Browsing All posts tagged under »Community Informatics Practice«

The Leap Manifesto Revised as Though Information Technology and the Internet Matter

April 25, 2016

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  The Leap Manifesto is an important document and one that is having significant impacts at the moment in certain political areas. The document as an attempt to link an environmentalist approach to a broader social and economic critique and a statement on ways forward, breaks new ground in the Canadian context and presents significant […]

Smart Cities vs. Smart Communities: Empowering Citizens not Market Economics

November 6, 2014

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So "Smart Cities" particularly in Less Developed Countries are ways of turning urban environments into gold mines for consultants, hardware and software companies and redoing the city in the image and for the benefit of its most prosperous and well-serviced inhabitants and in the meantime transferring additional resources and benefits from the poor to the rich.

The Right to Remember: A Speculative Community Informatics approach to “the Right to Be Forgotten”

July 5, 2014

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However, I am certain that having communities determine what needs to be remembered and what can allowed to be forgotten makes rather more sense and is more in keeping with the history of memory and the opportunities and value that memory provides us with, than turning those decisions over to anonymous and faceless Google administrators.

Beyond Access: Libraries Are the New Telecentres

November 16, 2013

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As those, who have been in and around community-based ICT/Internet access (community informatics) initiatives well know, the primary dilemma for these activities (e.g. Telecentres) is how to ensure sufficient sustainability, organizational stability and programmatic flexibility to allow for survival once the immediate round of funding which helped them launch, runs out.

Community Informatics for Improving Health

March 11, 2013

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Maintaining and improving the health of its members is one of the most important functions that a community must fulfill. As well, we know that the cost of health care is in many parts of the world becoming a huge and even unsupportable burden because of the directions in which health care has been evolving. Finally, we know that there is a strong and positive relationship between health and one's involvement in social relationships, including those of family, friends and community. Thus exploring how Information and Communications Technologies might enable health and health services by, through and within communities would seem to be a natural focus for Community Informatics.

Glocality: Thinking about Community Informatics and the Local in the Global and the Global in the Local. Special Issue of the Journal of Community Informatics

September 3, 2012

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One of the peculiarities of conceptualizations in the age and context of the Internet is the continuing desire to retain the traditional categories of the pre-Internet age. We talk of rural development and urban environments, of the "local" as feature of spatial connection and the "global" as the field in which large processes and interconnections take place.

Community Informatics and Older Persons: The Necessary Connection

March 6, 2012

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As is well known, there is a looming demographic crisis in Developed Countries with a rapidly aging population (people are living longer) and a rapidly declining birth rate. The effect of this is to put significant strains on overall economic activity and particularly on health care and support systems, as the aging population results in an increasing need for health care and medical interventions and for support and care services.

Evolving Relationships: Universities, Researchers and Communities:: Special Issue: Journal of Community Informatics: University — Community Relationships

January 12, 2012

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This issue of The Journal of Community Informatics (JoCI) deals with research relationships between universities and university based ICT researchers and communities. These matters are, of course of central significance to Community Informatics since much of CI is, in one form or another, linked into this type of relationship.

Are Mobiles a Capitalist Plot to Keep the Poor Poor?

November 7, 2011

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...in one study in rural Africa it was being found that the costs of mobile communications were absorbing up to 54% of the total net income of certain farmers

Up from Facebook: #Occupy—(Re)Building and Empowering Communities

October 22, 2011

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#OWS (occupy Wall Street and the “Occupy” movement) have been widely discussed but not as yet in the context of a broader understanding of an evolving Digital/Information Society.