Essay Questions 2017 Information & Communication Technology Policy and Strategy (812N1) Please choose one of the following or agree with convener an alternative by Week 10. 1. ‘Virtual communities’ may flourish or they may fail to ignite or sustain interest within the Internet’s open environment. Choosing one community as your primary ‘case’ discuss factors that enable this community to flourish and factors that may make it difficult for it to be sustained in the future. Essential Reading: Preece, Jenny (2000) Online Communities: Supporting Sociability, Designing Usability, Wiley 2. Discuss the alternatives for the granting and enforcement of intellectual property rights enforcement in the information society taking into account the tradeoffs between incentives, authors’ rights, and the interests of those who seek to access digital information. Essential Reading: Lessig, L. (2003). The Future of Ideas. New York, Random House. 3. Innovations in information and communication technologies reduce the costs and increase the feasibility of ‘codifying’ knowledge (allowing it to be transformed into information that can be exchanged). What is the role of digitally connected social networks in this respect? Discuss the implications of this view and the arguments against it. Essential Reading: Special issue of Industrial and Corporate Change Vol 9: 2, 2000 and Amin, A. and P. Cohendet (2004). Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities and Communities, Oxford University Press. 4. Examine the development of a single open source software project, analyzing the factors that have contributed to its success and identifying shortcomings or problems that the project has encountered. Essential Reading: Weber, S. (2004). The Success of Open Source Software. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press. 5. The issue of what ICT policy is most appropriate for developing countries is receiving a growing about of attention. For a particular developing county, consider the main arguments that have been made in reports or policy statements of that country in relation to ideas or theories about ICT for development. Essential Reading: Tim Unwin (2009) (ed.), ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development, Cambridge University Press. Robin E. Mansell and Uta Wehn (1998), Knowledge Societies, Oxford University Press. .