The promises and pitfalls of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are tied to two quintessential motifs of our times: globalisation and the learning society. Both ideas have a rather different purchase in Africa than they do in Europe, North America and Australasia. So, too, do the promises of information technology.Globalisation may be described as the process by which societies are connected through rapid, large-scale networks of political, social and economic interaction. Such temporal and spatial processes, James Bohman (1998) suggests, would not be possible without multiple networks of co-ordination and interaction, and a proper supporting communicative infrastructure. In other words, the international communications network is both a feature of globalisation and the very condition of possibility for the process of globalisation.The learning society is a predominant contemporary myth (Hughes and Tight, 1995). Current political, social, economic and education problems, so the myth goes, may all be addressed through the development of a learning society. Four other interconnected myths sustain the myth of the learning society: the productivity myth; the change myth; the lifelong learning myth; and the learning organisation myth (Hughes and Tight, 1995). Information technology is a common theme in all these myths. To call these ideas myths is not to dismiss them out of hand. Rather it is to recognise both their power and the ways in which they either distort or obscure our understanding. The myth of the learning society, together with its sustaining myths, can at best offer only a partial basis for understanding the complex relations between life, learning and work, and for planning related educational policy and practice (see Hughes and Tight, 1995). The very notion of learning is under-theorised, indeed taken for granted, in several of these myths and some of their pivotal concepts such as the recognition of prior learning. Yet, as a myth, the idea of a learning society may have a powerful role in enabling governments and industry, as well as communities and individuals, to take education and training seriously in developing alternative visions of a well-functioning society and in leading people through change. Part of the vision, we suggest, is to provide open access to educational goods and so to include those who have previously been 41
