When I was a child there was a world's fair where visions of everybody
going to work in a personal helicopter was offered as a vision of the
future. That future is here. Why doesn't everybody go to work in a
helicopter? The answer is, of course, it doesn't make sense. Full stop.
A similar question lurks in the background w/r to the question "Why aren't
more people online?" The more proper question is "Why be online?". Being
on line is a waystation to somewhere else, somewhere else in the
socio-economic landscape. A way station is part of going somewhere, it is
not a destination in and of itself. I grew up in a town that was a
railroad creation. Over 100 years later that town is still adjusting to
the changing reality of the railroad. Life is more complicated than "Why
don't more towns have railroads".
One problem here is the continuous (mainly North American) focus on the
individual and access to the Internet, in contract to asking what does
this electronic space mean for groups (communities) of social actors, be
they civil society groups and groups of 12 year olds trying to get an
education. Even much of the discussion on "community access" ends up
being discussion about community facilities to promote individual access.
Some are online who shouldn't be online, e.g. pedophile rings. Others
should be online who are not, e.g. rural teachers or doctors in need of
access to a supportive community of practice. It is more useful to ask
what communities of practice, interest or concern are online and doing
what. A learning circle consisting of half a dozen students, or teachers,
or nurses, with a single member online, and the group up to something, is
more important that a collection of hundreds of people who get recorded as
"having online access".
Online is just the how. The why and what are more important and seldom are
they mainly about the individual, usually they are about the group, the
community. For example, Amnesty International is about saving one person
at a time, almost always a person with zero Internet access. But, today it
is AI's ability to mobilize a community of concern, mainly online, to
write personal letters on behalf of the individual in need that counts
most.
While it is important to address the obstacles that re-enforce the digital
divide, the purpose is not simply to increase the number on line. It is to
open up these electronic spaces to "doing good" and "reducing bad" to put
it in very simple terms.
If there is a technological imperative in these ICTs it is not that they
will drive the good, or drive the bad. It is that they will be used. The
issue remains, as always, to what ends. Almost nobody owns a railroad.
Almost nobody's life is untouched by the ebb and flow of railroads. The
big issues are at the level of social process, not individual access.
Sam Lanfranco
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Sam Lanfranco, Chair, SASIT email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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School of Analytic Studies and Information Technology
York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3
-> SASIT: Bridging Liberal and Professional Studies <-
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