Community Networking
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| Community | Internet | Communities Online | Join in | IndexWho can I communicate with?
Who can I communicate with? Ideally, you should be able to
communicate with anybody else who's online. Many organisations
(at least at a national level) have a web presence, as do many
local and national government offices. Unfortunately, although
they may have published some information as web pages, they don't
always encourage interaction and discussion. There may only be
one email address for a local council site.
Exchnaging email addresses, while it may seem pretentious, is a
great way of keeping in contact with and developing a
relationship with someone you have met.
You may want to communicate with people with common interests,
for example a support group which may be spread over a the whole
country, and the Internet provides an efficient means of doing
this. There's probably a focus for your hobby, a web site or
nrewsgroup - if not, why not create one?
Of course, you can also encourage other people to communicate
with you. Publisize yourself, your organisation and your
services,by producing and advertising your own web pages. Make
sure you highlight a guest book or feedback form to build up
mailing lists.
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In my experience, that depends on how well people know each
other. Many people simply 'lurk' on mailing lists or discussion
groups, reading but not contributing. People are reticent about
getting on an electronic soap box if they don't know who is out
there.
It's good to have specific task or subject to work around. If you
are not networking with a purpose, people will quickly become
bored and unsuscribe. It may also be necessary to have a list
coordinator to keep discussion flowing creatively and to try to
keep the topic in focus, as well as summarizing content.
See Internet Basics: Mailing
Lists
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It may seem dstrange to want to use the global Internet to
communicate with people who only live a few minutes bus ride
away, but the local community is an important 'interest' group
and the technology can enhanceexisting social networksand lead to
greater cross sector communication.
By providing up-to-date local information, with no time
restrictions on availability, and allowing any one to publish
their own view on local issues, there exists the means to
increase the knowledge of local people about theirt community. In
addition, there is the ease with which feedback and discussion
can happen
For example, providing local governemt information and email
access to councillors enabling two way communications between
local respresentatives and citizens, even (as in Singapore)
voting over the net, public feedback to local organisations
aloows people to be involved in local affairs, increasing local
pride and participation.
Some of this may have started in your area (See A List of Local Community Networks)
Online collaboration can help to develop working together. Groups
of people with complementary services can increase work
opportunities by advertising, sharing skills and with easy file
transfer allow work on the same document at (virtually) the same
time.
This cooperation can be extended cross-sector to help with
funding bids where partnership is a key requirement.
Other initiatives which could benefit from these sort of
initiatives are LETS schemes, cresdit unions, food coops, baby
sitting groups and volunteers recruitment.
It may be useful to think of this technology as a services such
as noticeboards, village halls and telecottages.
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There many kinds of community networks in operation. Although
the vast majority of them are in the states, Britain (and Europe)
is catching up.
The US models may not be completely right for us but to try to
avoid re-inveting the wheel, the following from Anne Beamish (http://alberti.mit.edu/arch/4.207/anneb/thesis/toc.html)
may help:
In practice, it is probably a combination of these which will
develop as a community decides what suits it best. The more
information and participation going on, the greater the take up
will be, and vice-versa.
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The evolution of the Internet means that there is an 'open'
system, one with common standards for communication. There are
commercial services who will provide the basis for publishing, at
a cost, but a community may decide to set up its own low cost
version with a common independent 'space' for internaciton and
discussion. It needs the whole community to decide what is right
for its needs.
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Orginating in corporate computing, this is the use of Internet
software on existing internal networks.
The idea may be expanded, however, to mean the use of Internet
software on a local area Internet network. Rather than signing up
with an Internet Service Provider, you could connect, via a local
call or an internal telephone exchange, to your local Intranet
service which would attach you to services for your local area.
This could then be a very low-cost connection, with an additional
cost for Internet connection.
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To be succssful, a community network needs the support of all
sectors of the commuity.
We need to convince people of the benefits of the Internet (even
if they haven't seen it)
We need to ensure genuine bottom up values are incorporated and
stress the importance of interactivity
We need to make it easy and cheap to use.
We need a commitment to information sharing
Resources for economic development
Telecities, cross- community, schools use
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The Internet should be seen as simply a new tool to help
existing networks of people communicate better. There is still
the need for face-to-face iteraction but the technology can
support personal contact. It's a way of keeping in touch
inbetween times, or when distance is prohibitive, for example in
the networking of rural communities or other isolated
individuals.
In the "Information Society", it can provide social
cohesion and participation for citizens.
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Should we assume that there will be near universal
connectivity? ...and if we don't get universal connectivity, how
does this affect our vision of wider community benefits?
At a governmet level, universal service could be defined as
regulation that requires licensed service providers to offer a
particular service universally.
At a local level, anyone with a telephone line can have Internet
service on an equal basis so long as there is an Internet access
point within local call distance. The cost of adding Internet to
an existing telephone connection is small, but the hardware costs
are still high, and there needs to be public provision of
low-cost access in public places.
As technology changes, the requirements for universal access
change. For example, at some stage we probably need to make ISDN
access a universal service requirement since there is a big
difference between Internet access at the highest analogue level
and via ISDN. If ISDN access is available much cheaper to
businesses and government buildings, the low volume user could be
disadvantaged compared with the higher volume users - for example
unemployed people versus successful teleworkers.
One reason for worrying about universal service is the problem of
excluded users and the information "haves" and
"have nots". Universal service may not the the best
mechanism. Even if we assume that within a few years most homes
will have PCs and Internet access just as today most homes have
television and a phone, then it may be better to provide for the
"have nots" through social security mechanisms rather
than through telecom regulation.
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