Building the NII From The Bottom Up: A Strategy For Working Through Local Organizations
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 1994 16:35:26 -070
>From: Phil Agre
Subject: Building the NII from the Bottom Up
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T H E N E T W O R K O B S E R V E R
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 8 AUGUST 1994
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Building the NII From The Bottom Up:
A Strategy For Working Through Local Organizations.
Steven E. Mille
CPSR National Board
smiller@mecn.mass.ed
By definition, an infrastructure is something that lays th
foundation for something else. The coming National Informatio
Infrastructure (NII) will lay the foundation for -- and thereby
help shape -- new forms of production, consumption, culture,
social interaction, and citizenship. The kind of future the NII
helps shape depends, in part, on the visions it is intended t
achieve and the strategies used to implement those goals.
Industry spokespeople describe the NII as a vehicle for movies
on demand, home shopping, and sit-com reruns, with the "serious"
content provided by endless infomercials. Clinton Administration
liberals stress the NII's educational importance of allowing
access to endless information, as well as its potential to spur
private sector economic development. Many cybernauts are most
enthused about the creation of virtual communities and the coming
together of the global village.
But for those of us whose pleasure in the technology is matched
by a growing concern about the tendency of the NII to furthe
divide our society (and the world) into "haves" and "have
nots," these visions -- and the NII implementation strategies
they imply -- are woefully inadequate. To those of us who see
the NII as a critical tool for the revitalization of democracy,
the strengthening of neighborhoods, the release of grass-roots
cultural creativity, and the revival of mutual aid, these visions
are a painful warning of opportunities we hope are not yet lost.
These visions fail because they won't lead to the achievement of
universal service in a meaningful way. While an estimated third
of American homes have a computer, only about 3% are regularly
online. In fact, as a result of price increases caused by
deregulation, a growing number of Americans -- up to 20% of some
low-income communities -- don't even have home telephones. Even
if the "NII access device" of the future is built into TV sets,
cable set-top boxes, video game controllers, or other "everyday"
devices, and even if they eventually drop in price, it will be
a long time before the entire population will be able to affor
them -- if ever. In addition, no matter how friendly computers
get, they will still require some level of skill and expertise.
In a nation which has a 40% high school drop out rate, a 20
adult illiteracy rate, a permanently unemployed underclass, and
a segmented labor market that tracks a significant proportion of
the working population into dead-end, unskilled, and short-term
jobs -- it is likely that many people will never get taught the
skills needed to do more than the most basic types of (probably
consumption oriented) activities. Social transformation requires
social participation, and a totally market-driven NII is not
likely to achieve it.
Second, these visions fail because they are too focused on
individuals. For all the importance of individual responsibilit
and effort, societal power (political, economic, and cultural)
overwhelmingly operates through institutions. Individual
empowerment can lead to upward mobility. But the "trickling up"
of particular people doesn't change the structural hierarchies
and inequalities of our society. Social justice, the provisio
of the basic necessities of life for everyone, the inclusion o
all groups in a democratic governing process -- all these require
the poor and powerless to aggregate their individual efforts into
organizations and collective campaigns
AN ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY
These criticisms of the most common visions of NII implementation
imply another approach: combining NII deployment with local
organizational development. And not just any organizations,
but specifically those that serve, advocate for, and are run
by people from the parts of our society that are least likely
to be able to buy their way into a market-driven NII tha
rations access according to personal income. In this context,
people who are creating civic networks as a way of anchoring NII
development in the needs and realities of local communities must
go beyond making their facilities available to large numbers of
individuals, even if those individuals are low-income, non-white,
non-English speaking, or any of the other politically correct
categories. We need to adopt a strategy of working through and
with grassroots organizations.
An organizational strategy has many advantages. Organization
usually have greater financial resources than individuals,
particularly low-income people. Non-profit organizations are
much more capable than individuals of soliciting donations
or applying for grants to pay for a couple of computers and
modems. In fact, most Internet users already get supplied with
equipment and access through organizations -- universities and
corporations. To include other populations, we need to work
through the organizations that impact their lives.
