Communication, Culture, and Governance in Asia | Communicative Assemblages of the Pisonet and the Translocal Context of ICT for the “Have-less”: Innovation, Inclusion, Stratification

Abstract

This article examines the translocal context of emerging information and communication technology (ICT) for the “have-less,” with a focus on public access ICT that emerged to become popular in low-income communities in the Philippines: the pisonet (one-peso net). Drawing from two years of in-depth interviews and participant observation in slum communities in the Philippines and reviews of ICT governance reports, the case examines how the pisonet emerged and diffused, and the communicative assemblage: a complex interplay of global technological discourses, national ICT governance mechanisms, social innovators, spatial conditions, and socioeconomic context that together forge the development of particular ICT ecologies and shape techno-social practices in this locale.