New technology, communities, and networking: problems and prospects for orchestrating change
Introduction
The rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in recent years has lead to rising expectations that these new technologies could be used to support a wide range of innovative community-based services, besides more commercial applications. However, such hopes and visions have occurred whenever a new technology emerges – witness the discussions about the possible uses of radio and television as two-way communication channels at the time of their invention – and yet, in most cases, their ultimate deployment has not been in a direction that has provided much in the way of new socially useful products or services. Will the technologies underpinning our emerging “information society” be any different, despite the voices of many futurists describing enhanced quality of life, services, and sense of community through electronic means?
While it is too early to make a definitive statement on this issue, the market forces driving new product and service development, as described, for example, in the EU Bangemann report, do not augur well for such community-based initiatives (Bangemann, 1994). The emphasis instead seems to be on market liberalization and competition, with relatively little space or resources being given to improve social or community services, despite the concerns of some commentators. Likewise, many of the national Information Society reports produced in recent years, while occasionally mentioning the need for equitable access for all, and for a strong social dimension to national strategies, rarely are specific on possible mechanisms to ensure such a perspective, or on the resources that might be required to make it happen (Bannon, 1997, Friis, 1997).
Despite this dearth of funding and relative neglect by local and national governments, there has been a long history of attempts to harness the capabilities of the new technologies to support social and community objectives dating back to the 1960's and 1970's. These efforts made use of such mechanisms as – bulletin-board systems, computer-mediated conferencing, simple e-mail facilities, and open access points in libraries and community centres, to provide a variety of services that could be accessed and used by local people. The important point was that ordinary people were often serving as information providers, and also had a degree of control over how these services were to be organized. The crucial issues “centre around who uses the tool and controls its use, what policies guide its use, and what is the purpose of the tool” as noted by the activist Doug Schuler in his book, New Community Networks (Schuler, 1996, p. 14).
Many of these community networking projects collapsed after a few years of operation. This was for a variety of reasons, ranging from lack of funds, to lack of technical support personnel, to internal political bickering among groups as to the primary uses of the network, to lack of clear objectives as to the overall purpose of the network. In the early days, the expensive and cumbersome nature of computer systems, modems, and related software was a significant problem. The often Byzantine access and login procedures required to connect the computer to the network were also major stumbling blocks for many users, who were often not technically skilled. This meant that there was a need for technical support personnel, who were expensive, and usually not available on an “as-needed” basis by local groups. Also, due to the relatively high cost of the machines in the early days of computing, often many people in a small voluntary organization would have to share access to a single computer, thus making it less likely that they would bother to login and use the services – even basic electronic mail.
It should be noted that many of these problems have become less pronounced now, not due to increased technical literacy per se, but due to the development of a new generation of technical equipment that is cheaper, less error-prone and much more robust, as well as the fact that these systems have much more usable interfaces and simplified login procedures. More recently, the huge acceptance of the World Wide Web and the use of standard browsers such as Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Explorer for access to mail and information has meant that the learning required to use these services has been minimized.
However, these improvements, while very welcome, do not address other important barriers to people attempting to develop community networks. One major problem that has been found frequently in projects is the lack of clear objectives for the network, and poor understanding of the needs of the groups that are encouraged, or are keen, to be involved. Many networks are assumed to support voluntary or advocacy groups in discussing and sharing information, for example, yet often it has not been ascertained whether or not these organizations do in fact wish to share the information they possess, as it may be seen as a strategic asset. In other cases, it has not at all been apparent exactly what the benefits are for specific organizations in communicating with other similar groups.1 These problems surface again and again in evaluations of such networks (see Talbot and Newman, 1998, for examples and discussion).
Despite these problems, the growth of what are sometimes termed free-nets, or community networks, has continued over the years, and there are now a number of associations of such networks that provide useful resources for these networks, such as the Association for Community Networking (AFCN) and the European Alliance for Community Networking (EACN). Support for these initiatives comes from a variety of sources – government, research foundations, and occasionally from an amalgam of government, corporate and community sources.
In this paper, we wish to provide some information on certain relatively large-scale social experiments in community networking. The focus here is on community networks that are not small, very locally driven, bottom–up efforts, but on networks have the participation of city or state governments to some extent, or some form of corporate cosponsorship. We wish to investigate how real local community concerns are addressed within these larger partnerships, and investigate what are the possibilities for innovation and change in these settings. We provide a more in-depth account of one specific experiment – the eircom Ennis Information Age Town project in Ireland – that is ongoing, where we are currently researching ways and means of supporting local community involvement in the exercise. Before mentioning these studies, however, we would like to discuss further the very concept of community networks that is at the centre of our concern.
Section snippets
Community networks
Defining the “community” concept is not a simple matter. Indeed, within the sociological literature, one can find a myriad of different, and non-overlapping, definitions of the term. Indeed, it has been observed that almost the only consensus among the definitions is that the term must have “something to do with people”. For many, there is a strong link with the notion of living and working within a defined geographic neighborhood, where each member of the community must get along with their
Community networks in Ennis
The Interaction Design Centre is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Limerick that conducts research on a variety of topics concerning the interaction of people with new information and communication technologies. The centre performs research in such areas as human–computer interaction, usability, requirements analysis, computer-supported cooperative work, workplace design, multimedia evaluation, interface design, and software prototyping. A common concern is with the
Conclusion
… we need to treat Internet media as continuous with and embedded in other social spaces, … they happen within mundane social structures and relations that they may transform but … they cannot escape into a self-enclosed cyberian apartness. (Miller and Slater, 2000, p. 5)
In this paper, we have provided an overview of how new information and communication technologies can be used by communities to further their aims. We have noted how, in many cases, problems occur due to the fact that the
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank eircom Ennis Information Age Town Ltd., Ireland for providing financial support for our research, and Michael Byrne and Helen McQuillan for useful on-going discussions about the Ennis project and comments on a draft of this paper. However, the interpretations made in the paper are the sole responsibility of the authors. Thanks also to Sarah Kennedy and Eileen Dunne of the University of Limerick who have worked as research assistants on the project, and all in the Ennis
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