition. This would certainly fit into the paragraph, "A New Kind of Ingratitude" prominently displayed in the prologue. Is Mr. Taleb arrogant, ungrateful, and also deceitful?
knowing you can't knnow the unknowable.......2007-10-21
Ultimately, deep down inside us all, we know that we are only human and that some events only serve to highlight our flawed understanding of our time here on Earth.
In daily life however, we rarely are able to reflect on the uncertainty of existence because we have agendas to meet, people to reassure or please, responsibilties and all sorts of pressure to deliver the daily bread, not to mention our grand design to achieve our desires which causes us to look in to the future with anticipation of the realisation of our dreams. None of this is a recipe to help us anticipate the unexpected or highly improbable.
This is why a book like Black Swan is a vital tool to anybody searching for greater understanding. This is a book that will challenge you to re-appraise your paradigm and demonstrate some of the many ways in which we drift away from the reality of life as it is, as opposed the the life we imagine.
A great tool for the sceptical empiricist!
Book Description
According to virtually every business writer, we are in the midst of a new "information age," one that will revolutionize how workers work, how companies compete, perhaps even how thinkers think. And it is certainly true that Information Technology has become a giant industry. In America, more that 50% of all capital spending goes into IT, accounting for more than a third of the growth of the entire American economy in the last four years. Over the last decade, IT spending in the U.S. is estimated at 3 trillion dollars. And yet, by almost all accounts, IT hasn't worked all that well. Why is it that so many of the companies that have invested in these costly new technologies never saw the returns they had hoped for? And why do workers, even CEOs, find it so hard to adjust to new IT systems? In Information Ecology, Thomas Davenport proposes a revolutionary new way to look at information management, one that takes into account the total information environment within an organization. Arguing that the information that comes from computer systems may be considerably less valuable to managers than information that flows in from a variety of other sources, the author describes an approach that encompasses the company's entire information environment, the management of which he calls information ecology. Only when organizations are able to combine and integrate these diverse sources of information, and to take them to a higher level where information becomes knowledge, will they realize the full power of their information ecology. Thus, the author puts people, not technology, at the center of the information world. Information and knowledge are human creations, he points out, and we will never excel at managing them until we give people a primary role. Citing examples drawn from his own extensive research and consulting including such major firms as A.T. and T., American Express, Ford, General Electric, Hallmark, Hoffman La Roche, IBM, Polaroid, Pacific Bell, and Toshiba Davenport illuminates the critical components of information ecology, and at every step along the way, he provides a quick assessment survey for managers to see how their organization measures up. He discusses the importance of developing an overall strategy for information use; explores the infighting, jealousy over resources, and political battles that can frustrate information sharing; underscores the importance of looking at how people really use information (how they search for it, modify it, share it, hoard it, and even ignore it) and the kinds of information they want; describes the ideal information staff, who not only store and retrive information, but also prune, provide context, enhance style, and choose the right presentation medium (in an age of work overload, vital information must be presented compellingly so the appropriate people recognize and use it); examines how information management should be done on a day to day basis; and presents several alternatives to the machine engineering approach to structuring and modeling information. Davenport makes explicit what many managers already know in their gut: that useful information flow depends on people, not equipment. In Information Ecology he paves the way for all managers to build a more competitive, creative, practical information environment for their companies.
Customer Reviews:
When a change is needed.......2004-06-17
This book offers great insight into creating an information envionment within the company. I think that the numerous examples for real life companies provide credibility to his claims. However this is for people who are building and IT strucutre for scratch or are looking for a paradigm shift in how they do IT? If your IT envionment is not producing results this is a great place to start. It provides the theory to apply to real life situations. Understanding the necessity of Information Technology is essential for implementing results oriented systems.
Useful and informative book with new insights.......1998-01-12
I found this to be a useful and informative book with new insights, especially in the area of developing a wholistic view of an information enterprise. Most previous books seem to be limited to just MIS departments and ignore the fact that managing information is not something that just happens in a vacumn. I also found the diagnosis section to be useful and grounded in real work versus the "blackboard" consulting suggestions that sometimes comes from academics whose ideas are not grounded in real world experiences.
