Shaping

the
Network
Society

The New Role

of Civil Society
in Cyberspace

edited by

Douglas Schuler
and Peter Day
Shaping the Network Society
Shaping the Network Society

The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace

edited by Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Integra Software Services Pvt Ltd.,
and was printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shaping the network society : the new role of civil society in cyberspace / edited by
Douglas Schuler and Peter Day.
p. cm.
“An outgrowth of the Seventh DIAC symposium held in Seattle in 2000”—Introd.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-19497-X (hc : alk. paper)
1. Information technology—Social aspects. 2. Computer networks—Social aspects.
3. Social participation. 4. Civil society. I. Schuler, Douglas. II. Day, Peter, 1954–
III. DIAC (Conference) (7th : 2000 : Seattle, Wash.)

HM851.S43 2004
303.4833—dc22
2003065170

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Introduction vii
Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

1 Shaping the Network Society: Opportunities and Challenges 1

Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

I Civilizing the Network Society 17

2 U.S. Global Cyberspace 19

Oliver Boyd-Barrett

3 Shaping Technology for the “Good Life”: The Technological

Imperative versus the Social Imperative 43
Gary Chapman

4 Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society 67

Cees J. Hamelink

II Global Tales of the Civil Network Society 83

5 A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 85

Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

6 A Polder Model in Cyberspace: Amsterdam Public Digital

Culture 111
Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

7 Community Networks Go Virtual: Tracing the Evolution of ICT in

Buenos Aires and Montevideo 137
Susana Finquelievich
vi Contents

8 Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment: Experiences in the Former

Yugoslavia 159
Veran Matic

9 Rethinking Telecenters: Microbanks and Remittance Flows—

Reflections from Mexico 185
Scott S. Robinson

10 The Role of Community Networks in Shaping the Network Society:

Enabling People to Develop Their Own Projects 199
Fiorella de Cindio

III Building a New Public Sphere in Cyberspace 227

11 Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 229

Craig Calhoun

12 What Do We Need to Know about the Future We're Creating?

Technobiographical Reflections 253
Howard Rheingold

13 Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 279

Nancy Kranich

14 The Soil of Cyberspace: Historical Archaeologies of the Blacksburg

Electronic Village and the Seattle Community Network 301
David Silver

15 Globalization and Media Democracy: The Case of Indymedia 325

Douglas Morris

16 Prospects for a New Public Sphere 353

Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

References 377
Contributors 407
Index 413
Introduction

Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

In 1987 Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) sponsored

its first “Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing” (DIAC)
symposium, intended to help raise issues related to the social implications
of computing. The symposium was built on the premise that academics do
not necessarily have to be “merely” academic but can play a vital role
in society. It was also intended to provide a forum for the nascent and
relatively unorganized group of academics concerned about the uncritical
adoption of computers in society.
Of course, since those early days there has been an immense increase of
interest among academics and other researchers in a multitude of issues sur-
rounding the use of computers in society. Unfortunately much of this work
is divorced from the “real world,” including all the messy issues, perplexing
threats—and opportunities—that it provides. Information and communica-
tion technology (ICT) has been, and increasingly is being, marketed in the
service of efficiency, speed, progress, and, of course, profitability. The more
flesh-and-bones aspects of life—neighborhoods, emotions, resistance, fallibi-
lity, accidents, carnivals, play, smells, death, and so on—play little part in the
antiseptic aura spun by the high priests and priestesses of computerization.
The message is this: computers are for people in control, not for people who
are under control. In other words, computers are to be used to maintain the
status quo, not to perturb it.
In much of the “developed” world, especially the United States and
Europe, “research” in computing, unless it is devoted to “e-commerce,” is
rarely applied (excepting, again, disciplines devoted to business, such as
management information systems). If the communities using the systems
are not businesspeople, research in that area is often at the margins of
acceptability. The reasons for this are numerous and beyond the scope of
viii Introduction

this book. But the upshot is that people (both inside and outside academia)
who are interested in research related to real-world issues may be tolerated
but are rarely championed.
This situation raises a number of important questions in urgent need of
consideration. Why is research that is socially shaped so important in the
network society? What can/should academics do? Why do they need to work
with people and communities? How could this be a win-win situation? This
book illustrates how research that focuses on people in their natural social
environments, that uses common language, and that is flexible and prag-
matic and nonetheless receives little support from national and international
funding agencies can and is being successfully undertaken around the world.
Partnerships based on a spirit of mutuality, reciprocity, and trust are emerg-
ing between some spheres of academia and a diverse range of action/advocacy
networks and local communities. From these alliances new research para-
digms and orientations are emerging: a “new pact” that engages with the rest
of the planet, where everything is connected to everything else!
The contributors to this book assume that ICT represents important oppor-
tunities and threats that cannot be ignored. Ideally we would like to envision
and develop sociotechnical systems that help humankind deal with our envi-
ronmental crises, curb militarism, and promote social and economic justice,
but how can such a social vision be achieved? The collective message from
the chapter authors provides us with some hope for the future of a network
society. By working together in a collaborative and cooperative manner, by
sharing experiences and knowledge through discussions that legitimize
actions, and through communicative action that enables citizens to engage in
shaping local community initiatives and enterprises, great strides can be
made. Finally, by demonstrating courage and dedication, sometimes in the
face of enormous odds, hugely significant social advances can be made locally
that impact at the global level.
This book is an outgrowth of the Seventh DIAC Symposium, held in
Seattle in 2000. We have been working with several of the attendees at this
symposium (and one or two others) to help bring out the message that
computer professionals have a critical role to play in the ongoing deploy-
ment of computers. We also began a discussion of how civil society should
engage with the United Nations on the issue of ICT for the common good.
In that meeting, we started work on a collective “pattern language.” Since
that time, the Eighth Symposium was convened.
Introduction ix

We believe that people interested in the other side of computing

should read this book. This includes community and civil-society practi-
tioners, teachers and students, journalists, artists, policymakers, and—
most important—citizens. This book tells at least part of the new story
that is emerging about how computers might be used more effectively by
people in communities, by activists in social movements, and by citizens
interested in a better future.
Computer professionals need not confine themselves to the bits, bytes,
algorithms, theoretical musings, and so on that have traditionally defined
computer science. (Interestingly, while some would narrowly define com-
puter science as a type of engineering, many departments have ushered in
new programs in e-commerce and entrepreneurism.) Enterprises with less
potential for generating income in the short term—such as preventing and
recovering from environmental catastrophes, strengthening the digital
commons, or developing civic intelligence—are frequently neglected by the
private sector and the government as well. The work here—and elsewhere—
demonstrates that important research can be conducted in partnerships
with civic and community activists in ways that vastly expand the scope,
and relevance, of their practice.
We have been fortunate while preparing this book to work with such a
creative, dedicated, and engaged group of authors from around the world.
While we feel that this group is exceptional, we are happily aware that they
are not unique in their concerns. If the ideas expressed in this book (and
the related ideas issuing from all over the world) are to become influential
in a broad sense, it will be due to the efforts of the hundreds of thousands
of people who are working—generally with little fanfare and fewer
resources—on all of these issues. We wish you—and all of them—good
luck. We are hoping to be able to work with you in the future in the
ongoing struggle to shape the network society.

We also would like to thank a few people. Our families, first and fore-
most—wives Terry and Denise, and children, Reed, Zoe, Nadine, and
Katie—for putting up with our absences, even when we were physically
present. Jessica Smith put in hours on the more thankless chores, for-
matting, alphabetizing, and so on. We would also like to thank The MIT
Press, Bob Prior, and Catherine Innis for supporting this project and
working with us to see it through. Finally, of course, this work would
x Introduction

not even be possible without the great authors, those who assisted
them—and the people from around the world who are currently engag-
ing with communities so that they participate in shaping the network
society.
The Social Dimensions of Engineering, Science and Technology (SDEST)
division of the National Science Foundation helped support this work
through grant 0138149. We would also like to thank the Creativity and
Culture program of the Rockefeller Foundation for its generous support.
1 Shaping the Network Society: Opportunities and
Challenges

Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

Global civil society is best expressed in the global non-governmental movement. As

a group, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are diverse and multifaceted.
Their perspectives and operations may be local, national, regional or global. Some
are issue-oriented or task oriented; others are driven by ideology. Some have a broad
public-interest perspective; others have a more private, narrow focus. They range
from small, poorly funded, grassroots entities to large, well-supported, profession-
ally staffed bodies. Some operate individually; others have formed networks to share
information and tasks and to enhance their impact.
—“Our Global Neighborhood,” the Report of The Commission on Global Governance

That an explosion of information and communication technology (ICT) is

helping to restructure the world’s economic, political, and cultural systems
is not news. What is news, however, is the strong role—largely unacknowl-
edged—that global civil society is playing in shaping the “network society”
(Castells 1996). Too often people regard the current work in technology
development as an arena in which millions of dollars of venture capital are
required in order to participate. Yet, on every continent, through countless
experiments and projects, teachers, social activists, researchers, community
organizers, and concerned technologists are writing their own rules. These
people are working to establish an information and communication infra-
structure that is in marked contrast to that desired by the dot-coms and the
technolibertarians—an infrastructure that truly meets the disparate and
critical needs of the world’s citizenry.
The directions taken by practitioners of civil-society ICT are too numer-
ous to be explained exhaustively in this chapter, or even in this book. These
projects have yet to be cataloged in their entirety. They may be changing
and growing too fast for analysis and may be too far-ranging for a single
book. The sociotechnical environment of those systems is also complex and
2 Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

dynamic. Yet in a very real sense, these projects need to be considered as

elements of a broader “movement,” however unorchestrated that move-
ment may be. It is our modest hope that this book will help weave these
related, though largely disparate, strands together into a more coherent,
cohesive, and useful fabric for researchers, practitioners, policymakers,
and citizens.
The purpose of the book is to lay some of the initial groundwork for
understanding the actuality and potentiality of new, generally Internet-
based, forms of information and communication for social amelioration
and social change. Because these forms are, after all, “media” (albeit new,
nontraditional, less established and supported, and dedicated to different
ends), and because their competition is also “media” and because our soci-
ety is increasingly mediated, this book also considers other types of media,
especially new global-media empires. John Thompson, writing in The
Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media (1995), underscores the
critical importance of media systems, including both the vast global
leviathans and the grassroots upstarts we consider in this book:
We can understand the social impact of the development of new networks of com-
munication and information flow only if we put aside the intuitively plausible idea
that communication media serve to transmit information and symbolic content to
individuals whose relations to others remain unchanged. We must see, instead, that
the use of communication media involves the creation of new forms of action and interac-
tion in the social world, new kinds of social relationships and new ways of relating to others
and to oneself. (p. 4; our emphasis)

Although the systems and projects in our book are not grafted onto the
existing world, instead being integrated into existing systems and projects,
their effects—consolidating existing power and/or empowering a plethora
of socially ameliorative and decentralized forces, for example—may be
profound.

Local Skirmishes/Global Forces

On the first night of the Seattle ministerial meeting of the World Trade
Organization in November 1999, with the steady howl of police sirens in
the background, a civic encounter had been convened at the nonprofit
“Town Hall” to look into root causes of the disagreements and, hence, of
the chaos outside. Three proponents of the WTO were squared off in a
Shaping the Network Society 3

debate against three opponents. The themes of the meeting were intensi-
fied by the noise from outside; the somewhat abstract themes of world
trade were made concrete and urgent because of the struggles outside the
enclave. The “Battle in Seattle” and subsequent clashes in Genoa and other
places highlight a rift, a growing fault line. So does the September 11,
2001, attack on New York and Washington, D.C. In the WTO debate in
Seattle, a curious point of agreement emerged from those on both sides of
the issue: over the past twenty or so years the rich had indeed gotten
richer, the poor poorer. Several such rifts are strongly apparent and widen-
ing further: rural and urban, secular and fundamentalist, global and local.
The gap between rich and poor is perhaps the most obvious and the most
grievous, for not only does it lead to misery and hardship for the poor, but
to war, disease, and environmental degradation for everybody.
The scope of these concerns is becoming increasingly global; our social
(political, cultural, economic) systems are linked in an interdependent web
that is complex and largely incomprehensible. At the same time the envi-
ronmental cocoon on which we all depend for life is increasingly being
marred and abused by humankind’s misdeeds. Collective and basically
unchecked use of fossil fuels can eat away at our atmospheric mantle,
changing climatic factors unpredictably and sending environmental—and
thus social—shock waves throughout the world, unmooring habitual
behavior and provoking a cascading imbalance that may yet undo us.
Homer-Dixon, Boutwell, and Rathjens (1993), for example, demonstrate
the clear link between the loss of renewable resources and deadly conflicts
worldwide.
Solutions may come about through dialogue, discussion, deliberation,
and debate. These forms of communication—and democracy in general—
presuppose the existence of a public sphere.

What Is a Public Sphere and Why Is It Needed?

In 1962 the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, of the renowned Frankfurt

School in Germany, used the term Öffentlichkeit (“public sphere”), where
information exists and communication occurs in a public way, where pub-
lic discussion and deliberation take place, a “space,” in other words, within
which public matters are settled, on which democratic systems must rely.
Although his influential book on this subject was not translated into
4 Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

English—as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into

a Category of Bourgeois Society—until 1989 (Habermas 1989), the concept of
a public sphere soon became one of the most important concepts in
communication studies. In contrast to other concepts in communication
studies (like cultural imperialism or media monopoly), the concept of
public sphere is posited as a positive one, a mode of communication that
represents a desirable state of affairs. It is an idealized communication
venue (or “theater,” to use Nancy Fraser’s (1988) term) into which every-
one can freely enter. Important civic decisions are made through the
discussions in this “public sphere,” rendering it a fundamental aspect of
democratic systems. A public sphere is a “mediating structure,” albeit an
abstract one, like political parties, representative governments, the media,
and so on. A mediating structure is a linking mechanism; it is intended to
connect disparate viewpoints, to give voice to all, to prevent the escalation
of grievances into desperation or lethal conflict.
A public sphere seems to be characterized by three main features. First,
it presents communication opportunities in a broad sense. Thus coffee
shops, public hearings, town meetings, and other venues where people
interact with one another face to face fit under its conceptual umbrella.
Forms such as newspapers, broadcast media, and the Internet can also fit—
under some circumstances. Second, public spheres are “public” in two
ways: people can enter the “spaces” without undue hindrances, regardless
of their ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, gender, or economic status,
and the spaces themselves are visible; the discussions and decisions do not
take place behind closed doors, gated neighborhoods, or private intranets.
Third and finally, a public sphere mediates between people and institu-
tions, between those that may be powerless and those that may be
extremely powerful. Without this linkage or engagement, conversations
would take place in walled-off zones and be ineffectual; the conversations
may be full of “sound and fury” but if they are unheard and unheeded,
they ultimately signify nothing.
As it turns out, Habermas’s concept was flawed in many respects, as he
himself has acknowledged. For one thing, the one instance of a public sphere
(namely, liberal European bourgeois society during the 1800s) that Habermas
brought to light was not really a public sphere at all. The poor were excluded,
as were migrants, workers, and women. The public sphere that Habermas
identified was more of a “gentlemen’s club,” according to one observer.
Shaping the Network Society 5

The concept of the public sphere, moreover, is imprecise; people do not

agree on its meaning. Habermas himself did not explain exactly what he
thought one was, nor did he offer a theory of how to build one. Is there a
single, central public sphere that everybody in the world would or could
use? Maybe there are dozens, hundreds, or millions of spheres, as some
have suggested. And are there needs for alternative public spheres whose
raison d’être is to challenge the assumptions and specifics of the more ortho-
dox public spheres? What are the consequences of these limitations? Do
they render the concept useless, or can it be salvaged in some way? And—
more important for us—how can we use the concept effectively to help
steer technology to make it better serve human needs? How, for example,
does it help us think about the Internet and its ongoing evolution? Can it
be used to spur activism on a large scale? A global scale?
A public sphere must be inclusive in several respects. First, everyone
should be able to participate on an equal basis; those with more money than
others should not be able to purchase more influence with their money,
either directly or indirectly. For example, weapons makers should not deter-
mine foreign policy; prison-guard unions should not develop “three strikes
you’re out” laws, computer and media conglomerates should not define
proper use of public airwaves, and software billionaires should not determine
whether a city needs a new football stadium. This means that society needs
to closely examine the ways people participate in public decision making (at
community meetings, for instance) and help ensure that those mechanisms
do not favor the privileged.
Second, there must be ways citizens can place their concerns on the public
agenda. If the public agenda is monopolized and manipulated by corporations,
politicians, or the media, the public sphere is seriously imperiled.
Third, the public sphere requires a deliberative public process in which
all voices are equal—at least at decision points. This point entails the
following critical ideas:
■
Deliberative. Adequate time must be allotted for hearing and considering
multiple points of view.
■
Public. The discussion should take place openly, where it can be observed
by all.
■
Process. The procedures through which concerns are brought up, discussed,
and acted on should be clear and widely known.
6 Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

Since the concept of public sphere is abstract and imprecise, its best use
may be as an indicator for direction and as a metric for criticism and action.
The idea of a public sphere helps us to critique existing systems and imag-
ine better ones. The preceding observations will serve as a useful backdrop
for all the forthcoming chapters.

Structure of the Book

The major themes of the book are reflected in its structure. The broad con-
text for ICT and civil society is discussed in part I, “Civilizing the Network
Society.” A variety of case studies from around the world offer rich and tex-
tured exemplars of local cyberspace-based civic projects in part II, “Global
Tales of the Civil Network Society.” Part III, “Building a New Public Sphere
in Cyberspace,” provides theoretical underpinnings, empirical findings,
and other intellectual support for the development of the next generation
of civic applications of ICT.

Civilizing the Network Society

Part I provides useful context for the chapters that come after. It introduces
the critical elements of the opportunities and challenges offered by new
ICT capabilities. This part also provides theoretical frameworks that are
employed later. The chapters in this first section present most of the key
conceptual elements related to communication technology deployment
and social forces that are then woven together throughout the book.
Oliver Boyd-Barrett’s contribution, “U.S. Global Cyberspace” (chapter 2),
is grounded in the sociology of cyberspace. The goal of the chapter is to
provide critical contextual information for understanding the evolving
character of cyberspace and the prospects for an accessible and effective
public sphere. Boyd-Barrett’s work does not invalidate grassroots efforts—
all great social movements have started as small, quixotic, uncertain
impulses. It does, however, provide valuable educational grounding for the
utopian among us while pointing to the vast challenges ahead.
The portrait he paints of cyberspace is one of exclusivity. Corporate and
state bullies of immense proportions take advantage of—and promulgate—
ideological forces that allow them to control an interconnected and
powerful web of ICT assets in all spheres of broadcast and digital commu-
nications. We should thus be suspicious, Boyd-Barrett cautions us, of any
Shaping the Network Society 7

attempts by these corporate and state entities to get on the bandwagon of

grassroots democracy.
Gary Chapman, in “Shaping Technology for the ‘Good Life’: The
Technological Imperative versus the Social Imperative” (chapter 3),
explores the idea of technological imperative in the current context of
a rising “technoglobalist tide” and various countermovements, predom-
inantly the “slow food” cultural movement that originated in Italy in
1986. Chapman places “Moore’s law,” an intellectual cornerstone of
today’s global technologists, under particular scrutiny. In 1965 Intel
cofounder Gordon Moore predicted with uncanny accuracy that micro-
processor power would double approximately every eighteen months
until 1975. Remarkably, this trend persisted well beyond 1975 and is
still holding true, some twenty-five years later. To some people, this
suggests that Moore’s observation/forecast is, in fact, a physical “law”
manifested independently in nature, rather than describing a set of
technological opportunities that could be fruitfully exploited with the
proper (immense) investment of time, money, and human resources.
Accepting Moore’s law as a law, consciously or unconsciously, can lead
one to believe that the future is preordained and that technological
innovations themselves (with no social intervention) are the motor
behind an inexorable unfolding of tomorrow.
Enter the slow food movement, which Chapman proffers as an alternative
paradigm (among many others) that challenges the global-technological
imperative. Far from being simply a glib rejoinder to the American fast food
orientation, the slow food ideology offers a middle ground, mediating
between antitechnology anarchists and technoglobalist true believers.
Instead of focusing on technology or on corporate capitalism—either for or
against—the slow fooders (and advocates of other new paradigms) turn back
instead to more basic questions: What is the good life (“il buon vivere”), for
example, and how do we get there? Beyond this, there is a conscious attempt
to do the hard work of organizing and building new institutions that can
help propel the new work forward.
Chapman then applies his analysis to the realm of a network society. He
believes that global-technological forces are acting to shape the Internet
into the media equivalent of fast food. He believes that “fast media” are
not preordained and that human values and human aspirations must
reassert themselves over a putative global-technological imperative.
8 Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

The prominent Dutch communications researcher and activist Cees

J. Hamelink has contributed “Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society”
(chapter 4), which contrasts the onslaught of global marketing and
merchandising with universal values. He discusses the latter largely through
the lens of the United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and
the U.N.’s plans for the first “World Summit on the Information Society.”
Hamelink discusses how four rights from the U.N. Universal Declara-
tion—the right to free speech, the right to a democratic order, the right to
equal participation in social life, and the right to cultural identity—are
specifically threatened by the “billboardization” of society. He contrasts
the political preferences of the “global billboard society” with those of the
International Human Rights Regime (IHRR), which he believes to be on a
collision course. As a longtime U.N. watcher, contributor, and gadfly,
Hamelink fears that the U.N. is likely to side with the forces of the global
billboard society to the detriment of the IHRR and other socially ameliora-
tive communities worldwide. Although the development of collaborative
civil-society networks raises complex questions, Hamelink believes that the
mobilization of civil society is necessary to strongly remind the U.N. of its
mission and the people worldwide for whom it claims to act.

Global Tales of the Civil Network Society

The case studies in part II provide a sampling of actual projects from all
over the world that have developed in response to, and in the context of,
powerful social and technological forces. These case studies are intended to
be interdependent with the writings in the rest of the book. Their evolving
and experimental nature will be stressed: What do they accomplish for
their users? What are their objectives? How do they relate to other similar
efforts and to the orienting ideas from part I of this book? Where are these
projects going and what obstacles—of both an internal and an external
nature—do they face? Additionally, setting the stage for the ideas in the
rest of the book, these chapters discuss best practices as well as new social
and technological directions.
In “A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio” (chapter 5), Kate
Williams and Abdul Alkalimat attempt to identify every public computing
facility in Toledo, Ohio, a medium-sized American “Rust-Belt” city. They
explore three main settings in which citizens have access to networked
computing—three possible “bridges across the digital divide”: the home
Shaping the Network Society 9

where personal computing occurs, the workplace where private computing

occurs, and other places, where access is more open-ended and inclusive,
especially in but not solely confined to libraries, schools, community
centers, churches, and storefronts, which the authors call public computing.
They are concerned with what will happen to democracy in the transition
to an information society, and they scrutinize Toledo as a possibly typical
“dual city” (Castells and Hall 1994) with this in mind. From the observa-
tions of Toledo’s ninety-nine public computing sites, Williams and Alkali-
mat show that government sites are more or less randomly located around
the city, community sites are generally located in economically rich or
poor (but not middle-stratum) neighborhoods, while commercial and
university sites correspond most closely to market forces and are located in
close proximity to upper-income and student populations. If these find-
ings are generally valid, the implications for democracy—particularly in
relation to poor and working people—are profound.
In “A Polder Model in Cyberspace: The Contemporary Amsterdam Public
Digital Culture” (chapter 6), two Amsterdam Internet developers and critics,
Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens, discuss developments in Amsterdam’s
new-media culture since its beginnings in the early 1990s. They especially
focus on Amsterdam’s community network, the Digital City (De Digitale
Stad). Roughly paralleling the Seattle Community Network and Blacksburg
Electronic Village (both Silver, chapter 14, this volume) and Rete Civica di
Milano (De Cindio, chapter 10, this volume), the Digital City project as
a product of Amsterdam’s new-media culture was a vibrant and utopian
digital project offering free services to tens of thousands of people. But in
retrospect, it was on a collision course due to its own internal contradic-
tions (conflicting management and user objectives and strategies) and the
all-consuming ideological Zeitgeist of the “new economy’s” get-rich-now
mentality. Analogous to David Silver’s “historical archaeologies,” Lovink
and Riemens depict a rich and volatile sociotechnico-historical landscape
in which idealism bloomed and was, to a large degree, frustrated. Lovink
and Riemens point to what they consider the particular “Dutchness” of
the project, including its exclusive use of the Dutch language (the only
policy decision along these lines made by management), the radical-
squatter and “new-media-culture” movements, and the “Polder model”
of social/political interaction characterized by “endless rounds of meet-
ings.” Some of the issues they raise are more universal: the lukewarm (at
10 Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

best) and indifferent or hostile (more commonly) attitudes shown by

municipalities and other government units toward utopian public-
sphere projects in cyberspace, like the Digital City. They also underscore
the inability of those harboring more idealistic visions, to successfully
organize, to articulate compelling visions, and to garner support and
effectively work toward common goals.
The main goal of Susana Finquelievich’s “Community Networks Go
Virtual: Tracing the Evolution of ICT in Buenos Aires and Montevideo”
(chapter 7) is to evaluate the social impact of ICT uses in local contexts, on
both sides of the River Plate in South America. She focuses on local
governments and their communication with citizens, as well as on the
practices of civic networks trying to increase their impact on public issues.
ICT uses and effective reach were studied in the local government’s inter-
nal management practices, as well as in their attempts to assimilate the
population to the information society. Finquelievich traces how some of
the region’s historical factors as well as the sociotechnical infrastructure
have had a powerful influence on ICT development. Although the main
focus of the chapter is on earlier data, Finquelievich discusses how the
current crises in Argentina are shaping and are being addressed by existing
citizen networks and ICT infrastructure.
Veran Matic’s chapter “Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment:
Experiences in the Former Yugoslavia” (chapter 8) is a chronicle of stead-
fast media resistance in a hostile environment over a period of five or
so years in the former Yugoslavia. As such it highlights the critical—and
dangerous—role of journalists and media institutions in securing human
rights and democratic reform while fostering a critical and informed
citizenry in the face of fascism and totalitarianism.
Matic’s chapter performs the valuable service of highlighting particular
issues and ideas that may be applicable in a variety of other situations, not
only in fascist states and systems, but also in the West, as a corrective
response to current methods of media operations. Experiences in the
former Yugoslavia remind us that media can be used creatively and ener-
getically in pursuit of higher goals, a principle unfortunately ignored or
forgotten to a large degree by media producers (and consumers) all over
the world.
Scott S. Robinson, in his chapter “Rethinking Telecenters: Microbanks
and Remittance Flows—Reflections from Mexico” (chapter 9) focuses on
Shaping the Network Society 11

a different geographic region. Robinson casts a critical yet hopeful eye on

the nascent telecenter movement in Mexico and the other countries of
the global South and on the particular set of historical forces in which
these telecenters are spawned. He calls telecenters “cybercafés with a
social conscience,” and he sees them as an institution for the new
“Second World” of refugees and migrants that could serve as the nucleus
of a wide range of potential socially ameliorative functions. Robinson
views them first as possible centers for microbanking in villages (which
currently lack any formal financial institution), and secondarily as
centers for training and for the use of (and production of) new electronic
extension services.
Robinson is particularly interested in the new Second World of migrant
populations who, of necessity, routinely traverse the First and Third
Worlds. Since migrants often lose a substantial percentage of the money
they send home, he proposes to combine community telecenters with
microfinance institutions and offer cost-plus communication and basic
financial services to migrants and their families at home. The savings could
not only pay for the telecenters on both ends, but once the human and
technical infrastructure is in place, other services could be provided and
scaled to networked migrant communities, North and South.
Fiorella de Cindio’s chapter, “The Role of Community Networks in Shap-
ing the Network Society: Enabling People to Develop Their Own Projects”
(chapter 10), is in large part the oral history of the Milan Community
Network (Rete Civica di Milano or RCM in Italian), one of the world’s most
prominent community networks. By using the words of people who devel-
oped purposeful social venues within RCM’s sociotechnical framework,
De Cindio tells a meaningful story of social engagement in the hands of
ordinary citizens, deftly illustrating the main tenet of this book—that civil
society should be allowed and encouraged to play a role in shaping the
network society.
De Cindio performs two additional services for us. First, she discusses
four “genes” (academia, computer-supported cooperative work, participa-
tory design, and civil engagement) or philosophical and methodological
orientations that provided foundations that helped steer RCM into a useful
platform for Milan’s citizenry. Second, she relates how social actions nom-
inally confined to a single community can have repercussions beyond the
local context.
12 Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

Building a New Public Sphere in Cyberspace

Part III, “Building a New Public Sphere in Cyberspace,” focuses on the future:
What do the case studies suggest? In what ways do they constitute new
opportunities for civil society? How might a more democratic, community-
centered information and communication infrastructure help steer
humankind in directions that may be at odds with those suggested by the
ubiquitous neoliberal, corporate media? What should be done?
Craig Calhoun’s contribution, “Information Technology and the Interna-
tional Public Sphere” (chapter 11), is a wide-ranging explication of issues and
prospects related to the development of information technology and the
emerging network society. Calhoun’s focus is on Habermas’s idea of a public
sphere and its possible relevance in today’s world of “culture, capitalism, and
inequalities” in a new mass-mediated, globalizing environment.
Calhoun is emphatic in his belief that a global public sphere is essential
to the democratization of the global order. He is realistic, however, about
the actual prospects. He argues that global public sphere in which critical
public discourse trumps propaganda, commercialism, threats, and violence
may indeed be possible—but that its future is by no means certain.
In “What Do We Need to Know about the Future We’re Creating?
Technobiographical Reflections” (chapter 12), Howard Rheingold embarks
on a personal odyssey of his expectations and experiences with emerging
computer technology. Using his own personal story, Rheingold starts with
his grade school lectures on “Howard and the Atom” and progresses to his
present-day work on “smart mobs” as a parable. To some degree Rhein-
gold’s own somewhat-diminishing infatuation with technology echoes the
view that he expects the rest of humankind to now be adopting: that
technology—and the Enlightenment worldview that engendered it—while
being extremely powerful intellectually as well as materially, is not up to
the task of solving the problems the world is currently faced with.
(Although many of the problems we are faced with now are not new, it was
generally easier to dismiss them as transparent or superficial—not deep,
systemic, and persistent—in previous generations.)
Rheingold’s continuing fascination with, and everyday use of, online
communication naturally leads him where other people looking for ideas
for new paradigms and technologies have also been led: to questions related
to the “public sphere” in traditional Habermasian terms and to new possi-
bilities as well. Without forswearing technological opportunities in general,
Shaping the Network Society 13

but through a consideration of possibilities opened up by new sociotechni-

cal systems, Rheingold believes that new information and communications
systems can play an important role. If they are thought about—and
shaped—with this in mind, they can help our species to better prepare for—
and shape—the future and to help develop a more enlightened stance
toward world stewardship.
Nancy Kranich’s chapter, “Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil
Society” (chapter 13), explores the role of the public library in the current
era, in which print-based, broadcast, and new digital media all coexist. She
builds a compelling case for libraries as a cornerstone of democratic soci-
ety. She describes libraries as an abiding public institutionalized force for
equitable and readily available information. Lost in the dot-com hysteria is
the intriguing story about increasing library usage and the increase in the
number of titles published each year.
At the same time, libraries have not let the online, digital boom—and its
likely long-term effects on future information and communication spheres—
escape them. Libraries have been busily providing access to the Net and to
digital information while engaging in political and legal battles to main-
tain—and possibly strengthen—these rights in the future. For democracy to
flourish in the digital age, the public will need a commons to exchange
ideas and interact with fellow citizens. Libraries promise to provide such a
public space, but citizens need to pick up the gauntlet and fight to ensure
equitable access to information in their local communities.
David Silver’s chapter, “The Soil of Cyberspace: Historical Archaeologies of
the Blacksburg Electronic Village and the Seattle Community Network”
(chapter 14), compares two influential community networks in the United
States. The first, the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV), was amply endowed
with millions of dollars (thanks to Bell-Atlantic, the Virginia State Legisla-
ture, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and others) and received many
commendations, at least in its early days. The second, the Seattle Commu-
nity Network (SCN), the product of progressive computer scientists, software
developers, librarians, and homebrew computer nerds, relied on volunteer
labor and virtually no funding. Silver performs the gritty genealogical detec-
tive work of analyzing the soil—the sociotechnical milieu—that shaped and
nurtured the development of the two community networks.
Now the environment for both systems has changed dramatically; access
to the Net (at least in Blacksburg, Seattle, and much of the United States)
14 Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

is ubiquitous, and the collapse of the dot-coms has taught sobering lessons.
The community and civic potential for systems such as BEV and SCN has
not gone away (nor has their need), although their proponents may have
been chastened by the way things have turned out. Can BEV and SCN
developers free themselves to some degree from the bonds of the history
that they have helped write (and that Silver elucidates)? The environment
in which they emerged has changed. Can the form they have created
evolve accordingly, while they continue to strive toward the ambitious
community and civic goals they have espoused?
Douglas Morris’s chapter on “Globalization and Media Democracy: The
Case of Indymedia” (chapter 15) explores one way the sociotechnical
milieu that the Internet offers has been quickly and creatively embraced by
people with a radical critique of contemporary neoliberalism. The Inde-
pendent Media (“Indymedia”) Center (IMC) movement is being propelled
by a growing but widely distributed, loose-knit group of antiglobalist
activists worldwide. These activists have stitched together a remarkable
communications network using a common technological infrastructure,
a more or less shared philosophy and strategic orientation, and few
economic resources. Launched in anticipation of the major protests
surrounding the World Trade Organization’s meeting in Seattle in 1999,
the network has grown to over 130 nodes worldwide.
The case of the IMC is critical to our present inquiry for two main reasons.
We are concerned with the issues that the IMC has helped put on the public
agenda. Is a corporate, top-down, rationalized, homogeneous philosophical
orientation going to be the single ideology that guides our thoughts and
actions, or will there be space for alternative viewpoints and ideological
diversity? Who makes the rules and (more important?) the news?
We wonder, particularly, about the alternative and independent use of
cyberspace. Can sustainable models of civic, noncommercial enterprises,
including those that rely substantially on volunteer labor, be found? Can
they gain legitimacy and influence in a sea of well-funded commercial
enterprises? Finally, can the social, political, and economic functions that
the IMCs strive to provide, coalesce with other efforts, including less
confrontational efforts, like, for example, those of the public library? How
do the arguably more traditional civil-society institutions support or
detract from the militant calls for social change that the IMC and other,
more radical groups demand?
Shaping the Network Society 15

The concluding chapter, “Propects for a New Public Sphere” (chapter 16),
by Peter Day and Douglas Schuler, has two major objectives. The first is to
take stock of today’s sociotechnical milieu and the issues raised by the
book’s contributors. Currently there is urgent and widespread interest in
developing new models, services, organizations, and ways of thinking
around the world. It is possible that this work may blaze brightly for a time
and burn out just as quickly as the novelty fades or the obstacles become
insurmountable. On the other hand, this work may signal the beginning of
new social forces that could significantly alter the paths humankind takes
in the future.
The second objective is to propose and evaluate efforts for a new public
sphere that effectively employs the medium of cyberspace for social and
environmental progress. The protean nature of the medium and its potential
for inexpensive and ubiquitous access to information and communication
suggest a rich potential for civic uses, but will these aspirations be realized?
Do Basalla’s (1988) conditions for technological innovation exist? Part of the
reason for including views from around the world, of course, has been
to demonstrate the commonality (as well as the diversity) of the efforts to
create new systems.
Day and Schuler discuss a number of the challenges these systems are
likely to face. They come in two basic varieties: internal and external. Inter-
nal challenges result from the necessity of responding flexibly and effectively
to changing and possibly inhospitable conditions. Externally policies can
change, as can institutions, the general Zeitgeist of the era, and the techno-
logical foundation on which we create these systems. Will the systems be
able to adapt to change?
Advancing “utopian” schemes is always risky, yet it may be that new
historical circumstances are setting the groundwork for rapid change. Once
the technological pieces were in place the World Wide Web grew (and
continues to grow) at an unprecedented rate. Do these new developments
signal something profound historically, or will they be known ultimately
merely as historical footnotes?
The final chapter concludes with a number of suggestions—both practical
and somewhat speculative—on how an effective, equitable, and durable
public sphere can be advanced in the years ahead. We have attempted to
weave relevant strands of critique, analysis, case studies, and policy consider-
ations into a coherent story of a powerful yet diffuse movement. Although
16 Douglas Schuler and Peter Day

many of the authors are academics (who are burdened with at least some of
the deficiencies that the label implies), most, if not all, of them infuse their
work with human values and hope for positive social change.
The world offers a nearly infinite number of opportunities, challenges—
and surprises. While some of these circumstances may change from
moment to moment, others may stubbornly persist. How we interpret and
act in response to the circumstances we encounter constitutes the business
of living. Although we must play with the cards we are dealt, we may
decide to change the rules of the game from time to time.
I Civilizing the Network Society
2 U.S. Global Cyberspace

Oliver Boyd-Barrett

This book explores the contributions of cyberspace toward a better world.

