Network Society—Towards a Holistic Approach to Human Development in Asia

Abstract

Today, the world is witnessing an even more histrionic turnaround due to the consolidation of many pervasive disruptive forces, especially in the domain of technology where human development has witnessed a propagation of innovation in technology-driven space in most of the eastern and westernized nations. Despite our awareness of all these alterations, most of the current studies have failed to comprehend its 2nd and 3rd-order effects that might result. The indubitable realism is that technology strategy has to be made the business strategy in the era of IoT (Internet of Things) revolution. Taking this perspective, we contemplate the emergent prerequisite of the network society for human capital development in Asia due to its pervasive reach in a global society. Human intangible capital resources play a vital role to ensure the holistic economic development where per capita GDP may be a narrow indicator to map the economic well-being of any nation. The current study focuses on how advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) could promote human capital development with special reference to the panel of South Asian Region (SAR). The results hint toward the strong associations of Internet penetration, technological readiness and mobile usage to the human development index. Furthermore, per capita GDP, birth life expectancy and school enrollment rate are also tested separately in order to have an in-depth understanding of individual component level linkages of HDI with ICT and other macroeconomic demographic indicators. The overall results are found to be in sync with the key findings. Therefore, the study recommends a cohesive ecosystem that could amalgamate digital space with HDI.