From needs to aspirations in information technology for development

ABSTRACT

“Needs” figure prominently both in the technology sector and in international development. Both fields refer frequently to people’s needs and perform needs assessments. But, the two groups differ on what needs are. The technologist’s conception is represented in such statements as, “the user needs to see shoes in various colors on an e-commerce website.” Development focuses on more basic needs such as nutrition, health, and employment. We argue that conflating these two classes of needs is a subtle but underlying cause of myopic technological interventions. While development is increasingly understood to require changes in human capital, institutional capacity, and mass values – traits internal to people and societies – the technologist’s conception of needs suggests solutions that change external context through technological artifacts. We propose an approach to ICT and development that is focused less on needs, and more on aspirations. We rationalize aspirations as a basis for action, and present preliminary evidence in the form of a survey and three brief case studies for the viability of aspiration-based approaches to development.

KEYWORDS:

• Information and communication technologies and development
• needs assessment
• aspiration-based development

Disclosure statement

The author has no financial interest or benefit arising from the direct applications of this research.

Notes on contributor

Kentaro Toyama is W. K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information, a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, and author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology.

ORCID

Kentaro Toyama http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9128-2255