My skeptical position is rooted in the sociology of communications, a chal-
lenging source for assessing media contributions to democracy. Between the
first and final drafts of this chapter the global economy moved from threat
of mild recession to something darker, exacerbated by the September 11,
2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The computing,
Internet, and telecommunications sectors led the way into recession, after
years of boom, bubble, and disproportionate, hyperbolic news coverage.
Market decline and “9-11” do not challenge the U.S. lead in information
technology (IT) (whose response will likely be further concentration and
convergence), nor its significance for global development and U.S. foreign
policy.
Computing and the Internet incontestably benefit many people. I argue
that benefits disproportionately accrue to the wealthy and powerful,
within and between nations, and that corporate interest is an ever-present
threat to public interest in an equitable system of governance, use, and
accessibility of global cyberspace. In this chapter I attend to the global con-
text of the evolving cyberindustry—its contributions to and implications
for the balance of power and, in particular, U.S. interests.
I place the “digital divide” in a broader context of threats to global security,
environment, and human development. How does this guide us to strategic
reforms for all communications media? Long-term actions need to address
the structure of the world economic order, whose outstanding feature is U.S.
dominance of global business, including communications. I examine U.S.
leadership of the global computer industries and their infrastructural under-
pinning of an information-entertainment complex. U.S. dominance of global
communications is part cause, part outcome of a dialectical interplay between
20 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

macrostructural trends over several decades. Evolution of these trends paral-

lels a transitional epoch that began with ex-colonial calls for a “new world
economic order” (NWEO) and “new world information and communication
order” (NWICO). These were savaged by the Reagan administration’s neolib-
eral “new world order.” I assess how communications media contribute to the
contemporary process of U.S.-led economic “globalization” and argue that
the relationship between communications and globalization contributes to
continuing U.S. world dominance.

From Digital Divide to Human Development

In May 2000, BBC News Online reported that 50 percent of the U.S.
population had home Internet access. In Europe as a whole (despite high
distribution in Scandinavia, Britain, and elsewhere) the proportion was as
low as 4 percent, and only 3 percent in Russia. In China the figure was not
much above 1 percent, and in Africa it was 0.016 percent. Subsequently,
these figures have grown, in some cases dramatically, but large disparities
will persist for the foreseeable future.
It is right to extend the benefits of computing and computer intercon-
nectivity to as many people as possible. Such efforts need to take account
of the broader political and cultural contexts in which the computing
industries operate. If our end goals are economic growth, amelioration of
economic inequality, protection of human rights, and liberation from both
political and corporate oppression, we should ask whether computing really
is the appropriate place to start or on which to focus. Whose interests are
served by so doing—those of the people, or those of the corporations that
produce computer hardware and software? Are these interests compatible?
Is this a new digital age, or an old age digitized?
The Human Development Reports by the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) for 1999 and 2000 show that there were over six billion
people on earth, of whom half, three billion, subsisted on less than $2
a day. Worse yet, 1.2 billion people subsisted on less than $1 dollar a day.
One dollar a day as the benchmark borderline between poverty and non-
poverty is bizarre, to say the least. Worldwide, many families experience
poverty on annual incomes of many thousands of dollars.
There have been improvements: reduction in malnutrition, improved
access to safe water, more employment, less income poverty, increased life
U.S. Global Cyberspace 21

expectancy, more democratic institutions, increased literacy, reduction in

armed conflict, and advances in the opening of national markets to trade.
But in 2000, 790 million people were malnourished; a billion people in
developing countries lacked access to safe water; 2.4 billion people had
inadequate sanitation. Ninety million primary-age children were out of
school. Twenty-five percent of all adults were illiterate. Thirty thousand
children died daily from mainly preventable causes. Forty countries were
without a multiparty electoral system. Global policymaking institutions
(IMF, World Bank, G7), dominated by large, rich countries, gave poor
countries and poor people little influence or voice. Over 150 million
workers were unemployed (as of 1998); there were ten million refugees and
five million internally displaced persons. As many as 1.2 million women
and girls trafficked in prostitution. There were 250 million child laborers;
100 million children lived or worked on the street; 300,000 children
were soldiers. Six million children were injured in armed conflicts during
the 1990s.
Global income inequalities have rapidly accelerated. Income disparity
between richest and poorest countries, 3 to 1 in 1820, was 44 to 1 in 1973,
72 to 1 in 1992, and 74 to 1 in 1997. Inequality invites such problems as
migration, environmental pressure, conflict, instability. Average annual
income growth per capita in 1990–1998 was negative in fifty-five countries.
Eighty countries in 1999 had per capita incomes lower than a decade or
more previously. Tax revenues declined in poor countries from 18 percent
of GDP in the 1980s to 16 percent in the 1990s, reducing governments’
capacity for response to inequalities.
In 1997, the richest 20 percent of the world’s population living in the
highest-income countries enjoyed 86 percent of world’s GDP, 82 percent
of exports of goods and services, 68 percent of foreign direct investment,
74 percent of world telephone lines, 93 percent of Internet usage. The bot-
tom fifth had just 1 percent of world GDP, 1 percent of export markets,
1 percent of foreign direct investment, 1.5 percent of telephone lines, and
less than 1 percent of Internet usage. OECD countries, with 19 percent of
the global population, accounted for 71 percent of global trade in goods
and services, 58 percent of foreign direct investment, and 91 percent of all
Internet users. The world’s 200 richest people had assets of over $1 trillion.
Assets of the top three billionaires surpassed the combined GNP of all of the
least developed countries and their 600 million people. By 2001, the world
22 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

had 7.2 million people with “investable” assets of at least $1 million,

controlling a third of global wealth. Additionally, there were 425 billion-
aires, of whom 274 lived in the United States. (Bishop 2001). In 1993, ten
countries accounted for 84 percent of global research and development
expenditures and controlled 95 percent of U.S. patents granted in the
previous two decades. More than 80 percent of patent grants in developing
countries belonged to residents of industrial countries.
One in ten people was an Internet user in 2001. Approximately 30 per-
cent of persons in urban areas of China, India, Russia, and the rest of the
developing world had even to hear of the Internet (Ipsos-Reid 2001). The
poor do not buy many computers. In 2001, a computer cost the average
Bangladeshi over eight years’ income, the average American one month’s
wage. Sixty percent of the world’s population lived in rural areas in 2000,
yet 80 percent of the world’s main telephone lines served urban areas; rela-
tively few had even made a phone call. Teledensity in India was 1.5 percent
and narrowband; less than 1 percent of adults had personal computers.
Even if people in the rural, developing world could access the Internet, its
usefulness would be hindered by illiteracies, cost, and insufficient access. In
2001, 70 percent of Internet users lived in the United States, Western
Europe, and the remainder of the English-speaking world. Forty-eight
percent of websites were in English; worldwide, one in ten people speak
English (many fewer read it).
Maps exist for those who would apply digital solutions to global prob-
lems. The 1999 UNDP Human Development Report called for global gover-
nance by a framework of values prizing ethics, equity, inclusion, human
security, sustainability, and development. Good governance required
strong commitment to global ethics, justice, and respect for universal
human rights; human well-being as the end, with open markets and eco-
nomic growth as means; respect for the diverse conditions and needs of
each country; and accountability of all actors. The report outlined a plan
to strengthen policies and actions for human development, and adapt
them to the global economy. Measures included the reduction of financial
volatility and associated human costs; efforts to tackle global threats to
human security; technology innovation for human development and
poverty eradication; reversal of the marginalization of poor, smaller coun-
tries; and the creation of an inclusive, coherent, democratic architecture
for global governance.
U.S. Global Cyberspace 23

The Human Development Report for 2000 identified freedoms that require
widespread adoption. These included freedom from discrimination, want,
fear, injustice, and violation of the rule of law; freedom of thought and speech;
freedom to realize one’s human potential, participate in decision making, and
form associations; and freedom for decent work without exploitation.
The 2000 report recommended key strategies to secure human rights. Every
country should strengthen social arrangements for securing human
freedoms—with norms, institutions, legal frameworks, and an enabling eco-
nomic environment. Legislation alone was not enough. The fulfillment of all
human rights required democracy that is inclusive—minority rights, separa-
tion of powers, and public accountability. Elections alone were not enough.
Poverty must be eradicated—an issue of development and of human rights
equally. Human rights required global justice. The state-centered model of
accountability must be extended to the obligations of nonstate actors and to
the state’s obligations beyond national borders. Improvements in informa-
tion and statistics were needed for a culture of accountability and realization
of human rights, one that could smash barriers of disbelief and mobilize
changes in policy and behavior. Achieving all rights for all people in all
countries would require action and commitment from major groups of
every society. Human rights and human development could not be realized
universally without stronger international action to support disadvantaged
people and countries and counter global inequalities and marginalization.
Media’s role would be to offer what the report identifies as more
connectivity, community, capacity, content, creativity, collaboration, and
cash. In the case of computing, the United States is leader, standing to
benefit most from its expansion. Computing is vital to global knowledge
industries, of which a few wealthy countries are principals. Computing
and communications companies are significant players among, and
contribute to the power of, the world’s leading transnational corporations
(TNCs), principal drivers of contemporary globalization. To be sanguine
about this, one must believe that TNC interests are global interests.

Core Features of Contemporary Globalization

World business is led by a handful of major economies. These are primary

hosts to most TNCs, which mainly benefit the same host countries. The
world economy was worth $33 trillion in 2000, led by the United States,
24 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

whose economy was twice as large as that of all of Europe combined (Kahn
and Andrews 2001); the economies of the United States, Europe, and Japan
accounted for over half of global economic activity. Fifty percent of the
world’s 1,000 largest corporations in a 1999 Business Week compilation
were U.S.-based. The United States, Britain, and Japan accounted for 942
of the 1,000. Of the FT Global 500 (ranked by market capitalization) top
corporations in 2001, the U.S. accounted for 239 (48%). North America
and Western Europe together accounted for 80 percent.
In 1999 the world’s approximately 60,000 TNCs controlled 500,000 foreign
affiliates. Eighty-five percent of TNCs were based in developed (OECD)
countries. TNCs primarily benefited their host countries, corporate managers,
and shareholders. They accounted for two-thirds of global exports in 1999 (of
which one-third were intrafirm transfers); they typically employed two-thirds
of their workforce in, and produced more than two-thirds of their output in,
primary host countries. Much American trade was TNC intracompany,
accounting for $563 billion (47%) of U.S. imports and $246 billion (32%) of
U.S. exports in 2000 (O’Connell 2001). In 1998, sales by foreign subsidiaries
of U.S. firms totaled some $2.4 trillion, substantially more than exports of
merchandise (worth $933 billion).
The United States accounted for two-fifths of world GDP growth in
1995–2000 while tying the world’s economies to America through trade,
global supply chains, and TNCs (The Economist, 2001), a factor con-
tributing to global recession in 2001. American imports in 2000 were
worth 6 percent of the GDP of the rest of the world. Two-fifths of the
growth of non-Japan Asia in 2000 was due to an increase in IT exports
to America.
U.S. knowledge-based industries are strongly represented among TNCs.
In OECD countries they accounted for half of business output in the
mid-1990s. Of the world’s top 1,000 companies, by market value as ranked
in Business Week in 1998, over 11 percent were in information and com-
munication technology (ICT), a category that accounted for one-third of
the top 100, and one-half of the top 10. Of the top 200 best-performing
public, ICT companies rated by Business Week in June 2001 by revenue
growth, size, shareholder return, and return on equity, 129 or 64.5 percent
were based in the United States, followed a long way behind by Japan with
25 (13.5%) and Taiwan with 7 (3.5%). Of the FT Global 500 in 2000, some
20 percent were ICT.
U.S. Global Cyberspace 25

An August 2001 Business Week ranking of the world’s 100 most valuable
brands, based on future projected earnings among brands with significant
nondomestic sales, 62 percent originated in the United States, 29 percent in
Europe, and 7 percent in Asia. Over one-third of all brands were significantly
related to ICT industries. Commerce in cultural products alone accounted for
more than 7 percent of U.S. GDP in 1999, when U.S. copyright-intensive
industries like film, television, and music exported goods worth almost
$80 billion, more than any other sector (even chemicals, aircraft, and agri-
culture) (Vaidhyanathan 2001). The 1999 UNDP report noted that the single
largest export industry for the United States was entertainment, led by
Hollywood (grossing $30 billion worldwide in 1997).
The annual growth rate of the ICT sector in the United States in the
1990s was twice that of the overall economy, peaking at one-third of
economic growth. I conclude that the U.S. economy, both in terms of GDP
and international trade, relies considerably on knowledge-based industries.

Globalization and the Communications Media

Globalization is not new, but assumes a defining form in each epoch, and
also shapes the epoch. There are at least three defining characteristics of
contemporary globalization (Boyd-Barrett 1999). First is the relative inclu-
sivity of the global economic order: it embraces almost all countries.
Second, this era of globalization has been driven by predominantly
Western-based TNCs. Their number will be joined by state, military, and
private enterprises based in China. TNC activities outstretch and outsmart
the will or capacity of regulatory agencies. Contemporary globalization,
third, is dependent to a high degree on the ICT sector.
Communications industries contribute to globalization in four principal
ways. They create profit, first, from global sales of hardware, software,
telecommunications services, computing, broadcasting, cinema, print,
public relations, and advertising. Indirectly, profit comes from sale of
licenses protected by proprietary patent and intellectual property rights
(IPR), mostly of benefit to interests located in the large, wealthy countries.
Piracy of intellectual property is estimated to cost billions of dollars each
year, yet IPR are increasingly enforced by countries that accede to WTO
membership and its disciplines, or subscribe to conditions imposed on
applicants for funding assistance from the IMF or World Bank.
26 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

Second, many communications products and services are vehicles for the
carriage of advertising. Advertising is critical to the transnationalization
of product and service sales, both directly, through paid-for advertise-
ments and promotions, and less directly, through the representation,
paid-for or incidental, of products, services, and lifestyles in media
content. Paid-for representation of cigarette smoking in Hollywood
films, or submission of screenplays to federal agencies to attract financial
support, count among the worst of known practices. Advertising is the eco-
nomic basis for much broadcasting, print, and Internet revenue. Trends
toward deregulation and privatization in media industries increase media
dependency on advertising, promote neoliberal regulatory practices
designed to reduce state subsidy, and increase dependency on advertising
and commercial revenue.
Third, ICTs have become essential facilitators of global trade and
finance. Basic and enhanced telecommunications services are related to
the economic development of states and enterprises alike. The availability
and quality of such services help to determine how TNCs functionally
differentiate their activities in time and space, and how they interact with
providers and clients. Many content services are tools for trade and
finance, sometimes structuring the marketplace for the buying and sale of
services. Examples include web-based, print, and audiovisual services
provided by Reuters, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, CNNf,
and the Wall Street Journal.
Fourth, communications industries contribute to the “semiotic con-
struction” of the world—that is, the ways images of the world, nations,
institutions, people, and activities are designed, packaged, and dissemi-
nated, or not, as the case may be, by the media, or by influences that act on
the media. Images signify meanings and values that are related to global-
ization processes and have implications for how these processes are under-
stood, supported, or contested. It should never be assumed, in the absence
of evidence, that given media contents have particular “effects”—human
consciousness is often too fluid to be impacted permanently by given
media “messages.” But the patterns of representation and expression thus
formed are a matter of concern, not least because they privilege some
voices, ideas, and interests and exclude or marginalize others (Boyd-Barrett
1998).
U.S. Global Cyberspace 27

Trends in Global Communication

Several interacting trends in recent decades have enhanced the contribu-

tion of communications media to globalization (I have built on six
trends identified by Hamelink in 1994): digitization, convergence, fusion
(the merger of common-carrier and gatekeeper models), deregulation,
privatization, concentration, “competitivization,” commercialization,
internationalization, Americanization, and democratization.
Digitization speaks for itself. Its impact coincides with the history of com-
puting and of the transition from analog to binary communications. It is
a precursor to new forms of convergence, the coming together of what were
once discrete technologies for the delivery of communications. The Inter-
net, a dramatic example, can deliver data; text; voice, natural sound, and
music; still and moving images. Much delivery is interactive in ways not
previously possible. Bandwidth permitting, the Internet can deliver
content that was once separately associated with newspapers, magazines,
posters, books, radio, telephone, fax, photography, television, and cinema.
It has weakened boundaries between previously discrete industries, while
older interdependencies associated with advertising, music, celebrity
coverage, and so on have been enhanced.
Some predigital differences between delivery systems resulted from
regulatory agreements, not technological necessity. For example, early
telegraphic cable companies were also news agencies; telephony was once
a broadcast medium. What is sometimes called convergence may be recon-
vergence (see Winseck 1998). A form of (re-) convergence in telephony is
the merger or fusion of different regulatory orders, notably common-carrier
and gatekeeper models of control. In the common-carrier model, telecom-
munications companies (telcos) agreed to restrict their activities to deliv-
ery of content, not its production. In return, governments protected their
monopoly status, which the telcos alleged was necessary for system ratio-
nality and ‘universal service’ irrespective of place or status of client
communities. Adopting the alternative gatekeeper model, telcos have
acquired direct influence over what gets communicated over their lines,
much as television channels determine their own programming portfo-
lios. This happens, for example, when telcos move into cable or broad-
casting (such as AT&T’s acquisition of MediaOne—later acquired by
Comcast—in the United States).
28 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

Technology developments and applications result from human choices,

often in the service of institutional goals, subject to regulatory controls.
Formal regulatory structures for communications are powerful. In the United
States, issues subjected to the regulatory control of the Federal Communica-
tions Commission (FCC) have included restrictions on mergers between print
and broadcast interests within the same communities, the local or national
proportion of households that may be captured by any single cable network,
and the provision of airtime for political candidates. Processes of deregulation
promoted during the 1980s’ Reagan administration have had immense
impact, nationally and internationally. Deregulation, however, is a confusing
term. It suggests a reduction in quantity of regulation, but really signifies a
change from one kind of regulation to another, from a system that protects
the public interest, toward a system that referees competition between major
corporations—a shift that was ratified by the 1996 Telecommunications Act
(Babe 1997). Deregulation does not necessarily nor permanently increase
competition. Five years after the 1996 Telecommunications Act, most cable
markets were still monopoly markets, and Baby Bells exercised monopoly
control over 95 percent of local telephony in their respective regions.
In countries that had supported “public-service” media, controlled or pro-
tected by the state, deregulation took the path of privatization, the sell-off of
state communications properties to private interests, and/or the exposure of
state media to the discipline of a competitive marketplace. Privatization has
been prevalent in broadcasting and telecommunications worldwide. Stated
rationales had to do with technology and efficiency. With expansion of
available bandwidth, it was argued, the state no longer needed to control all
communications space. The privatization argument took strength from,
but predates digitization. The BBC-dominated U.K. television market was
opened to market forces after the introduction of independent television in
1962, a measure lobbied for by advertising and other commercial interests.
It has also been argued that state media enterprises were too bureaucratic,
insufficiently responsive to the needs of consumers and advertisers.
Convergence facilitates a century-old trend toward industrial concentra-
tion, both horizontal and vertical. An important countervailing influence—
boosted by free-trade politics—has been the opening of domestic and
international markets to greater competition. I call this competitivization to
distinguish it from mere competition, signifying that new competition is
often induced unnaturally, or is simply a phase defining the boundary
U.S. Global Cyberspace 29

between one pattern of concentration and another. In telephony, private

interests avoid servicing poor, rural areas until special government induce-
ments stimulate a competition that the market by itself did not. Some
broadcast services, including interactive television, reflect “industry push”
more than “market pull”; industry hopes that video on demand can be
packaged with other interactive services for which consumers show less
enthusiasm.
Competition is often the short-lived product of technological innovation,
and of sudden expansion in market size that innovation may cause. Such
developments create opportunities seized on by entrepreneurs, whether
existing players, other industries, or “out of nowhere.” Numbers are later
pruned in an ensuing crisis of oversupply, falling prices, and mounting debt
obligations (as in the dot-com and telecommunications collapses of
2000–2001). Intensification of global competition may be the pretext for
loosening domestic impediments to concentration, on the grounds that
domestic industry must be “strengthened” so that it can better compete
internationally. Alternatively, deregulation may lead to greater diversity on
the domestic market following the local appearance of foreign corporations.
This same “diverse” range of corporations, meanwhile, stitches up the inter-
national or regional market. As local telco monopolies are privatized in the
developing world, the ex-monopolies of the developed world—enterprises
such as Deutsche TeleKom, France Telecom, British Telecom, (Spain’s) Tele-
fónica, and others—pounce in search of booty.
Such trends intensify commercialization and internationalization of media
markets. Deregulation and privatization of broadcast media reduced the
influence of state-controlled communications systems, whose raison d’être
was public interest more than profit. In their place came institutions driven
by shareholders to maximize advertising and audiences, reduce costs, and
transform news and documentary to tabloid “infotainment” (see Thussu
1998). Deregulation forms part of the neoliberal project for world trade,
involving the progressive (selective) dismantling of trade barriers and
constraints on capital flows. These facilitate international sales of
communications products as well as transfers and accumulations of capital,
and they make it difficult, ideologically and in terms of business strategy, for
governments to engage in cultural protectionism. Even where ownership and
content are predominantly local, the business model for communications
is increasingly western in terms of advertising, competition policy, program
30 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

formatting, and genre. This has implications for content and audience
address, and creates products that function like the commercial Western
products they imitate.
There has been increasing evidence of “reverse flow”—that is, of foreign
capital investing in the United States. The leading communications
exponents of this tendency, such as Bertelsmann (Germany), Pearson (U.K.),
Sony ( Japan), Vivendi (France), and News Corporation (Australia), come to
depend on the United States for a substantial part, even most (80 percent for
Bertelsmann) of their global revenues. In the process, their business strategies,
media contents, and mode of global address become “Americanized.” They
increasingly demonstrate the characteristics of neoliberal capitalistic con-
glomerates everywhere—enslavement to shareholder expectations of profit,
narrowness in business practice, product range, and genre.
This eager supply of foreign capital simultaneously helps reinforce American
hegemony and reduces rather than enhances diversity. Munoz (2001) notes
that Hollywood increasingly looks to foreign investors, mainly from Europe
and Japan, who prefer casts with European-Americans as leading characters.
Japanese investors are uninterested in financing films with African-Americans.
International box office sales show that dramatic stories with ethnic leads do
not sell as well as movies that star white talent. Stories about African-
Americans or other “ethnic” groups are not thought likely to sell well abroad.
Films with white male stars tend to be the biggest sellers abroad. Perceived
marketability, Munoz (2001) notes, has a major effect on casting decisions and
has limited opportunities for ethnic actors in dramatic roles. The core of the
argument here is a seeming paradox, namely, that both the export of U.S. cap-
ital and the import to the United States of foreign capital contribute to a global
process of Americanization, a form of loosely regulated capitalism that threat-
ens to homogenize and standardize business practice, cultural commodities,
and social behavior worldwide. Efforts to “localize” cultural commodities
superficially disguise a ruthless singularity of corporate greed.
The issue of democratization reflects the growing number of countries
that have adopted electoral representation as the basis of government. This
includes Central and Eastern Europe, the Russian republics, much of
Africa, and South America. By 1997, between two-thirds and three-quarters
of the people in developing countries lived under relatively pluralist and
democratic regimes. Nearly all countries now have universal adult suffrage,
and between 1974 and 1999 multiparty elections were introduced in 113
U.S. Global Cyberspace 31

countries. Democratization has typically been followed by a liberation and

proliferation of media outlets, both print and broadcast, whose numbers
have later contracted as market forces exercise their customary push to
external and internal buyouts and concentration. In many countries, the
relationship between government and media continues to be very tense.
Chinese media, though certainly more pervasive and liberal than hitherto,
are essentially government controlled. Independent TV in Russia finally
disappeared in 2003.
Democratization is a long-term improvement when contrasted with the
regimes that it succeeds. But the ten-year period of chaos suffered by Russia
following the ouster of Communist Party reformist Mikhail Gorbachev,
and his replacement first by Boris Yeltsin and later by Vladimir Putin, as
well as the sheer magnitude of economic upheaval and political and crimi-
nal disruption of that period, should at least give optimists some reason to
pause. This chaos should also be seen to have contributed to a reversal of
some of the freedoms that were initially gained. Many of the new democ-
racies are born into a neoliberal world of diminishing state sovereignty,
interventions by global institutions and multinational corporations, reduc-
tions in job security, social security, and social services, and a marked
widening in the divisions between rich and poor. In all these processes,
communications media have had a part to play, often through uncritical
acceptance of neoliberal utopias.

