Sumitra Srinivasan
Sumitra Srinivasan is a Ph. D. student in the Department of Communication at Georgia State University and is currently writing her dissertation on globalization of grassroots technologies in developing countries. Before she came to study at Georgia State, she was a Masters student in Television-Radio-Film at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communication and part of the graduating class of 2001.
Globalization of grassroots technologies in India: A political-economy study of a FLOSS in developing countries
This talk will be based on Srinivasan's dissertation research which
studies grassroots technologies on a global scale and in the context of
developing countries to understand how the digital divide is being
transformed. Political-economy players are acknowledging and adopting
the power of such technologies in third and first worlds. Open-source
technologies are gaining importance so much that corporate and
governmental actors are endorsing them, as evident in a case study of
Linux in India. The government of India recently announced an
Open-Source Initiative as encouraging the adoption of open-source
software in its various applications.
This research specifically focuses on Linux and the political-economy
of its globalization in an Indian city. Indian Linux User Groups or
ilugs are a communities of Linux users and activists with chapters in
cities all over India. Still in a nascent stage of development, ilugs
communicate via list-servs and monthly meetings to discuss technical
and social issues of using Linux. Significant evidences of Linux
adoption over the past three years include the first Indian Linux
magazine and Linux-Asia conferences hosted in India.
- Presentation [PDF]
- MP3 (45MB)
- OGG (39MB)