"Information and Communication Technology (ICT),

Social Changes and Transformation"

By
Faisal Muhammad Adam, Jan16/Comp/008x, M.Sc., Computing (IT) At
Ugandan Technology and Management University Kampala Uganda
faisaladamm@gmail.com +2348030557645
Abstract
Considering the world being a global village, Information and communication technologies
(ICT) have become more valuable entity in all aspects of life. Over thirty years, the use of
ICT has fundamentally changed the practices and procedures of nearly all forms of exertion
surrounded by business, governance and education. In recent years, many organizations and
governments have worked to increase frankness and clearness in their actions on how
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are understood by many people as a
cost-effective and suitable means to promote candidness and social changes in E-
government, E-learning and social interaction in particular. Some of these individual efforts
have received considerable attention on the issue of whether these ICT-enabled efforts have
the ability to create a substantive social change in approaches toward transparency or not.
In this article, I reviewed multidisciplinary literature concerning the role of ICT on
social changes and transformation and identify some viewpoints regarding the nature of the
role ICT played in social changes and transformation toward innovation. I then discuss four
formed by combining the perspectives on nature of the ICTs innovation on social
development and transformation in a tabular form. My review suggests that ICTs research,
in spite of its incredible theoretical abilities to study technology innovation in relation to
socioeconomic context, remains weak in forming conclusive arguments about IT-enabled
socioeconomic development as a result of digital divides.

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Key words
Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Information Communication and
Technology Development, (ICTD), General Purpose Technologies (GPT), Direct Recording
Electronic, (DRE).

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Introduction 
According to Duncombe (1999), [1] “A group of interrelated technologies (electronic
devices) for accessing, processing and disseminating information is called ICT or Information
and Communication Technologies)”. It is a system of electronic network activated through a
complex hardware and software systems linked by a vast array of technical protocols
(Mansell and Silverstone, 1996). [2]

ICTs are indisputably important part of our social setting today. The term ICTs has been used
to embrace technological innovation and merging in information and communication
transforming our world into information or knowledge societies. The rapid development of
these technologies has faint the boundaries between information, communication and various
types of media. The fast-tracking merging between telecommunications, broadcasting
multimedia and ICTs is the driving force that gradually changes many aspects of our lives,
including knowledge dissemination, social interaction, economic and businesses, politics,
media, education, health, leisure and entertainment.

The development of a society mostly depends on the access to information. The Information
and Communication Technologies (ICTs) greatly ease the flow of information and
knowledge offering the socially-marginalised and unaware community an extraordinary
chance to attain their own rights socially, economically, educationally and politically. Despite
ICT’s massive potential, the current global information outburst has had surprisingly little
impact on development activities and access to practical information for rural communities,
local people and forefront development workers in developing countries.

The emergence of Internet, World Wide Web, mobile cell phones, digital television, and
several other new electronic devices pertaining information and communication technologies
(ICTs) are opening a fresh passageways for transforming the way we live, work, learn,
communicate and also provides a strategic opportunities of diverse and significant social and
economic benefits to people across the globe.

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Social Change

According to H.T Mazumder “social change may be define as a new fashion or mode, either
modifying or replacing the old, in the life of people or in the operation of a society“[3].

Social change can be refers to a transformation of culture and social organisations/structures

over time. We are aware that in a modern world, a society is never static and that of social,
political, economic, and cultural changes occurs constantly.

How Does ICT Contribute to Society or Social Changes Development?

The impact of ICT is extensive. As a matter of fact, we experience its effect in our daily lives.
It is however important to note that the benefits are of ambiguous with some being harmful
and other being beneficial. On this paper, I decided to mention few not all on the benefit of
ICT toward social changes and transformation.

Social Transformation through ICT Empowerment

The social transformations that could result from the increasing use of ICTs depend strangely
on verdicts made by organizations and individuals outside our household, many of whom
have great economic leverage, political power or technical expertise. To increase the consent
potential of ICTs, it is important to understand some of their basic features, which make them
a unique kind of technologies. ICTs are general purpose technologies and this means that
they have a standard use through a huge collection of sectors and activities. With gradual
society-wide adoption, GPTs lean towards to disrupt existing social systems and recreate new
ones in their place. Below are some of the social transformations via ICTs,

1. Entertainment

With the advent of new technologies, the world of entertainment is constantly evolving.
Digital broadcasting has completely changed the way we experience television and radio with
more interactive programming and participation. Digital cameras, scanners, and printers have
enabled more people to experiment with image production. Computer gaming has also been
an important influence in the development of graphical interfaces. Technology has been at the

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forefront of changes in production and distribution of music, as well as the way in which
people can access and listen to music.