CyberLeader

I will look briefly at the structure of the computing industry in the period
1999–2000. Subsequent changes have not challenged the relative strength
of the U.S. lead in ICT. There is insufficient space here to deal with the
broader context of U.S. dominance of the information and entertainment
industries. I do not argue that U.S. or even Western communications influ-
ence is all-pervasive. On some dimensions, communications systems are
very national or local in terms of regulatory structure, ownership, and feel.
In summary, my thesis is fivefold. First, I maintain that communications
capital and control are accumulating and concentrating, first and foremost in
the United States, and then in some of the advanced economies. I believe that
the true scale and impact of these processes, already dramatic, has scarcely
reached “liftoff” (note FCC liberalization of media regulations in 2003).
32 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

Second, the processes of globalization, in particular relating to movement

of capital and product, are further enhancing the already considerable
transnationalization of communications activity.
Third, transnationalization, which further contributes to the world hege-
mony of the United States and other leading powers, is first manifested at a
subcontent level, in relation to sources of capital, technology, patent,
formatting, business models, and so on. Through computing, in particular,
the United States provides the digital infrastructure on which global indus-
try and services in general, and communications in particular, come to
depend.
Fourth, notwithstanding my third point, some countries of the world,
including some developed, Western countries, are indisputably the targets
of overt media imperialism; I would include Canada, New Zealand, and
Eastern Europe among these.
Fifth, within national borders, there is near universal evidence of the
colonization of communications space by massive concentrations of
communications capital and power.
By 2000, American companies—Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Sun
Microsystems, Oracle, Intel, IBM, Compaq and Dell, AOL Time Warner,
Cisco, and Lucent—dominated the global markets for operator systems,
computer chips, computer and PC hardware manufacture, Internet access,
computer server systems, and telecommunications equipment. At the time
of writing Hewlett-Packard and Compaq are scheduled to merge. (Much of
what follows is drawn from Hoovers Online business data and the Financial
Times FT Global 500 report. Figures predate the 2001 market crisis, but
reflect relativities of power.)
Microsoft ranked fifth in the FT Global 500 in 2001, with market
capitalization of $258 billion, annual revenues of $23 billion, and assets of
$52 billion. Microsoft controls almost all the global market for operating
systems of personal computers. In 2001 it anticipated sales of 160 million
new personal computers with Windows software. Its MSN was the second
most popular Internet portal after Yahoo!, with fifty million hits; MSN web
access, with five million subscribers, was a distant second to AOL. One
hundred million customers enjoyed free Microsoft e-mail; thirty million
used instant messaging. Microsoft share values in 2000 increased by
60 percent. Microsoft had significant ownership interests in other large
communications enterprises, including AT&T and AOL Time Warner.
U.S. Global Cyberspace 33

Intel ranked ninth in the FT Global 500 in 2001. Its profits far exceeded
those of other semiconductor manufacturers, commanding over 80 percent
of the world’s PC microprocessor market, with market capitalization of
$227 billion and annual profits of $34 billion. Microsoft’s operating system
software is written for Intel chips. Demand for servers exploded in the late
1990s due to the popularity of the Internet and of corporate networks
linking employees, customers, and suppliers. Primary customers for Intel
include computer manufacturers Compaq and Dell, both U.S. companies.
Way behind Intel, the number 2 slot is held by U.S. company AMD, most
of whose sales are exports, with revenues of $5 billion in 2000.
The leading global provider of computer hardware was New York–based
IBM. IBM was number 11 in the FT Global 500 in 2001, with a market capi-
talization of nearly $203 billion and annual turnover in 2000 of $88 billion.
IBM claimed the number 2 position in software, after Microsoft. Another
U.S. company also claimed title to that position, namely Oracle, a database
specialist ranking 14 in the FT Global 500 in 2000, with market capitaliza-
tion of over $182 billion and annual revenues of $10 billion. The database
market is dominated by Oracle and Microsoft. Databases are platforms for
“enterprise resource planning” (ERP) applications. Oracle dominated the
Unix market, and provided over 40 percent of the databases running on
Microsoft NT. Oracle claimed that 87 percent of Fortune 500 companies had
an Oracle database, and that the ten most-visited consumer websites, includ-
ing Yahoo! and AOL, were powered by its databases, as were the ten biggest
business websites (The Economist, March 18, 1999).
Another major U.S. software producer is Sun Microsystems, based in San
Francisco, and using its own chips and operating system. Its programs
include JAVA. It ranked 35 in the FT Global 500, with $101 billion in
market capitalization and nearly $16 billion in sales. During 1999, Sun
Microsystems had become the premier maker of server computers for the
Internet and e-business, in competition with IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
Eighty-four percent of its sales were made over the Internet, and more than
80 percent of customer queries were answered online (The Economist, April
6, 2000). The world’s three leading manufacturers of PCs in 2001 were Dell
(13 percent market share), Compaq (12 percent), and IBM (7 percent)
(Business Week, August 3, 2001).
The world’s largest purveyor of technology services was IBM: “It counsels
customers on technology strategy, helps them prepare for mishaps, runs all
34 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

their computer operations, develops their applications, procures their

supplies, trains their employees, and even gets them into the dot.com realm”
(Sager 1999, 132). Sixty percent of IBM’s revenues came from outside the
United States. Hewlett-Packard (San Francisco) was the number 2 manufac-
turer of computers after IBM, earning 85 percent of is revenue from comput-
ing and imaging, and in the process of becoming an Internet specialist.
Fifty-five percent of its sales came from outside the United States. It ranked
68 in the FT Global 500 in 2000, with market capitalization of $68 billion and
annual revenues of $49 billion. Houston-based Compaq was the third largest
computer company after Hewlett-Packard. It ranked 181 in the FT Global
500 in 2000, with market capitalization of $38.5 billion and annual sales of
$42 billion. Texas-based Dell Computer Corporation was the number 1 direct-
sales computer vendor, with 75 percent of its revenues from sales of desktop
and notebook PCs. It ranked 104 in the FT Global 500 in 2000, with market
capitalization of $50 billion and annual sales of $32 billion.
As these data indicate, computer production had become an increasingly
U.S. activity. Siemens of Germany withdrew from the PC market in 1998;
in Japan, NEC, following Fujitsu, gave up the fight to maintain a propri-
etary PC system in its own home market and decided instead to sell
machines built to Wintel standards. NEC’s market share in Japan slid from
about 70 percent to 35–40 percent (Schiller 1999, 83). Indeed, Japan grew
increasingly dependent on U.S. computer technology during the 1990s.
The number 1 company for the growing market of data routers was Cisco,
based in San Francisco, ranking number 2 in the FT Global 500 in 2000, with
market capitalization of $305 billion and annual revenues of $19 billion.
Cisco controlled two-thirds of the global market for routers and switches that
link networks and power the Internet. It remained the clear market leader in
the broadband DSL access concentrator market, and maintained the top
market-share position in the cable head-end market. Its competitors were U.S.
companies Juniper Networks, Lucent Technologies, and (Canadian) Nortel.
Juniper, also based in San Francisco, was number 2 in this market, with
a ranking of 131 in the FT Global 500 in 2000, market capitalization of
$556 billion, and annual revenues of $679.5 million.
AOL Time Warner ranked seventh in the FT Global 500 in 2001 and had
a market capitalization of $214.5 billion. AOL in 2000 had services in
sixteen countries and eight languages. Including the 2 million subscribers
of CompuServe Interactive Services, Inc., which AOL owned, AOL served
U.S. Global Cyberspace 35

more than half of all the wired homes in the United States. Only three other
companies in the United States had passed the 1 million mark (AT&T
WorldNet with 1.7 million, EarthLink with 1.3 million, and MindSpring
with 1.2 million). Jupiter Research reported that the top 50 popularity
ratings for portals in February 2001 were led by AOL Time Warner Network
with 69 million unique visits, followed by Microsoft sites’ nearly 60 million
and Yahoo!’s 57.5 million (Newsbytes.com, March 14, 2001).
The leading U.S. companies were also active in overseas markets. AOL
and Microsoft were leading rivals in the Internet messaging (IM) market
that allows users to “chat” in real time. Nearly 90 million people used IM
services in 1999, and roughly 80 percent of them were AOL customers;
users generated an estimated 760 million messages a day, twice as many as
the letters handled daily by the U.S. Postal Service. Such a huge audience
was highly attractive to advertisers. (Pan and Arora 1999). AOL has subse-
quently merged with Time Warner, whose access to Hollywood-related
properties enhanced AOL sites.
Internet content services were dominated by U.S. corporations. Leading
news sources accessed through major portals AOL, Yahoo!, and countless
other websites included the Associated Press, CNN, MNBC, and Dow Jones.
Reuters (U.K.) and Bloomberg (U.S.) were leaders of online financial news
services for business and investment communities. The global leader in
digital rights management transaction services was Reciprocal (U.S.). The
principal Internet market researcher was Forrester (U.S.).
The U.S. telecommunications market, heavy consumer of ICT technologies,
was the world’s largest. The process of capital concentration, the crisis of
2000–2001 notwithstanding, produced economic powers of great aggressive
potential on world markets. AT&T was the nation’s number 1 long-distance
provider, ranking 54 in the FT Global 500 in 2000, with market capitalization
of $79 billion and earning $66 billion annual revenues. Verizon was the num-
ber 1 local telephone company and number 2 telecommunications provider
in the United States, ranking 21 in the FT Global 500, with market capital-
ization of $148 billion and earning annual revenues of $65 billion. The two
other major players were Sprint (with both fixed-line and wireless arms) and
WorldCom MCI, operating in sixty-five countries.
U.S. leadership in computing and telecommunications gave the United
States a foothold in almost every industry worldwide, including other com-
munications industries. Film and broadcasting production and distribution
36 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

were increasingly digitized. Computing industries were integrated with

communications industries on a larger and larger scale. A prime example of
convergence was the alliance forged in 1999–2000 between AT&T (tele-
phony; with 60 percent of the U.S. residential long-distance calls in 2000),
Microsoft (with a 2.6 percent share of AT&T in 1999, software supplier for
AT&T set-top boxes), TCI (cable), Time Warner (video content and local
phone), and wireless communications. AT&T owned 10 percent of Time
Warner. By acquiring the third largest U.S. cable company, MediaOne, in
2000, AT&T acquired a 25 percent ownership of Time Warner Entertain-
ment, now part of AOL Time Warner. Ownership of MediaOne gave AT&T
co-control of web-access service Road Runner, one of the two principal
suppliers of high-speed Internet access by cable. AT&T already owned the
other principal operator, @Home. AT&T now had control over delivery and
content—for example, AT&T could give a high profile to the Excite web
portal that @Home also owned.
By 2001 AT&T Broadband was the nation’s largest broadband services
company, providing analog and digital television entertainment services
in English and Spanish to over sixteen million customers in the United
States. AT&T also partnered with British Telecom in acquiring a third of
Japan Telecom, number 2 telcom in Japan after NTT, and had bought into
Telewest, one of Britain’s largest cable companies, owned by BT rival,
Cable and Wireless. AT&T and British Telecom between them controlled
half of global business telecommunications, and half of the lucrative North
Atlantic communications traffic.
Wireless telephony demonstrated a significant confluence of telephony,
computing, and Internet. European corporations, notably Nokia (Finland)
and Ericsson (Sweden), led the world in application and marketing of wire-
less technology, a lead that looked fragile in face of potential U.S. demand
(160 million U.S. cellphone users anticipated by 2005) that could hand
dominance to U.S. providers like Motorola. In any case, Ericsson, Nortel,
Siemens, and other original-equipment manufacturers contracted out work
to giant U.S. companies such as Flextronics International and Celestica Inc.
with worldwide networks of factories, suppliers, and just-in-time delivery
systems (Einhorn and Keliher 2000).
Telecommunications also converged with computing through the “Inter-
net backbone” networks routing Internet traffic. In 1997, four leading back-
bone suppliers, together handling 80 percent of U.S. Internet traffic (the rest
U.S. Global Cyberspace 37

being accounted for by twenty-five smaller companies), were owned

by major telecommunications carriers, including InternetMCI, Sprint IP
Services, GTE Internetworking, and WorldCom’s UUNet. Fears of monopoly
control of the backbone inspired regulator resistance to a planned merger
between Sprint and MCI in 2000 that would have reduced competition in
many markets, combining the world’s number 1 Internet backbone, MCI,
carrying 50 percent of worldwide traffic, with Sprint’s network, carrying
18 percent. The top three U.S. telecommunications providers, WorldCom,
Sprint, and AT&T, commanded 80 percent of markets for U.S. residential
customers, U.S. Internet backbone service, U.S. international long distance
with fifty foreign countries, U.S. international private lines with sixty
foreign countries, and data network and custom network services to large
U.S. business customers (Associated Press, June 27, 2000).
U.S. computing strength impacted many countries’ economies. In 1990,
95 percent of India’s software industry revenues came from the United States.
The United States accounted for 62 percent in 2000, followed by Europe (24
percent) and Asia. Indian production in 2001 was damaged by the technol-
ogy downturn of 2000–2001 ( Joseph 2001). Ireland also prospered from U.S.
investment in the technology boom of the 1990s. The largest foreign investor
was Intel. Microsoft sales alone accounted for 3 percent of Irish GDP in 2000,
and for 4 percent of exports. Other major investors include IBM and Dell. In
a total workforce of 1.7 million the computer/electronics sector employed, in
2001, some 44,000 people, accounting for 22.8 percent of total exports. But
2,500 jobs were lost in the first months of 2001 (Business Week, August 3,
2001). Non-U.S. manufacturers and suppliers of computer chips around the
world, some of them government protected, were heavily impacted by the
slump and its ensuing overcapacity and falling prices: South Korea’s Samsung
electronics and Hynix Semiconductor, Japan’s Toshiba, Taiwan’s Semi-
conductor Manufacturing Company, Singapore’s Chartered Semiconductor
Manufacturing, and Europe’s Infineon. East Asia had been overreliant on
exports of IT equipment to the United States (The Economist, August 9, 2001).

The Politics of World Domination

These trends worked to consolidate U.S. global power, in general and in

communications, even while the global pitch was readied for intensified
economic competition between the United States, the European Union, and
38 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

China. This point deserves further contextualization. The 1970s represented

a difficult period for the United States. The country had survived the Cuban
missile crisis of the 1960s, stalemating relations between the Soviet Union
and the United States. Fearful subsequent reaction to the perceived
“domino effect” of communism trapped the United States ever more tightly
in the Vietnam quagmire, leading to military standoff, then surrender to
the North Vietnamese. Castro and communism were spurious justifications
for U.S. support of various despotic and undemocratic regimes, even to the
point of usurping democratically elected regimes deemed too left-wing, as
in Chile. Its power notwithstanding, the United States was vulnerable to the
maneuvers of its Cold War opponents, the Soviet Union and China, and to
backlash from its own military interventions (Iran, Angola, Guatemala,
Nicaragua, El Salvador, and so on).
The United States was also vulnerable ideologically, in forums such as the
United Nation and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), during an era of
decolonization and postcolonialism. Emerging new nations, after decades
of struggle, aspired to a political-economic sovereignty they soon discov-
ered was elusive. Through the United Nation, whose membership they had
swollen, came their demands for a “new world economic order” (NWEO),
challenging U.S. interests. NWEO strategy involved import substitution,
national control over TNCs, and cartelization of Third World raw materials
suppliers (Ryan 1998), as in OPEC’s decision to restrict oil and raise prices
(leading to worldwide recession).
Then came a parallel call for a new world information and communication
order (NWICO) (see Boyd-Barrett 2001) to redress one-way, unregulated, and
biased flows of news and information from First to Third worlds. Nations
could not control how foreign media covered them, nor how other countries
were represented in the imported First World media on which governments
and media depended for world news. This had political and economic impli-
cations. Hence the Third World call for free and balanced information
exchange between sovereign nations, and for national sovereignty over
inward and outward information flows.
Early in his administration, President Reagan took the United States out
of UNESCO (followed by the U.K.), a major U.N. agency that had endorsed
NWICO. These were signs of a major shift in U.S. thinking about the global
economy. NWICO was scarcely a practical contender in a global capitalist
system. As for the vaunted economic order, import substitution was mostly
U.S. Global Cyberspace 39

impossible for impoverished nations, unable to compete with First World

providers. Nationalization of TNCs, augmenting the state’s economic
power, fostered inefficiency and corruption. Scarce available resources were
exhausted by debt payments, not least those incurred for payments to
Western arms suppliers in Third World struggles to consolidate borders and
establish control. OPEC undermined the West temporarily, but OPEC-style
consensus among supplier nations was less likely for nonoil products that
Western nations found easy to substitute.
The United States intensified its global defense of capitalism and pursued
its national interest through agencies over which it had control, such as
the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, G7. Retaliating against
UNESCO calls for NWEO and NWICO, the United States proposed a “new
world order” of free flows of goods and capital, regulated by the powerful
nations, while resubscribing to precrisis concepts of information “free
flow” that would allow Western media corporations to grow bigger and
gave free reign to a U.S. military–incubated “secret weapon”—computer
microprocessor technology.
U.S. policy presumed an age of digital plenty that would eliminate older
rationales for regulation based on ideas such as scarcity, universal service,
and separation of carrier from provider. The new world order dismantled
trade barriers, enhanced trading activity, and strengthened TNCs, thus
heralding global economic boom. The boom provided ideological and
physical resources that undermined the communist regimes of Europe and
Soviet Russia. But they did not undermine the Chinese communist regime,
whose cheap, controlled labor, party centralization, and military muscle
created a long-term competitor to the United States. The economies of
China and India comprised one-sixth of global GDP in 2000, while Russia’s
economy was likely to be less than one-fifth the size of that of the United
States even in 2015.
A December 2000 CIA report noted that economic dynamics, the WTO,
and the spread of ICT made globalization an increasingly important driver of
global trends. Workshops sponsored by the Department of State and the CIA
in 1999 identified four future scenarios for globalization. In the Inclusive
Globalization scenario, a virtuous circle was envisaged between technology,
economic growth, demographic factors, and effective governance, enabling a
majority of the world’s population to benefit from globalization. In the
Pernicious Globalization scenario, global elites would thrive while the majority
40 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

of the world’s population failed to benefit from globalization. In the Regional

Competition scenario, regional identities would sharpen in Europe, Asia, and
the Americas, driven by growing political resistance in Europe and East Asia
to U.S. global preponderance and U.S.-driven globalization and by each
region’s preoccupation with economic and political priorities. In the Post-
Polar World scenario, U.S. domestic preoccupation would increase as the U.S.
economy slowed, then stagnated. Europe would turn inward; national
governance in Latin America would destabilize; national rivalries would
intensify in Asia, with potential conflict between China, on the one hand,
and Japan and the United States on the other.
This Global Trends 2015 report argued that U.S. global influence would be
unparalleled among nations and regional or international organizations, cast-
ing the United States as the key driver of the international system. The United
States would be identified throughout the world as the leading proponent
and beneficiary of globalization. The United States, with its decisive edge in
information and weapons technology, would remain the dominant military
power for fifteen years. (Of international arms sales worth $36.9 billion in
2000, half were accounted for by U.S. corporations, whose sales of $18.6
billion doubled those of the next major supplier, Russia, and exceeded the
sales of the six largest non-U.S. international arms suppliers. Two-thirds of
these arms went to developing countries (Shanker 2001).) Access to space was
critical to U.S. military power (and to the proposed missile shield), although
this would be increasingly countered by competitors and adversaries
(evidenced sooner than expected by the “9/11” low-technology attacks).
Further bolstering U.S. strength were its unparalleled economic power, its
university system, and its investment in research and development—half of
the total spent annually by the advanced industrial world.
But CIA future scenarios all forecast a waning of U.S. influence (which may
help explain the Bush policy of U.S. global hegemony as articulated in
September 2002 and U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003). Governments would have
less control over transborder information and other flows. The networked
global economy would require rapid, largely unrestricted flows of informa-
tion, ideas, cultural values, goods and services, and people. ICT would build
international commerce and empower nonstate actors, integrating increas-
ingly with other technologies such as biotechnology. Increasing urbanization
of the world’s population—more than half by 2015—and a growing middle
class, already two billion strong, would further expand ICT. The United States
U.S. Global Cyberspace 41

would maintain a strong edge in IT-driven “battlefield awareness” and in

precision-guided weaponry. It would lead the technological revolution from
information to biotechnology and beyond. China would lead the developing
world in utilizing ICT.
Growth of the U.S. population and economic activity would require a
61 percent increase in energy imports, in turn requiring more political and
military intervention abroad to ensure supply. U.S. strategy would require
access to key overseas supplies of petroleum by pressurizing foreign gov-
ernments to open up their energy sectors to significant investment by U.S.
energy firms, ensuring “political stability” in producer countries so that
U.S. companies could safely operate, promoting reduced barriers to trade
and investment, and improving the “investment climate.” Countries likely
to be targeted for attention in relation to U.S. energy needs included Azer-
barjan, Columbia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the Persian Gulf countries
(the United States invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003), and countries of the
Caspian Sea basin (many of these figuring ominously in the 2001 “war
against terrorism”).
U.S. ICT preponderance was not everywhere reflected in media content,
arguably the least important indicator of ultimate control and benefit.
Rather, it was reflected multidimensionally, through choices of business
model, sources of capital, sources of advertising, control over the global
“Internet backbone,” dominance of satellite supply and launch, supply of
computer hardware, server, network, database management and software,
program format, and audience address. These were paralleled by the con-
trol of global media such as Hollywood films; Disney; AOL, CNN, and
Time—these three all belonging to AOL Time Warner—Dow Jones and the
Wall Street Journal, and so on.
The cyberrevolution may be a triumphal phase in the trajectory of an
otherwise much-touted decline of “U.S. media imperialism.” This would
correspond to consolidation by America’s elite of its central role in the
global polity and economy through the WTO, NAFTA/FTAA, World Bank,
and G7, while protected by a continent-wide missile defense system
against the consequences of a potential long-term waning of relative
power. The achievements of cyberspace and its sophisticated networking
opportunities, and the expansion of resources and sources that it repre-
sents, should be evaluated against this backdrop of the concentration of
world power by the United States and its allies.
42 Oliver Boyd-Barrett

Conclusion

In this chapter I traced the links between trends in the communications

industries, particularly computing and telecommunications, and the global
balancing of power around a governing neoliberal framework of value of
which the U.S. elite—its government and corporations—are the principal
guardians and beneficiaries. My analysis left open the question as to what
fissures may exist for the formation of a global public sphere, and what role
in this the Internet may or may not have. Any such public sphere must, by
definition, show itself sufficiently independent of state and corporate influ-
ence to contest features of the governing framework that might constitute
a threat to global security, environment, and human development. This
task must involve an assessment of how far the Internet, in particular,
affords such spaces for contestation and under what conditions. This book
as a whole is a contribution to such an assessment.
3 Shaping Technology for the “Good Life”: The
Technological Imperative versus the Social Imperative

Gary Chapman

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist Eastern bloc at
the beginning of the 1990s, technology and economic globalization have
become the chief determinants of world culture. Indeed, these two
omnipresent features of modern, civilized life in the postindustrial world
are so intertwined that they may be indistinguishable—we may speak
more or less coherently of a “technoglobalist” tide, one rapidly engulfing
most of the world today.
A significant point of debate raised by this phenomenon is whether, and to
what extent, the rapid spread of technologically based global capitalism is
inevitable, unstoppable, and even in some vague sense autonomous. There
are those who believe that there is in fact a strong “technological imperative”
in human history, a kind of “technologic” represented both in macro-
phenomena such as the market, and in individual technologies such as
semiconductor circuits or bioengineered organisms. It is not hard to find evi-
dence to support such an idea. The prosaic description of this concept would
be that technological innovations carry the “seed,” so to speak, of further
innovations along a trajectory that reveals itself only in hindsight. Moreover,
the aggregate of these incremental improvements in technology is an arrow
that points forward in time, in a process that appears to be accelerating, piling
more and more technologies on top of one another, accumulating over time
to build an increasingly uniform and adaptive global civilization. There often
appears to be no escape from this process. As the allegorical science fiction
villains of the TV series “Star Trek,” the Borg, say in their robotic, repetitive
mantra, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” Stewart Brand, the
Whole Earth Catalog guru and author who turned into a high-tech evangelist,
put it this way: “Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of
the steamroller, you’re part of the road” (Brand 1987, 22).
44 Gary Chapman

The growing and vocal antiglobalization movement, on the other hand, is

questioning such assumptions and challenging the idea of a necessary link
between a “technological imperative” and human progress. The protesters at
antiglobalization demonstrations typically represent a wide range of both
grievances and desires, so it is difficult to neatly characterize a movement
that is repeatedly drawing hundreds of thousands of protesters to each major
demonstration. But the one principle that seems to unite them—along with
many sympathizers who choose not to participate in public demonstra-
tions—is that the future is not foreordained by a “technological imperative”
expressed via global corporate capitalism. There is the hope, at least, among
antiglobalization activists that human society might continue to represent a
good deal of diversity, including, perhaps especially, diversity in the way
people adopt, use, and refine technology.
Who wins this debate, if there is a winner, will be at the heart of “shap-
ing the network society,” the theme of this book. The outcome of this
ongoing debate may determine whether there are ways to “shape” a global
technological epoch at all. If the concept of a “technological imperative”
wins out, over all obstacles, then human beings are essentially along for
the ride, whether the end point is utopia or apocalypse or something in
between. Human consciousness itself may even be shaped by surrender to
the technological imperative.
If, on the other hand, technology can be shaped by human desires and
intentions, then the critics of the “autonomous technology” idea must
either explain or discover how technologies can be steered deliberately one
way and not another. Neither side in this debate has a monopoly on either
virtue or vice, of course. Letting technology unfold without detailed social
control is likely to bring many benefits, both anticipated and unantici-
pated. Setting explicit goals for technological development could, on the
other hand, help us avoid pitfalls or even some catastrophes. It will be the
search for balance that is likely to characterize our global discussion for the
foreseeable future, a balancing of the “technological imperative” with
what might be called our “social imperative.”

The Technological Imperative Full Blown—Moore’s Law and Its Distortions

In 1965, Gordon Moore, the cofounder of the Intel Corporation and a pio-
neer in semiconductor electronics, publicly predicted that microprocessor
computing power would double every eighteen months for the foreseeable
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 45

future. He actually predicted that the number of transistors per integrated

circuit would double every eighteen months, and he forecast that this trend
would continue through 1975, only ten years into the future. But in fact
this prediction has turned out to be remarkably accurate even until today,
more than thirty five years later. The Intel Corporation itself maintains a
chart of its own microprocessor transistor counts, which have increased
from 2,250 in 1971 (the Intel 4004) to 42 million in 2000 (the Pentium 4)
http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.htm. The technology
industry is nearly always preoccupied with when Moore’s Law might come
to an end, especially as we near the physical limits of moving electrons in
a semiconductor circuit. But there always seems to be some promising new
technology in development that will keep Moore’s Law alive.
Moore’s prediction has so amazed technologists, because of its accuracy
and its longevity, that it has become something close to a natural law, as
in Newtonian physics. Of course, there is bound to be an end to the trend
that makes the prediction accurate, which means that Moore’s Law will
someday become a historical curiosity rather than a “law.” But the pre-
diction has taken on a life of its own anyway. It is no longer regarded as
simply a prediction that happened to be fulfilled by a company owned
and controlled by the predictor, a company that spent billions of dollars
to make sure the prediction came true and profited immensely when it
did come true. Moore’s law is regarded by some technophiles as “proof”
that computers and computer software will increase their power and
capabilities forever, and some computer scientists use the thirty five-year
accuracy of Moore’s law as evidence that computers will eventually be as
“smart” as human beings and perhaps even “smarter” (Kurzweil 1999;
Moravec 1998).
There is no connection between transistor density on a semiconductor chip
and whether or not a computer can compete with a human being in terms of
“intelligence.” It is not even clear what constitutes intelligence in a human
being, let alone whether or not a computer might match or surpass it. Intel-
ligence is an exceedingly vague term, steeped in controversy and dispute
among experts. Computers are far better at some tasks than humans, typically
tasks that involve staggering amounts of repetitive computation. But human
beings are far better at many ordinary “human” tasks than computers—
indeed, an infant human has more “common sense” than a supercomputer
with billions of transistors. There is no evidence that human beings
“compute,” the way a computer processes binary information, in order to
46 Gary Chapman

cogitate or think. Nor is there evidence that the von Neumann computer
model of serial bit processing is even a simulacrum for human information
processing.
This is not to say that Moore’s law is insignificant or irrelevant—the
advances in computer processing power over the past thirty five years have
been astonishing and vitally important. And the fact that Gordon Moore
was prescient enough to predict the increase in a way that has turned out
to be amazingly accurate is fascinating and impressive. But as others have
pointed out, the semiconductor industry has spent billions of dollars to
make sure that Moore’s prediction came true, and it is worth mentioning
that Moore’s own company, Intel, has led the industry for all of the thirty
five years Moore’s law has been tested. Nevertheless, if the prediction had
failed we would not be talking about it the way we do now, as a corner-
stone of the computer age, and for this Moore deserves credit. But there is
nothing about Moore’s law that points to the kinds of future scenarios that
some authors and pundits and even engineers have attributed to it. There
is nothing about Moore’s law that makes it a true “law,” nor is there any
imperative that it be accurate indefinitely, except the industry’s interests in
increasing transistor density in order to sell successive generations of
computer chips. In any event, there are trends now that suggest that this
measure of progress, of increasing chip density, is gradually losing its
significance (Markoff and Lohr 2002).
Moore’s law is an example of how a thoughtful and interesting prediction
has been turned into an argument for the technological imperative, that
society must invest whatever it takes to improve a technology at its maxi-
mally feasible rate of improvement—and to invest in a specific technology,
perhaps at the expense of a more balanced and generally beneficial mix of
other technologies. Advocates of the semiconductor industry argue that
semiconductor chips are the “seed corn” of the postindustrial economy,
because their utility is so universal and significant to productivity. But so is
renewable energy, or human learning, or sustainable agriculture, all things
that have experienced a weakness in investment and attention, at least in
comparison to semiconductors and computer hardware.
In April 2000, Bill Joy, vice president and cofounder of Sun Microsys-
tems—a very large computer and software company in Silicon Valley—
published a provocative essay in Wired magazine titled “Why the Future
Doesn’t Need Us” ( Joy 2000). Joy raised some troubling questions for
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 47

scientific and technological researchers, about whether we are busy build-

ing technologies that will make human beings redundant or inferior beings.
Joy’s article created a remarkable wave of public debate—there were public
discussions about his thesis at Stanford University and the University of
Washington in Seattle, he was invited to present his ideas before the
National Academy of Sciences, and he appeared on National Public Radio.
His warnings were featured in many other magazine articles.
Joy refers to the arguments of two other well-known technologists, Ray
Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, who have both written extensively about how
computers will one day become “smarter” than human beings. Humans will
either evolve in a way that competes with machines, such as through
machine implants in the human body, or else “disappear” by transferring
their consciousness to machine receptacles, according to Kurzweil and
Moravec. In his Wired article, Joy accepts this as a technological possibility,
perhaps even an inevitability, unless we intervene and change course. “A
technological approach to Eternity—near immortality through robotics,”
writes Joy, “may not be the most desirable utopia, and its pursuit brings clear
dangers. Maybe we should rethink our utopian choices” ( Joy 2000).
But the question then becomes, Can we rethink our utopian choices if we
believe rather thoroughly in a technological imperative that propels us inex-
orably in a particular direction? Can Moore’s law coexist with a free ethical
choice for technological ends? Joy says that perhaps he may reach a point
where he might have to stop working on his favorite problems. “I have always
believed that making software more reliable, given its many uses, will make
the world a safer and better place,” he notes, adding that “if I were to come
to believe the opposite, then I would be morally obligated to stop this work.
I can now imagine such a day may come.” He sees progress as “bitter sweet”:
“This all leaves me not angry but at least a bit melancholic. Henceforth, for
me, progress will be somewhat bittersweet” (Joy 2000).
There is a great deal to admire in such emotions; these are the musings
of a thoughtful and concerned person, and, given Joy’s stature and repu-
tation in his field, such qualities are welcome precisely because they seem
so rare among technologists.
But behind such ideas is an unquestioned faith in the technological
imperative. Joy suggests that unless we simply stop our research dead in its
tracks, on ethical grounds, we may create dangers for which we will be eter-
nally guilty. This is certainly possible, but it is distinctly one dimensional.
48 Gary Chapman

Could we not redirect our technological aims to serve other goals, goals
that would help create a life worth living rather than a life shadowed by
guilt and dread? Joy begins to sound like Theodore Kaczynski, the
“Unabomber,” whom he quotes with some interest and intrigue (as does
Kurzweil). Kaczynski also believed the technological imperative is leading
us to our doom, hence his radical Luddite prescriptions and his lifestyle,
not to mention his deadly attacks on technologists for which he was
eventually sent to jail for life. Kurzweil, Joy, and Kaczynski all portray tech-
nology as an all-encompassing, universal system—Joy repeatedly uses the
phrase “complex system”—that envelops all human existence. It is the
“totalizing” nature of such a system that raises troubling ethical problems
for Joy, dark fantasies of doom for Kaczynski, and dreams of eternity,
immortality, and transcendence for Kurzweil. But might there not be
another way to adapt technology to human-scale needs and interests?

The Slow Food Movement in Italy

The Italian cultural movement known as “slow food”—not a translation, it

is called this in Italy—was launched by Roman food critic and gourmand
Carlo Petrini in 1986, just after a McDonald’s hamburger restaurant opened
in Rome’s magnificently beautiful Piazza di Spagna (Slow Food, 2002).
Petrini hoped to start a movement that would help people “rediscover the
richness and aromas of local cuisines to fight the standardization of Fast
Food.” Slow food spread very rapidly across Italy. It is now headquartered,
as a social movement, in the northern Piedmont city of Bra.
Today there are 65,000 official members of the slow food movement,
almost all in Western Europe—35,000 of these members are in Italy. These
people are organized into local groups with the wonderfully appropriate
name convivia. There are 560 convivia worldwide, 340 of them in Italy (Slow
Food, 2002). Restaurants that serve as “evangelists” of the slow food move-
ment display the group’s logo, a cartoon snail, on the front door or window.
If one sees this logo displayed by a restaurant, one is almost guaranteed to
enjoy a memorable dining experience.
Slow food is not just about sustaining the southern European customs of
three-hour lunches and dinners that last late into the night, although that
certainly is part of the message. Petrini very cleverly introduced the idea of
a “Noah’s ark” of food preservation, meaning a concerted effort to preserve
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 49

nearly extinct natural foodstuffs, recipes, and, most of all, the old tech-
niques of preparing handmade foods. From this idea, the slow food move-
ment has broadly linked gastronomy, ecology, history, and economics into
a benign but powerful ideology that nearly every southern European citi-
zen can understand. Slow food, in addition to being an obvious counter-
movement to American “fast food,” has developed into a movement that
promotes organic farming and responsible animal husbandry, community-
based skills for the preservation of regional cuisines, and celebrations of
convivial, ceremonial activities such as food festivals and ecotourism. The
Slow Food organization has even sponsored a film festival, featuring films
with prominent scenes about food, and plans to award an annual “Golden
Snail” trophy, the slow food equivalent of an Oscar.
Slow food is thus one of the more interesting and well-developed critiques
of several facets of globalization and modern technology. Specifically, it is a
response to the spread of globally standardized and technology-intensive
corporate agriculture, genetic engineering, high-tech food preparation and
distribution, and the quintessentially American lifestyle that makes “fast
food” popular and, for some, even imperative. Italian proponents of slow
food and their allies in other countries—convivia are now found in other
European countries as well as in the United States—view this as a struggle for
the soul of life and for the preservation of life’s most basic pleasures amidst
a global trend pointing to increased competition, consumerism, stress, and
“hurriedness”:

We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast
Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to
eat Fast Foods. . . .
Many suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoy-
ment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for effi-
ciency. (Slow Food, 2002)

In 1999, the slow food movement spun off a new variation of itself: the
slow cities movement. In October of that year, in Orvieto, Italy, a League
of Slow Cities was formed, a charter was adopted, and the first members of
this league elected as their “coordinator” Signor Paolo Saturnini, the
mayor of the town of Greve in Chianti (Città Slow, 2002).
The Charter of Association for the slow cities movement (which in Italian
does have the Italian name “città slow”) has a rather sophisticated and subtle
view of globalization.
50 Gary Chapman

The development of local communities is based, among other things (sic), on their
ability to share and acknowledge specific qualities, to create an identity of their own
that is visible outside and profoundly felt inside.
The phenomenon of globalization offers, among other things, a great opportunity
for exchange and diffusion, but it does tend to level out differences and conceal the
peculiar characteristics of single realities. In short, it proposes median models which
belong to no one and inevitably generate mediocrity.
Nonetheless, a burgeoning new demand exists for alternative solutions which tend
to pursue and disseminate excellence, seen not necessarily as an elite phenomenon,
but rather as a cultural, hence universal fact of life (Slow Food, 2002).

Thus, slow cities are those that

■
Implement an environmental policy designed to maintain and develop the char-
acteristics of their surrounding area and urban fabric, placing the onus on recovery
and reuse techniques
■
Implement an infrastructural policy that is functional for the improvement, not the
occupation, of the land
■
Promote the use of technologies to improve the quality of the environment and the
urban fabric
■
Encourage the production and use of foodstuffs produced using natural, ecocompat-
ible techniques, excluding transgenic products, and setting up, where necessary, pre-
sidia to safeguard and develop typical products currently in difficulty, in close
collaboration with the Slow Food Ark project and wine and food Presidia
■
Safeguard autochthonous production, rooted in culture and tradition, which con-
tributes to the typification of an area, maintaining its modes and mores and pro-
moting preferential occasions and spaces for direct contacts between consumers and
quality producers and purveyors
■
Promote the quality of hospitality as a real bond with the local community and its
specific features, removing the physical and cultural obstacles that may jeopardize the
complete, widespread use of a city’s resources
■
Promote awareness among all citizens, and not only among inside operators, that
they live in a Slow City, with special attention to the world of young people and
schools through the systematic introduction of taste education. (Slow Food 2002).

