Incommunicado Working Conference

The Incommunicado Working Conference was a two-day working conference working towards a critical survey of the current state of 'info-development', also known as the catchy acronym 'ICT4D' (ICT for development).

Before the recent "flattening of the world" (Thomas Friedman, 2005), most computer networks and ICT expertise were located in the North, and info-development mostly involved rather technical matters of knowledge and technology transfer from North to South.While still widely (and even wildly) talked about, the assumption of a 'digital divide' that follows this familiar geography of development has turned out to be too simple. Instead, a more complex map of actors, networked in a global info-politics, is emerging.

Different actors continue to promote different -and competing- visions of 'info-development'. New info-economies like Brazil, China, and India have suddenly emerged and are forming south-south alliances that challenge our sense of what 'development' is all about.

The 'incommunicado' project started early 2004 as a web research resource combined with an email-based mailinglist. It was founded by Soenke Zehle and Geert Lovink, who had earlier collaborated during the European Make World and Neuro events, that attempted to develop critical work around new media and no border issues.

Incommunicado05 was organized by the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam) together with Waag (Amsterdam) and the New Media Centre Sarai (Delhi), with support from HIVOS, IICD, and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.