In recent years, there has been a curious shift in the nature and organization of transnational labor. Drawing attention to the international division of labor, earlier studies have pointed out the movement of labor from developing to developed nations as well as the reverse movement of transnational corporations to cheaper labor markets overseas. In contrast, I investigate issues of labor and globalization by exploring a swiftly growing, but understudied, labor practice that does not require either labor or corporations to move in physical space. It inquires into a practice that allows workers based in India to work online on projects for corporations in the United States, representing a new mode of labor integration where software code emerges as a new organizing medium.

For a brief period, Ireland looked like a software giant in the making. Indeed, it was actually the world's leading exporter of pre-packaged software at one point. This talk investigates what went wrong, and what other ex-colonies can learn. It argues that the central problem was a lack of intellectual sophistication among key decision-makers; alternatively put, it was the new-found interest in computer software by technically inept senior politicians that forced a delicate consensus between civil servants and software entrepreneurs to be destroyed.

Some of the results are frankly hilarious. A previously sophisticated funding mechanism was abandoned for the creation of a digital hub with the promise of 700 companies and initial investment of $130 million. Four years after the announcement, there are 4 companies on site. A much-ballyhooed joint venture with MIT, which cost the State over $50 million, was revealed to involve no substantive commitment of any sort on the MIT side. In particular, MIT refused to accredit any degrees from Medialab Europe, or indeed allow its name be used; the fact that it chose to send over academics who had been refused tenure itself speaks volumes for the contempt shown to the project.

Unless radical changes are immediately made, the moment has passed for the creation of a viable 21st century Irish software industry. The final part of the talk focuses on how countries that, like Ireland, lack intellectual infrastucture, might avoid making its mistakes.

Sean O Nuallain holds an M.Sc. in Psychology from University College, Dublin (UCD), Ireland and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He holds a visiting scholar's position at Stanford and directs the independent non-profit Nous Research. For five years, he acted as Science and Technology convenor for the Irish Green party, and published the first IT policy paper in the history of the State.

He is the author of a book on the foundations of Cognitive Science.

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