Slow food and slow cities are thus not neo-Luddite movements; both
acknowledge the importance of technology, and they specifically mention
the benefits of communications technologies that allow a global sharing
of ideas. But both movements are committed to applying technology for
specific purposes derived from the values of the “slow” movement as a whole:
leisure, taste, ecological harmony, the preservation and enhancement of skills
and local identities, and ongoing “taste education.” The subtleties of this
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 51

worldview are typically lost on most Americans, who have no idea where
their food comes from, nor would they care if they did know (this applies
to most, but not all, Americans, of course). Many Italians and French are
concerned that this attitude might spread to their countries and wipe out
centuries of refinement in local cuisines, culinary skills, agricultural special-
ties, and other forms of highly specific cultural identity. As the Slow Cities
Charter of Association straightforwardly asserts, “universal” culture typically
means mediocre culture, with refinement and excellence reserved in a special
category for people with abundant wealth. The “slow” alternative is to make
excellence, identity, and “luxury” available “as a cultural, and hence univer-
sal fact of life,” something not reserved for elites but embedded in daily life
for everyone. This will require “taste education,” something meant to offset
the damage of mass marketing and the advertising of mass products.
Slow food might be dismissed as a fad among the bourgeoisie, a cult of
hedonists and effete epicureans. It is certainly a phenomenon of the middle
class in southern Europe, but it may serve as a kind of ideological bridge
between more radical antiglobalization activists and older, more moderate
globalization skeptics. The slow food movement is not thoroughly opposed
to globalization, in fact. It is concerned with the negative effects of global-
ization and technology, which have prompted the movement’s appearance
and its eloquence—with respect to the leveling of taste, the accelerating pace
of life, and the disenchantment with some of life’s basic pleasures, such as
cooking and eating.
In this way, the “slow” movement is an intriguing and perhaps potent cri-
tique of modern technology, which is otherwise widely viewed as propelling
us toward the very things the “slow” movement opposes. In the United
States, for example, bioengineering is typically regarded as inevitable, or even
promoted as the “next big thing” for the high-tech economy. In Europe, by
contrast, genetically engineered crops and foodstuffs are very unpopular, or,
at best, greeted by deep skepticism, even among apolitical consumers. In the
United States, there is widespread resignation in the face of the gradually
merging uniformity of urban and especially suburban spaces. Shopping malls
all look alike, and even feature the same stores; many Americans look for
familiar “brand” restaurants and attractions such as those associated with
Disney or chains like Planet Hollywood, indistinguishable no matter where
they are found; a “successful” community is one where the labor market is so
identical to other successful communities that skilled workers can live where
52 Gary Chapman

they choose; suburban tracts of new homes are increasingly impossible to tell
apart. Critics of this universal trend in the United States bemoan the appear-
ance of “Anywhere, U.S.A.,” typified by the suburban communities of the
West, the Southwest, and the Southeast. These communities are often char-
acterized by a sort of pseudo-excellence in technology—they are often the
sites of high-tech industries—but mediocrity in most other amenities of life.
Such trends are not unknown in Western Europe—Europeans are starting
to worry that these kinds of communities are becoming more and more
common there too—but there is at least a vocal and sophisticated opposition
in the slow food movement and its various fellow travelers.
At bottom, the slow food and slow cities movements are about the
dimensions of what Italians call “il buon vivere”—the good life. For Italians
and many other Europeans (as well as many Americans and people in other
countries, of course), the “good life” is one characterized by basic pleasures
like good food and drink, convivial company and plenty of time devoid of
stress, dull work, or frenzy. The advocates of slow food see the encroaching
American lifestyle as corrosive to all these pleasures. The American prefer-
ence is for convenience and technology that replaces many time-intensive
activities, rather than for quality and hard-won skills. Plus, the American
style is one of mass production aimed at appealing to as many people (or
customers) as possible, leaving high-quality, customized, and individual-
ized products and services reserved for the wealthy. In the United States,
this trend has now taken over architecture, music, films, books, and many
other things that were once the main forms of artistic and aesthetic expres-
sion in a civilized society. Many fear this American trend toward mass
appeal, mediocrity, and profit at the expense of quality, excellence, and
unique identity is now taking over the Internet as well.
It must be mentioned that the orientation toward local communities, the
preservation of skills, skepticism about globalization and technology, and so
on is not without its own pitfalls. At the extreme ends of this perspective
are dangerous and noxious political cauldrons, either of nationalism and
fascism on the one hand or neo-Luddite, left-wing anarchy on the other.
There are already discussions in Italy about the similarities in antiglobaliza-
tion sentiments shared by the extreme right and the extreme left, which in
Italy represent true extremes of neofascism and full-blown anarchism. At the
same time that these two forces battled each other in the immense antiglob-
alization protests in Genoa in the summer of 2001—when neofascists on the
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 53

police force allegedly beat protesters to their knees and then forced them to
shout “Viva Il Duce!,” a signal of the fashionable rehabilitation of Mussolini
among the Italian right wing—intellectuals on the right of Italian politics
were musing in newspapers about how much of the antiglobalization
rhetoric of the protesters matched positions of the neofascist parties.
The slow food movement has nothing to do with this dispute—the
movement is capable of encompassing the entire political spectrum, except
perhaps the extreme left wing. Nevertheless, there is the possibility that an
emphasis on local and historically specific cultural heritage, even limited to
cuisines, could become a facade for anti-immigrant or even xenophobic
political opinions, which are discouragingly common in European politics
today. Moreover, there is a long history of skepticism and outright opposi-
tion to technology among right-wing extremists, who often try to protect
nationalist and conservative traditions threatened by technologies such as
media, telecommunications, the Internet, and reproductive technologies,
to name a few.
So far, it appears that the slow food and slow cities movements are
admirably free of such pathologies, at least in their public pronouncements
and in the character of their concerns, such as environmental, agricultural,
and water quality in developing nations. Both movements argue that tech-
nology has a place in their worldview, especially as a tool to share ideas glob-
ally, and as a means of protecting the natural environment. Far from being
tarred with the neofascist surge in Italy, or with the anarchist tactics of French
activist Jose Bove—who has smashed a McDonald’s in Provence and burned
seeds of genetically altered grain in Brazil—slow food and slow cities have
been linked to the concept of “neohumanism,” a phrase used by Italian poet
Salvatore Quasimodo in his acceptance speech when he received the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1959. “Culture,” said Quasimodo, “has always repulsed
the recurrent threat of barbarism, even when the latter was heavily armed and
seething with confused ideologies” (Quasimodo 1959).
This seems to me the idea of culture that the slow food and slow cities
movements represent, using cuisine and urban planning as vehicles, like
Quasimodo’s poetry, to both repulse barbarism and strengthen “il buon
vivere.” It seems no mere accident that slow food has been born in the same
country that gave us humanism and the greatest outpouring of art and aes-
thetic beauty the world has ever seen, roughly 500 years ago. Now, in an age
of high technology, “neohumanism” seems like our best course for the future.
54 Gary Chapman

Lessons for the Networked Society

Just as Carlo Petrini presciently identified a trend in food preparation and

consumption that threatens some cherished traditions of southern Europe,
numerous commentators have pointed out that the Internet is now con-
fronted by the media equivalent of “fast food”: the immense and increas-
ingly concentrated “infotainment” companies that are clearly aimed at
dominating the Internet and turning it into a global consumer service, a
medium of sales, profit, and mass appeal. These companies are rapidly
absorbing various other equally concentrated media such as music and
movies, and all the companies focused on this “new economy” of services
over the Internet are exploring ominous ways to protect intellectual prop-
erty, methods that may turn much of cyberspace into a “pay-per-view”
environment, squeezing the medium’s public space into irrelevance.
I have called this, in the past, the “suburbanization” of the Internet, a
process led with great diligence by AOL Time Warner, which now accounts
for about a third of the Internet users in the United States. The model is
nearly identical to what is happening in real American suburbs. In many
if not most suburban developments in the United States, public space is
sacrificed for private space, or spaces that are deliberately configured to
contribute to profits. Identities are privatized, rather than shared commu-
nally, since most suburbs look and feel the same. American suburbs are
notorious for their attachments to nearly all facets of mass culture: music,
fashion, design, political attitudes, and so on. While “deviant” ideas can be
found in both suburbs and on AOL, they are typically lost in the noise,
overwhelmed by the large numbers of people who gravitate to the mediocre
median of culture described in the Slow Cities Charter. This description
appears to fit much of the Internet as well. AOL staked its corporate future
on being the brand name on the Internet with the most mass appeal.
Microsoft set its goals on the same target with its software applications and
its Windows operating system, and has also succeeded with nearly complete
market dominance worldwide.
What concerns many people today is the economic viability of alterna-
tives to this model of corporate gigantism, with its many economies of
scale and its market power. Wal-Mart in the United States has used its mar-
ket power to drive out of business many small stores that were once
cornerstones of small communities, and chain bookstores and restaurants
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 55

have devastated their small-business counterparts. There is growing alarm

over the effects of similar concentration in Internet services and informa-
tion, despite the promise that the Internet would foster the emergence of
millions of new voices that had previously never been heard.
Slow food activists are frightened about the survivability of small farms
and independent grocers and restaurateurs, and with good reason—the
state subsidies in Europe that have propped up many small farmers are
threatened by new trade-equalization rules, not to mention the dire eco-
nomics of small farming that have killed thousands of family farms in the
United States. Just five to seven years ago, someone could start a new
website and hope to acquire an audience with relatively low investments.
Now it often costs millions of dollars to program a website with the latest
technologies and then market it enough that it penetrates the cacophony
of calls to “look at me!” Plus, the survivability of the best of the web has
been called into question over the past two years, as many showcase
web ventures died, along with the “dot-coms,” such as the sites of FEED
magazine, the Word, Suck.com, and many others. Widely admired sites
of quality journalism, like Salon.com, are barely hanging on and may yet
go under.
Under such conditions what are even more in jeopardy are efforts, like
slow food, meant to preserve skills and knowledge that are by their nature
difficult to acquire. It is not just cheaper prices at chain stores and supermar-
kets that threaten smaller businesses, it is a lack of knowledge about quality
that is an obstacle for people who truly wish to preserve what is best about
civilization, or else improve what we already have. There is the combined
threat of economic efficiency (whose costs are often hidden) and of conve-
nience, of immediate presence, and of not caring enough to do better. These
are the signals that slow food has tried to point out as corrosive, long-term
threats to good living.
The same must be done for the Internet. Right now, the Internet is
rapidly, inexorably beginning to resemble and imitate television, another
case of a technology that has fallen far short of its potential. Turning the
Internet away from the trajectory of television requires not only interven-
tion but the difficult work of convincing people that doing better might
involve thinking more and working harder. This runs up against the cur-
rent, common sales pitch for the Internet (for online services, for example)
that the Internet will make life easier and more fun.
56 Gary Chapman

There are many facets to the struggle to preserve quality, identity, and
skill on the Internet, and there are some laudable groups and intellectuals
dedicated to these values. Below are just a few of the key battlegrounds for
shaping the networked society.

Skills
There is a lamentable pressure in the Internet business to confine the skills
of users to the bare minimum necessary to pay for a service; very often
these days what passes for “computer literacy” is the most rudimentary
collection of skills like pushing a cursor around a screen, using menus, and
finding websites. Commercially, the only complex skills encouraged by
service providers are for playing byzantine computer games.
Internet activists must strike a balance between giving users the tools they
need to understand how computers work and making it easy for people to do
what they want to do. The fundamental premise should be that Internet users
should be producers, not just consumers of information. The skills needed to
produce information are not supported as well, or even encouraged, by most
large Internet services. It will take a guerrilla movement of people interested
in hearing the voices of users online to turn this around. The “blog” move-
ment1 that appears to be gaining momentum is encouraging in this regard,
and new software tools are appearing to make it easier for individual users
to get their ideas online without having to learn complex scripting or pro-
gramming languages. More of this is needed, as is universal and ubiquitous
access to Internet services that support information producers, instead of just
consumers.

Open, Free Information

The “copyright wars” are just beginning, despite the fate of Napster.2 There
will be incessant pressure to “monetize” information, or make it profitable,
and thus there must be constant pressure to keep some information free,
openly circulating, and protected from appropriation. Stanford Law School
Professor Lawrence Lessig has done yeoman’s work in keeping this idea
alive in the United States, but he must be joined by a broad and vocal coali-
tion of people who understand the value of an “information commons”
(Lessig 2002).
One idea, proposed and pursued by media policy veterans Lawrence
K. Grossman and Newton N. Minow, is called the Digital Promise Project
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 57

(Digital Promise, 2002). Grossman and Minow have proposed a new federal
agency for the U.S. government, to be modeled on the National Science
Foundation, that would support educational and public-domain digital
information, funded by revenues generated by the Federal Communications
Commission’s auctions of spectrum rights for telecommunications. Such
auctions could produce up to $18 billion over the next five to seven years,
according to Grossman and Minow, a portion of which could be used for
public investments in information resources. In April 2002, Senator Chris
Dodd of Connecticut introduced the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust
Act, which will instruct the National Science Foundation to investigate the
Digital Promise idea (Digital Promise, 2002).

Open Source, Free Software

The Open Source and free-software movement has exploded in recent years,
thanks to a growing and enthusiastic base of Linux users worldwide. Open
Source software like Linux has even transformed companies like IBM, which
is now essentially a Linux company. While Open Source software develop-
ment has slowed, it is still an exciting and hopeful alternative to the Microsoft
Windows monopoly and to expensive software in general. Open Source soft-
ware may be of particular advantage in developing nations, where it can be
used without fear of violating new international intellectual property laws,
and a lot of Open Source software is the right price, too: free. The fact that
Open Source software is often more difficult to use than commercial software
may actually be of some benefit. People who become good at using and
improving Open Source software are likely to know a lot more about com-
puters than their counterparts who use commercial software with secret code.
Open Source software can be used on everything from huge supercomputers
to handhelds, and it does not add anything to the price of a component. Sun
Microsystem’s chief researcher, John Gage, has proposed to the World Eco-
nomic Forum that the international digital divide be addressed using cheap
Sony Playstation 2 game machines running Linux with a satellite connection
for Internet connectivity, a device that costs about $300 (Evers 2001).
The real benefits of Open Source software, however, are similar to the
benefits of slow food’s convivia—Open Source is a model of collective
competence, of building community, of sharing and improvement for the
common good. In some utopian future, one could imagine a universal
environment of software development standardized enough to foster
58 Gary Chapman

ubiquitous compatibility, but configurable enough that even modestly

skilled computer users might configure computers for their own individ-
ual needs and share their programs with others. Open Source is a step in
that direction. Of course, free software is troublesome for commercial soft-
ware vendors, which is why Microsoft has put so much energy into fight-
ing the free-software movement. Microsoft offers its own products as
more convenient and less taxing to use, which again raises the issue of
whether a little work and skill on the part of computer users might actu-
ally pay off in the long run, just as if everyone learned how to cook well
or speak a second or third language.
Open Source software should improve, in terms of its ease of use and
its array of software applications, and volunteers can help these things
happen. There should be pressure applied on schools to consider using
Open Source software as a legitimate alternative to Microsoft or Apple
software, or at least with equal status. Public institutions like government
agencies should be willing and able to use Open Source software and
become part of the user community of Open Source. Ways should be
developed to help educate the public about the Open Source alternative—
most people have never heard of Linux or other Open Source programs.
Right now, Linux is reserved for “geeks” and “techies”—and, it should be
added, for gifted students. There are plenty of reasons why Open Source
software should become a mainstream phenomenon, but with enough
diversity to nurture excellence and innovation.

Fostering Identities and Excellence through Communities

Just as the Slow Cities Charter of Association argues that excellence comes
from communities’ ability “to create an identity of their own that is visi-
ble outside and profoundly felt inside,” so must we foster such qualities in
the online world. Pioneers of “virtual communities” have observed that
such associations really thrive when the online communication can be
supplemented by face-to-face communication, either in groups or one-
on-one. While virtual communities do not have to be groups that are
geographically proximate, it helps, and thus there is a connection between
online communication of interests and desires and the development of
real community ties. Such associations can help build collective purpose
and both group and individual identities. That in turn helps develop
self-confidence, which is a prerequisite to excelling at anything.
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 59

The alternative model is of atomic and anomic consumers who share

little online except the vague and unremarkable experiences of shopping,
“surfing,” or communicating via e-mail with the typical list of family
and friends. Such experiences are valuable but can also add up to a lot of
wasted time. What benefits society most is the practical and deliberate
development of “social capital,” that phrase made famous by Harvard
sociologist Robert Putnam (2000b), meaning the networks of trust and self-
sufficiency that are the backbone of democracy, particularly the concept of
democracy as friendship. This concept is intimately, historically connected
to the tradition of humanism, yet another intersection of humanism and
the “good life” in cyberspace.

Closing the Digital Divide

The term digital divide was invented to describe the disparities in access to
the Internet between income strata and racial and ethnic groups in the
United States. It has now acquired global reach—the term is used around
the world to refer, for example, to the disparities between entire conti-
nents. In the United States, the idea has taken on more complexity and
subtlety than just disparities in access to the Internet. Researchers now
speak of gaps in skills, relevancy of information, gender, age, and various
other dimensions of inequality.
There is controversy in the United States over whether the digital divide is
closing or not. The administration of George W. Bush has never been a cheer-
leader for eliminating the digital divide the way the Clinton administration
was, and Bush’s 2003 budget eliminated most of the Clinton-era programs
created to address the issue. The argument of Bush-administration officials is
that the growth in Internet use among former target populations is now
greater than the growth of Internet use among white and affluent groups, and
therefore the digital divide is disappearing (National Telecommunications
and Information Administration (NTIA), 2002). Critics of this argument point
out that the rate of change is less important than the fact that poor Americans
are still vastly underrepresented on the Internet, and for a variety of reasons
this is something we need to fix (Digital Divide Network, 2002).
This political dispute is likely to continue in stalemate for the foreseeable
future. What is more important is that Internet activists simply figure out
ways to help close the digital divide, with government help or not, and that
they come to understand the disadvantaged populations starting to use the
60 Gary Chapman

Internet as users with their own needs and interests, just like everyone else.
The deficits that affect affluent populations are strong in low-income com-
munities too—lack of skills, a rising tide of information that requires pay-
ing a fee, a lack of understanding of the Internet as something more than
just an information-delivery or an e-mail system, and so on. In other words,
people who work on the digital-divide issue should have—must have—
a vision of what the Internet can and should be, rather than just pushing
the Internet as it exists, with all its crass and increasingly expensive content.
The “vision thing” should encompass and make room for ideas contributed
by new users just coming to the Internet, too.

Tying It All Together

It is fortuitous, but no accident, that all of the tasks for building an Internet
that serves the “good life” seem to fit together into one alternative vision that
can be communicated, refined, and advocated. All of the elements described
above require action, both individual and collective, as opposed to the passive
behavior that allows an (alleged) technological imperative to take its course.
These elements require understanding and consideration, and in some cases
active seeking of information, connections, and ideas, all activities that go
against the grain of current trends on the Internet. A basic premise is that
technological development is not in fact inevitable, or that a particular out-
come of a technology’s trajectory is not foreordained. Making appropriate
choices thus becomes not only possible but of paramount importance, and it
helps a lot if multiple choices work together to enhance and promote values
worth defending.
Slow food, for example, has admirably linked culinary enjoyment to
environmental protection and responsibility as well as to a critique of eco-
nomic forces that push people into a harried life. The Slow Cities League
has extended this idea to the cultural identity of towns, cities, or regions,
and then in turn to the desire for excellence and distinctiveness among
individuals. The Open Source and free-software movement is clearly linked
to grassroots struggles over intellectual property laws and to the challenge
of balancing hard-won skills and ease of use. So far, technology activists
attracted to the Open Source and free-software movement have had less
sympathy with addressing the digital divide, although there are many
activists who have made this bridge. This is simply an area where more
work needs to be done.
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 61

It is obvious that there is not yet a completely realized “consciousness”—

for lack of a better word—about the new paradigm described above, a way of
thinking about the world that is not only opposed to the negative, dehu-
manizing aspects of globalization but that recognizes globalization’s positive
features and incorporates them into a worldview that both embraces tech-
nology and shapes it to different ends. Many young antiglobalization
activists are—unfortunately—opposed to all aspects of globalization, and
some are even opposed to modern technological development in general
(even though antiglobalization organizations are very effective users of the
Internet, by and large). Some young anarchists mistakenly want to preserve
cultures and forms of social organization that are guaranteed to be stuck
in poverty and ignorance indefinitely. Among the most visible antiglobal-
ization activists—for example, those who are willing to resort to violence
and overt confrontation with the police—there is hardly more intellectual
content than an inchoate rage or the thrill of rebellion, which are useless for
building alternative visions of good living.
The antiglobalization movement, on the other hand, has tapped into
some powerful feelings, and not only among young rebels. Thoughtful
people who simply see a world with intensified forms of current trends—
including industry concentration and gigantism; a magnetic pull toward
blandness, sameness, and mediocrity; a life chock-full of advertisements;
and the replacement of authentic and free culture with ersatz and “pay-
per” “experiences”—have reasons to be both alarmed and angry. People
whose Internet experience stretches back to the years before the dot-com
frenzy of the 1990s are often appalled at what the Internet has become.
There is a sense that when commerce touches anything these days, it either
dies or is transformed into something artificial and alien, a poor substitute
for the “real.” This may continue indefinitely, but not without resistance
and friction.

Conclusion: A New Bipolarity?

During the decades of the Cold War, the “intellectual frame” of the world
was organized around a competitive bipolarity between the capitalist West
and the communist East, with other parts of the world judged on their ori-
entation to these two poles. For historical and political reasons, the bipolar-
ity of the Cold War was both ideological and geographic, symbolized by the
62 Gary Chapman

phrase—and the reality of—the “Iron Curtain.” This experience predisposed

many of us to think of cultural and political bipolarities in geopolitical
terms.
Globalization has not only ended this way of thinking about the world,
but it has introduced the potential, at least, of thinking about competing
worldviews that have no geographic “map”—that is, there are different
social movements representing different goals for culture and history that
transcend nation-states or regions. Since the tragedy of September 11 there
have been speculations about a colossal and terrifying “clash of civiliza-
tions” between the secular West and the Muslim crescent that stretches
from the west coast of North Africa to Indonesia. Such scenarios typically
leave out the fact that there are millions of Muslims in Western countries,
largely an epiphenomenon of globalization. The September 11 terrorists
themselves spent years outside of Islamic countries. The old framework of
geopolitical rivalries representing alternative views of how society should be
organized and governed is no longer as relevant as it once was. People with
any particular political orientation that claims to be relevant to the entire
world can cheaply and easily find allies and surrogates around the globe by
using the Internet and other communications technologies. The impact
and significance of “memes”3—or germs of cultural ideas—have been
increasing in a dramatic fashion because of these developments. Even the
Zapatistas, the political movement of the impoverished and largely illiter-
ate population of southern Mexico, have used the Internet in such effective
ways that their conflict in Mexico has been described as a form of “infor-
mation warfare” (Ronfeldt and Martinez 1997). The use of the Internet by
antiglobalization protesters around the world has become a key component
of their success in organizing massive and repeated demonstrations at the
meetings of world leaders (Tanner 2001).
But it is the slowly emerging threads of a different vision of how to live
life—and how to think about technology—that are most interesting,
especially as they begin to interweave and create a positive, attractive, and
feasible alternative to large-scale corporate organization and mass con-
sumerism. Slow food and slow cities are two examples, and the Open
Source and free-software movement is another. The growing opinion that
biotechnology is a distraction from addressing the world’s crisis in biodi-
versity is yet another example. The tumultuous politics in the Middle East
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 63

are supplying new urgency to questions about postindustrial societies’

dependence on fossil fuels for energy. There are other examples. So far,
these “alternative” views, or challenges to the status quo, have yet to
cohere into a complete ideological framework that might appeal to large
numbers of people, enough people to transform political agendas. But this
could happen. The antiglobalization protests are large enough and fre-
quent enough—particularly in Western Europe—that they may begin to
have sweeping effects on political discourse and elections. In the United
States, there is growing evidence of a widening gulf between the two main
political parties. The activists of each party, the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party, are increasingly polarized; even the leadership of the
Democratic Party is often viewed by its own supporters as too timid and
compromised by deals with wealthy donors and corporations. Moreover,
the two ends of the political spectrum are coming to represent not just
political choices but entirely separate “lifestyles,” or two distinct cultures,
as intellectuals on both the right and the left now admit.
The familiar strategy of reigning in capitalism when its excesses need to be
checked, typically through state institutions with regulatory powers, is losing
its appeal among many people who are looking for completely new ways of
reconfiguring economic sectors such as agriculture, communications, enter-
tainment, and health care. We seem to be in the process of creating two
cultures that will coexist but with constant friction, especially because of the
economic fragility of small-scale enterprises in comparison to their more
powerful global counterparts. If French farmers are put out of business
because of world-trade agreements and the French lose their cherished tradi-
tions of regional culinary specialties, a lot of French people will be looking
for ways to fight back. If the Internet turns completely into a pipeline for
junk e-mail, pop-up web ads, online scams, garish “infotainment” sites, and
pornography, with little material of quality and excellence as compensation,
there will be a backlash. If all these things happen at more or less the
same time—say, within the next twenty years—and enough people see this
trend as folly and tragedy, a new, nongeographic bipolarity, may develop,
one between people who care about such things and those who do not, or
between people who have one vision of the good life and a competing group
who see their vision as being fulfilled by contemporary capitalism. This is
already happening in one form or another in most modern countries. Global
64 Gary Chapman

capitalist culture is already uniting the interests of billions of consumers.

What we are only starting to see is the merging of interests of people who
have reservations about that particular fate for the world. Pieces of an alter-
native global culture are beginning to appear, but are not yet meshed into
a coherent picture.
The world has many problems and not all of them will be solved
by “alternative” ways of thinking. We are likely to see more wars, more
anguish among entire peoples, perhaps even more terrorism, and there
will be responses to all of these things that will shape history in impor-
tant ways. There has certainly been a dramatic reinforcement of con-
ventional security institutions in the United States since September 11,
2001, for example. The big global problems like poverty, illness, and
violence will still need to be addressed by institutions with consensual
powers of authority.
Nor will we see complete harmony and a convergence of ideas and goals
among people who deliberately oppose the status quo. So many degrees of
difference among such people may persist that they will continue to look
like a chaotic, cacophonic mob rather than a historic force of change. It
may only be over the course of many years that we come to recognize an
emergent, new way of thinking, which is likely to take different but related
forms all over the world. The common thread that may unite many dis-
parate but like-minded efforts, from food activists to digital rights activists,
is thinking about technology as malleable, as capable of serving human-
determined ends, and as an essential component of “il buon vivere,” the
good life. It is only by working with that premise that the idea of shaping
the network society makes sense.

Notes

1. The word blog is a shotened version of the word Weblog, a recent phenomenon
on the World-Wide Web. Weblogs are typically online journals or diaries, and also
typically the work of a single author. But the capabilities and features of blogs are
expanding very quickly. Blog software allows blog authors to “subscribe” to each
other’s online content, creating a networked web of like-minded or thematically
linked diarists. Other interactive features include posting readers’ comments on blog
entries, creating hyperlinks to other Web sites that include commentaries on a blog’s
entries, and so on. These features have led to the conceptualization of a new class of
Internet applications, so-called social software.
Shaping Technology for the “Good Life” 65

2. Napster—originally a file-sharing software application created by Shawn

Fanning, then (1999) a college freshman at Northeastern University in Boston—
eventually became the name of a company that facilitated music file-sharing over
the Internet. A series of lawsuits agaisnt Napster, for copyright violations, led to a
court ruling in July 2000 that set in motion Napster’s shutdown as a company and
as a service. In 2003, Napster was relaunched as a commercial music-downloading
service.

3. The word meme is defined by The Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “an idea, behaviour,
style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.”
4 Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society

Cees J. Hamelink

Arguably the least well known of all the provisions in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights is Article 28, which states that “everyone
is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and
freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.”
The present chapter explores the extent to which the standard Article 28
sets is met in the process of shaping the network society. The orientation
of the chapter reflects my conviction that the world is contending at pre-
sent with the emergence of a global billboard society, not a global network
society. This position does not ignore the fact that networks are increas-
ingly crucial to the functioning of contemporary societies. It proposes,
however, that these networks consist primarily of commercial messages.

Utopian Expectations for Network Societies

New information and communication technologies are often introduced

as the carriers of revolutionary social change. This was certainly the case
with the transistor, the cassette recorder, and the television satellite. In
reality, however, these technologies have predominantly become the
carriers of commercial messages! Again today many utopian visions assure
us that the emerging network technologies are guiding societies toward
fundamentally new times. Commentators are offering numerous varia-
tions on the visions that Marshall McLuhan projected in the 1960s onto
the electric and electronic future. At the core of his thinking was the
notion that the global network society—through all its linkages—would
constitute a global mind comparable to Teilhard de Chardin’s “noo-
sphere.” According to McLuhan, electricity would liberate human beings
68 Cees J. Hamelink

from war and violence. He saw electricity as a metaphysical force freeing

human society from the bonds and restraints that modernity has imposed.
In a similar way, the electronic media would lead humanity toward a fuller
and more spiritual life.
In the same utopian tradition, Alvin Toffler proposed visions of direct
democracy, decentralization of power, and liberation from conventional
constraints. In his conception of digital life, Nicholas Negroponte
predicted that digital network technology would create a new and superior
mode of living. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore (1994) has suggested
that a global information infrastructure—the mother of all networks—
would create full employment, better education and health care, a safe
environment, and a new age of Athenian democracy.
Such utopian visions seem to suggest that the emerging network
technologies are creating a more humanitarian society, whereas current
social realities suggest that around the world these technologies are mainly
being used by commercial interests to usher in a global billboard society.
The key concern in this chapter is that in this process the essential
normative standards of the international human rights regime are coming
under serious threat.

