The interest in Telecentres has ebbed and flowed within the broad technology stream. In Developed countries the various programs which supported the development of telecentres (called by various names in different jurisdictions) have been in considerable retreat in recent years as the initial need for access to low cost Internet access and computers has been to a very considerable extent overtaken by commercial Internet service providers and the continuing reduction in the cost of computer hardware and the availability of low cost or free software.
As both an academic (and research) discipline and a community (and policy) practice, Community Informatics links a variety of communities and many with a widely varying degree of resources and opportunities.
In this, I think that the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have access to skills and resources which were unavailable to earlier movements that is—the Internet, social networking, mobile telephony and perhaps most important, the experience and knowledge of how to use these in support of collective social ends.
The app culture is one of individuals and individualized approaches. Apps enable and empower the individual as a consumer, as a communicator, as an information handler. However, many of the major issues in a developing world (and other) environment are not ones that lend themselves readily to individualized responses or individual solution. Issues involving citizenship and particularly the rights and responsibilities of citizens including political behaviours and governance, human rights, land rights, water rights and so on are often highly political and highly contentious with huge financial interests involved and where individuals no matter how empowered they may be matter for little against entrenched political power and financial strength.
That there will be many impacts some profound, many geo-political, even more unanticipated may be taken as a given. However, perhaps we received a signal of what may be one of the be the most important of all as it will potentially impact the way in which our world creates values and works towards an implementation of our highest aspirations. If such an impact is occurring then the effect will not simply change how we do and can behave but also how our technologies are defined and determined and perhaps most importantly how our relationship to our technologies acts so as to reinforce our humanity.
I'm not sure what anyone else thinks, but this proposal which is an attempt to get major funding to do very very large scale social simulations based on real time data of social phenomena is currently up for EU research funding. This seems to me to be extremely questionable from a variety of perspectives.
An even more intriguing possibility would be the fusing of existing rural (political) organizational structures with ICTs and envigorated with new blood from the “ant tribe” and other young people with Internet and ICT skills leading to a rural renewal, extended service delivery and both more efficient and sustainable agricultural and SMME and SME developments. Perhaps once the attention of the Chinese leadership shifts back from the explosive developments in urban areas similar structural developments might begin to be seen in rural areas and among lower income populations as well.
Certainly it is very hard to fault (or even disagree) with any of the above except that this definition and the following paper seem to not understand that lack of access in most developmental contexts isn’t simply a failure of reasonable people to understand that they should proceed in an “open” rather than a “closed/restrictive” fashion. The lack of access in many if not most cases serves the interests of some quite well including many who gain considerable advantage from lack of transparency, restrictions on use of government data, the use of security designations in inappropriate contexts. In these instances a lack of access is most frequently a function of a lack of power in a particular social and economic context and that articulating the good feelings attendant on an “openness” strategy are as unlikely to change those restrictions as were the thinking of good thoughts sufficient to stop the flow of oil from the BP Gulf catastrophe.
Processes of both embodied and electronically enabled mutual support, collaborative norm setting, reciprocity, trust building and so on will need to be put to the service of activities associated with creating sustainable environments in cities. There is thus a very considerable scope, even a requirement for concerted efforts towards the development of an urban community informatics movement.
For the last several months I’ve been acting in an advisory role to an EU funded project (N4C) on “Delay Tolerant Networking” (DTN) The project–N4C is based at Lulea University of Technology (LTU) in Northern Sweden but including partners in a variety of EU countries and including universities, SME’s, and the private sector. My role… [Read more…]
May 15, 2011
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