Old Wolf, New Wool Suit: India, IT, and the Legacy of Colonialism

Information technology forms an intrinsic part of the current global imagination, a worldview that has recently been challenged. The challenge, however, has not been extended to IT, which is seen, for the most part, in a positive light. We use actor-network theory to explore whether there might indeed be some problematic aspects of global IT that deserve the attention of the IS community. By concerning ourselves with the mobility of IT through both time and space, we investigate IT transfers related to India and their links to the colonial era, considering how IT might unobtrusively carry in it assumptions and practices that derive from that epoch.