2. Public services

Many of the nation's public services at federal, state and local council levels have become
available through online or ICT dependent facilities from the time when the Malaysian
government embarked on its massive transformation programme in 2001 which gave birth to
the current Malaysia as one of the giant country in Asia when talking about Social Changes
and Transformation in ICTs infrastructures. Malaysian today can take so many of the public
services online. E.g. they can pay their driving licenses online, file their income tax papers
balance online and many other countless public services. Many of the government
departments make available application forms for one or another purpose online. A lot of
countries embark on these online services as a fruitful result seen from Malaysia.

3. Financial services

Financial services go through huge changes in recent years as a result of the development of
ICT systems. Jane K. Winn* says “without information technology, financial markets
couldn’t consistently acquire information at the same time as their competitors”.[4] For
examples, internet allows access through use of sage or Microsoft excel software to manage
accounting activities, look at financial record when required, monitor and respond to
customers enquiries,[11]

4. Business

Businesses in today’s life have promoted a lot with the coming of ICT. Its impact cannot be
over emphasized. For examples ICT helps to increase productivity in business through the
use of social Media’s platforms for marketing and promotion. The use of websites now
allowed companies to develop new and cheaper ways of offering customers with
opportunities of buying goods and services at their convenient time, and also enhance the
level of customer service. ICT, provides more efficient scheduling of man power and jobs
through the provision of a Human Resource software’s ERP’s System that streamline many
of the task that took too many hours to be completed manually,

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 5. ICTs and social transformation on political moves

Indeed, the advent of ICTs set up a stage for considering political changes. ICTs tools are
enabling governments to change the way in which they function, including how they
communicate and interact with their citizens, which provides many new opportunities for
reconfiguring who gets access to politicians and governments as well as who politicians and
governments can reach with their own messages. On the other hand, Citizens are also able to
employ ICTs tools to discuss issues in groups, Protest, organize campaigns, and seek to
influence public policy. It appears that as long as alliances and links can be built across a
relatively large base of political and economic elites, ICTs can be used as instruments of
sustained dominance as much as further democratization. ICTs can both be employed to
increase statist domination, as well as establishing corporatist ideologies through newer kinds
of informational and communicational controls. For example, ‘E-voting’ using direct
recording electronic (DRE) voting machines or via the Internet can permit election processes
to be more efficient and eliminate the kind of margins for human error that might occur. For
example (DRE) played a decisive role in the year 2000 US Presidential election, a situation
where the final result had to wait for a U S Supreme Court judgement on the counting of
votes cast in Florida. In addition to improved efficiency and accuracy in vote counting, ICT
comes with devices also point to benefits for disabled voters and warnings if a vote has not
been registered correctly as seen in Nigeria’s General Election took place in (2015).

Meanwhile, ICTs tools facilitated open government, meaning greater access to public
information, e-government improvements in the support of administrative services (e.g.
budgeting and personnel), decision-making and in improving the speed, efficiency, accuracy,
and effectiveness of delivering public services, develop ‘e-democracy’ capacities and
infrastructure that employ the technology to bring government closer to citizens and to
encourage broader, more active participation in decision making.

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6. The Domestication of ICTs
As Silverstone (1999: 251).[5] explains: ‘Domestication involves fitting and fixing the new
into the familiar and the secure, moulding their novelty to the needs, desires, and culture of
the family or household.’
With the invention of smart appliances, like other technologies, ICTs emerged with house
hold appliances that are embedded with microchips to ease so many hustles in our houses.
Examples are programmable microwave, washing machine, home security system, mobile
telephones Etc.
7. ICT Enhancing Education
ICT increases the flexibility of delivery of education so that learners can access knowledge
ubiquitously. The use of ICTs equipment’s can influence the way students are taught and how
they learn as now processes are learner driven not teachers driven. This process in turn
would better prepare the learners for lifelong learning as well as to improve the quality of
learning.
Also, In line with geographical flexibility, technology facilitated educational programs and
removes many of the progressive constraints that face learners with special needs (Moore &
Kearsley, 1996) [6]. Students start to appreciate the skill to undertake education anywhere,
anytime and anyplace. One of the most vital contributions of ICT toward education is easy
access to learning. With the creation of E-Learning platforms, invention of search engines
like Google, Web 2.0 technology, students can also have an easy access to resource persons,
mentors, experts, researchers, professionals, and peers- ubiquitously.
This flexibility has amplified the availability of just-in-time learning and delivered learning
opportunities for many more learners who previously were constrained by other
commitments or socially marginalised.

