Is There A Wireless Community Informatics

Gurstein, Michael

English

Waterloo Library Journal Publishing Service (University of Waterloo, Canada)

Is There A Wireless Community Informatics?Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.Editor in chief <editor@ci-journal.net>In some earlier writing1 I asked the question whether there could be a wireless community informatics and whether we can in fact treat wireless “communities” as communities  in  the  same  way  as  we  understand  other  communities  from  a  CI perspective.The papers in this issue I think, give a resoundingly positive answer to the first question but still  leave open to research and practice the second; that is,  does the availability and use of wireless connectivity enhance community and can it be used as a  means for  building  communities? I  say that  there can be a  wireless  community informatics based on the work in this issue because what can see here is the way in which wireless connectivity can become an enhancement or an extension or even an alternative  to  other  forms  of  connectivity  and  in  this  way  become  the  basis  for extending access (and thus use) to previously excluded populations.The second question though is in some sense more intriguing.  What effect does  wireless  connectivity  and  the  fluidity  and  mobility  of  access-enhanced movement have on the capacity to build trusting relationships, to achieve consensus around values, to collaborate towards the realization of collective goals? The image, or perhaps better, the metaphor of wirelessness is of the “nomad”, the individual who moves  from place  to  place  carrying  his  “locality”  with him (or  her  or  even  as  a family). The “nomad” in this sense is a-local, having little connection to the space that she occupies and no real on-going connection to others occupying the same spatial geography. This does not on its face appear promising for the building of community.The question of the relationship between wireless and community building is in fact a very serious one from a community informatics perspective as it immediately presents the challenge of whether there can be for example an “urban” community informatics. The primary models and examples for locationally based CI are drawn for the most part from the rural, the small town, or relatively stable on-going urban ethnic enclaves.  It  is  in  these settings  that  “community” is  easiest  to  discern  and where, as follows, the relationship between ICTs and community enabling has the most  evident  applicability.  Here  the  link  between  community  and  geography is  a direct  and  visible  one  and  extending  that  linkage  to  include  ICTs  is  natural  and congruent with other elements of community life.This  is  not  the  case  in  urban  environments  where  there  is  a  much  higher degree  of  specialization,  segmentation,  and  a  de-linking  of  the  physical  from the social.  In  complex  modern  urban  environments  community  needs  to  be  built  and continuously  recreated  as  the  patterns  of  interaction  almost  inevitably  are  casual, fragmented  and transitory.  Whether  wireless  connectivity  simply  accelerates  these processes  or  can  provide  a  means  to  challenge  them  and  to  allow  for  the 1 Gurstein, Michael (2007) What is Community Informatics (and Why Does It Matter)? POLIMETRICA, Milan http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00012372/01/WHAT_IS_COMMUNITY_INFORMATICS_reading.pdf Some of the above text is taken from this publication.intensification  of  interaction  from which  community  can  be  built  is  still  an  open question. On the face of it however, a technology which is built on the metaphor of the “nomad” would not immediately suggest itself for this purpose.The  question  remains,  whether  there  is  a  wireless  community  informatics beyond that of facilitating access. Perhaps, the broader concept of a wireless CI is nothing more than a peculiar artifact arising from the circumstance that many of the early wireless innovators, while having somewhat parallel backgrounds to the early community  networking  innovators  (progressive  politics,  university  education, technical  proficiency,  youthful)  often  referred  to  themselves  as  “community networkers” even though they evidently had little knowledge of (or interest in) more traditional or long standing community networking advocates or institutions.A further difficulty with thinking about a “wireless community informatics” is that wireless as an infrastructure is necessarily virtual and placeless thus immediately making the creation of community connections (the normative integration necessary for community formation) exceedingly difficult. Wireless users are simply those who use a wireless connection to obtain Internet access and need have no other links or connections to other users either on the Internet or through the same Internet Service Provider (ISP). However, as some have identified, the fact that a wireless connection does have some degree of geographical anchoring (individuals gain access through some sort of geographically anchored “hotspot”) opens up the possibility of creating a degree  of  interconnection  among  users  over  and  above  that  of  a  random  and anonymous (to each other) group of users of a single ISP.Ile Sans Fils in Montreal use this limited amount of interaction as a way of interposing information as a basis for local promotion and development. Whether this can lead to enhancement of community interaction is still I believe an open question.But  as  the  world  becomes  increasingly  urban  and  wireless  the  need  (and opportunity)  for  the  use  of  this  form  of  untethered  access  not  only  to  enhance mobility,  fluidity  and  transience  but  also  possibly  as  a  means  for  facilitating interaction  and  thus  perhaps  interconnection  as  a  basis  for  a  re-formation  of community (or perhaps a re or updating of the definition of community) immediately presents itself.On a different, but unfortunately very sad note: this issue includes a brief appreciation of Steve Cisler, a pioneer in the field of Community Informatics, a leader in the library applications of information technologies and a longstanding friend of this journal. Steve passed away recently, and we along with others in our small community are remembering him and celebrating his life and work including in this issue through a personal appreciation by Associate Editor Eduardo Villanueva.My personal thanks to Alison Powell and Sascha Meinrath for their excellent work in bringing this most timely content rich special issue to fruition and through this issue raising within the CI community some very important and intriguing questions about the very nature of Community Informatics itself.

Is There A Wireless Community Informatics?

https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/JoCI/article/download/2963/3833

Is There A Wireless Community Informatics?

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Waterloo Library Journal Publishing Service (University of Waterloo, Canada)