The Global Billboard Society

As the 1998 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report claims,

“Globalization—the integration of trade, investment and financial
markets—has also integrated the consumer market” (UNDP, 1998, 62). The
opening of markets for consumer goods, mass production, mass consump-
tion, and advertising has both economic and social dimensions. The latter
imply that “people all over the world are becoming part of an integrated
global consumer market—with the same products and advertisements.”
As a result, they are beginning to share the same standards of the “good
life” (UNDP, 1998, 62).
However, the increasing visibility of consumer goods is not the same as
their availability: “While the global elite are consumers in an integrated
market, many others are marginalized out of the global consumption
network” (UNDP, 1998, 62). On the global consumer market most people
are merely gawking. As markets open worldwide and more advertising
for consumer products arrives to promote the expansion of a global
Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society 69

“fun-shopping” culture, an explosive disparity develops between visibility

and availability of goods around the world. The global shopping mall saw
some $24 trillion in consumer expenditures in 1998. Over 80 percent of
this was spent by 20 percent of the world’s population (UNDP, 1998, 62).
Propagating the “good life” worldwide is happening against the backdrop
of globalizing poverty.
Poverty has been increasing steadily around the world (for example,
in Eastern Europe it has risen sevenfold since 1989), so that the richest
20 percent of the world’s population had 86 percent of the global GDP in
1989. The ratio of the richest 20 percent of the world’s population to the
poorest 20 percent rose from 1:30 in 1960 to 1:74 in 1997. As the 1999
UNDP reports warns, “Global inequalities in income and living standards
have reached grotesque proportions” (p. 104). The potentially explosive
conflict between rich and poor is reinforced by today’s global media.
More than anything else, media audiences get commercial messages.
This is the heart of the global media market, and it is expanding. Adver-
tising expenditures per capita are steeply rising worldwide. At an average
of 7 percent per year, this increase is more than the GDP growth rates
in many countries. The worldwide advertising market represents an over
$400 billion business. The general expectation is that spending for adver-
tising will continue to rise. McCann-Erickson predicts an increase from
$335 billion in 1995 to $2 trillion in 2020. Growth is projected to be
especially steep for Asia (in particular China) and Eastern Europe. If this
process continues, many countries will spend more on advertising than on
education in the future.
Even the African continent reports that the six largest advertising agen-
cies in African countries had in 1995 billings for over $360 million. These
agencies were Young & Rubicam, McCann-Erickson, TBWA International,
Ogilvy & Mather, Ammirati-Puris-Lintas, and FCB.
Global advertisers and marketing firms are in hot pursuit of new targets.
Children are becoming major audiences for commercials. The average child
in an affluent country—at the age of seven—sees over 20,000 commercials
a year. At the age of twelve, most children have complete consumer profiles
in the databases of the major marketers. This is not so unexpected, once one
realizes that in the United States alone, children between ages four and
twelve spent some $25 billion (in 2000). Even more staggering, they are
thought to have had a major impact on the buying habits of their parents,
70 Cees J. Hamelink

accounting for some $188 billion in sales. Children have enormous com-
mercial clout, and though the International Code of Advertising Practices of
the International Chamber of Commerce forbids the use of “pester power,”
advertisers are reaching out to children worldwide more and more as kids
spend more time online. Teens constitute an especially fast-growing market
segment and a fast-growing proportion of the Internet community. When
young people cannot be reached through the Internet or TV, the billboard
society knows to find them through the educational system. Advertising
in textbooks and other forms of education-advertising mixtures (such as
corporate sponsorships) now occur in many countries.
The central role of advertising is obvious in the number of deals adver-
tisers are making with media companies. Examples include the coopera-
tive arrangements between the Disney studios (owner of ABC News) and
McDonald’s, or between the NBC TV network and IBM. The result is
an unprecedented influence of advertisers editorial policies. There is
a good deal of empirical evidence to demonstrate this worrisome devel-
opment, as well as other similar developments. One such practice
involves the blurring of the difference between selling and informing
through “advertorials,” “infomercials,” or sponsored messages. The
launching of these new forms of advertising is important, since many
markets are saturated and the overproduction characteristic of advanced
capitalism needs to be sold.
In 1998 the trend emerged to offer more outdoor advertising. Large
advertisers began spending an increasing proportion of their budgets on
billboards. The American Outdoor Advertising Association estimated
that in 1998 over $2 billion was spent on open-air ads. Using digital and
holographic technologies, the billboards are rapidly becoming more
spectacular and their production less expensive and faster. Per 1,000
people who can be reached with a commercial message, digital bill-
boards cost half what newspaper advertisements cost. As a result, there
is a proliferation of billboards along highways, as well as in sports sta-
diums and schools, in many countries. There is also a rapidly increasing
number of mobile billboards: cars wrapped in ad messages as vehicles
for outdoor advertising.
The new developments include the expansion of product placement in
feature films and TV programs as well. Whereas only brief exposures to
products used to occur in films, now they can be seen through most of
Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society 71

the movie. In this way films help to advertise products, and advertisers
promote films worldwide. Moviegoers are not only entertained but are
also sold products. For example, fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger’s prod-
ucts represented 90 percent of the wardrobe of the teen science fiction
horror production The Faculty. Hilfiger funded half of the $30 million
budget for the promotion of the film. The general expectation in the
advertising industry is that product placement and entertainment will
blur as part of the merger between advertising and the entertainment
industry. Since journalism is increasingly moving toward forms of info-
tainment, the production of news is also becoming more vulnerable to
the blurring of formats and to the growing impact of advertising.
It is worth noting that the advertising industry has increasingly usurped
a central role for itself in modern society. Advertising and marketing
personnel often describe their enterprises as philanthropic missions.
Because advertising is less and less about products than about brands, these
are elevated to the status of gods. Magazines such as Advertising Age and
Advertising Age Global refer to advertising executives as “missionaries on
a messianic mission” in the “battle for the souls” of consumers. In March
2001, Advertising Age Global published an article titled “Are Brands Our
New Gods?”, proposing that “the most powerful gods of this age are those
that come with more than just a product to sell—they have a message in
their marketing”. In February 2001 a report by the ad agency Young
& Rubicam announced that brands have become the gods of a new age:
“Our faith in religious institutions has been replaced with a belief system
that revolves around the brands that help give our lives meaning”. As the
article argues, it is particularly the so-called belief brands (like Calvin Klein,
Ikea, MTV, Yahoo!, Nike, Virgin, and Microsoft) that are now more
influential than institutions such as churches and schools. These brands
represent the values that shape people’s views of the world. As people
aspire to these values, they worship at the altar of these brands (Advertising
Age Global, March 2001).
The prevailing neoliberal political climate is reinforcing the expansion of
the global billboard society. Its aspiration to open up and expand markets
around the globe will require the growth of global advertising. This
implies, among other things, the need for more commercial space in
conventional media and on the Internet and for more public places to
advertise in.
72 Cees J. Hamelink

Human Rights Implications

Basic to the concept of human rights is the notion that human beings have
the inalienable right to respect for their intrinsic dignity. This means that
people must be treated in accordance with certain basic standards. The
recognition of the dignity of the human person implies that human beings
cannot treat each other however they see fit. The standards of human
conduct have evolved over a long period of time and under the influence
of different schools of religious and philosophical thought. The novelty
of the international human rights regime—as it has been established
after 1945—has been the codification of these standards into a catalog of
legal rights.
Human rights standards have been formulated in the United Nations
Charter of 1945 and in the International Bill of Rights (the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights). Human rights standards have also been covered by a series
of international human rights treaties, by regional instruments—such as the
European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms (1950), the American Convention of Human Rights (1969), and the
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981)—and in the Islamic
declaration of human rights, prepared by the Islamic Council of Europe in
1980 and presented to UNESCO in 1981. Earlier human rights declarations
included the Magna Carta of 1215, the British Bill of Rights (1689), the
American Declaration of Independence (1776), and the French Déclaration des
droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1789).
In 1945 this long history of the protection of human rights acquired a fun-
damentally new significance. First, the protection of human dignity (earlier
mainly a national affair) was put on the agenda of the world community.
The defense of fundamental rights was no longer the exclusive preoccupa-
tion of national politics but became an essential part of world politics. Judg-
ments on whether human rights had been violated were no longer the
exclusive monopoly of national governments. Second, the enjoyment of
human rights was no longer restricted to privileged individuals and social
élites. The revolutionary core of the process that began in San Francisco—
with the adoption of the U.N. Charter in 1945—is that “all people matter.”
There are no more nonpersons. Basic rights hold for everyone and exclude
Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society 73

no one. Third, the conventional view that individuals can only be objects of
international law gave way to the conception that the individual is the
holder of rights and bearer of duties under international law. The individual
can appeal to international law for the protection of his or her rights, but can
also be held accountable for violations of human rights standards.
The recognition of individual rights under international law was thus
linked with the notion that individuals also have duties under interna-
tional law. This was eloquently expressed in 1947 by Mahatma Gandhi in
a letter to the director of UNESCO on the issue of human rights. Gandhi
wrote, “I learnt from my illiterate but wise mother that rights to be
deserved and preserved came from duty well done.”
In the International Bill of Rights we find seventy-six different human
rights. In the totality of major international and regional human rights
instruments (see appendix I), this number is even greater. With the ten-
dency among human rights lobbies to put more and more social problems
in a human rights framework, the number of human rights is likely to
further increase.
But it is questionable whether this proliferation of rights strengthens the
cause of the actual defense of human rights. Various attempts have been
made to establish a set of core human rights that are representative of the
totality.
One effort led to the identification of twelve core rights ( Jongman and
Schmidt 1994, 8). These are:

1. right not to be discriminated against

2. right to education
3. right to political participation
4. right to fair working conditions
5. right to life
6. right not to be tortured
7. right not to be arbitrarily arrested
8. right to food
9. right to health care
10. right to freedom of association
11. right to political participation
12. right to freedom of expression
74 Cees J. Hamelink

The shaping of network societies should be measured against principles

that derive from these core rights, such as the right to free speech, the right
to a democratic order, the right to equal participation in social life, and the
right to cultural identity.

The Right to Free Speech

As a result of the growing pressure on editorial policies by advertiser inter-
ests, the human right to freedom of expression has come under serious
threat. In the global billboard society the dependence of information
media on advertising income tends to invite this interference. The world’s
largest advertisers need to secure ample and permanent access to global
audiences, so that they have a strong interest in controlling media content.

The Right to a Democratic Order

The commercialization and globalization of the information media pose
a serious threat to democracy. Citizens are primarily treated as consumers
at the disposal of global advertisers. The global info-com conglomerates do
a better job of informing people worldwide about better ways to fun-shop
than of providing information on democratic practices.

The Right to Equal Participation in Social Life

The global billboard society promotes a world society in which a small
proportion of the population consumes most of the world’s resources. This
approach effectively discriminates against the world’s majority, which is
invited into the global electronic shopping mall but only to gawk, because
they have no purchasing capacity of any significance.

The Right to Cultural Identity

Global advertising—in spite of an occasional nod to such local offerings as
the Indian vegetarian burger and Chinese rock on MTV—promotes a single
cultural standard for its worldwide audiences. As the global billboard Society
subjects the world’s cultural differences to the dominance of a consumption-
oriented lifestyle, people’s essential identity is to be a consumer and their
most important cultural activity is fun-shopping. Advertising also teaches
children around the world the values of materialism and the practices
of consumerism. This promotes a cultural uniformity that is fatal for the
development of diverse identities in multicultural and multilingual societies.
Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society 75

Table 4.1
Collision course between the global billboard society and the international human
rights movement

Global Billboard Society Preferences International Human Rights Preferences

Maximizing corporate profits Optimizing public welfare

Treating people as consumers Treating people as citizens
Privately appropriating public space Safeguarding public space
Prioritizing trade-law principles Prioritizing human rights
Treating culture as a commodity Treating culture as a public good
Ignoring inequality in market Aspiring to equality in human
transactions interactions

The global billboard society and the international human rights regime
represent different political preferences that are on a collision course.
Table 4.1 summarizes the issues of confrontation.

Governance for the Network Society

Whatever happens in the wake of technological developments is more deter-

mined by the quality of technology governance than by specific technical
characteristics or innovative technological applications. With respect to the
network society, there are currently two conflicting governance agendas,
neoliberal and humanitarian. In the field of advertising, the humanitarian
agenda proposes—counter to the prevailing neoliberal agenda—that public
space be reclaimed from commercial communications. It recommends cre-
ating ad-free zones in local communities, in the media, and in public spaces.
It suggests developing—across the globe—initiatives such as the law adopted
by the Swedish parliament, which prohibits TV advertising directed at chil-
dren. It proposes protecting editorial policies in news media against deals
between media owners and advertisers. The humanitarian agenda demands
that the international community match the commercial funding available
for efforts to teach people how to become consumers with public funding to
teach them how to become citizens.
At present, the battle between these conflicting agendas is being fought
on an uneven playing field. The commercial agenda is supported by
a strong constituency of the leading members of the WTO and powerful
business lobbies (such as the Software Business Alliance and the Global
76 Cees J. Hamelink

Business Dialogue). Much will depend, however, on the outcome of the

confrontation between the forces of economic globalization WTO-style
and those who contest the globalization process.
At present, the humanitarian agenda (although increasingly active in the
world arena, as the protests in Seattle, Prague, and other places since 2000
have demonstrated) is still in search of an active constituency in the world
communications arena. The development of such a constituency and its
active participation in global policy will raise complex substantial and
logistical questions.
The U.N. World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS;
www.wsis.org), held first in 2003 in Geneva and scheduled for 2005 in
Tunis, will be a major forum for testing the viability of an effective role for
a civil constituency in the global governance of information and commu-
nication. For the third time in fifty-five years, the international community
will address in a major way information and communication issues. The
first time was the 1948 U.N. Conference on the Freedom of Information
in Geneva. The second was the debate in the 1970s on a New World
Information and Communication Order.
These earlier attempts were rather unsuccessful. They created strong
antagonism between factions and offered no real solutions to the prob-
lems they confronted. The 1948 conference, in particular, suffered from
the emerging Cold War ideological confrontation. It produced numerous
resolutions and three draft treaties on Freedom of Information (proposed
by the British delegation), the Gathering and International Transmission
of News (proposed by the U.S. delegation), and the International Right
of Correction (proposed by the French delegation). Only the Right of
Correction draft entered into force in 1962 and has since been ratified by
eleven U.N. member states.
The debate in the 1970s produced similar ideological confrontations
between East/West and the Third World. It produced the UNESCO-sponsored
MacBride Report with many useful recommendations, most of which were not
implemented, and it established an underfunded development assistance pro-
gram, the International programme for the Development of Communication
(IPDC). It also inspired the departure from UNESCO of two major member
states, the United States and the United Kingdom. The greatest political
challenge facing the international community as it again attempts to address
information and communication issues (via the WSIS) will be the question of
Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society 77

whether the summit can genuinely allow public intervention in matters

of global governance.
A series of recent U.N. world conferences have dealt with a range of crit-
ical social issues such as gender, environment, and population. The WSIS
is different in the sense that it addresses society as a whole. This summit is
about the shaping of future societies! The way the summit does this will
send a strong signal to the world community about the democratic quality
of future information societies.
For the WSIS to be effective, citizens need to feel that they are copropri-
etors of the eventual outcome: the final declaration and the plan of action.
An outcome that cannot be appropriated by civil society since it had no
part in the decision-making process will have no credibility for many
citizens around the world. The risk is also fairly real that without adequate
and sufficiently forceful pressure from civil society, the WSIS may end up
with a U.N. blessing for the global billboard society.
It seems obvious that civil society should be mobilized to safeguard the
public interest. In much of the literature and debates one finds the ten-
dency to romanticize civil society by viewing it as inherently good and
homogeneous. In reality, civil society is neither. In many genocidal
conflicts (such as in Rwanda), members of civil society have played a major
role, and sociopolitical and economic interests are strongly divided among
various citizen groups.
As a result, it may be unrealistic to hope for constructive intervention
in the global forums by a permanent, homogeneously oriented entity
that represents civil society. It seems more useful to adopt a flexible
approach, because different forums and issues require different
intervention modalities. For example, public-interest intervention in
intellectual property rights negotiations may need a different coalition
from the intervention in the proceedings of the International Telecom-
munication Union, when the organization deals with tariffs and
accounting rates.
It will be necessary to establish changing ad hoc coalitions that focus on
specific issues and that put pressure on the decision makers to take
public-interest motives into account. These ad hoc coalitions should be
crossborder in nature—not only in the geographic sense, but also in terms of
discipline and orientation. They should not only involve civil movements
active in the info-com field, but should stretch beyond this community to
78 Cees J. Hamelink

include public-interest groups in fields such as human rights, environmen-

tal concerns, peace and security matters, and so on. Actually, since the polit-
ical and business domains are also divided, there could be alliances—on
certain issues—with representatives of business and diplomatic communities
as well.
The inevitable question is how realistic the prospect of an egalitarian
democratic arrangement for the governance of the network society is.
Given the formidable power of the driving forces behind the new world
order and the associated belief systems, this prospect would seem dim, to
put it generously. The fundamentalist market forces behind the new world
order and their often equally fundamentalist Islamic opponents are divid-
ing our planet through endless repetitions of us versus them conflicts. The
most effective remedy is probably to achieve a level of distance from
our own sectarian interests that allows us to see “everyone’s life as of
equal worth and everyone’s well-being and freedom as equally valuable”
(Lukes 1993, 36).
But the political reality of the world is not very encouraging for those who
adopt this egalitarian perspective. It seems unlikely that we could mobilize
counterforces against a world order that provides uneven access to the world’s
communications resources and that reinforces a growing gap between
knowledge-rich and knowledge-poor nations and individuals. Even so, one
could argue in support of this mobilization that the current arrangement can
only continue as long as most people believe a social and international order
that is inegalitarian, insecure, and undemocratic is in their best interest. Can
we bank, however, on the achievement of “globalization-from-below,” as
opposed to “globalization-from-above” (Falk 1993, 39)? The key component
of an egalitarian, democratic social and international order is a vibrant, active,
self-mobilizing world civil society. Although the current political climate may
not be encouraging, it should also be noticed that: “Twenty years ago many
despaired that global problems were spinning out of control. But slowly, inex-
orably, communities have shown that global change is within their power.
They have cut the world’s problems down to manageable size and exerted
influence far in excess of their numbers. They have ended wars, freed political
prisoners, cleaned up the global environment, rebuilt villages, and restored
hope” (Shuman 1994, 91).
Today millions of people around the world are involved with forms of
local community-based activities that focus on global problems. A new type
Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society 79

of world politics is emerging through these initiatives. This new approach

represents a departure from conventional international relations mainly
conducted by the foreign-affairs elites consisting of statesmen, diplomats,
and politicians toward a world political arena in which people in local com-
munities are becoming directly involved in the world’s problems, often
bypassing their national officials. As these local communities begin to net-
work and cooperate, a formidable new force in the shaping of world politics
is emerging.
In this process, globalization of the local is countered by local communi-
ties going global. Local communities have begun to assume responsibility for
problems outside their boundaries and have put world problems on their
policy agenda. Local initiatives provide people with the opportunity to
assume this responsibility and to make a significant contribution to political
life. People in local communities are aware that the fundamental obligation
to take the future into their own hands is implicit in the democratic ideal.
Just as local communities around the world are presently engaged in such
areas of activity as economic development, the environment, and human
rights, it could be argued that the goal of achieving a democratic world
communications order should also be put on their agenda. After all, this too
will decisively shape the quality of life in the third millennium.

Guidelines for Future Governance

Basic guidelines for the public-interest agenda in relation to governance of the

network society can be found in the standards for the evaluation of techno-
logical developments that the international community has adopted in
a series of international instruments. These standards point to the right of
protection against the harmful effects of technical applications, the right of
access to and enjoyment of technological progress, and the right of partici-
pation in decision making about technological development. With regard to
the protection against harmful effects, there are provisions such as:
■
The right to human dignity (e.g., in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
1948, Articles 1, 5, 6, and 29). This is pertinent when technologies in general,
and information and communication technologies in particular, are
deployed for surveillance, decision making by electronic systems, automation
in business and government, censorship of information, restriction of the
access to information, or the divulging of “disinformation.”
80 Cees J. Hamelink

■
The right of access to technology. This right is provided for in Article 27.1
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which contains the provi-
sion that “everyone has the right to . . . share in scientific advancement
and its benefits.” This right is inspired by the basic moral principle of
equality and the notion that technology belongs to the common heritage
of humankind.
■
The right to participate in choices about technology. The idea of human
rights has to extend to the social institutions (the institutional arrange-
ments) that would facilitate the creation of fundamental standards.
Human rights cannot be realized without involving citizens in the deci-
sion-making processes about the spheres in which freedom and equality
are to be achieved. This moves the democratic process beyond the politi-
cal sphere and extends the requirement of participatory institutional
arrangements to other social domains.

It also underscores the point that technological choices should be sub-

ject to democratic control. This is particularly important in light of the fact
that current institutional processes tend to delegate important areas of
social life to private rather than to public control and accountability.
Increasingly large areas of social activity are withdrawn from public
accountability, from democratic control, and from the participation of
citizens in the decision-making process.

Conclusion

The essential question is whether these standards will—as usually hap-

pens—be balanced against other pressing interests. This common strategy
reflects what could be termed the trade-off approach to human rights. In
this approach much lip service is paid to human rights standards, but they
are conveniently negotiated away and traded in for such interests as
national security, the battle against terrorism and crime, commercial
advantages, the privileges of the elite class, and so on.
However, once human rights standards are negotiable, they no longer rep-
resent intrinsic values but values relative to other norms. Intrinsic value is not
the same as absolute value, and the option always remains of limiting the
rights of some to advance the rights of others, for example. However, if rights
are intrinsic values, every attempt to limit their effectiveness puts a heavy
Human Rights in the Global Billboard Society 81

burden of proof on those who would propose limitations. It is not impossible

that under extraordinary circumstances the interest of national security
justifies limits on the exercise of essential rights, but very strong arguments
would be required to prioritize the value of—for example—national security
against the intrinsic value of—for instance—privacy. With human rights stan-
dards as guidelines, the sweeping expectations of those who project digital
utopias for the network society may not be necessarily be realized. However,
the implementation of these standards would—at a minimum—give the net-
work society a chance to be shaped in the spirit of Article 28 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
II Global Tales of the Civil Network Society
5 A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio

Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

This chapter reports on research designed to identify every public computing

site in the city of Toledo, Ohio. In addition to describing these sites, we
analyze their social environment. Our goal is to explore how different social
processes are influencing the informatization of society and the persistence
(or not) of the digital divide.

Three Bridges across the Digital Divide

The digital divide is a concept about inequality that has grabbed the imagi-
nation of scholars, activists, policymakers, and all varieties of hardware and
software producers. (A good overview might include Norris 2001, the Benton
Foundation’s http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org, the Pew Internet and
American Life reports at http://www.pewinternet.org, and Williams 2001.)
Being wired started out as an interesting innovation for scientists and the
military but now has become a systemic norm for social and economic life.
Moreover, social and technological change makes the digital divide a mov-
ing target. The digital-divide concept, explicitly or not, is now at the heart of
most discussions about workforce development, architectural and urban
planning, youth and social welfare, and all levels of education (Schön,
Sanyal, and Mitchell 1999). The fundamental assumption is that computer
literacy is a requirement for being a first-class member of society (National
Research Council, 1998; Williams 2003).
The most frequently cited measures of the digital divide focus on access
(by ownership or some other means) and use. There are multiple and related
conceptions and measures (National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA), 1999a, 2002; Loader 1998; DiMaggio and Hargittai
2001). Elsewhere we advanced the concept of cyberpower, a measure of to
86 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

what extent individuals, groups, or institutions are able to wield power with
information and communication technology or ICT (Alkalimat and
Williams 2001).
There are three ways people bridge the digital divide to access and use
information and communications technologies and even have the possibil-
ity of cyberpower. They may use a computer (with or without the Internet)
at home; we call that personal computing. They may use ICT on the job; we
call that private computing. Market forces drive personal and private com-
puting, involving individuals as consumers or as workers, respectively. But
there are many other places where people can access and use computers and
the Internet: universities, schools, libraries, cybercafés, and so on. New ICTs
are being introduced as well. On one block in Boston, several shops and
cafés offer free wireless access to anyone who has a laptop and wireless net-
work card (Bray 2002). On New York City streets as well as in many airports,
a public telephone–like booth offers web browsing and e-mail (Emling
2002). As part of its plan to combat the digital divide, the city of Atlanta is
rolling out a mobile computer lab on a bus (Holsendolph 2001), building
on earlier rolling computer labs in Indianapolis (Drumm and Groom 1998)
and elsewhere. All these settings for using ICT apart from home or work we
call public computing.
Public computing is a major aspect of how space is and will be allocated
in society. This is a collaborative process involving professionals such as
architects, urban planners, social-service agencies, librarians, and educators
as well as advocates or activists, be they politicians, community interest
groups, or social movements. This process of designing public computing
into urban spaces is one theme running through a stream of books emana-
ting from MIT over the last decade or more by a set of public intellectuals of
the information revolution, scholars and cheerleaders for their versions of
the future. (Thus from MIT’s departments of architecture, artificial intelli-
gence, computer science, and the Media Lab, in chronological order, we saw
Brand 1987; Mitchell 1995; Negroponte 1995; Dertouzos 1997; Gershenfeld
1999; Mitchell 1999; Dertouzos 2001; Brooks 2002.) Magazines from MIT’s
own Technology Review to the trade-oriented Archi-Tech (Turkel 2002) address
this problem of designing smart spaces.
Figure 5.1 compares personal, private, and public computing using data
from U.S. federal surveys (Williams 2001, using data from Kominski 1999;
NTIA, 2000). By 1990, more than half of K–12 students had ICT access in
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 87

100.0
90.0
80.0
70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0
–
1984 1989 1994 1999

...have computer at home

...use computer at work, 18+
...use computer at school, 3–18

Percent of U.S. ...have ...use ...use

households computer computer computer
that... at home at work, 18+ at school, 3–18

1984 8.2 24.6 28.0

1989 15.0 36.8 46.0
1993 22.8 45.8 60.6
1997 36.6 49.8 70.8
1998 42.1
2000 51.0

Figure 5.1
Operationalizing personal, private, and public computing: Percent of U.S. house-
holds that . . . Source: Williams 2001, using data from Kominski 1999; National
Telecommunications and Information Administration, 2000.
88 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

school. By 1997, more than half of adults had access at work. By 2000,
more than half of American households had a computer at home. Figure 5.1
suggests that the greatest and certainly the earliest equality of access might
be found in public computing. The quality of that access—part of which is
expressed in the social environment of a given public computing site—is an
important determinant of digital equality. But before we can evaluate the
quality of a public computing site we have to know it exists. Many public
computing sites are invisible even to their neighbors and thus overlooked
at the many levels of research, policy formation, and practice. Our method,
explained below, can be applied to bring these sites into plain view so that
research, policy, and practice can be more informed.

Two Social Processes

We are concerned with how democracy will fare in the transition to the
information society, and this has been another thread through the literature
(Toffler and Toffler 1995; Schuler 1996a; Lévy 1997; Miller 1996; Lee 1997;
Perelman 1998; McChesney 1999; Walch 1999; Rifkin 2000; Hodges 2000).
The early adoption of ICT followed the dynamic of the marketplace, taking
place at high income levels and in occupations related to the military,
science and technology, banking and finance, and the media.
But two social processes are at work. Society functions with and within the
world’s markets and also depends on a democratic tradition. This tradition,
encoded in laws and cultural practices, can complement or counterbalance
the impact of the market on national policy and on the life chances of those
with the least—people with marginal or no employment or dependent
on low incomes. We are accustomed to the interplay between these two
traditions of social life and social change, the market and the democratic
public sphere.
The strength of the market is that innovation in search of profit drives
change. With regard to ICT, new hardware and software, new uses and
applications, are being produced constantly and prices tend to fall. While
not a natural law (see Chapman, chapter 3, this volume), Moore’s law—
every eighteen months, chip capacity doubles and chip prices fall by
50 percent—is holding true into the twenty-first century. The problem
with the market is that we see persistent and even worsening inequalities
that threaten the fabric of society (Kelly 1998; Schiller 1999; Gilder 2000).
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 89

The strength of the democratic tradition is that its emphasis on equality

mediates against alienation and social conflicts. But at the same time, poverty
nurtures the legacies of intolerance and authoritarianism that undercut the
trust and stability necessary for democracy to be sustained.
From the earliest public computing projects—Community Memory in
Berkeley, California, Playing to Win in East Harlem, New York, and the Cleve-
land FreeNet in Ohio, for example (Schuler 1995)—to the relatively recent
federal eRate legislation, the United States has seen considerable democratic
activity designed to provide ICT access for all. As we will see, public comput-
ing itself expresses the interplay and contradictions between forces of the
market and forces for democracy. This can help us to understand prospects
for the digital divide.

The Social Environment of Public Computing

People enter virtual space—to browse the web or play a game of virtual
Solitaire—via technology located in actual space (Lévy 1997, 1998, 2001).
That space is a social environment, the result of a confluence of social
forces, institutions, and histories. People negotiate their way through and
into social spaces when entering a public computing site, and operate in
social space when online.
The social environment of public computing includes four aspects. The
first is the hardware and software configuration. The second is the institu-
tion that hosts a given public computing site. The third is the immediate
surrounding community. The fourth is the larger territory or macroenvi-
ronment—a city, country, and region—in which each community is
located. This social environment in turn impacts and shapes our use of ICT
and of cyberspace.
Castells (1989, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999; Castells and Hall 1994) has
categorized various macroenvironments according to their position in the
global transition to the networked society. Relying on Castells, we see three
categories: the technopole, the unconnected areas, and the dual city.
In the technopole, almost everyone is connected to and with ICT. In the
world’s unconnected regions, almost everyone is generally delinked from
ICTs. In the dual city, some communities and strata of people are connected,
and other communities and strata are not. Most of the world’s industrial
cities in transition to the information society are dual cities. So are most
90 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

national capitals, even if the only ICT-connected are the armies, the NGOs,
the state and supranational institutions, and the inevitable business and
luxury hotels.
Castells and Hall (1994, 10–11) discuss four kinds of technopoles:
industrial complexes, science cities, technology parks, and certain regions
with a comprehensive technopolis program for regional development.
Their summary points to three main functions of these cities: reindustri-
alization, regional development, and synergy for innovation. Castells
(1998) also advances the concept of the Fourth World, the world’s
delinked regions and countries. He explores (1999) how the typical “infor-
mational city” is a dual city and asks whether and how the digital and
other social divides in such a place can be reversed. Many empirical meas-
ures are discussed in these works, but it appears that public computing is
not in the picture.
Examining Toledo, Ohio, as a dual city, we have pursued two research ques-
tions. What are the public computing sites? What is the social environment
of public computing?

Public Computing: The National Picture

There is a growing body of research literature on the process of informa-

tization of U.S. society. Here we scan this literature with four questions in
mind:

1. To what extent are people using ICT?

2. What has been the impact of government policy on public computing?
3. What has been the contribution of the community technology center?
4. What trends provide leading models for change?

People Using ICT

The U.S. Department of Commerce released its latest digital divide report
in 2002, summarizing findings from a September 2001 survey. At that
time, the number of people using the Internet in the United States was
increasing by two million people per month. Overall, 66 percent of indi-
viduals use computers, 54 percent use the Internet, and 45 percent use
e-mail. Among children age five to seventeen, 96 percent use computers
(NTIA, 2002).
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 91

Table 5.1, shows data from the Department of Commerce report (NTIA,
2002) to summarize trends among selected population strata. Each of these
population strata increased its use of computers and the Internet between
1997 and 2001. The digital divide between men and women practically
vanished. But the other paired strata show a different trend, as the bold-
face numbers in the table highlight. For white/black and college degree/no
high school, the digital divide in both computer use and Internet use
widened. For employed/unemployed and $75,000 income/<$15,000
income, the computer-use gap narrowed, but the Internet-use gap
widened. Eventually, all strata could be on par. But the widening divide in
the interim is troubling because late adopters have a different relationship
than early adopters with the technology—and with the economy and
society that are structured around this technology.

Government Public Computing Policy

Government policy with regard to public computing has resulted in
expanding funds for schools, libraries, and community centers. Where
there is quantitative data, we see different rates of ICT availability across
the population within the overall trend of increased ICT availability to all.
The eRate, which provides technology funds for schools and libraries, has
amounted to a $6 billion investment in public computing since it was imple-
mented as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. In 1994, 35 percent
of U.S. schools were connected to the Internet; by 2001 99 percent were.
Table 5.2 Kleiner and Farris 2002 summarizes trends among selected types
of schools. Each of these types of schools has more school Internet and more
classroom Internet in 2001 than in 1994. But as the boldface numbers in the
table indicate, certain gaps widened: between high and low minority-enrollment
schools and between schools with high and low percent of students receiv-
ing free lunches (the most measured indicator of student poverty). In
minority/poor schools, Internet access tends to be more limited to libraries,
computer labs, or computers used only by teachers and administrators.
Library provision of computers and Internet is nearly universal, with
95.7 percent of the country’s libraries having Internet connections,
94.5 percent making Internet connections available to their patrons, and
an average of 8.3 workstations per library location (Bertot and McClure
2000, 25). The Gates Foundation has set out to boost public computing in
library branches located in low-income communities, and in a study of
Table 5.1
92

Percent of U.S. population using computers and the Internet

Computer use Internet use

October September October September

1997 2001 1997 2001

Gender Men 53.8 65.5 24.3 53.9

Women 53.3 65.8 20.2 53.8
difference 0.5 (0.3) 4.1 0.1
Employment Employed 61.7 73.2 28.5 65.4
Unemployed 24.8 40.8 12.4 36.9
difference 36.9 32.4 16.1 28.5
Household $75,000 and above 80.8 88.0 44.5 78.9
income Less than $15,000 29.8 37.3 9.2 25.0
difference 51.0 50.7 35.3 53.9
Ethnicity White 57.5 70.0 25.3 59.9
Black 43.6 55.7 13.2 39.8
difference 13.9 14.3 12.1 20.1
Education College degree 74.3 84.9 41.4 80.8
No high school diploma 7.9 17.0 1.8 12.8
difference 66.4 67.9 39.6 68.0

Source: National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 2002

Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 93

Table 5.2
Percent of schools and classrooms with Internet access

Schools with Internet Classrooms with Internet

1994 2001 1994 2001

Minority 6% or lower 38 99 4 88
enrollment 50% or higher 27 98 2 81
difference 11 1 2 7
Percent of 35% or lower 39 99 3 90
students 75% or higher 20 97 2 79
receiving difference 19 1 1 11
free lunch

Source: Kleiner and Ferris 2002

Toledo libraries, we found that each library branch did provide public
computing. But the branches with more ICT were located in communities
that were more white, with higher incomes, and more educated. So our
small local study of libraries suggests a trend similar to the school situation
and to ICT use across the population (Williams 2000).
The Pew Public Internet Project has been issuing a stream of empirical
reports that include data on public awareness of public computing. They
report that 51 percent of the adult population know of a public place to
use computers and get on the Internet (whites 53%, blacks 44%). Among
computer users, awareness increases to 63 percent. Of various sites they
mention libraries (42% aware of these), schools (2%), cybercafés (1%), and
copy centers (1%) (Horrigan 2001, 26). Gordon et al. (2002) report a survey
in which 76 percent of Americans agree that “public access to computers
and the Internet will help to narrow the gap between the haves and
have-nots in our society,” and a “substantial majority” of those surveyed
are willing to pay to guarantee public-access computing.

