Page 69 - Education in a Digital World

56 International Organisations

Of course, it would be overly simplistic to attribute the actions of firms solely to
motivations of altruism and philanthropy. It should be remembered that the pro-
curement of educational technology represents a lucrative market within which IT
industry actors operate. In making sense of these ‘philanthropic’ activities we should
remain mindful of the overriding interest that these commercial organisations have
in the selling and supplying of digital resources to educational institutions around
the world. As Tim Unwin observes, this motivation could certainly be said to drive
commercial involvement in the educational sectors of countries where domestic
markets for digital technology are still emerging:

The ICT sector has been a key agent in the processes of globalisation, and
has likewise benefitted greatly in terms of expanded markets and reduced
labour costs. It is therefore very much in the interests of private capital to see
an expanded take-up of ICTs across the world. In the richest countries,
increasing market saturation of mobile phones and computers means that
companies involved in their production have to innovate ever more crea-
tively in order to continue to expand their revenues. An alternative, though,
is for them to seek to expand their markets more extensively in countries
where the take-up of their technologies has so far been limited. Hence, global
ICT corporations have a real interest in encouraging governments and inter-
national organisations to facilitate their penetration into such markets, and
one way in which they do this is by engaging actively in programmes that
propound the benefits of their technologies.
(Unwin 2009b, p.161)

As Unwin implies, if anything, the main commercial gains to be made from the
involvement of major IT firms in educational technology are indirect and long
term. Rather than resulting in immediate and substantial profits, most firm’s edu-
cational technology activities could be said to be based around the establishment of
‘brand awareness’ and loyalty amongst future customers, as well as lending them the
kudos of being visibly involved in apparently ‘socially responsible’ activities. These
long-term motivations were illustrated, for example, in Google’s justification for its
development of online services for education institutions during the 2000s in terms
of developing the brand-loyalty of young users ‘for life’ (Paton 2007, p.11).
Similarly, as Jodi Dean observed with regard to the trend during the 1990s for the
corporate donation of IT equipment to educational institutions, “computer
companies’ donations of computers to schools [ … ] are clearly implicated in the
production of new users, consumers, and markets” (Dean 2002, p.143).
Of course, this is not to argue that the involvement of the private sector in sup-
porting and sustaining the use of technology across educational contexts is a wholly
cynical development. Indeed, such actions could be welcomed as bringing valuable
industrial expertise and professionalism to bear on an area of education where the