Dynamic Models of the Socio-Economic Role of Telecommunications Technology

Abstract

During the past three years a multidisciplinary research team at Queen’s University has been engaged in a study of the usefulness of dynamic models in the evaluation of the impact of telecommunications on developing regions. These dynamic models are similar in concept to those introduced by Forrester [1]. When based solidly on multidisciplinary investigations, they enable a wide diversity of information about a region or community to be brought together into a dynamic whole that has the potential to illustrate clearly the way in which the many facets of its socio-economic behaviour are interacting over a period of time. The model’s behaviour is, of course, no more than the end result of all the hypotheses built into its structure by its builders, with the major advantage that such structure is explicitly described and hence open to critical inspection and possible modification by the builders and the users. A key feature of the models is the incorporation of a large number of “feedback” loops to describe these socio-economic interactions over a period of time.