ORGANIZATION
Microsoft Research India
The Bangalore research lab that Toyama co-founded in 2004 and that became the primary site of the fieldwork from which the Law of Amplification emerged.
Microsoft Research India was established in Bangalore in January 2005 with Toyama as assistant managing director. Its Technology for Emerging Markets group, which Toyama co-founded, conducted five years of empirical research on technology deployments in education, health care, agriculture, and governance across South Asia. The lab's distinctive methodology combined computer science training with anthropological fieldwork, producing a body of work that challenged the dominant assumptions of the ICT4D field and, eventually, produced Toyama's reconception of the entire framework. The lab continues to operate and remains one of the most productive centers of ICT4D research globally, though Toyama's own critical turn led him to leave Microsoft in 2009 for academic positions at UC Berkeley and then the University of Michigan.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The lab was founded during a period of intense optimism about technology and development. The One Laptop Per Child initiative was launched the following year. The World Bank and other major development institutions were committing substantial resources to ICT4D projects. The underlying