Good theme but more buzzwords and bull than practical advice.......1997-09-05
I was disappointed by this book. While its central thesis (that MIS should include human and political considerations, not just technical ones) is valid and needs championing, I found the text repetitive, lacking in clear advice, and full of buzzwords used to restate the obvious. Mr. Davenport is clearly an expert on how to run MIS at large companies. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to glean applicable lessons from his book
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The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies
Michael Gibbons ,
Camille Limoges ,
Helga Nowotny ,
Simon Schwartzman ,
Peter Scott , and
Martin Trow
Manufacturer: Sage Publications Ltd
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ASIN: 0803977948 |
Book Description
As we approach the end of the twentieth century, the ways in which knowledge--scientific, social, and cultural--is produced are undergoing fundamental changes. In The New Production of Knowledge, a distinguished group of authors analyze these changes as marking the transition from established institutions, disciplines, practices, and policies to a new mode of knowledge production. Identifying such elements as reflexivity, transdisciplinarity, and heterogeneity within this new mode, the authors consider their impact and interplay with the role of knowledge in social relations. While the knowledge produced by research and development in science and technology is accorded central focus, the authors also outline the changing dimensions of social scientific and humanities knowledge and the relations between the production of knowledge and its dissemination through education. Placing science policy and scientific knowledge within the broader context of contemporary society, this book will be essential reading for all those concerned with the changing nature of knowledge, with the social study of science, with educational systems, and with the correlation between research and development and social, economic, and technological development. "Thought-provoking in its identification of issues that are global in scope; for policy makers in higher education, government, or the commercial sector." --Choice "By their insightful identification of the recent social transformation of knowledge production, the authors have been able to assert new imperatives for policy institutions. The lessons of the book are deep." --Alexis Jacquemin, Universite Catholique de Louvain and Advisor, Foreign Studies Unit, European Commission "Should we celebrate the emergence of a 'post-academic' mode of postmodern knowledge production of the post-industrial society of the 21st Century? Or should we turn away from it with increasing fear and loathing as we also uncover its contradictions. A generation of enthusiasts and/or critics will be indebted to the team of authors for exposing so forcefully the intimate connections between all the cognitive, educational, organizational, and commercial changes that are together revolutionizing the sciences, the technologies, and the humanities. This book will surely spark off a vigorous and fruitful debate about the meaning and purpose of knowledge in our culture." --Professor John Ziman, (Wendy, Janey at Ltd. is going to provide affiliation. Contact if you don't hear from her.) "Jointly authored by a team of distinguished scholars spanning a number of disciplines, The New Production of Knowledge maps the changes in the mode of knowledge production and the global impact of such transformations. . . . The authors succeed . . . at sketching out, in very large strokes, the emerging trends in knowledge production and their implications for future society. The macro focus of the book is a welcome change from the micro obsession of most sociologists of science, who have pretty much deconstructed institutions and even scientific knowledge out of existence." --Contemporary Sociology "This book is a timely contribution to current discussion on the breakdown of and need to renegotiate the social contract between science and society that Vannevar Bush and likeminded architects of science policy constructed immediately after World War II. It goes far beyond the usual scattering of fragmentary insights into changing institutional landscapes, cognitive structures, or quality control mechanisms of present day science, and their linkages with society at large. Tapping a wide variety of sources, the authors provide a coherent picture of important new characteristics that, taken altogether, fundamentally challenge our traditional notions of what academic research is all about. This well-founded analysis of the social redistribution of knowledge and its associated power patterns helps articulate what otherwise tends to remain an--albeit widespread--intuition. Unless they adapt to the new situation, universities in the future will find the centers of gravity of knowledge production moving even further beyond their ken. Knowledge of the social and cognitive dynamics of science in research is much needed as a basis of science and technology policymaking. The New Production of Knowledge does a lot to fill this gap. Another unique feature is its discussion of the humanities, which are usually left out in works coming out of the social studies of science." --Aant Elzinga, University od Goteborg
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The Economic Impact of Knowledge (Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy)
Dale Neef ,
Tony Siesfeld , and
Jacquelyn Cefola
Manufacturer: Butterworth-Heinemann
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ASIN: 0750670096 |
Book Description
Series: Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy
What happens to our understanding of economics when the vast majority of people within our economy are employed to create ideas, solve problems, or market and sell services rather than to produce tangible goods? How do we measure non-financial "intangibles" such as human capital or the effect of R&D? This anthology explores how economists and public policy makers are re-thinking the way in which governments measure, monitor, and influence an economy in an unbounded global environment where output is largely intangible and organizations are becoming increasingly "non-national" in scope.
Through a collection of seminal articles written by prominent business people, academics, and public policy makers, this three-part anthology examines the key issues surrounding the economic impact of knowledge-based growth, including:
* preparing for the effects of technological change
* understanding the change in traditional economic theory
* how Research and Development will be affected
* who will be the global "knowledge police"?
