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In the following I want to lay out what hopefully may function as an initial program towards a “digital citizenship” -- a form of digitally enabled and enhanced citizenship for the Internet age; and one which takes as its basic assumption the Internet's transformational risks and opportunities. This is presented in the form of an election “platform” -- a set of principles and policies which gives citizens a choice as to directions they may wish to follow.
November 6, 2014
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.
March 11, 2013
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.
April 10, 2012
There is it appears, two worlds of "Open Government Data"--one the world of smart phones, and Ipads, of apps and upscale "demographics" of interest to sponsors like Proctor and Gamble; and the contrasting world of slum dwellers without access to sanitation, of populations subject to systematic mal-and even corrupt administration --worlds where app providers and the folks who make the OGD available to them go public with multi-million dollar IPO's and ones where those with the courage to pursue public information may be putting their lives at risk.
July 25, 2011
Community Informatics colleague Ajit Maru, in a posting on the Community Informatics Research elist suggests some disturbing questions concerning the relationship between “Information Access” and “effective use” and its possible links to the rising food crisis globally.
May 15, 2011
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.
March 31, 2011
The suggestion that officials and others in Japan are looking for ideas and strategies had the effect of making me think a lot about the emergency post-earthquake post-tsunami intra-nuclear situation in Japan from the perspective of community based ICTs.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
September 14, 2015
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