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Also, ICT provides a broader access to people, services, and information as shown in a
tabular form below by Dutton et al. (2003: Table 2) [7]:-

ICTs provide access to Kind of ICT activities Kind of ICT activities

People Intercreativity between E- Mails, special forums, and
individuals and within other interpersonal Internet-
How you interact with
groups; like one-to-one, one- based interactions; talking or
people, with whom you
to-many, many-to-one, sending text messages by cell
communicate, who you
many-to-many phones, collaborating in
know, and where and when
communication. virtual networked teams,
you interact with them.
learning through online
lectures, playing online
multi-player games.
Services Influences what you Conducting electronic Electronic and Web-based
can do online, when you can transactions and obtaining delivery of welfare payments,
do it, and how much it costs electronic services from tax returns, and other public
to do it, where and when you distant or nearby sources. services; online shopping,
buy other products and banking, and other e-business
services, who pays to whom, interactions; online
and how it is paid. downloading of music, video,
and graphical art; doctors
viewing X-rays from remote
locations.
Information Affects how Producing and using ICT Providing and using wired
and what you read, hear, see, knowhow, equipment, and and wireless
and know. techniques to shape access to, telecommunications and
and use and consumption of, Internet infrastructures;
the Internet and other ICTs. Internet service provision;
We b browsers; network
security; anti-virus, anti-
spam and child-protection
software.

Source: [7]Adapted from Dutton et al. (2003: Table 2).

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How ICT Change Patterns of Social and Economic interaction

According to Chen, W. et al 2004 in Dutton et al 2003, [8] “ICTs does not just provide access to
more people, many of whom you wouldn’t be in touch with otherwise; it also change patterns
of interaction between people, communities, and institutions.” Most often, people use ICTs to
complement and otherwise enhance face-to-face communication. But people can and do
choose to substitute telecommunications for face-to-face communication, or substitute e-mail
for telephone calls, in order to reduce travel, save time, and extend the geography of human
community.

Summary and Coda

On this paper, I tried to illustrate how ICTs can be designed and used to transform access in
the lives of people and the workings of government, business, and other organizations. The
potential uses and impacts of ICTs on social transformation to our environment are many and
varied. No short paper can cover all aspects, and this paper does no more than provide a few
examples. However, the growing uniqueness of ICTs to social and economic life is focussed
only on a specific outcome of the information society, knowledge society, and network
society toward social transformation.

ICTs rarely course social transformations as much of the popular literature about ICTs and
social change gives emphasis on “social transformations” and the ways in which ICTs create
a new social worlds. Empirically-oriented social informatics researchers who carefully study
ICTs and social change find that the pace of change is relatively slow, and that there are
usually important continuities in social life in addition to the discontinuities. [2]

Lastly, considering a digital divide, the role of ICT for social changes and transformations of
developed economies and underdeveloped economies suggest that in the case of developed
economy, ICT access help development while in case of less developed economies it is
development that makes inroad for demand for connectivity. Evidences from large number of
experiments also suggest that if access to ICT or connectivity has to work in the marginal
economies, it has to follow and effectively coupled with availability of economic
opportunities, access to education/literacy, and empowerment of the people from grassroots.

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[References

[1]. Duncombe (1999), Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs), Poverty

Reduction and Micro, Small & Medium-scale Enterprises (MSMEs)

[2]. (Mansell and Silverstone, 1996). Design and the Domestication of ICTs: Technical Change and
Everyday Life

[3]. H.T Mazumder in Puja Mondal Social Change: Characteristics and Factors

[4]. Jane K. Winn* Catalytic Impact of Information Technology on the New International Financial
Architecture. Professor, Southern Methodist University School of Law, Dallas, Texas; Co-Director,
Center for Pacific Rim Legal Studies; jwinn@mail.smu.edu; http://www.smu.edu/~jwinn.

[5]. Silverstone (1999: 251)

[6]. Moore & Kearsley,1996) in Deryn Watson “Understanding the relationship between ICT and
education means exploring innovation and change” Educ Inf Technol (2006) 11 : 199 –216 DOI
10.1007/s10639-006-9016-2

[7]. William H. Dutton “Social Transformation in an Information Society: Rethinking Access to You
and the World” Published in 2003 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization 7, place de Fontenoy F-75352 Paris 07 SP

[8]. Chen, W. and Wellman, B. (2004), ‘Charting Digital Divides’, in Dutton et al. (2003):
forthcoming.

[9] John C. Bertot, Paul T. Jaeger, Justin M. Grimes “Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency:
E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies” University of
Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

[10] ROB KLING Social Informatics: “A New Perspective on Social Research about Information
and Communication Technologies” Prometheus , Vo l. 18 , No. 3, 200 0

[11]. Warshauer, M. (2003). Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

[12]. Edwards Paul. 1994. From “impact to social process: Computers in society and culture.
Handbook of science and technology studies . Sheila Jasanoff , Gerald E. Markle , and Jame s C.
Peterson, Chap.12. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage .

[13]. Avgerou, C., Ciborra, C., and Land, F. (forthcoming), The Social Study of Information and
Communication Technologies (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

[14]. Castles, S. (2000), ‘Development, Social Transformation and Globalisation’. Paper given at
Social Transformation Studies Workshop, Wollongong, Australia: Centre for Asia Pacific Studies,
University of Wollongong, 23-25 June. www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/012castles.htm

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