A Relational Ontology of “Open” Digital Infrastructures in Socially Excluded Communities in Angola

Abstract

The current literature on digital infrastructure offers a powerful lens for conceptualizing the increasingly interconnected system collectives found in contemporary organizations. However, little attention has been paid to the generative mechanisms of digital infrastructure, that is, the causal powers that explain how and why such infrastructures evolve over time. This is unfortunate, since more knowledge about what drives digital infrastructures would be highly valuable for managers and IT professionals confronted by the complexity of managing them. In the context of design and implementation of “open” digital infrastructures (II) in socially excluded communities, we view outcomes as innovations, as they arise from new uses and combinations of existing digital technologies, due to the dynamic relational interactions between digital infrastructure and the actors. These innovations, arising from the IIs, interacting with actors with different interests, can also alter and reshape the IIs into new forms and path trajectories which initially were not part of the design. This is the generative quality of open digital infrastructure, considered as the ability of an infrastructure to generate or produce new behavior, structure, or output without the direct involvement from the originator of the system Consequently, digital infrastructures are never fully complete, as they shape and are shaped by innovations that arise from the dynamic between the IIs and the actors, implying that there is always room for further improvement, extension or modification. Through recourse to the metaphor of affordances, we examine how the generative nature of open digital infrastructures is impacting on the digital divide problem in urban and rural communities facing social exclusion in Angola.