Scenarios for the future of technology and international development

Scenarios for the future of technology and international development

This paper explores the role of technology in international development in the coming years. It discusses four possible scenarios—a world with more government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation; a world in which successful strategies emerge for addressing urgent and entrenched worldwide issues; an economically unstable world, with a weak government and high criminal activity; and an economically depressed world where each community develops independent, localized solutions to a growing set of problems—all of them requiring different strategies and choices regarding the uses of technology for development.