Virtually Clueless
Who knows how to bring people together electronically to make
good things happen?
by Frank Odasz
franko@bigsky.dillon.mt.us
http://macsky.bigsky.dillon.mt.us/
(The following two paraphrased paragraphs are borrowed from "Share
Our Strength" by Bill Shore.)
Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has visited more than one thousand schools over
the past decade to teach young people about jazz. He was quoted in Life
magazine as saying "What a kid learns about jazz is how to express
his individuality without stepping on somebody else's. The first thing I
tell kids is "Play anything you want but make it sound like you."
The next step is learning to control that self-expression. Don't just blurt
something out, adapt it to what the other guy is doing. Being a good neighbor,
that's what jazz is all about. Jazz is democracy in action. Teaching jazz
is teaching the language of community. (page 106)
Current political thinking appears to have polarized between the Republican's
belief that the free market is the key to solving today's social ills, and
at the other extreme the Democrats have the belief that government holds
the keys to taking appropriate action. What both parties seem to have missed
is the necessity of action by the civic sector, as the third leg of the
milkstool to provide support for a vital America.
What both Democrats and Republicans fail to see is that the government and
the market are not enough to make a civilization. The language of the marketplace
says "Get as much as you can for yourself." The language of government
says "Legislate for others what is good for them." We're missing
the distinctive moral language of a civil society. All of us have to go
out in the public square, and all of us have to assume our citizenship responsibilities.
Rebuilding civil society requires people talking and listening to each other;
making music together as a community, through songs of action, caring; with
a spirit of giving freely without measuring it out precisely, or demanding
something in return. (Page 12)
The potential of the NII, community networking, and of each individual,
hangs squarely on this issue of joining with others to leverage the public
good, without thought of personal gain. Who controls our ability to do this
effectively? You and me.
Today, an increasing number of individuals are awakening to the personal
empowerment of today's easy-to-use webbed Internet, complete with search
engines and free software. Many of these individuals have a vision beyond
a society of solo browsers, they have experienced true human sharing and
a sense of community through their online social experiences and have realized
that with the will to do so, people anywhere, anytime, can bond together
to work toward common goals, no longer limited by distance, time, or the
lack of access to adequate information.
Many community networks operating today are the result of the work of such
individuals who have diligently attempted to impart their visions to others
by providing a model online environment combining the vision and the tools
with citizens eager to benefit others.
Will the big communications corporations preempt these budding 'bottom-up'
community networks? Citizens will determine the winners through their participation.
The options for any group of individuals to use a BBS, email, listserv,
newsgroup, web conference, or other emerging means (3D VRML avatars, CUSEE-ME
desktop video-conferencing, etc.,) are increasing. It's to everyone's advantage
for the big corporations to provide as high a quality of infrastructure
as possible, with citizens being primarily in charge of their choice of
communications tools and in the purposes for which they use them.
The reality of the situation is that creating autonomously controlled local
networks demonstrating the authenticity of widespread purposeful citizen
participation can only be achieved through a "Win-Win" ongoing
partnership between the builders, and the users, of our emerging National
Information Infrastructure.
The former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment clearly states:
"The diversity of applications necessary for a successful NII can only
come from the citizens themselves."
Theory vs practice
In around 1867, when the first transatlantic telegraph was installed, wonderfully
flowery visions of our global human family being joined together were ushered
from many a pulpit. Most of these visions have yet to be realized, even
with today's technologies. The point is there's a big difference between
espousing theoretical benefits and demonstrated practice/realization of
specific benefits.
Beyond basic physical connectivity, universal service needs to focus on
the social infostructure by which people become aware of the validated,
not assumed, benefits of connectivity at all levels.
Effective citizen engagement in lifelong learning and purposeful public
problem solving, that improves lives, is a key issue. We need ongoing evaluative
metrics to measure what's really happening after connectivity is made available.
Caring and connectivity are two related types of bandwidth which must interact
with common sense.
As a society, we still don't know how to work together online productively,
yet. We're a passive preliterate video society evolving toward becoming
a proactive literate society.
We're all kindergartners in the information age, experimenting with various
ways of communicating and working with others productively online. Problems
arise; such as a listserv discussion group growing so large that most members
become too intimidated to post their ideas, or a few members choosing to
dominate public discussions with sophomoric 'spitting contests,' airing
freely their negativity and causing the majority of discussion members to
recoil in distaste.
Worse even, are discussions without leadership which are reduced to circular
hodge-podge messaging, where the same issues are discussed over and over
again with no one summarizing, archiving and disseminating former quality
messages and "collected knowledge." When value and knowledge are
not aggregated, and decisions not reached, forward progress is lost.
It is the specific processes by which citizens aggregate knowledge and engage
in purposeful public problem-solving, effectively, that we need to turn
our focus. Without a national "knowledge collection" effort in
understanding how to leverage these dynamics effectively, to allow us to
define the direction forward in realizing our joint potential, we'll continue
to be...virtually clueless.
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