Title: From Silicon Valleys to Community Informatics Neighbourhoods—Digital Development Strategies as Though Local Economies Mattered
Author: Michael Gurstein
Source: Gurstein's Community Informatics
Date (published): 02/08/2010
Date (accessed): 03/08/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Many (most) countries in the world have in the decade just passed, developed and at least partially implemented what may be called a “digital development strategy”. These strategies are based on a perception that the kind of economic activity that has resulted from the technical/digital development taking place in Silicon Valley and similar such locales particularly in the US is a necessary element of the economic development strategy for any/every country that wants to be competitive and thus prosperous at this time in economic history.

The perception is that the well funded science and technology programs at the leading universities in the San Francisco and California region—Stanford, CalTech, UC Berkeley and so on attracted faculty and produced students whose leading edge work contributed more or less immediately and directly to the generation of technology innovations which in turn led directly to the creation of start-up technology enterprises. These mixed with fairly ready availability of investment capital, in turn sparked the technology (and commercial) digital revolutions of the Internet and other digital enterprises. In turn these enterprises provided the basis for economic advance and importantly (from a government’s perspective) job creation and enhancements to the national revenue stream through taxes and so on.

This logic is probably correct at least in outline (but would be worth examining in some close detail) however, what is rather less obvious is that this model can (or should) be reproduced not just once or twice but repeatedly in tens and hundreds of locations around the world..."