Community Informatics: Enabling Communities with Information and Communications Technologies: Enabling Communities with Information and Communications Technologies

Front Cover
Gurstein, Michael
Idea Group Inc (IGI), Jul 1, 1999 - Technology & Engineering - 596 pages

Community Informatics is developing as an approach for linking economic and social development efforts at the community level to the opportunities that information and communication's technologies present. Areas such as SMEs and electronic commerce, community and civic networks, electronic democracy and online participation are among a few of the areas affected.

Community Informatics: Enabling Communities with Information and Communications Technologies is an introduction to the discipline of community informatics. Issues such as trends, controversies, challenges and opportunities facing the community application of information and communications technologies into the millennium are studied.

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Contents

BACKGROUND AND ISSUES
31
The Access Rainbow Conceptualizing Universal Access to the InformationCommunications Infrastructure
32
Requirements for a REgional Information Infrastructure for Sustainable CommunitiesThe Case for Community Informatics
52
Embedding the Net Community Empowerment in the Age of Information
81
The Role of Community Information in the Virtual Metropolis The CoExistence of Virtual and Proximate Terrains
104
Differential IT Access and Use Patterns in Rural and SmallTown Atlantic Canada
136
Building the Information Society from the Bottom Up? EU Public Policy and Community Informatics in North West England
151
CI AND COMMUNITY NETWORKING
173
Facilitating Community Processes Through Culturally Appropriate Inforamtics An Australian Indigenous Community Information System Case Study
339
OnLine Discussion Forums in a Swedish Local Government Context
359
Reinforcing and Opening Communities Through Innovative Technologies
380
AcademicCommunity Partnerships for Advanced Information Processing in low TechnologySupport Settings
404
CI AND DEVELOPMENT
414
Communication Shops and Telecenters in Developing Nations
415
Virtual Communities Real Struggles Seeking Alternatives for Democratic Networking
446
Linking Communities to Global Policymaking A New Electronic Window on the United Nations
470

New Communities and New Community Networks
174
CTCNet the Community Technology Movement and the Prospects for Democracy in America
190
Community Networks for Reinventing Citizenship and Democracy
213
ICT and Local Governance A View from the South
232
Community Inforamtics for Electronic Democracy Social Shaping of the Digital City in Antwerp
251
InternetBased Neighborhood Information Systems A Comparative Analysis
275
Community Impact of Telebased Information Centers
298
CI Applications
319
Cafematics The Cybercafe and the Community
320
Community and Technology Social Learning in CCIS
494
COMMUNITY INFORMATICS CASE STUDIES
515
Community Participation in the Design of the Seattle Public Schools Budget Builder Web Site
516
Discussions and Decisions Enabling Participation in Design in Geographical Communities
539
Radio B92 Belgrade Harnesses the Power of a Media Activist Community During the War to Keep Broadcasting Despite Terrestrial Ban
561
The Economics of Community Networking Case Studies from the Association for Progressive Communications
568
About the Authors
584
Index
593
Copyright

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Page 88 - A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active, and natural participation in the life of a community, which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future.
Page 90 - Symbolic analysts solve, identify, and broker problems by manipulating symbols. They simplify reality into abstract images that can be rearranged, juggled, experimented with, communicated to other specialists, and then, eventually, transformed back into reality.
Page 88 - Internet was associated with declines in participants' communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness.
Page 377 - postmodern" position need not be taken as a metaphysical assertion of a new age; that theorists are trapped within existing frameworks as much as they may be critical of them and wish not to be; that in the absence of a coherent alternative political program, the best one can do is to examine phenomena such as the Internet in relation to new forms of the old...
Page 190 - People need not only to obtain things, they need, above all, the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others
Page 96 - Accordingly, politics is a phenomenon found in and between all groups, institutions (formal and informal) and societies, cutting across public and private life. It is expressed in all the activities of co-operation, negotiation and struggle over the use and distribution of resources. It is involved in all the relations, institutions and structures which are implicated in the activities of production and reproduction in the life of societies.
Page 451 - ... better equipped competitor often has the upper hand. Hence, the availability of low-cost computing power may move the baseline that defines electronic dimensions of social influence, but it does not necessarily alter the relative balance of power. Using a personal computer makes one no more powerful vis-a-vis, say, the National Security Agency than flying a hang glider establishes a person as a match for the US Air Force.
Page 211 - Most individuals have difficulty communicating their emotional "hang-ups", but videotaping and the playback evoke a response on the emotional level. The simple device of reflecting an image magnifies the individual's selfimage. The emotional dilemma induced by the gap between the image on the screen and the subjective feeling of the viewers, produces a crisis in which the person attempts to bring the two aspects into harmony, thus increasing his selfknowledge.
Page 183 - Free-Nets, community computing-centers, or public access networks), some with user populations in the tens of thousands, are generally intended to advance social goals, such as building community awareness, encouraging involvement in local decision making, or developing economic opportunities in disadvantaged communities.

About the author (1999)

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D completed a B.A. at the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. in the Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Gurstein was a senior public servant in the Provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan. For a number of years Dr. Gurstein was the president of the consulting firm Socioscope Inc. in Ottawa, Canada which specialized in the human aspects of advanced technologies. From 1992-95 Dr. Gurstein was a management advisor with the United Nations Secretariat in New York. From 1995-99 Dr. Gurstein was the ECBC/NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change at the University College of Cape Breton and the Founder Director of the Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (CCEN) of that institution. CCEN specialized in the application of information and communications technology to local economic development, particularly rural development. Dr. Gurstein has published widely and in addition to this book has authored the book "Burying Coal: Research and Development in a Marginal Community" by Collective Press. Dr. Gurstein is currently an Associate Professor of Management and Technology at the Technical University of British Columbia, in Vancouver Canada and the Director of the Centre for Community Informatics. [Editor]

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