Community Technology Centers and Community Networks

The community technology center (CTC) is a more varied category than
schools and libraries and has so far included technology centers in
community centers, apartment complexes, churches, and trade unions.
A combination of grassroots efforts and federal funds (Department of
Education, Commerce, Housing and Urban Affairs, and NSF), state funds
(in Ohio, for instance, via settlements against Ameritech as part of its
94 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

agreements with the state’s public utilities commission; see Children’s

Partnership, http://www.techpolicybank.org/ohdesc.html, and Ohio
Community Computing Network, http://www.occcn.org/history.html),
and private funds has resulted in the proliferation of these organizations.
Today a number of CTCs are organized on the national, state, and
local levels. The Community Memory project mentioned above, where
computer hobbyists installed a public-access terminal outside a shop in
Berkeley, is perhaps the earliest community technology site (Farrington
and Pine 1997). Community networks, which originated before the Inter-
net to network home computer users together, were early originators of
CTCs, placing terminals in laundromats and elsewhere to broaden access
beyond computer owners (Bishop 1993; Agre and Schuler 1997).
Ohioans work in active CTC associations at all three levels. CTCNet (more
than 650 members; http://www.ctcnet.org) was launched in 1994 based on
the experience of the early CTC Playing to Win, established by Antonia
Stone in New York City. Ohio Community Computing Network (more than
sixty-six members; Angela Stuber, personal communication, 2002; see also
http://www.occcn.org) formed in 1995 to oversee the allocation of funds for
community technology projects from a settlement against Ameritech for
unequal phone-service provision across the state. CATNet, based at the
Urban Affairs Center of the University of Toledo, formed in 1996 and has a
current membership of forty centers (http://www.uac.utoledo.edu).

Model Cities for Public Computing

The national projects mentioned above could certainly be taken as models.
But on a smaller scale, a number of cities have taken the initiative to over-
come a digital divide identified between communities and organizations.
These cities have set out to create and shape public computing. Some are
technopoles and other are readily identifiable as dual cities:
■
Technopoles such as Austin, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon
■
Government cities such as Nashville, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.
■
University towns such as Blacksburg, Virginia, and Urbana-Champaign,
Illinois
■
Diversified cities such as New York and Boston

(S. Levy 1998 and Sassen 2002 provide two among many approaches to
categorizing and ranking cities with respect to informationalization.)
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 95

Noteworthy among these cities is Seattle, where public computing is

a major thrust for city government. The city department of information
technology is implementing Citizens Technology Literacy and Access pro-
grams, providing funds, and conducting research aimed at making Seattle
a “technology healthy city” (http://www.cityofseattle.net/tech/). Seattle is
the home of Microsoft Corporation and also of the highly successful Seat-
tle Community Network, which played an early role in public computing
by advocating and/or providing technical support, e-mail accounts, and
web space for public computing in libraries, laundromats, and other public
locations.
The city has created an online directory that links to 132 Seattle CTCs
(http://www.cityofseattle.net/tech/techmap/). In a recent survey, 82 percent
of residents reported having access to the Internet and 72 percent as having
home Internet access. The 10 percent reporting access only outside the home
report using the Internet at work (81%), school (76%), an Internet café
(62%), a community center (39%), or a public library (34%) (Information
Technology Indicators Residential Survey, 2000, 24).

Method

Our method depends on surveys, key-informant interviews, statistical

analysis, and keeping our eyes open as involved actors in the city under
study. But in order to recruit students to responsible positions within the
research project, we reconceptualized our method as the D6 method. This
served to orient inexperienced young people both to what scientific
research is about and to the specific tasks of researching public computing
in Toledo. Several of the students then used the D6 method in their master’s
theses (Hamilton 2002; McGreevy 2002; Zelip 2002).
We call the method the D6 method because it has six parts, each beginning
with the letter D: definition of the problem, data collection, digitization,
discovery, design, and dissemination. Table 5.3 describes the basic activities
associated with each concept.

D1, Definition of the Problem

Our definition of the problem came as much out of experience as it did
from the research literature. Dealing early on with technology as a poten-
tial solution to social problems, and with technology as ubiquitous on
96 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

Table 5.3
D6 method

Definition Defining the problem, summing up the relevant literature,

and formulating the research question and/or hypothesis
Data collection Operationalizing the variables, drawing a popualtion
sample, collecting data regarding the variables
Digitization Inputting, scanning, otherwise putting the data on the
computer, organized in a useful way
Discovery Analyzing the data to test the hypothesis or answer the
research question
Design Laying out the data and the analysis in text, tables, and
figures in order to convey the findings to various audiences
Dissemination Sharing the findings with the various audiences as widely and
effectively as possible

major campuses but hard to find off campus, we experienced the impor-
tance of public computing. We searched constantly for places where
people could get online, and eventually became involved in a community
technology center (Alkalimat and Williams 2000). The large datasets such
as the NTIA surveys have not placed much emphasis here, but the litera-
ture close to everyday practice with technology tells many tales that
suggest its value to people seeking work, social connections, even political
impact (McKeown 1991; Mark, Cornebise, and Wahl 1997, Chow et al.
1998, 2000; Williams 2001).

D2, Data Collection

We collected data in the setting of an academic department and a commu-
nity technology center, using students who worked in both. The students
were paid by the federal work-study program and/or were earning academic
credit through enrollment in the University of Toledo course “Cyberspace
and the Black Experience” (Africana Studies 4900, 2002). Data collection
included a phone survey, visits to sites, and the use of various digital
devices—camera and tape recorder.
We created a list of all of the potential sites for public computing that we
could find. Our starting point was the telephone as a near-universal feature of
organized public life. In the United States nearly 90 percent of the entire pop-
ulation has at least one telephone at home, or lives within a few blocks of a
public phone. We assumed that organizations would have a phone, and used
the phone directory as the starting point in our enumeration.
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 97

We constructed a list of organizations to contact using the hardcopy yellow

pages, an online yellow pages then available for free at www.555–1212.com,
several local directories, news clippings, and personal leads. We identified
ninety-six yellow-page categories as relevant to our search, based on per-
sonal familiarity and on our review of the research and policy literature
about community computing and other forms of public computing
(available from the authors). The daily newspaper, for example, men-
tioned a children’s hospital providing computers for patients to use, so
for that reason alone we included hospitals as a category for potential
sites. We called coffee houses because we knew of at least one cybercafé
in town.
After compiling a list of more than 1,578 organizations that might host
public computing sites, we began canvassing them by telephone to find
out who actually did provide computers for nonstaff to use. Students
made most of the calls. Each call began as follows: “Hello, I’m calling from
the University of Toledo researching computer use in the area. Do you
have any computers for (the public/your members/parishioners/students/or
other relevant term for that institution) to use?” We made on average three
attempted calls before recording the site as a no response. These calls were
made over eighteen months during 2000 and 2001. As we made the calls,
we also located the addresses and verified that exactly 1,578 of the organi-
zations were actually within Toledo city limits. Those outside the city were
omitted from the dataset. We also contacted institutions that we estimated
would host multiple sites (the public library, public schools, Catholic
schools, and so on) and gathered data from them in person.

D3, Digitization
Digitization began when we used the online yellow pages to build our call
list and continued building a database of our call data. We also used geo-
graphic information systems software for geolocating the possible and
actual sites.

D4, Discovery
Discovery proceeded using GIS software (ArcView) to map the location of
the public computing sites and the demographics of Toledo, and using a
statistical package (SPSS). We made use of class sessions and team meetings
to discuss results periodically.
98 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

D5, Design
Design involved writing this chapter and producing a website (http://
www.communitytechnology.org/toledo) that will provide information
about the public computing sites in a searchable database. The University
of Toledo Urban Affairs Center plans to publish our findings.

D6, Dissemination
In addition to disseminating the book and the website via academic and
online channels, we will present findings to a growing network of business
and community leaders who are interested in a technology plan for Toledo
to advance new-technology-related local industries and boost the skills
and connectivity of the local and future workforce.

Enumeration and Analysis of Data

Our search for public computing in Toledo found 253 sites hosted by
a variety of institutions, as shown in table 5.4. We coded these 253 pub-
lic computing sites as government, community, commercial, and univer-
sity, according to their host institutions. Government public computing
sites are those located in public institutions, a direct reflection of public
policy and political forces. Community public computing sites are those
hosted by nongovernmental, not-for-profit organizations. These represent
the diversity of civil society. Commercial public computing sites are those
operating for a profit, in response to market opportunities. University
public computing sites are those established at colleges and universities.
While they will always be fewer in number, they will likely be the most
technology-intensive public computing facilities in any community. Each
type of public computing has its own economic imperatives, social
dynamics, and spatial realities or demographics.
As table 5.4 indicates, schools represent the largest number of sites in each
of the four categories. So government sites are primarily schools and libraries.
Community sites are primarily schools, churches, and community centers.
Commercial sites are primarily schools and apartment complexes.
Table 5.5 provides an overview of the response rates that led to the enu-
meration in table 5.4. We can use these figures to estimate the actual count
of public computing sites in the city. Of the 1,578 potential hosts we
sought to ask, we got yes or no responses from 761, or 48 percent. Of these,
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 99

Table 5.4
Public computing in Toledo, Ohio, by host institution

Schools—K–12 public 92
Public libraries 14
Apartments, hotels, and other group residences—public 2
Government offices 1
Total government 109
Schools—K–12 private 29
Schools—preschools and child care—nonprofit 8
Schools—other 1
Churches and temples 29
Civic organizations—other 12
Civic organizations—youth 4
Civic organizations—seniors 6
Apartments, hotels, and other group residences—nonprofit 4
Civic organizations—unions 3
Museums and parks 2
Hospitals and health care centers 1
Total community 99
Schools—preschools and child care—for profit 13
Schools—trade—for profit 10
Apartments, hotels, and other group residences—for profit 15
Copy shops, cybercafés, stores 4
Total commercial 42
Schools—universities and colleges 3
Total university 3
Grand total 253

253 (33%) reported that they do host public computing. The 817 sites we
could not contact may or may not host public computing. So we calculate
that between 16 percent (253 out of 1,578) and 33 percent (253 out of 761)
of the institutions on our list of 1,578 do host public computing. We
believe the sites we could not contact are less likely to host public com-
puting. As a result, we chose to settle on a rate of 20 percent, and estimate
that Toledo is likely to have 316 public computing sites.
Toledo is a “Rust-Belt” industrial city, historically connected to the auto
and glass industries. The 2000 U.S. Census (http://www.census.gov) reports
its population as 313,619, 23.5 percent African-American. The distribution
of the population is similar to other Midwestern cities: the African-American
Table 5.5
100

Contact data on public computing in Toledo, Ohio

Potential No, do not Yes, host Yes as

host host public public percent of all Response
institutions computing computing responses No response rate, percent

Government 138 21 109 84% 8 94%

Community 935 270 99 27% 566 39%
Commercial 501 216 42 16% 243 51%
University 4 1 3 75% — 100%
Grand total 1,578 508 253 33% 817 48%
Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 101

population is concentrated in the inner city and people with higher incomes
live near the periphery or in the suburbs. Toledo also has a working-class
east side, home to many Latinos and to a concentration of Toledoans of
Hungarian descent. This demographic pattern allows us to identify four
areas: East Toledo, a commercial downtown, the inner city, and the outer
city. Toledoans call the outer city the North, West, and South Sides. The map
in figure 5.2 shows these four areas. Shaded areas represent poverty rates of
greater than 25 percent. With this in mind, we can examine the four types
of public computing uncovered in our enumeration.

Government Public Computing

Of the 109 government public computing sites mapped in figure 5.3, 92
are public schools and 14 are public libraries. There are also two computer
labs operated by the county’s public housing administration, and one
county tax assessor’s office. This office provides computers for the public
to use to search the county’s real estate databases.

Outer City

Inner City

East Toledo

Downtown

Figure 5.2
Four areas of Toledo, showing census block groups of 25 percent or higher poverty
rates.
102 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

Figure 5.3
Government public computing sites.

Toledo is a city with six overlapping school systems: the Toledo Public
Schools (TPS), Washington School District (an autonomous district wholly
within the Toledo district), the Catholic schools, charter schools, private
schools, and an emerging but tentative statewide virtual school system of
online schools. Except for the virtual high schools, all of these are sur-
rounded by suburban school systems. In Toledo Public Schools there are
eight high schools, eight junior high schools, and forty-four elementary
schools (http://www.tps.org). There are over 37,000 students, of whom
46 percent are African-American and 7 percent are Latino. On the other
hand the staff is only 20 percent black. The legacy of segregation persists,
such that the high schools fit into three groups. One school is mainly black
(95% black), three schools are in the middle (blacks making up 61, 56, and
51% of enrollment), and four make up the third group (26%, 24%, 19%,
and 13% black enrollment). Thus the school system suffers from de facto
segregation based on class and race. The Supreme Court of Ohio has ruled
that the current arrangement of school districts in Ohio is unfair because
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 103

it produces major inequities in funding levels for different school districts,

especially ones like Toledo (DeRolph v. State, 2000, 88 Ohio St.3d,
http://www.catalyst-cleveland.org/06–00/DeRolph.htm).
The technology transformation of the public schools got a boost when
a bond issue passed in 1994 provided additional funding. A technology
commission was set up within TPS that also included telecommunica-
tions industry representatives. The period from 1995 into 2001 was a
period of rapid technological development. The State of Ohio invested over
$800 million in K–12 technology. A TPS official reported that the system grew
from about 4,000 client computers to its current size of 10,000 clients, and
the figure would rise to 15,000 within a year and a half (“Toledo Public
Schools: NetApp Scores an A for Improving Content Delivery,” 2000). As of
early 2001, every elementary classroom had about five networked computers,
and almost every school has at least one computer lab for the entire school.
Many organizations are attempting to expand technology access in the
schools and enhance training. The State of Ohio has SchoolNet and
SchoolNet Plus, which offer funding and training (http://www.osn.state.
oh.us/home/). They fund support for Tech-Prep programs for students
going into technical careers, but this functions primarily in the suburbs
of Toledo. Federal and state funds are channeled through the University
of Toledo to other programs like Prep-Tech, Excel, and Gear Up, which
are designed to enhance the educational achievement of either at-risk or
minority students.
The public schools’ computer labs service the student body of each school.
In the past the Toledo Public School System has had an open-door policy—
for example, the lighted-school concept involved having an open school for
community use one night a week. This is no longer commonplace, and
would certainly not involve the use of the computer labs. In contrast, some
of the suburban schools do exactly this, running computer classes in the
evening for the public. Another important feature of the computer labs is
that Toledo Public Schools invested in reading- and math-drill software
(Computer Curriculum Corporation, http://www.ccclearn.com) and have
avoided providing Internet access in the labs in order to drive teachers to
make full use of the software. However, many TPS teachers are not trained
to use the diagnostic powers of the software to customize test questions to
the strengths and weaknesses of the individual student. The district runs free
classes on the software in the summer, but few teachers take the course.
104 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

The public-library sites are all part of the Toledo-Lucas County Public
Library (http://www.toledolibrary.org). In addition to the fourteen sites in
Toledo, there are four branch libraries in the suburbs. Approximately 250
computers in the system dedicated to Internet and/or database access,
children’s software, or word processing functions are available. The library
sought and won several grants from the Gates Foundation to acquire
computers to equalize the access of lower-income communities, and these
computers were allocated primarily to the neediest branches, as mentioned
above (Williams 2000).
The library has a part-volunteer, part-paid program of Web Wizards who
assist patrons in using the Internet. Printing was free until September 2000,
at which time the library introduced a fee of 10 cents per page. In general,
the Wizards and the general library staff help anyone who comes in with this
technology. In response to the state’s requirement that libraries have a plan
to protect children from pornography, children have to have their parent’s
signature and be issued a card before going online at the library.
Public schools and public libraries are located in all neighborhoods of the
city. They are government agencies and fall under the mandate of the Four-
teenth Amendment, requiring equal access under the law for all citizens.
Our sense is that this government mandate, even supplemented by private
initiatives, is not yet enough to overcome the disparities of race and class.

Community Public Computing

There are a total of ninety-nine community computing sites. These are
mapped in figure 5.4. The host institutions are nonprofit organizations, nei-
ther commercial nor government, although they may receive public funds.
There are thirty-eight schools and preschools, twenty-nine churches, twenty-
eight community facilities or centers of various kinds, and four apartment
complexes.
Of the thirty-eight schools, twenty-two are part of the Catholic Diocese
of Toledo. As elsewhere in the United States, many of the European
immigrant populations were Catholic and built churches in what was a
smaller city. In a sense, the Catholic schools (http://www.cyss.org/Schools/
SchoolPage.html) are a parallel system to Toledo Public Schools as well as
a link to their respective churches. But these schools are tuition based, so they
represent a form of community schooling oriented to those who can pay.
As such, they are more friendly to parents, community, and congregation.
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 105

Figure 5.4
Community public computing sites.

In most Northern U.S. cities, about 10 percent of students attend Catholic

schools; for Toledo the rate is an unusually high 20 percent (Patrick McGuire,
personal communication, 2002).
The twenty-nine churches include seventeen different Christian denom-
inations. The highest representations are Lutheran (ten), Baptist (seven),
and Catholic (three). In many cases these are churches with affiliated
schools, but they have computer access for church use.
The rest of the community public computing sites consist of community
centers oriented either to the general public or a specific constituency. They
include community centers for the general public (e.g., Wayman Palmer
YMCA, W. J. Murchison Community Center, Adelante), for seniors
(e.g., Alpha Community Programs, Eleanor Kahle Senior Center), for youth
(e.g., Boys and Girls Clubs, Black Data Processing Associates), for union
members (Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Toledo Federation of Teachers,
Police Patrolmen’s Association), for museum visitors (Center for Science and
Industry and the Toledo Museum of Art), and the Medical College of Ohio
106 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

hospital. The last two are unusual: the museum has a computer in its K–12
resources center that is used by children and teachers, and the hospital has
a PC set up in a lounge near its physical therapy department for inpatients
to use.
The map shows a concentration of community sites in the inner city
along with sites in higher-income areas near the northwest suburbs. The
community centers with computers are primarily dedicated to poorer
central-city populations, and the remainder of the sites are located in
communities that can afford computer labs.

Commercial Public Computing

There are forty-two commercial public computing sites in Toledo. Of these,
twenty-three are commercial schools and preschools, fifteen are apartment
complexes, three are Kinko’s copy shops, and one is a cybercafé. The map in
figure 5.5 makes it clear that these public computing sites are either in the
downtown area or in the outer city, especially in the western part of the city.

Figure 5.5
Commercial public computing sites.
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 107

Several of the apartment complexes belong to the same owner, who won
a Department of Housing and Urban Development grant to set up computer
labs and thus improve his apartments. He has helped to grow the CTC
association in town, CATNeT.
Kinko’s is a copy shop that developed a business model and a reputation
around public computing. Their sites are near the suburbs and the University
of Toledo campus. The cybercafé is also near campus.
Commercial sites are far fewer than government or community sites.
This might reflect a lack of effective demand from the local population, or
a lack of imaginative capital from Toledo entrepreneurs.

University Public Computing

Three universities and colleges in Toledo provide computer labs for their
students: the University of Toledo (UT), the Medical College of Ohio (MCO),
and Mercy College of Northwest Ohio, a nursing and allied health college.
Each of these institutions is oriented toward educating professionals and
technical workers. UT and MCO are located in outer Toledo, and Mercy
College is located in the inner city near what was once a hospital complex.
(See figure 5.6.)
Their computer facilities are open only to students or rare one-time
public events, with two important exceptions. Mentioned above is the
computer available for patients at MCO hospital. UT’s women’s studies
program operates a women’s computer lab as part of their support for
un- or underemployed women in Toledo.
The university and college facilities are possibly the most advanced
public computing sites in the city. For instance, the UT business school is
a wireless zone for laptop access to the network. Many departments
provide specialized hardware and software. UT also teaches computer
classes of all kinds in several off-campus labs downtown.
The university is an important partner for public computing. UT faculty
helped start and continue to work with CATNeT, the local association of
community technology centers. A larger group of faculty is also proposing
a sociology minor in social informatics. This program would link with pub-
lic computing across the city in order to place interns for potential future
employment, conduct research, and collaborate for advocacy and policy
formulation.
108 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

Figure 5.6
University public computing sites.

Social Environment of Public Computing

We hypothesize that the four kinds of public computing fit three patterns
in relationship to the social environment:
■
Government sites are randomly located, in the same proximity to rich
and poor.
■
Community sites are located close to the opposite ends of the social spec-
trum, the rich and the poor having community sites but not the middle
strata.
■
Commercial and university sites are located according to market demand,
closer to upper-income groups and students.

As the maps indicate, our data suggest this pattern, but weakly. We
expect that a broader dataset would make a more compelling case.
The marketplace has a direct impact on the location of commercial and
university sites. There are however, two important particularities. University
A Census of Public Computing in Toledo, Ohio 109

sites combine upscale owner-occupied single-family homes with low-cost

apartment complexes for students. Further, a large concentration of ICT
users live in relatively affluent suburbs (Sylvania, Perrysburg, Maumee, and
so on), which transforms this urban pattern into a metropolitan one.
The U-shaped pattern of the predicted community public computing sites
may prove to be the best countermotion to the market as a foundation for
democratic traditions. The role of the church and other institutions that
represent bonding social capital is to give poor and working populations a
basis for collective consciousness and action, including self-empowerment
projects with ICT.
Government public computing sites are a result of public spending that
reflects increasing commitment to an ICT transformation of education at all
levels. As figure 5.7 indicates, the informationalization will be equal, but the
level of access and use is a matter of available state revenue and relative level
of commitment. In times of expanding revenue, an egalitarian state is a
major factor, but in dire times the impact can be relatively negligible.
In general, changes in hardware and software will dramatically impact
what we mean by public computing, especially the increasing use of wireless,
voice recognition, broadband, and technology convergence (phone, com-
puter, TV, music, camera, and so on). But we will still have the basic four
categories of public computing. In each case, we are interested in the rate of
adoption and pattern of use, and then in what cyberpower—people’s ability
to use ICT to achieve their goals—results in. (Alkalimat and Williams 2001

Number Number Number

of sites of sites of sites
Commercial
Government and Community
University

Poor Rich Poor Rich Poor Rich

Figure 5.7
Modeling the distribution of public computing. Government computing sites
distributed equally across poor and rich communities, commercial and university
sites distributed more to rich, community sites distributed more to poor and rich,
leaving out middle income.
110 Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat

elaborates on the concept of cyberpower as an outcome of a community

technology center.)
We are arguing that the stream of technical innovation is a force banging
against society, and like the beginning of a game of billiards, the balls are
scattering. Each type of public computing expresses a structural force—
an aggregation of institutions, people, and spaces—constituting a power
dynamic. It is the configuration of all the power dynamics of a society that
determines the likely course history will take.
We envision two stages of future research. The first stage involves
confirming this description of public computing and measuring variation
in different urban and rural areas, as well as in different countries. In the
second stage, we and others will examine what is going on in public com-
puting sites, what users are doing, and what forms of cyberpower emerge.
The stakes are high; we believe they extend to the nature of democracy in
the information age.

Note

The authors acknowledge the support of the Alliance for Community Technology at
the University of Michigan, The W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Urban Affairs
Center and Africana Studies program at the University of Toledo.
6 A Polder Model in Cyberspace: Amsterdam Public
Digital Culture

Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

This chapter is part of an ongoing participatory action research endeavor

into the Digital City (DDS), an Amsterdam-based free community network.
The DDS is the most famous of a motley collection of initiatives that came
collectively to be known as the Amsterdam Public Digital Culture.
Launched in January 1994, this community-network project got off to
a lightning start and attracted in a short span of time tens of thousands of
users, making it the largest “free net” in the world. Thanks to the public-
ity it generated, it was also to a great extent instrumental in the introduc-
tion of the public use of the Internet in the Netherlands. The aim of
its founders was to democratize the use of the Net and create a “digital
public domain.”
In the first part of this chapter we will look at the origins of and the
premises underlying the Digital City project within the broader Amster-
dam new-media culture that existed at the time. The second part focuses
on internal developments within DDS in the late 1990s, since they exem-
plify the evolution of this culture under the influence of a totally changed
and greatly expanded new-media landscape. Five years after DDS’s found-
ing, the displacement of the early forms of the Internet by the speculative
new economy at the height of its frenzy altered—fatally—the character of
the Digital City, and of grassroots media initiatives in general. We will
devote an afterword to DDS’s privatization by way of a management
buy-out, the determination of the new owners to discontinue the public-
domain functions of the Digital City, and the resistance by users, (former)
DDS employees, and various concerned groups to these policies. In late
2000 a newly founded users association (www.opendomein.net) tried
unsuccessfully to salvage the public-domain sections of the Digital City,
112 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

while other parts were either terminated or sold off. In August 2001 the
Digital City was relaunched as a commercial DSL broadband reseller—a sad
end to one of Europe’s biggest and most interesting community networks.
Let’s be clear from the beginning. The Digital City Amsterdam did not
intend to be a representation of the real city. Nor was it expressing a need
to catch up with the global economic dynamics. In this case the city
concept was used as a metaphor.1 Ever since the rise of computer networks
there has been a desire to “spacialize” virtual environments. The cyber-
space concept is a prime example. In this case, the name Digital City
appealed to the imagination of thousands of users. Although maps were
made to help navigate the Digital City web space, the city metaphor was
used in a restrained way. The spatialization was neither a representation of
a computer network nor a simulation of an actual city. The reference to the
urban environment here is to the concept of city as the “house of culture.”
City referred to a conceptual density that results in diversity and debate.
The collective mapping of complex community spaces was seen as an act
of culture-in-the-making. The city experience made operational for the
Internet context was that of a cosmopolitan flair, ready to ignore the
all-too-obvious dichotomies of real-virtual and local-global. What kind of
Internet culture would result from this choice of metaphor remains up to
its players and users and is the topic of this chapter. But let’s go back in
time first.

Squatting the Media

By the early 1990s, the (in)famous Amsterdam squatters movement, which

had dominated the sociocultural (and law-and-order) agenda in the previ-
ous decade, had petered out in the city’s streets, but its autonomous, yet
pragmatic, mode of operation had infiltrated the more progressive cultural
institutions. It was a time in which cultural centers like Paradiso and De
Balie, which were in the vanguard of local cultural politics, embraced the
theme of “technological culture” in their programming. In the beginning,
this took the form of a critical, if somewhat passive, exploration of the
technologies surrounding us, and of their risks and opportunities. This
lecture-based approach was, however, soon replaced by more do-it-yourself,
from-below methods, whereby various Amsterdam groups and the public
joined in making an event happen.
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 113

The shift, which also involved a shift in generations, came when

(information) technology was no longer seen as the preserve of science,
big business, or the government. It could also be accessible to ordinary
people or groups. Mass availability of cheap electronic hardware
and components had created a broad user base for definitely low-tech
applications, something that in turn spawned a profusion of video art,
pirate radio, and public-access television initiatives, besides well-
attended festivals where technology was rearranged in a creative and
playful manner. It was a time when the self-appointed vanguard of Ams-
terdam’s progressive cultural sector did not want to merely reflect on
the impact of technology on society but opted in favor of active involve-
ment. In this post-Thacherite but pre–Third Way era of ongoing dereg-
ulation and privatization, with brutal and repetitive budget cuts in the
arts and culture sectors, it no longer seemed to make sense to expect
the state to become architect and caretaker of a public domain in
cyberspace. Its creation and management were going to be the respon-
sibility of the public itself. And it was time to act before major media
corporations could move in and, in close collaboration with various
governments, seal off the new electronic spaces in order to gain control
of what they primarily saw as an economic opportunity presented by
the accessibility of a broad consumer base.
Going back to the beginning of that decade, the magic period around
1989 was not only marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall. It also witnessed
the emergence of computer networks. Such networks had already been
adopted by the military, financial institutions, and academia, but their use
was restricted to a few well-defined activities. Meanwhile, a number of
grassroots computer enthusiasts had also been building a patchwork of
so-called bulletin-board systems (BBS) for some time, but it was the hack-
ers’ repeated and much-publicized intrusions in the big network known as
the Internet that put electronic communications on the political agenda for
the general public. And thus the demand for public access was born, in the
Netherlands at least.
What made the Amsterdam situation even more special was the degree
of organization among the hackers and their willingness to structure them-
selves as an open (“new”) social movement. This enabled them to
communicate with a wide audience and to negotiate their acceptance in
society at large through journalists, cultural mediators, some politicians,
114 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

and even a few enlightened members of the police force. After a whirlwind
performance in Paradiso by the already-notorious German Chaos Com-
puter Club (CCC) in the fall of 1988, the stage was set for the Galactic
Hackers Party, the first open, public, and international convention of hack-
ers in Europe. This took place in August 1989, again with Paradiso as the
venue. From then on, hackers deftly positioned themselves in a cultural
landscape dominated by artists, intellectuals, political activists, and cul-
tural workers in general. They were even getting kudos from some
segments of the computer industry.
By then, the concept of public media in Amsterdam was also familiar,
thanks to the unique distribution of cable broadcasting: cable radio and
television were reaching over 90 percent of households by the mid-1980s.
These forms of media were operated by the KTA Corporation, set up and
owned by the municipality. The corporation was run as part of the provi-
sion of public utilities services, and the choice of channels it transmitted
and its tariff rates were set by the city council. The council had also
mandated that one or two channels be made available to various con-
stituencies, such as minority and artists’ groups. This was intended to curb
the wild experiments of TV pirates, and so various programs began to
be broadcast on the local channel, whose bill of fare, to put it mildly, was
distinctly different from mainstream television.2
Besides radio and television, there was also a proliferation of small, spe-
cialized, and noncommercial outfits in the realm of electronic music—like
Steim, Montevideo, and Time Based Arts—devoted to both general and
more political video art as well as to technoculture magazines such as
Mediamatic. All this resulted in a politically (self-) conscious, technically
fearless, yet financially modest and hence unassailable atmosphere and
constituency, which went a long way toward fostering a media culture in
Amsterdam that was neither shaped by market-oriented populism nor
informed by cultural elitism. The various players and the institutions in the
field did obtain some support from the usual funding bodies and
government agencies, but managed to retain their independence, thanks
in part to a mostly voluntary mode of operation and a low-tech and
low-budget approach. The shift in funding practice, moving away from
recurrent subsidies to one-of project-linked disbursements, in keeping with
the ruling market-conformist ideology of the time, also left its mark on the
format of these activities. Many small-scale productions had thus emerged,
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 115

but the establishment of more permanent structures remained constrained.

This in turn led to the prevalence of a hands-on, innovative attitude, an
ingrained spirit of temporariness, and the deployment of “quick-and-dirty
aesthetics” by groups such as TV 3000, Hoeksteen, Park TV, Rabotnik, and
Bellissima (all active in the public broadcasting space provided by the cable
channel SALTO). This edgy climate also resulted in the relative absence of
direct linkages between the new-media culture and the political establish-
ment, diluting the influence of the latter. Such a media culture was there-
fore seen as a buffer, an intermediary, not an expression of or an appendage
to representative democracy. This is what the Adilkno collective has termed
“sovereign media,” liberated from the statutory obligation to serve an
audience and benefit shareholders.3
In the meantime, electronic activists were poised for the next phase: the
opening up of the Internet for general use. The hacker movement, operat-
ing under the banner of the Hacktic group (which was also publishing
a magazine by the same name, full of technical “disclosures” that annoyed
the telecom managers to no end), staged a coup by obtaining from the
Dutch academic network permission to officially hook up to the Internet
and resell the connectivity. What no one had anticipated, least of all the
budding hackers-turned-entrepreneurs themselves, was that all 500
accounts that formed the initial offering of the Hacktic Network would be
snapped up the very first day. Access to the Internet through nontradi-
tional service providers was henceforth established as a norm of sorts
in the Netherlands. Combined with the technological expertise of the
hackers, this created a situation in which commercial enterprise would
follow and benefit from the existing creative diversity rather than riding
the waves of the Internet hype and making quick money without any
incentive to innovate or to show concern for public participation.4
These developments did not escape the smarter elements in the govern-
ment, who were on the lookout for ways of modernizing the social and
economic infrastructure of the country in the wake of the globalization
process. Since electronic communication was also perceived as posing all
sorts of possible threats on the law-and-order front, a two-pronged
approach occurred, meant to contain the “menace” on the one hand, and
to co-opt the whiz kids on the other. Comprehensive and fairly harsh
computer-crime laws were approved by parliament in 1993. The second
big hackers’ convention in the Netherlands, “Hacking at the End of the
116 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

Universe” (HEU), in the summer of 1993, responded to this potentially

repressive climate with a public relations offensive. By stressing the civil
liberties aspect, a coalition was formed between computer activists and
various media, culture, and business players who did not want to be
reduced to mere consumers of the agenda set by big corporations. The idea
was that programmers, artists, and other concerned parties could, if they
moved early enough, shape, or at least partially influence, the architecture
and the content of the networks. This is often the characteristic stance of
early adopters, since it enables one to gain ideological ascendance when
influential projects are taking shape, a move suitably, if somewhat cryptic-
ally, called in German “to take the definition of the situation into one’s
own hands” (“Die Definition der Lage in die Hand nehmen”). A form of
citizens’ activism emerged that in the late 1990s would be identified and
relabeled as the “spirit of entrepreneurial leadership.”
Elected politicians meanwhile struggled with another situational prob-
lem: that of their own position amidst rapidly dwindling public support
and sagging credibility. Not surprisingly, this problem was blamed on a
“communication deficit” for which a substantial application of new media
suddenly appeared to be an antidote. The cue was not lost on the De Balie
cultural center, which approached City Hall with a free-net-based proposal
to link up the town’s inhabitants through the Internet so that they could
engage in dialogue with their representatives and with the policymakers.
The system itself was to be set up by the people at Hacktic Network, the
only group of techies readily available—or affordable—at that time. The
Digital City (De Digitale Stad, DDS) of Amsterdam was launched in January
1994 as a ten-week experiment in electronic democracy to coincide with
the municipal elections to be held in mid-March of that year. The public
response was overwhelming. And in no time, “everybody” was communi-
cating with everybody else. With one exception, though: the politicians
themselves never made it to the new medium.
It is unquestionable that the DDS functioned as a catalyst for Internet
acquaintance and usage in the Netherlands. For many it represented their
first contact with the world of the electronic networks, whether because
they participated themselves or because they read, or watched television
programs, about it. But the Digital City also grew rapidly into an interna-
tional symbol of the public domain in cyberspace. Even though the DDS
did not bridge the gap between politicians and the electorate—which had
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 117

been one of its prime stated objectives, and the reason the government put
money in the experiment—it did have an exemplary function in the ongo-
ing debate about the information society. The DDS system grew in no time
into Europe’s largest and most famous public computer network, or
“free net,” as Americans called this model of free community servers. In
practice, this meant scores of dial-in phone lines, a free e-mail address for
every user, and later disk space for a home page, lots of opportunity to
make contact and gather and/or disseminate information, and above all,
the freedom not to be bothered by censorship and surveillance.

