ICT4D

The year 2014 marked a transition for me personally and for this blog.  My mid-year move from KAIST in Daejon to SUNY Korea in Songdo also presented the opportunity to return to my longstanding teaching and research interest in communication for development (C4D).  Thanks to the digital network revolution that is transforming society, politics and economics all around the world, the field is now more widely recognized as information and communications technology for development (ICT4D), and there is no better place to study and teach about it than here in new Songdo, Korea's premier smart city project.

Indeed, Songdo was planned from its inception to be the world's first ubiquitously networked city built from scratch on reclaimed land in the West Sea.  The vision was part of the larger Incheon Free Economic Zone and aimed at construction here of a seaport, airport (the new Incheon International Airport) and teleport (Internet connected digital networks).  Education was also part of the vision from the beginning, centering on the Incheon Global Campus, which is already home to four alliance universities, including SUNY Korea, George Mason University, The University of Utah and Ghent University.
The Incheon Global Campus in Songdo provides an ideal environment for teaching, research and training in the field of ICT4D, for several reasons.  First, South Korea is the world's outstanding example to date of a developing nation leveraging ICT to drive socioeconomic development. Second, the leadership of SUNY Korea is committed to recruiting a broadly representative group of students, both undergraduate and graduate, from developing nations around the world.  Third, for purposes of short term and customized professional training programs, the proximity of the Incheon Global Campus in Songdo to the Incheon International Airport is a major advantage, as is the reality that Korea has the world's fastest broadband network infrastructure.  Fourth, the presence of offices in Songdo representing a number of UN agencies and the World Bank, facilitates regular, ongoing collaboration among those entities, the alliance universities in Songdo, and other Korean governmental, corporate and NGO organization.  For these reasons and more, the Department of Technology and Society at SUNY Korea is developing an active program of research, teaching, training and innovation in the field of ICT4D.  I will occasionally use this blog to convey short progress reports.