Author: Joshua Goldstein
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The Internet “Access Trap” in Developing Countries
Three of five people in the world still do not have access to the Internet. From the perspective of standard economic models, this is puzzling. The supply of international connectivity has expanded dramatically since 2009, when several submarine fiber cables came online connecting even the poorest countries in Africa to the global Internet. Also, with…
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No Longer Bit Players: Internet Governance & Economic Growth in Developing Countries
The 200 sovereign state members of the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will gather in Dubai this week for the World Conference of International Telecommunications (WCIT). The WCIT is a treaty developed to facilitate global interconnection and interoperability between telecommunications carriers. The treaty was last reviewed in 1988, an era where the majority of telecommunications networks…
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Why Governments Open: Technology and Inclusive Institutions in Developing Countries
[Editor’s note: Tomorrow, Josh Goldstein is presenting on this topic as part of the CITP Luncheon Series, at the Woodrow Wilson School on Princeton’s campus. (12:10pm, in Robertson Hall room 023)] Around the world, societies generally agree that governments and bureaucrats should use the coercive power of the state, not to create extractive institutions that…
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What Open Data Means to Marginalized Communities
Two symbols of this era of open data are President Obama’s Open Governance Initiative, a directive that has led agencies to post their results online and open up data sets, and Ushahidi, a tool for crowdsourcing crisis information. While these tools are bringing openness to governance and crisis response respectively, I believe we have yet…