Scenarios for Technology and Development

The story of technology and development has many bright spots: the  mobile banking revolution, the treadle pump and so on. The importance of technology in the developing world has grown significantly over the years.

However, the continued growth and adoption of technology is not always certain. For philanthropists, investors alike, it is important to understand how the adoption of technology might develop in the future. This will enable them to adopt the right strategy for supporting the adoption and diffusion of not just technology, but the right kind of technology.

The Rockefeller Foundation remains committed to this goal. To this end, they have detailed several scenarios for the development of technology, and strategies to work under each scenario. The findings are presented in their report, “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development.”

In this report, they present the following global scenarios:

• Lock Step: A world-wide form of tight, top-down government and control and more authoritarian relationships, with limited innovation and citizen resistance.
• Hack Attack: Where an economically unstable and shock-prone world in which governments weaken, criminals thrive, and dangerous innovations emerge.
• Smart Scramble: Where economies are depressed, and where individuals and communities develop localized, makeshift solutions to a growing set of problems.
• Clever together: A world where highly co-ordinated strategies emerge for addressing both urgent and entrenched world issues.

For each scenario, the report details timelines, technologies that might emerge, the role of philanthropy — the opportunities and challenges that they may face, and a “day in the life of” sketch.

The scenarios are both interesting and provocative — and are meant to be so. Read more about them here.