Liberty of the Sovereign User

By mid-1998 DDS had over 70,000 “inhabitants”—that is, registered

users—and many more visitors, or “tourists.” Even more people were will-
ing to join, but in fact the limits of the current system’s capacity had
already been reached much earlier. It is a sad truth that most European
Community Internet and web projects that followed up on the DDS’s
initial success remained fairly empty and virtual indeed, and attracted far
fewer users. For example, Berlin’s “Internationale Stadt” initiative, the
DDS’s most direct clone, never had more than about 300 users, and soon
moved in the direction of content provision and software development.
It closed down in early 1998. By that time, the Amsterdam Digital City had
managed to spawn a diverse and lively Net culture. On the other hand, its
system had grown so big, and so intricate, that hardly anybody—least of
all the DDS management—had a complete grasp of it. The Digital City had
grown into a huge networked community facility—but without becoming
a community in itself.
One of the main reasons for this peculiar, but not idiosyncratic, state of
affairs is that DDS never attempted to solve, or even to properly address,
the contradictions in objectives and hence in methods of operation that
have resulted from the clash between the local and the global inherent in
the digital age. Within the DDS, as in many other free-net-inspired initia-
tives, “The driving interest in the organizing group was divided between
those who wanted a focus on local information, communication, and
networking, and those who wanted access to the global Internet” (Cisler
1993). Apart from the decision to stick to the Dutch language in external
communications and all administrative matters, the DDS simply let itself
118 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

be overrun by the onslaught of the Internet (especially in its World Wide

Web manifestation). From then on, like elsewhere, most “inhabitants”
used the DDS as a free way to reach content hosted all over cyberspace, and
could hardly be bothered by the alleged Amsterdam connection of their
provider.
The prime cause of the Digital City’s success and reputation, however,
was the freedom granted its users from the very beginning. This is not
trivial, in view of the amount of control over Net use exercised by univer-
sities and businesses, especially outside the Netherlands. For instance, the
Digital City had refused to become a public relations channel for City Hall
under the usual pretense of “bringing politics closer to the common people
thanks to information technology.” The DDS system was not the property
of the municipal corporation, even though many people assumed this to
be the case. In fact, apart from an initial grant, the DDS never received any
direct subsidy from the local (or national) authorities. The fairly obvious
fact that politics constitute only a small fragment of our daily lives has also
proved true on the Net. Besides, it appeared rather quickly that politicians
were neither able nor willing to familiarize themselves with the new
medium, because efforts made in the beginning of the DDS to bring
them online and start a dialogue with their constituents proved a waste of
time. And the citizens were far more interested in dialoging among
themselves than in engaging in arcane discussions with close-minded and
self-important politicos.
To take more of an insider’s view of the workings of the Digital City, we
will now let a few of the actors directly involved speak for themselves about
their experiences. For this purpose we collected interviews with a number
of (former) DDS employees over a period of time. Here we will go into the
stories of Nina Meilof (formerly in charge of community relations and of
the local broadcasting and streaming-media wing of DDS operations) and
Hapee de Groot (previous systems administrator of the Digital City). These
interviews were conducted in 1996 and 2000 respectively.
Meilof has a background in local television (another flourishing sector of
the Amsterdam culture). She was hired by DDS back in 1995 to organize
discussions about local political issues, such as the—failed—attempt
to restructure the municipality into an “urban province,” the controver-
sial house building drive into the Y-lake artificial island IJburg, the
even more controversial north-south underground railway project, or the
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 119

extension of Schiphol Airport, which had the whole environmental

community up in arms. The main goal was to find a way of transcending
the unproductive state of current political rituals.
According to Meilof, “A major advantage of DDS remains its anarchic
character. There are a lot of secret nooks and crannies, such as cafés in
out-of-the-way places. Then you may look into home pages and find the
history of that particular café, replete with the club jargon, a birthday list,
and a group snapshot. There is a Harley-Davidson meeting place, for
instance, which coalesces around one particular café, and it brings a
newsletter out. This kind of subculture is of course far more thrilling than
the mainstream sites maintained by big corporate or institutional players.
No way do those sites ever rock.” Hence the DDS’s policy of looking for
a balance between private interests and those of the general public,
whereby this type of subculture would still grow optimally, but without
“politics” being discarded altogether.
A precondition for this was the system’s independence. But that did not
come cheap. DDS had increasingly grown into a business, albeit by default
rather than by design, while wishing to retain its not-for-profit character.
At the time, the management was pursuing a policy of courting a handful
of major potential customers who would be able to bring some serious
financing in. The catch was to attract projects compatible with the DDS
philosophy, however vague, and that was not a totally smooth process. On
the practical plane, the DDS organization came to be divided into three
components: a commercial department going after the money, an innova-
tion wing that developed new technologies for paying customers, and the
community itself, which DDS wished to represent as a social laboratory of
sorts. But the image of a virtual community, as Howard Rheingold (1993)
has called it in his book by that name, was not really appropriate here. DDS
had grown instead into a multifaceted amalgam of small communities,
who shared among themselves the intention of perpetuating the DDS
system as an “open city.”
Out of that, a somewhat Faustian, and in any case unwritten, “social
contract” was hatched between the inhabitants and the management of
the Digital City, whereby the DDS would keep facilitating the activities
of the users free of charge, and otherwise leave them alone. Users, in
turn, would let the management manage and would not interfere in
the daily operations of the DDS business, thereby acquiescing in the
120 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

“democracy deficit.” As a consequence, general meetings of users and

management were discontinued, and the discussion list “dds.dds,” having
lost its role as a platform for bipartite dialogue, withered away into
a quaint digital equivalent of the Hyde Park Corner soapbox.

Metaphors and Interfaces

The central interface also played a key role in the evolution of the commu-
nity identity of the Digital City. It was originally designed to provide within
a fully text-based environment an overview of the mass of information
available. In keeping with the metaphor implied in the system’s name, the
DDS interface is built around the notions of squares, buildings/homes, and
(side) streets. But it does not show pictures of or simulate the actual
(Amsterdam) cityscape, as many people would have expected. Rather, the
arrangement is intended to be thematic, so as to attract communities of
(shared) interests. There are, for instance, “squares” devoted to the themes
of the environment, death, sports, books, tourism, social activism, govern-
ment and administration, and so on, but the interface was never able to
provide a full representation of the underlying activities. News features, and
the DDS’s own newspaper, the Digital Citizen, attempted to fill this lacuna.
But how did an insider keep abreast of current developments? Meilof
(who was also the editor of the Digital Citizen) again:
I was getting the “logstats” of the most popular “houses” ( home pages), so I would
go and look into them from time to time. We had, for instance, a network of male
homosexual “houses” springing up at some juncture. These exhibited pictures of
attractive gentlemen. Those were very popular sites. Yet it was all fairly down to
earth, in fact. Cars, substances, “how to grow your own weed” advice, music sites
with extensive libraries, and that sort of thing was on offer. There was also a exten-
sive circuit where you could obtain or exchange software, and some of these “warez-
houses” would be up for one or two days only and vanish again. And of course, you
had Internet games, those were an evergreen. But it may also have been a home page
on some very rare bird, becoming an internationally famous site attracting ornithol-
ogists from all over the planet. Then other people freaked out on design or on
JavaScript. You got the links samplers. And don’t forget the joke sites . . .

Thus there was in the DDS a gigantic alternative or underground world,

but there was also something like the “official” Digital City on the surface
and in the public eye. The subject matter most often brought to the fore in
that context was of the “democracy and the Internet” variety. For six
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 121

months in 1996–1997 an experiment was conducted with a “Digital Square

on Traffic and Transport Issues,” sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of
Public Works, Roads, and Waterways. Registered DDS “inhabitants” could
react to such statements as: “If we don’t pull together to do something
about congestion, traffic jams will never go away,” or “Aggressive driving
does pay: it gets you there faster,” or “The automobile is the most mar-
velous invention . . . of the nineteenth century.” The experiment even
boasted the luxury of a professional moderator, journalist Kees van den
Bosch, who would invite another high-profile politician to stir up the
discussion every month. And the government was footing the bill.
Van den Bosch was satisfied with the degree of participation. Yet it was
easy to fall prey to an overoptimistic estimate. Just a handful of partici-
pants generated an impressive quantity of statements. Genuinely new
ideas and arguments were few and far between. The evaluation report also
stated that little use had been made of the opportunity to obtain back-
ground data on the problems discussed. A large majority (about 75%) of
the participants only made one contribution and disappeared from view,
leaving the discussion to a vocal minority. The report also mentioned the
high occurrence of very personal traffic experiences being recounted,
whereby senior bureaucrats in the ministry let themselves be quick-started
into direct action. The typical hierarchical routine, with a minister making
decisions at the top would be temporarily disregarded.
Nonetheless, Meilof always had faith that the new media would influence
public opinion indirectly rather than directly. A good example was the ton-
ing down of the referendum instrument by the local body politic. A few
weeks before our interview, Amsterdam had introduced the hitherto politi-
cally tricky concept of a “corrective referendum” in matters of local decision
making by the municipal council. The idea had not really taken off, because
City Hall tried almost immediately to restrict its scope while at the same
time upping up its threshold. Meilof notes that: “politicians were con-
stantly tinkering with the rules, in order to give the impression that voters
had a say, while in fact everything stayed the same. Every referendum was
getting comprehensive coverage in the DDS, but it was clear every time that
politicians did not want to be bothered.” She concludes that it is far more
interesting and rewarding to do your own thing on the Net and let the old
media report about them in their usual feverish fashion. This way you do
exert some influence, however indirectly. She adds: “You may even hope
122 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

that some day politicians would be wanting to make contact with their
constituencies.” So in Amsterdam too, even if the Internet’s growth has
been exponential, it is still taking quite some time for political institutions
and practices to adapt to the new realities.
Indeed, a great deal has happened over the past few years in the field of
ICT development. And ever since its hackers’ phase, it had been the cus-
tom at DDS to give entirely free reign in computer-related matters to the
techies. Because DDS was also a relatively big but underfunded network in
the fast-growth lane, crisis was a permanent feature at system operations.
Technical problems and glitches were an everyday occurrence, as the sys-
tem’s hardware and software was constantly pushed to its operational
limits—and beyond. Added to this was an overriding ambition to be on
the cutting edge in technology, and to take a similarly innovative position
on the knowledge frontier. This has been a game at which DDS has been
remarkably successful up to fairly recent times. Meilof again:
At some point we got heavily into RealAudio and RealVideo—that is, combining
Internet with radio and TV (streaming media). It would be great if we could provide
home-page TV for our users. To achieve this, you must be well aware of the latest
technical developments and must also nurture a good relationship with the owners
of bandwidth who are going to carry out this fancywork. We wanted to avoid the
situation in which normal citizens have to go to big corporate players if they want
to put television on the Net—and pay their price. We felt that streaming media too
should be readily available to the greatest number, so that any private person could
start web TV at home.5

This technical-innovation push did not always square well with some
users’ expectations regarding content and regarding the quality of public dis-
cussions. In the early days of DDS, there was that idea that the Digital City
was some kind of empty shell that would be filled up by users and customers,
without much intervention from the DDS organization itself. But that for-
mula turned out to result in a very static system. Not very much changed in
the content structure of DDS over the years. Some felt that users’ creativity
had to be rewarded somehow. After all, that is what had kept the social going
(DDS did “reward” outstanding home-page developers in the end, with extra
bandwidth and technical support, but these had to be pretty spectacular
achievers). And as far as the DDS’s role as a platform for public discussion is
concerned, it is still not clear whether the Net is really a good place, let alone
the premier place, to conduct a meaningful, in-depth discussion. The first
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 123

hurdle is, of course, the issue of moderation. Or to put it differently: Was the
DDS a medium like others with editors who would organize and edit (and
hence censor) the discussion, or was it some digital remake of the Hyde Park
Corner soapbox?
One format that attempted to put more structure and coherence into the
presentation of the system’s content was the online newspaper, the Digital
Citizen. This publication also carried a line of supplements, which you
could opt to receive (or not). This made for an interesting forum to which
people might address contributions, which were filtered by an editorial
board. This was the case with the “best-house” contest, for which one had
to register beforehand—thus it was a mixed format, where the content was
being coproduced by the users. In addition, web-ring technology was made
available, where sites were automatically beaded together and visitors
could be taken on an organized tour of sorts by the editors.
Two models are competing here. One might be called anarchistic, where
things began to fall into place only after a period of time, if ever. The other
model was a more organized one, with editors surfing the place on the
lookout for those really interesting sites. A web ring was seen as a nice
compromise between the two. However, DDS never implemented all
the models discussed here, nor did it change its interface very much. In
fact, a few years after its inception, and while it was still growing at a fast
pace, it became obvious that the city had come to a conceptual standstill.
Another often-raised question had to do with the much-vaunted urban
metaphor of the Digital City. Would the city idea die at some point, and
with it the DDS, having achieved its emancipatory task? What about its
strictly local role; would that dwindle into insignificance also? Around
1998 no more than a quarter of the “inhabitants” were actually living in
the town of Amsterdam.6
One of the very few policy decisions that the DDS management made
was to retain Dutch as the official language of the Digital City. Many
users, for instance, were unwilling or found it difficult to express them-
selves in English. Generally it was felt that sticking to our own tongue
was one of the few areas where the Digital City could claim some local
anchorage. In itself, however, this said very little about the local or
global character of the system. That was something for the users to
decide, and for their net usage to show. Hence, successful home pages
usually ended up having an international exposure, and thus making, at
124 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

least partially, use of English. But at the same time it turned out that the
Internet was also being used more and more in a very local or regional
context. One could now go online to check out the program of the
culture club next door. On a more practical level, the question arose
about how much longer such typical metaphors as “houses” and the
“post office,” which had been the hallmark of DDS, would retain any
relevance. But then, fortunately, the Digital City never tried to impose
its own metaphors on the users. As it turned out, it was mostly out-
siders, looking at the DDS on their PCs but not being “inhabitants”
themselves, who took the Digital City name too literally, and then
started bashing the city metaphor as inadequate.
To recapitulate at this point, critical mass was eventually reached by the
DDS when its user base had become so variegated that it could both go for
decentralized diversity—which it did to a great extent—and for near-total
independence, even immunity vis-à-vis-attempts by the management to
govern its activities. This peculiar variant of the “network effect” could
only be achieved because the infrastructure was operated as a facility and
not as a compelling framework, and because the existence of competing
and sometimes contradictory sets of values among the user base was
accepted, whether by design or by default. This situation in fact quickly
became normative in the DDS organization, where semiautonomous units
proliferated up to the management level. This created a climate that could
be repressive, but that surely also produced tolerance and led to all sorts of
initiatives, ranging from the very obscure to the highly flamboyant, quite
reminiscent of the “Islands in the Net” setup (Bruce Sterling). Another
outcome was the absence of a dominant DDS scene as such, an endemic
feature of the mainstream Amsterdam cultural circles (even though there
are many smaller coteries, based on chat channels, cafés, MOO environ-
ments, and so on). Incidentally, this was also the prevalent mode of
operation of the whole new-media culture at that time. But it also failed to
set standards of accountability and decision making from below, and
hence to establish a truly democratic tradition in the realm of nonprofit,
public digital culture.
Yet the greatest difficulty is how to define public in the phrase “public
digital culture.” It should be clear at the outset that this “public” element
does not necessarily form the same constituency as that of the traditional
media, the occupants of the public domain in real space, or the franchised
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 125

electorate in general. Even if some of the basic tenets of the public domain
(and especially its ethics) can be transferred to cyberspace, their mode of
implementation is for the most part yet to be invented—and put into
practice. Another thing the Amsterdam example seems to demonstrate is
that the barrier of computer literacy was, and still is, very real, and this had
a great deal of influence on the actors involved in the DDS situation as well
as on their actions. Thus, the digital culture of the late 1990s remained to
a great extent the preserve of geeks/hackers, students, media professionals,
and a smattering of people who had gone to the trouble of becoming
conversant with computers.
In the search for alternatives to this state of affairs, we find ourselves still
being hampered by the founding myths of the network. Those myths refer
to a rumored golden age when “everybody” was an active participant and
“everything” was in the public domain. Freeware and shareware were the
rule then, a near-perfect gift economy existed, and the absence of author-
ity was in itself a safeguard for privacy and a guarantee of ethical conduct.
This lore naturally glosses over the fact that users at that time had of neces-
sity an extremely high level of computer competence, and were even less
representative of the population in general than now. Such an “Athenian-
democracy” model automatically generates its own story of inevitable
decline. It cannot deal in a positive way with the consolidation of the user
base, even though it was the very thing it had propagated in the first place.
Most Amsterdam digital initiatives had, more or less consciously, tried to
escape this predicament. This policy was successful to the extent that it
built on a well-entrenched pragmatism in organizational matters and
issues connected with a media environment that was traditionally run on
a nonprofit basis. In keeping with Dutch values, pluriformity was taken for
granted, high expectations were conspicuous by their absence, and benign
neglect by the powers that be was the rule. These are still the basic premises
of the current situation.

Community Networks in the Age of Dot-Com Greed

To return to our case study, we have seen that the Digital City had evolved
from an amateur, low-tech, nonbudget and grassroots initiative into a fully
professionalized, technology- and business-driven organization. And this
process seems to have been carried to its logical conclusion: corporatization.
126 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

In December 1999, the astonished “inhabitants” learned that the directorate

of the DDS had shed the foundation status in favor of a private-enterprise
framework, within a so-called management buyout. They also learned that
whereas community building and support remained noble aims, they were
no longer the paramount objectives of “Digital City PLC.” Incorporation
took place with the assent of the Digital City Foundation’s board, which laid
down a number of conditions under which privatization would occur.
The way was paved for this metamorphosis by the prevailing craze
surrounding e-commerce-oriented Internet start-ups, which mobilized
surrealistic amounts of venture capital on the basis of the flimsiest of busi-
ness plans and previous experience. In that respect, DDS’s prospects looked
more promising, yet the incorporation came too late. Far from rescuing the
Digital City, it throw it into even greater turmoil.
By the late 1990s the provision of complimentary access and facilities
the DDS had pioneered a few years before had become much more gener-
ally available. Scores of commercial free-access providers and hosting
services were popping up all over, offering the same kinds of services as—
or in many cases more and better ones than—the DDS was able to provide.
These providers sponsored massive advertising campaigns, and they were
addressing a potential customer base far removed from the idealistic
concerns that had informed the original Digital City. This almost immedi-
ately resulted in a substantial erosion, both quantitative and qualitative,
of the DDS’s own user base—and the process is accelerating. (The same
developments threatened xs4all, too, but they countered it with an
extremely smart public relations campaign.)
Even if the absolute number of accounts rose to an alleged all-time high of
160,000 “inhabitants” in early 2000, an analysis of the use patterns showed
that most of these accounts could no longer be related in any way to the
concept of community building or even to sociopolitically relevant infor-
mation exchange. Interest in home-page building and upkeep, for instance,
long the hallmark of DDS “citizenship,” declined. The once-valuable DDS
real estate—its web space—had turned into empty lots as fewer and fewer
inhabitants claimed ownership of an electronic homestead. The Digital City
was fast losing its attractiveness for common users and got caught in a down-
ward spiral. But the question of whether privatization was a cause of or
a response to this erosion of credibility is complex, and we will not attempt
to answer it here.
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 127

The Digital City had also lost ground as a platform for discussion of local
issues, despite various—and genuine—efforts to trigger debates around
important political events, as we have seen. Unfortunately, these efforts
took place in isolation from the rest of DDS’s operations. As a result, the
DDS had basically been turned into a facilitation structure providing the
usual ICT services to its “clients,” with the fee-paying ones (organizations,
institutions, and businesses) getting priority at the expense of the non-
paying community of individual inhabitants. Most clients, in fact, saw the
DDS as a convenient channel for Dutch-language interchange, and cared
little for the community as a whole.
This left sponsorship by the corporate sector as the only remaining
avenue of resource mobilization, together with some consultancy and
hosting jobs for various public and semipublic bodies. This mode of
operation, besides not sitting well with those who placed a priority on
community building and community service, gave rise to an increasingly
obfuscating rhetoric of public-private partnership masquerading as policy.
As could be expected, both approaches proved elusive in the end, and this
lack of direction left the DDS both politically vulnerable and seriously, and
permanently, underfinanced.
The growing number of users, with a host of individual requirements and
little patience for idealistically induced technical deficiencies, as well as the
need to deliver better performance to the paying (institutional) customers,
made this predicament even more acute. The lack of substantive political, and
hence financial, support—as opposed to gratuitous encouragement, which was
never in short supply—compelled the DDS to turn even more to the market,
but its status as a foundation precluded it from attracting investors’ money.
Last but not least, something needs to be said about the “postdemocratic”
management culture and management choices, which, either by design or
by default, presided over this unhappy evolution of the DDS’s fortunes. Very
early on, the opportunity to turn the Digital City into a truly self-governed
networked community had been put aside in favor of an allegedly more
efficient, but in the end messy and contentious, executive model of gover-
nance. Before long, the “inhabitants” grew tired of the paltry participation
opportunities given to them.
As far as the decision to go corporate was concerned (and parallel to
similar developments, such as the sellout of geocities.com, Multimania, and
so on), it is obvious that the DDS’s management must have had the value of
128 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

individual accounts and brand visibility firmly in mind. “Properties” of this

nature had generated absurd multiples of thousands of dollars per unit
worldwide at the height of the dot-com mania that characterized the last
half of 1999. The actual realization of these dreams by DDS, however, had
to wait until the complex conditions pertaining to the new ownership
structure had been sorted out. They were, but not in time.
Ironically, like most of the new-media initiatives described in this chap-
ter, the Digital City lacked internal democracy. It may have been a back-
lash against the democracy overkill of previous decades, with all the
collectives and workers’ councils, that led to the pragmatic, sometimes
domineering governance of these initiatives (often by people who came
from alternative movements themselves). Since the cultural sector does
not carry much economic weight, general interest in (and scrutiny of) that
sector was, and remains, deficient. Management and employees alike
appear not to be overly concerned with building up a democratic structure.
According to De Groot, “After a decade of activism a lot of people, still
having a lot of energy in them, were looking for new opportunities. Some
of them joined the NGO community, often under some kind of workfare
employment scheme. Other joined media projects such as the Digital City.
They became so involved, not to say obsessed, with their jobs that they
completely identified with the organization they were working for, and
completely cut off the opportunity for others to unfold their own ideas.”
In these exciting years, when everyone seemed to be participating in the
construction of the network, raising questions about ownership, power rela-
tions, and work conditions was not the thing to do. Critiques of management,
and demands for more participation or even for better pay, were rarely
expressed. If they were, prompt categorization under any of the headings
“old economy,” “losers’ whining,” “cultural pessimism,” “negative attitude,”
“maladjustment,” or even “sabotage of the organization’s constructive work
atmosphere” was sure to follow. One either had to endorse the parameters of
the future, as defined by New Age business gurus, with enthusiasm, or become
an instant casualty. Looking through the lens of this proprietary claim to the
Internet, start-up personnel even felt pity for those left behind and interpreted
any critique as a sign of spitefulness or resentment. Dissent came to be seen
as an echo of a chaotic past that had been expelled from the realm of suc-
cessful ideas. Only innovators and entrepreneurs were endowed with creative
ideas and possessed the unique knowledge of how to implement them.
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 129

This discussion, however, leaves the fundamental problem untouched:

no precise blueprint for an open, public domain in cyberspace has
emerged yet. In fact, this public domain has not even been precisely
defined—despite numerous and sometimes outlandish fantasies and spec-
ulations. The big questions remained unanswered. For instance, who is
going to take responsibility for noncommercial culture in cyberspace?
Even more important, who will own the concept, content, and finally the
space itself? It is clear—in the Netherlands, at least—that political parties
have been avoiding this debate, and effectively left the Digital City to
operate in a vacuum.

DDS and the Quest for Network Democracy

What is also crucial is the actual ownership of the cables, or “pipes.” Leg-
islation is a contentious issue as well, yet is highly relevant to what people,
as potential producers of content, will be able to achieve with regard to the
design and maintenance of a new public domain in cyberspace. One thing
should, however, be clear: it serves no purpose to wait for governments or
corporations to implement, or even facilitate, the emergence of a public
digital culture. The Amsterdam example shows that it is not the big
visions, models, and plans that count, but the actual hands-on initiatives
and activities of the people themselves. The alternative is the death of
a culture at the hands of blind commercialism and/or stifling bureaucratic
regulations.
But then, how would one define the term public in the phrase “public
digital culture?” This public does not necessarily form the same con-
stituency as that of the traditional media, the occupants of the public
domain in real space, or the electorate in general. Even if some of the basic
tenets of the public domain (especially its ethics) can be transferred to
cyberspace, their mode of implementation has, for the most part, yet to be
invented, agreed on, and then put into practice. Contrary to a certain
prevailing ideology about the networked society, our experience in
Amsterdam has shown that the barrier of computer literacy is still opera-
tive, and that this barrier shapes both the actors involved and their actions.
The digital culture of the late 1990s remained to a great extent the preserve
of geeks/hackers, students, media professionals, and a smattering of people
who had gone to the trouble of becoming conversant with computer
130 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

systems. Hundreds of thousands of new users may have entered the scene
over the past few years, but they do not necessarily aspire to be part of an
online culture or a public sphere as such. Their computer use is limited to
just a few applications (usually provided in a Microsoft environment), and
they perceive the Internet as a mere component—and probably not the
most important one—of the increasingly gadget-filled telecommunications
sphere.7 This, by the way, is not meant as a moral judgment. But the cre-
ation of online communities requires skills and practices that go beyond
the mere possession of a device. Internet use and new-media literacy are
not the same.
The next issue is that of the extent to which a digital public realm is
desirable or feasible. To a great extent, this is the same discussion as with
the subject of the urban public domain, and sometimes the same actors
show up. The answer has now become clear, at least from our standpoint,
and it is a negative one. In almost the whole of Europe—France being the
usual exception—the state has declined to administer or design, let alone
finance, the public part of cyberspace (with a few exceptions such as
Bayern Online, Bologna’s “Iperbole,” and some others). Rather, we now
have a narrowly, but from the political point of view, comfortable,
economic approach to the opportunities offered by the information age.
Meanwhile, at the street level, we are witnessing a proliferation of Internet
cafés catering to the need for connectivity that public utilities decline to
provide. In fact, and completely in tune with the prevalent ideology of
market conformism, even universal access is not seen as something for the
authorities to intervene in, as one can infer from the very limited, usually
fruitless, efforts to make public-access terminals generally available.
Returning now to the Dutch new-media cultural scene, the Polder model
(“the society of dialogue and consensus”) has engendered its own digital
clone, going under the name of the Virtual Platform. This partnership of
sorts between various new-media-related cultural institutions was estab-
lished in 1997, with the aim of creating and maintaining a working
consensus among its members, thereby avoiding harmful competition. By
enforcing a modicum of corporatist discipline—brought about the Dutch
way, by endless rounds of meetings—it ensures that the fledgling institu-
tions do not go at each other’s throat over such (financial) support as is
provided in homeopathic doses by the largely indifferent national and
European government bodies.
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 131

The practical outcome of this model is that a limited number of

organizations (V2, De Balie, Society for Old and New Media, Steim, Paradiso,
Montevideo, and a few others) have shed their start-up/experimental/
anarchistic avant-garde status and have consolidated themselves into new
mainstream institutions without being forced to merge or to disappear. The
shadow side is that since the Virtual Platform is not a truly open body, its
very existence substantially raises the threshold for those newcomers who,
for whatever reasons, are not yet members. This then begs the question
whether a limited number of not necessarily representative organizations
can claim to embody the public digital realm. In the meantime, as could
have been predicted, the Virtual Platform has mainly turned into a conve-
nient vehicle by which the Ministry of Culture can outsource its adminis-
trative chores and its policymaking headaches and thus retain patronage
without responsibility. For better or worse, this concept has proven a
successful formula, and its format, already adopted and adapted by, for
example, Belgium and (pre-Haider) Austria, is poised for further export.
These state policies and attitudes have had yet another surprising out-
come: as creative spirits left the confining spaces of the not-for-profit
cultural sphere, they moved on to create their own (ad)ventures on the
commercial front. These days, doing business is being experienced as
challenging, rewarding, and fun. But it should not hide the fact that the
current enthusiasm for entrepreneurial drive was basically the only avail-
able option under the circumstances. The Digital City remains, of course,
the prime example of this flight into capital—as a belief system. But it is
far from being the only one, and having now all but floundered, far from
being the most successful.
The commercial analog of the Virtual Platform has also come into existence
under the acronym ANMA, the Amsterdam New Media Association, modeled
after the New York original. It has something of the “First Tuesday” format,
with less emphasis on the business-angels or venture-capital approach, con-
cerning itself more with social networking, debating, and even policymaking.
Oddly enough, the municipality’s economics department has awoken to this
development and has turned out to be an enthusiastic supporter, maybe too
much so.
With this we have come full circle. The allegedly recalcitrant state turns
out to be very much present after all and manages to participate without
applying governance. Under this new dispensation, a ubiquitous yet
132 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

absentee state likes to portray itself as just another business partner.

Within this depoliticized framework, representation and accountability
have been instrumentalized away in favor of convoluted yet subtle net-
worked procedures, responding to “benevolent” markets. French thinker
Alain Minc has said it all before: “Democracy is not the natural state of
society—but the market is.”
Codirector Joost Flint and his business partner (and the other DDS direc-
tor) Chris Gödel devoted most of their energy hatching and negotiating
their corporatization plans and management buyout scheme. These efforts
were finalized on March 1, 2000, when the Digital City was formally incor-
porated as a limited company. DDS as a whole was vested in a holding
company (DDS Holding BV) and its operations split among four limited
companies: DDS Ventures for research, DDS Services for hosting, DDS
Projects for web design, with the community part transferred to DDS City.
This setup merely formalized the practices that had developed over the
years. However, in a commercial environment, it reinforced the differ-
ences between the “earning” and “spending” departments, this time to
the detriment of the latter.
In the original business plan, the community was seen as a potential
breeding ground for all sorts of value-adding activities, which, though they
need not be commercial in themselves, would reflect positively on the
balance sheet of the other DDS companies. Unfortunately, the dot-com
craze was going belly up at the time, and the community began to be seen
as a drag on resources. Hence, in November 2000 the DDS content staff got
the sack and the news on the opening pages of the portal was discontinued.
Meanwhile, Internet College, a high school students’ portal site, which was
the sole component of DDS Ventures, had been sold to an educational pub-
lisher, promptly followed by the sale of the hosting company, DDS Services,
which was bought by the English Electricity Utility Energis. This left DDS
Projects, the web-design bureau, as the sole revenue-earning company
among the holdings, further undermining the community’s financial base.
At this stage Flint and his partner let it be known that they were seriously
considering pulling the plug from the Digital City as we knew it.
In January 2001 a group of Digital City “inhabitants” (users) decided to
forestall, if possible, the likely demise of the public-domain section of DDS.
An initiative launched by Reinder Rustema in the columns of the online
magazine Smallzine attracted a lot of enthusiasm. Before long over 400
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 133

people had joined the ranks of a Save the Digital City association, now
registered as the Open Domain Association (http://www.opendomein.nl)
(this because of a conflict with the holding company about the “protected
brand name DDS”). The association’s goal was to take over as much of the
old DDS as possible—that is, the networked-community part—with the
aim of preserving the spirit of a public domain in cyberspace.
The association initiated talks with the current owners of the DDS, but
finding a common ground appeared to be an uphill task. Apart from the
fairly deep distrust both parties harbor about each other’s agenda and
actions, there was a virtually insurmountable conflict of interest with
regard to the domain name (dds.nl), and with respect to the value of the
individual, private accounts (now believed to number 70,000 at most, half
of them active). This was an important issue because the mere creation of
the association has suddenly revived the market’s valuation of the DDS,
while its subsequent activities even gave credence to the feasibility of
transforming dds.nl into a fee-earning ISP.
According to Manuel Castells (2001, 151), it was competition that killed
DDS. Another reason Castells mentions, based on Van den Besselaar’s
research, is the steady decrease of activity in political forums. The com-
mercial success of DDS and of the Internet in general “created major con-
tradictions among the idealistic activists at the origin of the network and
the managers of the foundation” (p. 151). Responding to Castells, Patrice
Riemens observes that “the fact that the telephone system is the property
of the people does not entitle them to occupy the telephone exchange”
(p. 152). Castells seems to disagree with Van den Besselaar’s conclusion
that the experiment of DDS has failed.8 “As usual,” Castells says, “the
process by which historical change muddles through is far more complex.
Instead of emphasizing failure and decline, the networked community
scene appears to ‘forshadow a new, global civil society’” (p. 154). He even
talks about a “new, meaningful layer of social organization” (p. 154).
Again and again Castells proposes close links between community
networks and the local state, counterbalancing the merger between the
nation-state and global capitalism. Yet the DDS example points in another
direction. A lively civil-society network may as well be seen as a potential
competitor to the interests of local politicians who do not see why they
should fund media initiatives that are not under their direct control. For
good reasons, community networks are reluctant to create a long-term
134 Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

dependency on local government. Often, community networks with close

ties to local politics look dull and dead, offering few resources for users.
Instead of calling for more (local) funding, it may be better to diversify
income sources through membership fees, micropayments, content syndi-
cation, web banners, sponsorship, donations from private foundations,
consultancy work, online services, and reselling of Internet capabilities.
The DDS story calls for Internet-specific forms of democracy and for the
development of legal structures to prevent a small group from highjacking/
privatizing the digital public domain. The lesson of the Amsterdam
Digital City, now an ordinary commercial provider offering DSL broad-
band services, is an economic and legal one. It deals with the fine art of
staying independent in an increasingly commercial environment, no longer
relying (solely) on government support.

