Big Data for Development: A Review of Promises and Challenges Martin Hilbert, University of California, Davis; hilbert@ucdavis.edu Author’s version Hilbert, M. (2016). Big Data for Development: A Review of Promises and Challenges. Development Policy Review, 34(1), 135–174. http://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12142 Abstract The article uses a conceptual framework to review empirical evidence and some 180 articles related to the opportunities and threats of Big Data Analytics for international development. The advent of Big Data delivers the cost-effective prospect to improve decision-making in critical development areas such as health care, economic productivity, and security. At the same time, all the well-known caveats of the Big Data debate, such as privacy concerns and human resource scarcity, are aggravated in developing countries by long-standing structural shortages in the areas of infrastructure, economic resources, and institutions. The result is a new kind of digital divide: a divide in data-based knowledge to inform intelligent decision- making. The article systematically reviews several available policy options to foster the opportunities and minimize the risks. Keywords: Big Data, decision-making, innovation, ICT, digital divide, digital, international development. Acknowledgements: The author thanks International Development Research Centre Canada (IDRC) for commissioning a more extensive study that laid the groundwork for the present article. He is also indebted to Manuel Castells, Nathan Petrovay, Francois Bar, and Peter Monge for food for thought, and to Matthew Smith, Rohan Samarajiva, Sriganesh Lokanathan, and Fernando Perini for helpful comments on draft versions, and thanks the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-CEPAL), where part of the research was undertaken. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.

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Big Data for Development: A Review of Promises and Challenges

http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/nbnfi-fe201902185288.pdf

Continuous deployment of software intensive products and services: A systematic mapping study

Let's call digital transition the societal process arising from the deployment and uptake of ICTs. Indeed, with the current multiplication of devices, sensors, robots, and applications, and these emerging technologies, we have entered a new phase of the information age, a phase where the hybridization between bits and other forms of reality is so deep that it radically changes the human condition in at least four ways:

The Onlife Manifesto

What is the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the human condition? In order to address this question, in 2012 the European Commission organized a research project entitled The Onlife Initiative: concept reengineering for rethinking societal concerns in the digital transition. This volume collects the work of the Onlife Initiative. It explores how the development and widespread use of ICTs have a radical impact on the human condition.

ICTs are not mere tools but rather social forces that are increasingly affecting our self-conception (who we are), our mutual interactions (how we socialise); our conception of reality (our metaphysics); and our interactions with reality (our agency). In each case, ICTs have a huge ethical, legal, and political significance, yet one with which we have begun to come to terms only recently.

The impact exercised by ICTs is due to at least four major transformations: the blurring of the distinction between reality and virtuality; the blurring of the distinction between human, machine and nature; the reversal from information scarcity to information abundance; and the shift from the primacy of stand-alone things, properties, and binary relations, to the primacy of interactions, processes and networks.

Such transformations are testing the foundations of our conceptual frameworks. Our current conceptual toolbox is no longer fitted to address new ICT-related challenges. This is not only a problem in itself. It is also a risk, because the lack of a clear understanding of our present time may easily lead to negative projections about the future. The goal of The Manifesto, and of the whole book that contextualises, is therefore that of contributing to the update of our philosophy. It is a constructive goal. The book is meant to be a positive contribution to rethinking the philosophy on which policies are built in a hyperconnected world, so that we may have a better chance of understanding our ICT-related problems and solving them satisfactorily.

The Manifesto launches an open debate on the impacts of ICTs on public spaces, politics and societal expectations toward policymaking in the Digital Agenda for Europe’s remit. More broadly, it helps start a reflection on the way in which a hyperconnected world calls for rethinking the referential frameworks on which policies are built.

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The Onlife Manifesto: Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era

https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/files/144962514/Geraldi_and_Soderlund_2017_Project_studies.pdf

Project studies: What it is, where it is going

Castell’s book is the first part of his milstone “The Information Age: Economy Society, and Culture” work. The author states that, the triology was prepared to be a single book, but then with the contributions of the editor, it was divided into three books by making each part of the study a separate book. In this particular book, Castells presents an easily understandable and comprehensive analysis by examining the economic, social, and cultural changes that caused by the Network Society. He does this by being as realistic as possible and reaching a clear conclusion by supporting all of his claims with various statistics and examples.

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Sevil Bal Kizilhan

Papers

The Rise of the Network Society - The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture