What’s at Stake for Community Informatics?
Walter Brown just posted on the ciresearchers listserv (for people working in community informatics), run by Michael Gurstein. He echoed a provocative question from Mike’s blog: “So What Do We Lose if We Don’t Have the Internet?” He continued,
The burning question for CI Researchers in my opinion is “How can policy makers, business and economic leaders, academic and related research institutions and organizations, and the whole development community, refocus their attention on finding solutions to providing high quality affordable information directly to individuals in marginalized communities?” and “How can marginalized communities and individuals be made aware of the power of ICT4D and begin to demand affordable high quality information services?” And the emphasis on finding answers to these questions must focus on “doing” more than just knowing the underlying theories of how to or why it does not get done.
Brown recommended an article from a 2005 issue of The Information Society (1: 41-51) that I will try and locate: Govindan Parayil, “The Digital Divide and Increasing Returns: Contradictions of Information Capitalism.” I am in the midst of writing proposals to the state and feds for stimulus funding related to broadband access and find I am hobbled by similar questions to those posed by Walter Brown.
Community Informatics as “Activist” Social Informatics
Larry Stillman
Larry Stillman of Monash University wrote the original drafts on community informatics for Wikipedia. He just posted this comment to the “ciresearchers” listserv:
Larry Stillman and Henry Linger
There is an ongoing debate in Community Informatics about the need for a stronger conceptual and theoretical base in order to give the field disciplinary cohesion and direction. By investigating the body of reflective thinking in Information Systems, researchers in Community Informatics can develop a more rigorous theoretical context for their work. Information Systems can be considered as a fragmented adhocracy that allows many intellectual communities to co-exist under its umbrella. A sympathetic reading of Information Systems offers an opportunity to Community Informatics, in spite of its different orientation, to address both social and technological issues in its theoretical framework. This framework would be based on a common language that expresses a shared ontology and epistemology with Information Systems. Such a framework then allows Community Informatics to fully address its information systems problem solving agenda as well as its community problem solving activities. Strengthening this dual agenda will allow Community Informatics to work effectively with both the technical and social design and implementation problems. But it also provides Community Informatics with an opportunity to contribute to a discourse within Information Systems in order to broaden the traditional Information Systems concept of organisation and social action.
The Big Neighborhood Supper
Chickens, chard, plums and cabbage
About 25 of us gathered on a fairly warm and humid August evening to enjoy The Big Neighborhood Supper. Artist Maggie Taylor worked hard all summer to collaboratively organize workshops , conceptualize a group gathering around local food and drink, and produce a meal in a lovely setting. She pulled it off, and then some! In Maggie’s back yard, we sat around home-made tables from discarded lumber found in an alley; set with 60-year-old china, vases of flowers from Rachel’s garden; placemats made from photos of local fruits, vegetables, and chickens (see photo); decorated with fabric and candles hanging in trees; and sprigs of herbs on each place setting. We all pitched in to prepare the food, and what food! Pesto and bread (thanks, Pekara!), chilled cucumber soup, salad greens with sweetpea currant tomatoes, grilled veggies, vegetable frittata, and half cantalopes filled with mint ice cream and warm plums. WOW. Almost everything was local, grown by the people who came to the meal. The four children, three dogs, and many adults were quite content when I left at 9:30 last night. We shared memories of food production and I met many new people, or got better acquainted with people who have been around as long as I have, but I haven’t talked to much. (Three of us were 56!) Thanks SO much, Maggie and all BNS participants! 
Continuous City
The Builders Association performed their show, “Continuous City” last night here in Champaign-Urbana. I was intrigued by the publicity, since it was supposed to be about cities, social networking, and theatre all at once, and how cool is that? The funders also touted the “boundary-pushing” and “cross-cultural” understanding of interdisciplinary art productions like this one. First of all, I’m glad that Marianne Weems, director, Harry Sinclair, writer, et al., brought this to our campus. Weems has been and is in a position to really think about arts in a globalizing world, having directed some other interesting pieces here before–Alladeen and Super Vision–and co-edited, with Brian Wallis and Philip Yenawine, a book I’ve used, Art Matters: how the culture wars changed America. In the program notes, Weems cites Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums as contributing to the development of this work. So, the bar is set pretty high.
On the plus side, the video work was pretty nifty and at times stunningly beautiful. I’d like to know more about how it was done. Peter Flaherty did the video design and you can learn more about him at www.thefourthefive.org The ideas behind the production were wonderful: video contributions from Shanghai, Mexico, Toronto, and KCPA, with an amusing “vlog” by Moe Angelos. Harry Sinclair as Mike was good as a globe-trotting, clueless father who, in his exhausted, unshaven way, was trying to sell a video-networking product he didn’t believe in, to people who already had satisfying in-the-flesh relationships. And his daughter, Sam, was great as a sullen, precocious, and cute kid.
But–of course there is a “but”–with all this techno-savvy and on-stage skill, the performance was ultimately about the lead character J.V.’s inability to have intimate relationships. That theme is treated much more profoundly and richly by many other playwrights. Rizwan Mirza’s J.V. didn’t convince me that he was a stressed out Internet entrepreneur. He seemed way too relaxed for that. And the metaphor of cutting off possibilities by going into a tunnel was really unsatisfying as an ending. I’m usually disappointed by endings, but this one seemed a cop-out.
Perhaps it comes down to “social architecture,” what Richard Farson in 1970 recognized as something we need to build in order to match (or compensate for, I’m not sure) the level of the technology we have set up. It seems like the technology on stage last night was flashy, sophisticated, funny, and capable of subtlety, but the dramatic storyline was too thin, too undeveloped, to support all that computer wizardry.
There were some inklings of social complexity, with food security, immigrants, and sprawl having brief mentions. It was thought-provoking as the family members were fuzzy and static-y, the images of Mike kept breaking up, and Sam kept hiding from her dad. But the evidence of resource-intensive, upper/middle-class ownership and production juxtaposed with a seeming lip service to papadum sellers in Mumbai or Vietnamese living in U.S. trailer parks rankled. Am I ungrateful that at least these folks are trying? No. Do I want more? Yes.
