Information technology and communications technology are becoming part of everyone’s life. They are changing the very fabric of society, creating new economic structures and destroying old ones. This book looks at how these technologies are being deployed now and how they could be used in the future. The history of computing research is largely the history of individuals using technology to reach other individuals, the purpose of the research being to enhance the power of that individual. Community informatics takes a contrary view, that the ultimate purpose computing technology is to empower communities, not individuals.
In a world where the average citizen has yet to make their first phone call the idea that every citizen will have their own computer and unlimited access to communications is a purely western vision. The danger is that the advantaged elite of today, the digerati, will capture the resources of the wired future for themselves, leaving the others even further behind. The papers in this book argue that new technology cannot be separated from existing power relationships embedded in advanced societies. The solution therefore is to create new patterns of usage and ownership that are community based and which concentrate on improving life at the community level.
Community informatics (CI) is the application of technology to enhance and support social structures. It takes as its starting point that technology should be used to improve the quality of life of the groups using it. It should be participative, two way, interactive and transfer power to the wider community, not create technical elites. Gurstein has created a collection of well written, well researched papers on every aspect of CI. The first section includes papers defining the issues of access, sustainable development and community development. The second section offers theoretical frameworks and models of CI from the standpoints of sociology, politics and regional development. The next section deals with experiences of applied CI. One part looks at CI in disadvantaged communities within developed societies, and another reports on the lessons learned in introducing technology in third world situations. The final section contains detailed case studies of CI applied in a wide variety of situations.
The range of contributors’ backgrounds is a reflection of just how new this discipline is. Contributors include information scientists, sociologists, regional planners, computer scientists, environmentalists and journalists. In combining these varied strands into a coherent work Gurstein has made a major contribution to the corpus of research in this area. The skilled mix of rhetoric, theory and empirical results will inform and direct future research in this field for some time to come. This is a landmark book for this emerging discipline.