But simply having the equipment is not enough. Few of us
learned all we know by ourselves. When we go to a library, we
start by asking the librarian for help. In terms of computers
most of us learned from others at our schools or workplaces. We
all need intermediaries to get us started and support us throug
the inevitable problems of learning to enter and wander through
cyberspace. Local organizations can provide the vital connection
between ordinary people and the on-line universe
Organizations are multipliers. Training individuals helps
individuals. Training people in an organization means that
the skills are likely to be passed on to others, and that
the community will retain an institutional capability even as
individuals pass in and out of activity
Working through local organizations also makes it easier to
connect to people. Instead of trying to convince people to come
to the network, the network goes to where the people are alread
being gathered together to serve their own needs. These are the
groups that are already fighting to empower their members, i
will be no small accomplishment if we can help them finds ways to
use telecommunications to increase their chances of success. The
strengthening and success of local citizen's groups, self-help
neighborhood associations, locally run service agencies, and
other community-based organizations is crucial to any larger
strategy for increased equality and justice in our world, of
which preventing the creation of "information haves and hav
nots" is just one aspect.
Rooting cyberspace in the social realities of neighborhood
organizations increases the odds that the needs and priorities
of those "have not" areas will be effectively aggregated and
expressed. If we want to impact NII policy, we have to build
a grassroots base as well as advocate at the federal level.
Washington-based public interest advocacy is vitally important
But it is only one part of the picture. Local understanding of
the issues based on concrete efforts to use telecommunications
for community improvement is just as important, perhaps in some
ways even more important. This is another way that organizations
multiply individual impact.
TECHNOLOGY HELPS ORGANIZATIONS
People support or join groups because membership brings some
amount of personal benefits such as learning new skills, access
to resources, exposure to a broader world, getting useful
services, etc.; because the group provides a way to be connecte
with other people who share similar interests; and because they
see the group as an effective vehicle for dealing with personal
or societal problems.
Technology can help organizations attract and keep loyal
members, a vital ingredient for success. The value of membership
increases if organizations are the vehicle for computer skills
training and for access to the world of on-line resources.
At the same time, local organizations will be better than some
central group at recruiting network users from a broad range of
the population.
Technology also makes groups more effective. Internally, groups
can use word processing to create funding proposals, write
reports and petitions about important issues, create membership
letters and other materials, prepare newsletters and flyers,
and more. Databases are vital for keeping membership lists and
addresses, tracking contributions, client tracking, etc. And
financial software for bookkeeping and fund accounting helps with
one of the biggest headaches in the non-profit world.
Externally, telecomputing allows organizations to gather data
on funding opportunities, on issues they address, and on the
population they serve. It allows them to more easily communicate
with their peers in other organizations to share experiences
and build coalitions. It allows them to gain greater exposure
and establish increased credibility by participating in national
forums and acting as "issue experts" for community networks.
In this sense, local groups act as "information providers"
rather than as information consumers -- exactly the kind of
bottom-up activism that will be needed if the NII is more than
an overwhelming and hegemonic waterfall of top-down data flow.
Networks augment the ability of those who already know about
and talk with each other offline to share large amounts o
information over greater distances with less concern about "real
time" coordination. Broad based local and national networks
help bring together those who share similar interests, or could
simply be helpful to each other, but whose paths do not otherwise
cross. In this way, people and groups can join with others who
are "like us."
IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITY NETWORKS
An organizational strategy has important implications for
creating community networks. While most local network organizers
are already doing some of these activities, the absence of an
explicit strategy has forced many of them to discover these ideas
on their own and hindered fully effective sharing of experience.
First, it implies that the first step in creating a local network
is talking to local neighborhood leaders and building a coalition
of local community groups. These groups should be treated as
full partners in the design process rather than as clients to be
served.
Since few of these groups will have enormous resources or
technical expertise, this process also requires a deep commitmen
to some type of participatory design approach. A successful
PD effort needs a combination of talking about general needs
and opportunities to use and comment upon functional models.
Here, in fact, is where the technically knowledgeable people in
the group play a key role, iteratively creating prototypes and
then incorporating insights from group critiques. In this way
technically sophisticated people can help non-techies understan
the general possibilities of available technology so that th
newcomers can inject their specific needs and realities into
the design. Without working prototypes, group discussions can
get lost in galactic visions beyond local capabilities. Without
group input, technical development can easily forget that it is
only the vehicle for achieving other goals.
Local groups should be seen as a primary vehicle for public
access, equally or even more important than libraries, city hall,
and shopping malls. But, more importantly, network organizers
should welcome, rather than feel unease, about the inevitable
tendency of local groups to see the network as a vehicle for
serving their own organizational needs. The success of the loca
groups is the success of the network, even though it will often
feel as if there is a tension between the two
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Phil Agre, editor pagre@ucsd.edu
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego +1 (619) 534-6328
La Jolla, California 92093-0503 FAX 534-7315
USA
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