Course at Lapin Yliopisto 2005, Session set 1

1. Dimensions of „e“ –
ICT in the Arctic
University of Lapland
ISC/ Faculty of Social Sciences
Period 3/January 2006
Oliver Krone

2. Content
knowledge? technologies
KI Infrastructure
constructionism content
regulation
elements of KI
”e”
ICT and cultural revival
indigenous
technolog. Innovation people
the development Issue
what are those? what about
implementation?
where are they literarcy vs. orality
coming from?
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3. Day 1 –
infrastructure and other issues
around ICT
• Technical details and
• market relevant legal aspects
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4. Some European Voice Data
European Telecommunications Traffic Flow 2002,
www.telegeography.com
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5. The Internet
Adapted from www.telegeography.com
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6. The European – Arctic
The GEANT Net
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7. An account of ICT in the Arctic
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8. The starting point of it all -
OSI modell
Logical Application
Level Level
Physical
Level
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9. Ownership Issues I
• Most of the networks that are existent in
the countries that have shares of the
Arctic are originating from former
monopolies
– Regulation in order to achieve what?
• Fair access to network by new entrants
• Fair prices on the utilisation of the “former state
owned network”
• Fair Interconnection (Voice-Web) costs
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10. Ownership III
• Pending on the reach of NW, costs that are incurred
can be carried forward to the customer=>
Interconnection regimes
• Insofar as Telecommunication services are
privatised, generation of innovations and their
implementation are increasingly subject to private
negotiations=> privatisation of positive private rents
• Due to the liberalisation of telecommunications
market, states loose possible leverage points to push
for “public good” oriented corporate policies=> state
has less options for regulation
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11. Implications of privatisation I
• Carriers, those owning the NW, develop
power positions in contrast to the state that
allow them to optimise their negotiation power
• Interconnection issues, that were until the
nineties subject to state negotiation, are
becoming inter-corporate commercial issues
=> insofar as telec. are described as being
important for commerce and interstate trade,
the distinction of „high“ and „low“ politics,
stipulated by functionalism and
interdependency theories of IR, is challenged15
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12. Interconnection models
(Voice I)
Peering as form of interconnection if all contributors have
roughly similar payloads for voice
This model is as well used in the Web for carriers that
have content providers on their network that have large
audience (much traffic- Greeland problem)
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13. Interconnection models
(Voice II)
Transit, is a form of interconnection in which smaller
carriers dump their traffic into the network of larger
carrier, which is then charging the destination as well as
origin
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14. Interconnection models
(IP-Internet)
The interconnection for IP based services, is based on the reach
and NW that is available to a given carrier.
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15. The Arctic as telecommunication
and IP „No-mans-land“
Why the Arctic location matters:
– Access to alternatives for data provision are not really
available
– Only alternative is satellite, which delimits again options for
alternatives due to
• Restrictions in bandwidth
• As state owned priority in bandwidth allocation to public
services
• Is off-side from main commercial routes, in terms of high-
economic exchange rates
– What are the assets of the North that would allow to make
telecommunication and IP offerings from more carriers
attractive?
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16. Day 2 –
Indigenous people and ICT
• Indigenous people
– oral vs. literacy
– ICT and cultural revival
• ICT as means for integration into world
economy – is there an element of
choice?
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17. Are ICT alien to and destroying
indigenous cultural traits?
• Taking a southern perspective onto ICT, and in
particular to its web-side, the discussion has
focussed onto the emergence of „virtual self“
• Therefore question is due, whether one can take this
perspective also in respect to indigenous
populations?
• In a consecutive step the question is then: If the web,
as pre-dominant research object, is conducive to the
virtualisation of life's and characters, is there a
distinction to be drawn btw. North-western and
Northern/Arctic aspects of virtualisation?
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18. Are ICT alien to and destroying
indigenous cultural traits? II
• There seems to be a tendency of Arctic indigenous
people to adopt ICT, and the web in particular, to
their needs
• The web is not so pervasive to their lifes’, due to the
infrastructural element,
– They seem to integrate their „off-line“ lifes’ into the web
– The web is, in the words of some Inuit (Greenland and
Northern Canada), in line with the nomadic heritage of them
– Allows them get in contact with other cultures and
– Re-present „history and story“ based on their accounts
(Christensen, 2003)
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19. Are ICT alien to and destroying
indigenous cultural traits? III
• But what about the transfer mechanisms of
culture: the duality of oral vs. Literal cultures
• Characteristics of “primary oral cultures”
– tendency to be communicated by oral means only
– the essence/content of the story told matters
– the utterance is finite=> no option for rehearsal or
repition as sound has vanished, rarely stories are
noted down
– story told about a societal/cultural fact allows for
variation, or modernisation in respect to
circumstances (cp. Ong, 19913; Moar, 2003)
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20. Are ICT alien to and destroying
indigenous cultural traits? IV
• Literate cultures:
– Fix speech to place (noted on paper or which ever
means)
– Allow for abstractions, reflection about speech,
sciences and history
– Resting on fixed grammars, with theoretical bodies
on how to articulate sentences and content, but
=> Grammar and words are derived from the
observation of oral performances
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21. ICT and their positive effects
for cultural revitalisation I
• Development and appropriation of ICT by
local communities has allowed for the
strengthening of local cultures
• The development of culture revitalising
effects is dependent on
– technological as well as
– personal infrastructure (ICT literate staff, willingness to
engage with ICT, capabilities and capacities to train the
utilisation)
• To profit from ICT means to take the shift
from the oral to the literal culture!
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22. ICT, knowledge and the integration
into global economy I
• Facing the Arctic one is struck by the fact, that one
can see a polarisation of it
– North-western, European parts and a
– Russian part, while
• In relative and absolute terms (except most likely
Kola-peninsula) both blocs are, on a citizens level,
describable as being economic deprived
• The European Arctic areas bear this stamp most
obvious:
– subject to Objective 1 funding by the EU Commission
(Objec. 1= 75 % or less of avg. EU GDP per head),
– in Finland this is whole of Lapland, parts of central and Oulu
lääni, and whole of east Finland
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23. What, yet another term of
„resources“? I
• Given that I am taking an economics inspired
approach to this topic there is no choice.
• But: the term „resource“ employed is a widely used
definition
• Definition is indifferent to a distinction between
Human and physical resources (e.g. plant,
equipment, land and natural resources, raw
materials)
• “[I]t is never resources themselves that are the
‘inputs’ in the production, but on the only services
that the resources can render” (Penrose, 1995, p. 25)
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24. What, yet again another term
of „resources“? II
• In the prod. proc. some of these might be
completely used, while other remain
unaltered, and durable in their consistency
and can be used either for other activities, or
become finite products
• „[R]esources consists of a bundle of potential
services and can [..] be defined independent
of their use,
• while services cannot be so defined, the very
word service implying a function, an activity“
(ibid, p. 24-5)
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25. ICT and knowledge –
why together? V
• The importance of ICT for development is
result of the western notion that more and
more economies are ”knowledge” based
• Thereby the value of corporations is much
less with their physical assets, but rather with
the capability to convert ”information” into
”knowledge”
• Some authors, actually quit many, argue that
knowledge should be treated as an asset of
its own
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26. The knowledge- ICT
development connection V
Is there a logic premium put to western-
technical knowledge, and
are we blind to see how much these models are
at odds with
aim to allow for continued existence of
indigenous cultures?
Are we asking for the adoption to our standards
on the side of indigenous people,
while we want to sustain only our way of
thinking?
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