Subscribe:
RSS feed
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
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.
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.
September 3, 2012
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.
June 9, 2011
I’m just back from a variety of recent travels--lecturing, workshopping, seminaring, meeting with academics and researchers in various parts of the Asian less developed countries (LDCs). Specifically I was invited to discuss community informatics with academics/researchers in 3 universities in 3 rather different regions of Asia. In reflecting on these meetings I realized the very strong strain of consistency in our discussions. In each instance, the academics, almost all of whom had recent Ph.D.s from research universities in Developed Countries (DC’s) returned home to find that their recently acquired skills and areas of expert knowledge were of little direct value in their home environments.
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 
November 16, 2013
12