Most business people think of economics in terms of growth, interest rates, and inflation. This book is unique in that it focuses on the economic impact of knowledge-based growth in order to provide business people with a bigger picture of the knowledge management case for action with their organizations.
The most up-to-date and most relevant articles on the subject
Unique focus on the theme of knowledge
Organized logically, with a foreword to introduce each section
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The Sociology of Energy, Buildings and the Environment: Constructing Knowledge, Designing Practice (Routledge Research Global Environmental Change Series, 5)
Simon Guy
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ASIN: 0415182697 |
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Focusing upon energy conservation and the built environment, this book engages with areas of debate and policy currently dominated by technologists and natural scientists. Based upon empirical research, the book develops a sociological analysis of the science and technology of sustainability and energy efficiency.
Book Description
The future of computing-the future of business
Rapid technological innovation is moving us towards a world of ubiquitous computing-a world in which we are surrounded by smart machines that are always on, always aware, and always monitoring us. These developments will create a world virtually without secrets in which information is widely available and analyzable worldwide. This environment will certainly affect business, government, and the individual alike, dramatically affecting the way organizations and individuals interact. This book explores the implications of the coming world and suggests and explores policy options that can protect individuals and organizations from exploitation and safeguard the implicit contract between employees, businesses, and society itself. World Without Secrets casts an unflinching eye on a future we may not necessarily desire, but will experience.
Customer Reviews:
A collection of snippets of other people's thinking.......2006-11-14
This book, published a scant four years ago, was old before its time.
Authors who have to create new words to discuss their oh-so-advanced concepts always strike me as self-aggrandizing, pretentious and usually silly. Author Hunter borrows and invents words like "Mentat" and "I-filters" to describe mundane, everyday concepts. Mentat is taken from Frank Herberts "Dune": a Mentat is essentially a human computer. The bottom line is that we rely on others to help us in reaching decisions and - surprise - those others may not have our best interests at heart and may, in fact, be using our "secrets", like our music preferences, to influence our decisions.
This is not news.
Hunter not only likes movies, he draws life lessons from them. There are dozens of references to movies in this book.
Hunter has a few schmaltzy rules that he has created, like "When everything is known, no one knows everything." Ponder that. But don't expect to get paid for it.
Ultimately this wandering book of nostrums, recycled newspaper stories and references to Hollywood movies as sources of wisdom comes down to a muffled sales pitch for Gartner, "the world's largest technology research firm." "Lots of systems administrators aren't taking these basic steps now, and that's a prime reason why their systems get cracked." But fear not is the implied message, Gartner can help save you! "Any credible vulnerability assessment will find two out of three Web servers connected to the Internet are vulnerable to simple attacks that can ar least result in changing the contenrt of the Web server," my Gartner colleague said . . . Get the message?
Ultimately the hyper-ventilated theme is that there are no secrets. Moreover, the author fears deep ". . . surveillance of ordindary citizens." Excuse me, but in a nation where your income sources, bank accounts, spending patterns, medical histories and everything else have been closely scruitinized for decades, what are you concerned with?
The message is fear-mongering about a situation that has been with us for a long time. Hunter brings nothing new to the table, except a penchant for quoting from movies as if they were brothers and sisters to Socrates.
Jerry
New York Times April 28, 2002, Book Review?.......2006-03-14
Fascinating book. Fascinating man. Why didn't Amazon reprint the New York Times review of this book (William J. Holstein, NYT April 28, 2002)?
Don't support this guy.......2005-01-03
This book sounds like an intelligent read, full of insights on technological breakthroughs, etc.. It's not. Do you have that one guy at work, let's say, that just complains all of the time? The guy that sounds so darn whiny that you just want to slap him? That's this author, and that's this book. I mean, really, dude, who doesn't support non-lethal weapons? You're trying to sound so smart and informed about the subject. When's the last time you were standing in from of a crowd of fifty somewhere outside Balad? Moron. Just another one of those Fox News "military analysts". I'm glad I went war to support your right to publish such drivel.
Good & bad view of Digital Technology.......2004-07-14
Easy to read review of what digital technology is going to promise us in the future - both good & bad.
It's not intended to scare, nor to defend the undefendable, but it gives a good all round review in an easy entertaining style.
