The Internet as a tool for community development Matthew Stevens 1996 (mls@zeta.org.au) (Transcript of a talk given at the 28th annual conference of the Community Development Society, Melbourne, Australia, 22 July 1996) I guess that as you are here in the Telecommunications group, you probably already accept on-line communities as being genuine communities, and so I don't have to convince you. But have you thought about why virtual communities might qualify as genuine communities? When I did the study last year for the project that became the background for this talk, my project supervisor, Dale Williams, who is one of the organisers of this conference, challenged me to understand the nature of community. A good place to start is the dictionary, which uses terms such as fellowship, social body, social group, body of people, shared heritage, unified, common characteristic, common interests. There are two keys here: people and communication. It's no coincidence that the words community and communication derive from the Latin communis, meaning common. Members of communities have features in common that allow them to be identified (or to identify themselves) as a cohesive unit. And unless you're an ecologist studying plant communities or an ethologist studying animal communities, then an essential common feature of communities are their people, doing what people do best_communicating. All definitions of community I've found agree on one point: people sharing something or identifying with something they have in common. Few definitions mention or require geographical proximity. Before the advent of radio and television, before telephones, before newspapers, a community would have been easy to identify_the people in a town. But now with the freedom of communication and association that the Internet and computer-mediated communication allow, we can see that geographical proximity is not a necessary element to participation in a community. The "netizens"_the Internet citizens (or denizens)_who spend part of each day on the Net, will all tell you that they are part of a community. Most notable are Net gurus like Howard Rheingold_ cofounder of the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (the WELL) in California_ and John Perry Barlow_cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation_both prolific authors on the topic. But no less important are the nameless millions of others. I make a living as a scientific editor. Wearing my editor's hat, I am part of a 24-hour, worldwide conversation about editing. There are 1200 members of this community. I've met only two, but feel that I know several dozen more, some well. What makes this group a community for me is the sharing of news, wisdom, resources, advice, personal tidbits, jokes, good experiences, bad experiences and so on. What makes it special, apart from knowing that many of these people like me, is the complete lack of animosity displayed publicly among the members. They're a friendly, supportive bunch and it's a great place to be. But if the Internet's a place, how can it be a tool as well? The answer is in its sheer size and diversity. This allows you to look at it as a meeting place, a library, a catalogue, a department store, a laboratory, a communication medium. Depending on how you view it and use it, it can give you many different things. For community developers it becomes: a network of community developers sharing ideas, results and methods of community development thousands of communities, developing, developed or wanting help communities communicating within and between themselves case studies for research a library of information about community development. And so it becomes a tool for helping people and their communities to develop. A point I want to emphasise is that the Internet is not the answer to community development. It's just one tool in an array of tools for the community developer. One important facet of the Internet is the community network. (Actually, the community network doesn't necessarily have to be connected to the Internet, but it's a reasonable assumption that most are or will be.) Community networks exist in and for a geographical place, though they need not be restricted to that. Their aim is to enhance the communication of the residents of a place, not to replace it. It's another form of communication, along with the telephone, television, radio, newspapers and face-to-face contact, to broaden the opportunities the residents have for interacting. Through interaction, of course, comes information, opportunity, empowerment and a stronger sense of belonging. An Australian example of a community network is the Community Information Network, which is a trial project funded by the Australian Federal Government. My coauthor's wife, Dr Rowena Bell, is in charge of the Tasmanian part of the project. The project's primary aim is ensuring that low income earners and other disadvantaged groups don't lose out on access to the "Information Superhighway." Access points have been placed in public places such as libraries, schools and community organisations. Participants have access to a wide variety of information on government and support services. They can participate in on-line discussions and send e-mail anywhere. One of the main aims of the Tasmanian project is to evaluate how the CIN can improve the quality of life of rural families, particularly of rural women. The project placed terminals in 20 rural homes where the families already had an active involvement in the local community. The hope was that these homes could act as focal points for electronic communication within the community. The women participating in the project have gained important personal development from their participation. From backgrounds of little or no computer awareness and no experience with the Internet, these women have gained skills and confidence to now communicate regularly with each other, debate issues, participate in a weekly live discussion with rural women in the USA and Canada, and find information from around the world on subjects of importance to them, notably farming. Their families have also learned these skills. This communication is very important for these farm women, who otherwise wouldn't be able to participate because of their geographic isolation. The women believe that the Internet will join tools such as CB radio, the fax and the computer as necessary tools for modern farm management. As in anything technological, however, all is not plain sailing. The project has revealed the difficulties of establishing the Internet in rural communities. These include the need for intensive training sessions to develop computer skills and confidence, which is a potential barrier to widespread adoption of the Internet in dispersed farming communities in the short term. In fact, the organisers grossly underestimated the time it would take them to train the participants to the level of skills you and I would probably consider basic. The participants were initially slow to adopt the new technology because of their fears and the techncial difficulties. Once these were overcome, however (just in the last few months), they've really been using it. The project really needs another year to show what it can mean to the women and the rural communites, but it'll be wound up in October and the Government isn't interested in extending it. And because it's finishing, the Government is no longer interested in sorting out the remaining problems. This is disappointing for the project organisers. A major barrier to adoption is the technical difficulties in connecting rural phone lines to the Internet. In the Tasmanian project, 3 of the 20 phone lines were so poor that the computers wouldn't communicate at all with the rest of the network. At most of the other sites, data transfer is very slow or is frequently interrupted. These problems have all caused much frustration and, at times, loss of interest in the project by the participants. Another major barrier, specific to the CIN project, was the lack of 24-hour-a-day access to the Internet. Use of the CIN was limited to daytime use_the very hours when farmers are most likely not to be available to use computers. The limited access was a major concern to all involved. The final, frustrating problems were that the help desk changed five times, and the access structure of the network changed radically and confused a lot of people. So to conclude, there are benefits and problems for communities. Benefits of community networks include: sharing problems and solutions in a group discussion that is not limited by time or place lobbying governments as a group access to the latest information on anything access to government and services from home or locally communicating and comparing notes with other similar communities worldwide rebuilding a sense of community equal (though costly) access for disabled people ecological sustainability_CMC uses little electricity and has no waste products. Problems, on the other hand, include: high initial set-up cost. Many people can't afford it. Once people have access, though, the running costs are very small, and the opportunities the wealth of information and free communication can bring could quickly repay this small running cost. infrastructure. People in remote areas are not as well served by CMC as people in cities. In countries with a sparse rural population, like Australia, the costs of cabling are likely to remain prohibitive in the foreseeable future. Maintenance in remote areas is also going to be a problem because of distance, weather, stock and wildlife. unfamiliarity with computers, fear of computers, illiteracy and cost of training. All of these problems can be overcome with money. So I'll leave you with the suggestion that perhaps that's where community development moneys could profitably be spent.