World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Ag.......2002-11-02
"World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing" - Reviewed by Stephen Lafferty
The title of Richard Hunter's book refers to the growing availability of information about the personal lives of consumers living in capitalist democratic states. The book begins with the assumption that "very little of consequence can't and won't be known about anyone or anything". Hunter approaches the subject of the erosion of personal privacy from two angles: the business and the governmental/police justifications for retaining information on individuals. His argument, that citizens in democratic countries had better take responsibility for the power of surveillance technologies while they still can, emerges from the discussion of the increasing possibilities for deriving behaviour patterns from recombining archived data.
Hunter's first point, that people adapt at a slower rate than the
introduction of new technologies, is underlined using examples of
Amazon.com and Acme-Rent-A-Car of Connecticut. Neither set of
consumers, when they began relationships with either company, realised that information collected about their shopping habits and movements would be sold to third parties or used for law enforcement purposes.
Hunter then goes on to demonstrate how organisations that create and retail information, such as Microsoft and record companies, are responding to threats being posed by self-organising groups using the Internet to communicate. Hunter calls these groups 'Network Armies' and provides an analysis of how such groups coalesce and fight their cause, using examples of the Open Source software movement and Linux vs. Windows, Napster and digital distribution of music and the anti-capitalist protestors in Seattle and Genoa.
The discussion then moves on to identifying social groups within the 'world without secrets'. Hunter and a team of researchers at Gartner identify four groups: 'Network Armies', the 'Lost and the Lonely', 'Conscientious Objectors' and the 'Engineered Society'. This analysis implies that the world without secrets is inevitable and the area of society to which you belong depends upon whether you support or oppose the authority of the leadership that passes legislation to eliminate barriers to information flow.
The last two chapters are dedicated to discussion of war when all
enemy movements are known; and the possibility of a war in cyberspace.
Parts of this book were written on or after September 11th 2001 and Hunter considers the development of terrorist network armies and the response that an 'engineered society' can make to such attacks. The New York Electronic Crimes Task Force is used as a model network army for terrorist threats from cyberspace, an Internet version of Interpol with intercontinental crime-fighting agreements.
Richard Hunter believes that a world without secrets is inevitable.
He urges his readers to take responsibility for the ways that
technologies are implemented through democratic means, such as
building in limitations for information usage by the authorities.
This book makes a compelling argument for educating both the
authorities and the public about the type and uses of recorded
information and is an excellent introduction to contemporary
attitudes towards and policies of surveillance. Readers who are
interested in the freedoms that they enjoy in their societies should read this along with Simson Garfinkel's 'Database Nation' and Michael Caloyannides 'Desktop Witness' and be careful about to whom they give their personal information.
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National Systems of Innovation in Comparison: Structure and Performance Indicators for Knowledge Societies
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 140204917X |
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The concept of National Systems of Innovation was introduced as a method to describe the various elements which contribute to innovation performance and their interaction. Most analyses refer to the description of the structures of specific countries, whereas the comparison of different countries generally fails due to the inconsistency of information sources or the lack of specific data. In this book, the innovation structures of a broad set of countries are compared on the basis of various indicators. In particular, the topics of public and private R+D and their internationalisation, of scientific and technological performance, of innovation activities in manufacturing and services, of foreign trade, of technology-based start-ups, and ICT infrastructure are examined in detail. A further relevant area of investigation is higher education and highly skilled employment, and finally trends in innovation policy are presented in an international comparison. The book documents major elements of the joint work of eight leading German institutes, elaborated in the context of a regular annual report on Germany's technological performance. It provides much more than the pure compilation of quantitative indicators for international benchmarking, but gives support to an appropriate interpretation of the referring results and suggests relevant conclusions for innovation policy. A special focus is on Germany; so the book also aims at non-German readers interested in specific features of the German innovation system.
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The Virtual University?: Knowledge, Markets, and Management (Education)
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Hardcover
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Managing Technological Change
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Book Description
This book, written by scholars from around the world discuss the effects of information technology on higher education. This volume covers the process of integrating information techology, creating virtual learning and possible consequences of the new information and communications techologies
for higher education. It also focuses on how becoming a "virtual university" contributes to the reorganization of colleges and universities, gaining a more managerial and business identity globally.
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Automating Interaction: Formal And Informal Knowledge In The Digital Network Economy (The Hampton Press Communication Series)
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Developing Successful Ict Strategies: Competitive Advantages in a Global Knowledge-driven Society
Hakikur Rahman
Manufacturer: Idea Group Reference
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Product Description
Developing Successful ICT Strategies: Competitive Advantages in a Global Knowledge-Driven Society collects an authoritative core of research investigating the notion that information communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential to improve the lives of people and contribute to enhancing social conditions in developing countries through such concepts as the Knowledge Society, open education, and e-governance.
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