Notes

1. This distinction between three types of digital cities is taken from van den Besselaar,
Tanabe, and Ishida 2002.

2. The TV pirates were thus eliminated, but the radio freebooters stayed on. Three
nonprofit “cultural-pirate” radio stations are still tolerated today.

3. Adilkno, the “foundation for the dissemination of illegal knowledge,” an intellec-

tual collective originally based in Amsterdam, described the process in these terms:
“Sovereign media insulate themselves against hyper-culture. They seek no connection;
they disconnect. . . . Once sovereign, media are not longer attacked, but tolerated
and, of course, ignored” (Adilkno, 1998, 12–15).

4. Hacktic Network, renamed XS4ALL (“Access for All”) for obvious marketing reasons,
became a profitable, albeit always very tricky, business venture. After protracted negotia-
tions, which ensured complete policy independence for a period of three years, it was sold
to KPN Telecom, the former state monopolist, for an undisclosed but large amount of
money. Both its six owners (key members of the original Hacktic group as well as some
associates) and permanent staffers can look at the process with satisfaction. Parts of the pro-
ceeds of the sale have also benefited worthy causes, such as the Dutch Branch of the EFF,
the digital liberties watchdog Bytes of Freedom (www.bof.nl), and the political-content
provider contrast.org.

5. It has turned out that this option was deliberately turned down by the management,
which wanted to make it available to a number of selected—and paying—customers
only.

6. Over the years, University of Amsterdam researcher Peter van den Besselaar
conducted comprehensive research on DDS in general and on its users’ profile in
A Polder Model in Cyberspace 135

particular. In the beginning, these quantitative inquiries happened with the permis-
sion of and in collaboration with the DDS’s management. Such assent was with-
drawn, however, when the DDS’s privatization drive transformed these data into
commercially sensitive information. See 2001; Van den Besselaar, Melis, and Beckers
2000; Van den Besselaar and Beckers 1998; Van den Besselaar and Beckers 1997.

7. There are in fact ominous signs that mobile telephones are going to constitute the
main immersive communication environment for the masses, and that, for the
moment at least, Internet applications will be a mere, and probably klunky, add-on—
Japan seeming to be the exception.

8. Van den Besselaar writes: “We may have to rethink the role of the public sector
for guaranteeing and regulating the electronic public domain. As with the physical
public space, virtual public space requires care and maintainance, and resources to
do so. The main question is whether there is room left for non-commercial Internet
culture and social interaction” (quoted in Castells 2001, 153). I am not sure about
the usefulness of such nostalgic calls for a return of the welfare state. Rather,
activists should prepare for a further withdrawal of the state and a lessening of its
obligation to care for and innovate national infrastructure.
7 Community Networks Go Virtual: Tracing the Evolution
of ICT in Buenos Aires and Montevideo

Susana Finquelievich

This chapter draws on the results of research carried out by a binational

team (the Research Institute Gino Germani, Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Buenos Aires, and the Department of Sociology, Universidad
de la República, Montevideo) in order to evaluate the social impact of ICT
uses in the practices of civic networks and their potential for increasing cit-
izen participation in public matters. This research involved an investiga-
tion of the operational incorporation of ICTs by community organizations
in the cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and their initial impact. Pri-
mary and secondary data were used, including electronic surveys, face-to-
face and electronic interviews, and project analysis, in both municipalities,
of ICT incorporation and current implementation.
Data from both studies will be presented in this chapter and a comparison
of commonalities and differences made. This will inform a discussion of how
the Internet is impacting civil society, the public sphere, and democracy in
general in South America. The chapter concludes with a consideration of
some of the most salient points raised and how these might affect the future.
The fact that a large MERCOSUR1 country such as Brazil is investing
strongly in e-government systems and related software2, as well as creating
a nationwide network of 30,000 public computer terminals, will undoubt-
edly affect Argentina and Uruguay.

Community Networks in South America: Building the Information Society

on Both Sides of the Río de la Plata

The practice of citizen networks utilizing ICTs is not a new social phenom-
enon, but their numbers have multiplied quite dramatically since the late
1990s. Artopoulos (1998, 53) writes, “These experiences are the outcome
138 Susana Finquelievich

of a political–technological movement’s activities, as opposed to the

centralized informatics systems of the North-American military-industrial
complex. . . . Deviating from the postmodernist thesis, alternative uses
of information technologies not only express cyberpunk rebellion but also
the utopian views of citizen participation in the center of the community
territorial space—the city.”
Community networks (CNs), also called electronic citizens’ networks
(ECNs), provide an additional access platform for multiple sources of infor-
mation for the community. In addition to providing local information,
many ECNs offer connections between people and ideas. Many organize
weekly newspapers or electronic bulletins, provide connections to national
and international networks, and offer community access to cable tele-
vision. Focusing on interactive communication, many ECNs perform as
catalysts and conduits for broader community projects.

ICT Adoption and Use in Buenos Aires Civil Society

In focusing attention on the development of civic networks in cities such as

Buenos Aires and Montevideo, it should be understood that the size and scale
of a city have a tendency to influence forms of civic participation. Indeed, it
has been noted that the bonds between the state and civil society in rural
municipalities, towns, intermediate-sized cities, and metropolitan areas differ
quite markedly (Arroyo and Filmus 1997). Using a categorization scheme
developed by these authors, it can be seen that Buenos Aires civil society is a
complex structure, comprising base organizations3, intermediate entities,4
and support organizations.5 This heterogeneous—and dense—associative
nature of Buenos Aires is reflected in the fact that the city registers the biggest
concentration of NGOs of the country (46% of the total number).
Centro Nacional de Organizaciones Comunitarias (CENOC)6, a national
institution with an extensive database of community organizations, iden-
tified 483 such organizations in Buenos Aires City, mostly civil associations
and foundations. The most frequent thematic areas are social develop-
ment, health, and education, and the most common form of social inter-
vention includes the provision of training, basic care, and consulting
services. Half of all community organizations participate in networks and
most carry out activities of wide territorial reach (44% of them work at
national level).
Community Networks Go Virtual 139

Using a 3-element selection system, the study focused on nonprofit

civil-society organizations that (1) were institutionally independent of both
state and private enterprise, (2) promote innovative forms of collective
action, and (3) use ICTs and the Internet (either through their own websites
or e-mail). Traditional organizations such as unions, neighborhood clubs,
churches, school cooperatives, political parties, and senior citizens’ centers
were excluded. Also excluded were organizations providing information for
directive areas—for example, consultants, political foundations, private
universities, and private academic centers. This work facilitated the gather-
ing of statistics on ICT use and the implications for strategic aspects of the
production and use of information, communication, and generation of new
services.
The most evident result was the increase, both in quality (based on indi-
cators such as the quality of informatics equipment, Internet connections,
cable connections, and dial-up access) and quantity (the amount of the
ICT infrastructure installed in NGOs). Support organizations in Buenos
Aires have on average five computers per organization; an average of four
computers are connected to the Internet. One-third of organizations are
connected to the Internet7. The equipment is usually acquired for an
organization’s exclusive use, although they may also use computers in the
homes of members.
The issue of ICT training is an area that provides some interesting
insights into the disparities existing among Buenos Aires community orga-
nizations. Well over 33 percent have no funds available for ICT training.
However, among those in a position to allocate a budget for ICTs (services
supplier, phone expenses, website hosting and maintenance, software, and
so on), twenty-three made up to 5 percent of this available for training,
while in sixteen cases the figure was as high as 11 percent. Despite these
figures, 51.2 percent of all organization members taught themselves to use
ICTs, with only 16.3 percent learning inside their organizations. However,
there are indicators that NGOs are beginning to invest both in technology
and in technological training for their members.
Most organizations (fifty cases) have been using the Internet for three
years or more and another fifteen for at least two years. The Internet ser-
vices most widely used by organizations are e-mail and the World Wide
Web (42.8% and 25% respectively). Discussion forums are also used quite
extensively, at 18.9 percent. A similar story can be told about organization
140 Susana Finquelievich

members. Almost half the members surveyed have access to electronic mail
(47%), but only a third have access to the web.
Most of the organizations (sixty cases) report using the Internet to dis-
seminate information through their websites. Basic information is pro-
vided by only 36.3 percent of NGO websites. Another 20 percent provide
access to an electronic newsletter, while 15.6 percent and 11.9 percent
respectively have databases and discussion lists on their websites as well.
Half the organizations update their website contents monthly, while the
other half update two or three times per year. Only 20 percent of the NGOs
claimed that the main benefit of using the Internet was improved access to
information and dissemination of activities. Another 19.3 percent men-
tioned that communications with other organizations had improved,
while 15.1 percent claimed that administrative tasks had additionally been
simplified. These figures confirm what preliminary interviews with key
informants had already suggested: at the time of data collection, many
organizations in Buenos Aires were still ambivalent about the Internet.
Some saw its concrete benefits, but nevertheless, there was a clear cultural
resistance to using the Internet to its full potential.
However, the evolution of the process of ICT dissemination among
NGOs gained momentum. Community and voluntary-sector groups dis-
covered that by utilizing ICTs as developmental tools, they could con-
tribute more effectively to community networking in Buenos Aires, and
in Argentina. One of the most outstanding aspects was the Internet’s
potential for networking, both among NGOs, and between NGOs and the
local government. Most of the organizations integrate networks (sixty-four
cases). These networks are integrated by national organizations (38.7%),
foreign organizations (36.3%), and local organizations (25%). Evidently,
organizations that have their own websites interact more with other organ-
izations at national and international levels than do NGOs that have not
yet built their own websites, not only because they have better means of
disseminating their missions and actions, but because they already
reflected a “networking-prone” attitude.
When asked about their relationship with City Hall, 19.7 percent of the
organizations said they participated in some City Hall activities, such as
attending meetings. Another 17.9 percent received some form of financial
support for their activities, while another 14.5 percent accessed municipal
information through the Internet. However, it should be noted that a
Community Networks Go Virtual 141

significant proportion of NGOs (27.4%) have no relationship with City

Hall whatsoever. These figures suggest that, in spite of an increase in ICT
use among NGOs, there is still a ways to go before ICTs become an active
means of interaction between civil society and local government. This may
be due to the fact that the Buenos Aires government has traditionally over-
looked dialogue with citizens. Hence, this cultural inertia is transferred to
the Internet era: ICTs are mainly used by local government for internal
management issues, rather than as an instrument of communication with
city residents.
Those organizations currently using the Internet are beginning to under-
stand its potential for improving access to information through the use of
online databases and participating in virtual communities. However, this
is not the only change emerging in the behavioral and activity patterns of
community organizations in Buenos Aires. In their role as information
providers, organizations are increasingly moving beyond the use of
websites as “message boards.” Community organizations are beginning to
visualize the potential of the web to access resources and generate new
services. In most of the websites analyzed, we found the creation of inno-
vative tools that improve access to scarce resources, facilitate donations,
raise money, solicit volunteers, and provide virtual training. Many of these
new ICT-supported services are used to disseminate demands from and
strategy ideas to the neighborhood assembly, provide advice on commu-
nity issues and access to training, and organize campaigns via e-mail, as
well as enabling access to community information through portals.
Increasingly, Buenos Aires community organizations are actively engag-
ing in the global communications system. Many are beginning to develop
strategic uses of the Internet, linking it to their specific goals, projects, and
missions such as public safety, community health, or human rights. The
next section provides insight into events that were the catalyst for this
change in NGO use of ICTs.

The Boom in ICT-Supported Citizen Networks

So far this chapter has focused on the behavior of medium and large NGOs
as being reflective of Argentine civil-society ICT usage. However, the
December 2001 financial crisis not only generated a powerful social explo-
sion leading to the demise of two presidents; it also created a new citizens’
information outburst. Hundreds of antigovernment e-mail chains emerged
142 Susana Finquelievich

among the 3.6 million Argentine Internet users. On December 19, the first
of many public citizens’ protests occurred when thousands of indignant
citizens took to the streets clattering their pots and pans, in one of the first
“cacerolazos,”8 to protest against the Etat de Siege.
Groups of citizens from different neighborhoods in Buenos Aires and
other large Argentine cities began to meet and organize on street corners
or in cafés after hours to discuss “proposals for a new Argentina.” Within
days, similar demonstrations were being organized as these grassroots net-
works started to utilize ICTs and the Internet to support the activities of
the emergent citizen movements. Electronic forums emerged to continue
debates online and to inform neighbors who could not get to meetings.
Many websites were also designed to spread their actions and proposals.
Gradually, the different neighborhood assemblies—there are currently
more than fifty of them in Buenos Aires—began to communicate with each
other through e-mail and via their websites. Within two weeks interneigh-
borhood meetings had been organized for every Sunday, where issues were
discussed and proposals for action debated. Results of these meetings were,
and still are, disseminated through websites and electronic and hardcopy
newsletters.

ICT-Supported Social Movements: A New Form of Democracy?

The spontaneity of the street protests seen in the early days of the crisis
gave way to a more planned form of campaigning as the neighborhood
groups started to organize and lead the demonstrations. The Assembly’s
discussions were uploaded to web pages, and electronic lists of information
and proposals for action became commonplace. One such example is
Cacerolazo.com, a portal of international civil protest, where people can
leave messages and participate in a protest forum. The site claims that “we
don’t put the saucepans away, we have to have them visible, don’t let
them manage us” and urges action: “let’s all march to claim May Square”
(Cacerolazo.com, 2002). Neighbors are invited to become active contribu-
tors and upload information about the events planned by their local
assemblies. Another site—http://www.rebelion.org—is an electronic news-
paper that covers the diverse demonstration agendas.
Among the best designed of the action network sites is the Indymedia
Argentina web page (http://argentina.indymedia.org). Indymedia Argentina
is an international organization providing information about protests in
Community Networks Go Virtual 143

over 130 cities around the world. Another site featuring analysis of national
events and presenting a “cacerolazos” agenda is El Atico (http://
elatico.com). Vaciamiento.com (www.vaciamiento.com), born from the
Aerolineas Argentinas conflict,9 today analyzes national politics. In addition
to these efforts, many tentative online attempts to generate civic awareness
about the importance of fighting together can be found in the “Politics and
Government” and “People’s Opinion” sections of Yahoo! Groups (http://ar.
groups.yahoo.com).
All these sites provided agendas for the demonstrations planned, not only
in Buenos Aires, but in different cities throughout the country. On many
websites, updated news on the evolution of the social conflict appeared once
or twice a day. Electronic forums and chats complemented and continued
the face-to-face discussions in neighborhood assemblies. Articles written by
well-known journalists and political analysts, as well as by the neighbors,
contributed to building public opinion. Actions taken by other assemblies
were disseminated, and citizens could be informed about the current debates
between different factions in the neighborhoods. Many neighbors that had
been skeptical until then about the Internet’s potential, received crash
courses in ICT use from friends or children and became frequent users. Low-
income citizens who did not have computers at home used the free com-
munity technology centers (CTCs; there are 1,300 of them distributed
throughout Argentina), cybercafés, or low-cost commercial Internet kiosks.
To summarize, prior to the momentous events of December 2001, access
to the Internet tended to be the domain of the middle classes, but since the
protests that emerged from the streets it is no longer limited to the middle-
income groups. Civic use of the Internet has become broader and more
inclusive, as social movements have adopted it as a communications tool.
An example of this can be seen in the convocation of the Federation of the
Earth, and Housing and Habitat of the Workers’ Power—an organization
of blue-collar workers who became unemployed as a result of the recent
deindustralization of the country. The unemployed workers were invited,
via e-mail, by the Neighborhood Assembly movement to engage in dia-
logue with the victims of the financial corralito.10 The intention was for the
saucepans and picketers to meet for the first time in May Square, as a
symbol of a new alliance between the workers, the unemployed, and the
middle classes. Although the alliance was brief, the portent of things to
come set off alarm bells for the politicians in power.
144 Susana Finquelievich

While this chapter is being written, in August 2002, this social process is
showing signs of tiredness. Fewer neighbors attend the weekly assemblies,
although those who still do civic work are better trained than ever. Some
websites have closed, mainly for lack of financial resources to keep them
online, but they have kept the electronic forums and chat rooms going.
Neighborhood assemblies have had modest successes: helping elder care
centers, providing food and shelter for street children, collecting medicines
for public hospitals, or organizing public control of municipal-run public
hospitals. They have also succeeded in alerting citizens to the current eco-
nomic and political problems. However, they could not—until now—
accomplish one of their main goals: to generate an alternative project for
the “New Argentina,” including innovative, young, uncorrupted social
leaders.
Whatever the future, leaders and members of the new Neighborhood
Assembly movement agree that this massive organization could not be
implemented without the Internet. As events unfold in Argentina, the
Internet will continue to be utilized as a communications tool by civil
society in its attempts to campaign for the establishment of a popular
Assembly-based government.

Electronic Community Networks in Uruguay: The Pioneers

Civil-society organizations (also called Third Sector organizations, to differ-

entiate them from government and private-sector organizations) have
played a fundamental role in the process of Internet dissemination in
Uruguay. At the end of 1985, after the military dictatorship, and during the
first years of democratic restoration, the world of the NGOs was revitalized
in a new liberal context. Cooperatives and community organizations,
including the research centers that provided them with information to
resist the dictatorship, were strengthened and reinforced by repatriated
exiles. These young people returned to the country bearing new knowledge
from abroad (Europe, United States, Canada) and were eager to put into
practice the innovative public-participation strategies they had experienced
or learned about.
One consequence was a developing interaction between the main com-
munity organizations and the University of the Republic. As researchers
and professors returned to the country and joined those who had taken
Community Networks Go Virtual 145

refuge in private centers during the dictatorship, it became necessary to

maintain and consolidate the social and academic networks and maintain
the international contacts the exiles and NGOs had developed. ICTs were
utilized by the NGOs working on economic and social research to network
the social and technological scientists collaborating with them. For exam-
ple, in 1986 the Institute of the Third World (ITeM, headquartered in Mon-
tevideo; http://www.item.org.uy/) was already using ICTs to communicate
with a vast network of correspondents. This provided low-cost access to
databases all over the world.
News of this technology spread rapidly across the country and ITeM
began providing communication services to Uruguayan NGOs, especially
human rights organizations, private centers of social research, and feminist
NGOs. In 1989 ITeM, together with a dozen NGOs, obtained a $10,000
donation from the Dutch Organization of Cooperation for Development
(Novib) to start the first connection server for civic use in Uruguay. Named
after ancient aboriginal messengers, Chasque was housed at the BBS of
GeoNet in England and requests for e-mail accounts began pouring in from
NGOs.
Imbued by the democratic and participative spirit of telematic communi-
cation pioneers, the group of enthusiastic engineers, students, and com-
puter specialists that sustained this first Electronic Community Network
established links with institutions in Nairobi (EconewsAfrica) and Penang
(Third World Network). They also created NGONET, a network dedicated to
promoting civic participation in the processes of international negotiation.
Chasque was fundamental to the process of extraacademic dissemina-
tion of the Internet, even though it was based in the academic world, and
it maintained strong bonds with the SECIU (University Central Service of
Computer Science). In 1994 a direct line between SECIU and Chasque was
laid and in August 1995, Chasque began providing Internet access to the
general Uruguayan community. Uruguayans began to surf the World Wide
Web, uploading their own web pages without the need for registration or
affiliation, while being billed directly to their phone accounts.
However, from that date on the sociotechnical panorama began to
change in Uruguay. The role of NGOs as promoters of Internet dissemina-
tion passed to the state and private enterprise. Chasque fell into the vortex
this situation created. Today, some people, pointing to its corporate
approach to service provision, question its tax-exempt NGO status. This
146 Susana Finquelievich

is an especially sensitive issue, because Chasque no longer offers special

connectivity or web hosting to NGOs and does not differentiate their con-
tent from a classic commercial portal.
The process of massive Internet dissemination caused a change in the
profiles of both users and providers of services and contents. Twenty-six
percent of the population has a PC at home and another 13 percent at
work. Twenty percent of the urban population claim to be frequent users
of IT and 10 percent are connected to the Internet, the highest percentage
in Latin America.11 The web users’ growth rate is 40 percent yearly. ICT-
supported services are also increasing. In 2001 there were 54,065 hosts
with a “.uy” (for Uruguay) extension.
However, the distribution of ICT access (through PC-ownership indica-
tors, according to socioeconomic level) reveals a digital divide in Uruguay.
In high-income groups, 58 percent have a PC at home, and 25 percent
have another at work, against 22 percent and 14 percent in middle-income
groups, and 2 percent and 8 percent in low-income groups. Ten percent of
the population as a whole has access to the Internet. Within this 10 per-
cent, there is a generation gap, because 62 percent of Internet users are
younger than thirty and 19 percent are between thirty and forty. These
proportions diminish to 11 percent for those forty to fifty and decrease to
8 percent among those older than fifty.12
One of the most striking differences between the situations of Argentina
and Uruguay is that unlike the Argentina case, the Uruguayan population’s
interest in ICT is reflected in the corporate world. Both the national govern-
ment and the most innovative enterprises consider ICT an economically
viable solution. The paramount sector of the information society in Uruguay
is the software industry. Uruguay’s software industry is consolidated now as
relevant in Latin America in the development of information systems for
companies, an area in which world-class competitive capacity has been
reached. According to the Competitiveness Agenda’s results (1999) for the
main entrepreneurs of the sector in the Ministry of Industries, the inform-
atics sector is integrated by twenty large companies and fifty medium-sized
firms, which export software for around U.S. $60 million per year.13 The
positive attitudes toward technological innovation in the corporate and
government spheres are reflected in the civil society. Unlike the situation
in Argentina, proactive national policies that promote ICT contribute to a
wider dissemination and use of these technologies in Uruguay.
Community Networks Go Virtual 147

A View of ICT in the Organizations of the Uruguayan Civil Society

Active citizens’ networks have increased in number in Uruguay in the last
few years. Some examples are:
■
A group of pioneer Organizations of Civic Electronic Networks, inte-
grated by ITeM and Chasque, has been set up to fight poverty and its
causes, and campaign on human rights issues.
■
Solidarity Uruguay—Uruguay Solidario—is a portal that promotes and
interconnects community NGOs. It is an initiative of the Fundación
ACAC, belonging to a cooperative bank. Its website features a national
directory of NGOs.
■
VECINET (Neighbors Net) focuses on the electronic publication Local
Self-Management, which disseminates local news via e-mail. The website
publishes documents of community interest and on urban management,
budget matters, human rights, housing and productive cooperatives, and
self-management.

The Uruguayan cooperative movement has a strong tradition and solid

organizations. Although they cannot be considered NGOs, they have
played and continue to play an extremely important role in supporting,
promoting, and collaborating with the Uruguayan social organizations.
Recently, the Programa Neticoop has been developed and maintained by
the Uruguayan Confederation of Cooperative Entities (CUDECOOP), a
representative organization of the Uruguayan cooperative movement. Their
purpose is to promote the use of available ICT, in particular the Internet,
among the Uruguayan cooperative organizations and their partners.

Citizens’ Organizations and Community Telecenters

Centralized national policies in Uruguay put the accent on private, home-
based, and corporate Internet connectivity, and little consideration was
given to alternative community-access ICT-based civic socialization.
Indeed, until as recently as mid-2000, Uruguay had no telecenters or (even)
cybercafés, even though citizens’ organizations were championing the
popular and social appropriation of ICT in the form of telecenters. It fell to
an NGO specializing in poverty and marginality, and the leftist City Hall
in Montevideo, to generate an outstanding innovation in the national
connectivity strategy with a system of telecenters distributed in the
capital—the Billiard Project.14
148 Susana Finquelievich

This innovation was born from an agreement between the Franciscan

Research and Ecological Promotion Center (CIPFE), the Intendencia
Municipal de Montevideo (IMM), and the Montevideo City Hall. The City
Hall provided twenty Zonal Communal Libraries, which are distributed
across the city, while the NGO installed four computers in each and pro-
vided an informatics teacher and Internet tutor. The project started in
1998 with the goal of implementing a telecenter providing technological
training and connectivity at low cost—students pay U.S. $23 per month—
in each library. This money finances the teachers’ and tutors’ salaries. The
telecenters provide four hours of free Internet access daily. In return for the
use of library facilities, the databases and administration of each Zonal
Library are being computerized.
To date these telecenters have infotrained 1,700 students, and 800 more
are currently studying. User profiles range from children and teenagers, to
men of up to eighty-five years, housewives, youths in search of jobs, and
workers searching to improve job prospects. The economic profiles vary
according to urban areas but the project prioritizes low-income areas.
The Star Media Foundation, together with the National Youth Institute,
has implemented another outstanding project, called Escuelas de Infor-
mática y Ciudadanía (Schools for Informatics and Citizenship). The project
is managed by the Committee for Computer Science Democratization
in Uruguay (CDI Uruguay)—an NGO branch of the American CDI. This
organization intends to create self-sustaining computer science schools
throughout the country. They have already implemented the first school
and center to train future educators, and three more schools are planned
in the near future. The model aims to compensate for the uneven progress
existing in the public informationalization process in primary and
secondary education.
In 2002, more than 5,000 youngsters in the poorest neighborhoods of
Montevideo received free courses on informatics, in a specially equipped
bus, called “La P.C.Ra,” a word game between PC and “the fishbowl.” The
“La P.C.Ra” project is an outgrowth of a general policy designed to have a
high social impact—a policy carried out by the Montevideo City Hall,
Microsoft Uruguay, and the transportation enterprise Cutcsa. The project
emphasizes democratic access to technology, and facilitates the entry of
poor young people into the labor market.
Community Networks Go Virtual 149

Montevideo NGOs: A Survey of ICT Use

How do Uruguayan NGOs use ICT? To obtain comparative data, a ques-
tionnaire similar to the one used in Buenos Aires was distributed to a rep-
resentative sample of eighty NGOs. Complete information on ICT use was
received for sixty NGOs. Twenty-five percent of the NGOs were created
before the 1976 military coup d’état and another 25 percent during the
dictatorship; the third 25 percent were established between 1985 and
1992, and the last quarter emerged after 1992. Three-quarters of the NGOs
have paid staff. A quarter of these are small organizations of between one
and five paid employees. Another 25 percent have between five and thirty
employees, while the remaining 50 percent have more than thirty
employees.
The data provides some interesting insights into ICT ownership among
NGOs, which appears to be quite high in Montevideo. Some 87 percent
own at least a basic PC, while 55 percent possess multimedia equipment.
Seventy-eight percent have a printer of some type. Forty percent own a
scanner and 20 percent have a CD copier. Internet use is also relatively
high, with 60 percent of NGOs possessing Internet connectivity. Seventy
percent of these organizations have an exclusive mailbox but only 25 per-
cent have their own web page. Interestingly, almost 18 percent of these
organizations were already using ICTs before 1994. Twenty-one percent of
organizations report having their own intranet system. This group of more
technologized NGOs is also the most active in its interaction with local
government. At the other end of the scale, 10 percent of organizations
indicated that they share equipment with other NGOs, while another
11 percent used ICTs in a member’s house.
Despite this relatively high rate of ICT use among NGOs, it is the more
traditional technologies that remain the most broadly used for communi-
cations purposes—the telephone (93%), fax (68%), and traditional postal
mail (73%). Fourteen percent of NGOs have more than five phone lines,
while 38 percent have only one phone line.
Although Uruguayan NGOs have incorporated ICTs quite intensively into
their operations, a multimedia mix of modern and traditional communi-
cations technologies underpins their communications policies and stra-
tegies, which tend to be coordinated and integrate citizens’ organizations
into communicative social networks.
150 Susana Finquelievich

However, as in Argentina, intensive use of the Internet does not ensure

a fluid dialogue with the local authorities. The Montevideo City Hall does
not, in its practices, foster public participation through electronic net-
works. There are also other limitations in the use of the ICT to interact
with NGOs, besides problems affecting e-mail communication between
NGO members and civil servants. For example, the distribution of muni-
cipal information by e-mail to the NGOs and to the citizens is not con-
ducted by City Hall itself, but by NGO VECINET, using press releases
distributed by City Hall.
The Uruguayan social sector has a proactive attitude toward ICT: it has
made significant progress in encouraging the national government to pro-
mote Uruguay’s integration into the information society. However, so far,
social organizations have not had an opportunity to monitor the progress
of government efforts to increase citizen participation in the information
society. Nevertheless, this possibility is regularly proclaimed in official
speeches.

ICT and Civil Society on Both Sides of the Río de la Plata: Commonalities
and Differences

If Argentina and Uruguay are similar in their use of ICT for local governance,
they differ dramatically with respect to ICT use in community networks.
Both countries have a long history of involvement in social movements and
community organizations. Both were strongly influenced by European
immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In relation to the
social use of ICT, however, the NGOs in each country travel divergent paths.
One of the main characteristics of Argentine NGOs is their relatively late
participation in the world of information technology, especially medium and
small organizations. Even recently, with millions of people in universities,
commercial enterprises, mass media, and government organizations using
the Internet, NGOs still lagged way behind.
In Uruguay, however, the reverse was true. NGOs championed Internet
use and played a significant role in its diffusion and adoption throughout
the country. They used the Internet to transmit the values of a relatively
well-organized civil society and strong union and cooperative movements,
starting in integrated global networks and later communicating with local
and national organizations. Whereas Uruguayan NGOs have a tradition of
Community Networks Go Virtual 151

collaboration and working collectively, Argentine NGOs had a tendency to

act individualistically. Until the emergence of the street protests, they
rarely fashioned any form of civic networks, and it is only recently that
they have begun to exchange information and resources. The lack of a
national federation of NGOs has not helped in this regard, and individu-
alism was reflected in the NGOs’ use of ICT. Networks took the form of
internal organizational mechanisms rather than externalized interorgani-
zational networks. However, the emergence of the Neighborhood Assem-
blies movement indicates the potential for a more collaborative form of
civic networking in Argentina.
The relationships between community organizations and the state show
similarities between Argentina and Uruguay, with little evidence of cross-
sectoral strategic ICT partnerships existing. Argentinean NGOs contend
that the state must take responsibility for the dissemination and facilita-
tion of public ICT access. The state does determine civil society’s ICT
needs, but there are no common actions, policies, or programs imple-
mented to address these needs. A similar situation exists in Uruguay. How-
ever, the emergent system of free-access municipal telecenters in the
Montevideo Zonal Communal Centers indicates that collaboration
between government and civil society may be possible in the future.
Despite a lack of coordination between social actors in Uruguay, there is
some evidence that civil-society organizations, the state, and commercial
enterprises appear to be set on steering the country into the network society.
This tendency is particularly noticeable in terms of the NGOs. In Argentina,
the three main social actors (NGOs, government, and commercial enter-
prises) deliver pronouncements about the necessity of integrating the coun-
try into the network society, but there is little coordination of effort between
the different actors, or inside each actor’s environment. Consequently,
Argentina displays a slower integration of civil-society organizations into the
network society, at least in the short and medium term.
Despite the differences of approach in Argentina and Uruguay, it is
important to understand the wide range of economic and political con-
texts in which ICT experiences have evolved in both countries. These
include conflicting demands for regional and international competitive-
ness, the economic crisis, national interests, local objectives, disagree-
ments between the groups in power, cross-sectoral tensions, and the
need for a reconstruction of democracy. All of these factors have greatly
152 Susana Finquelievich

influenced the projects and processes involved in the development of the

network society in both countries and go some way toward explaining
present circumstances.

Democracy, the Internet, and the Public Sphere

Can the events in Argentina and Uruguay be described as an example of

the construction of an innovative public sphere? Drawing on the Haber-
masian concept of the public sphere, Rheingold (1993, 13) provides
thought-provoking insight:
The idea of modern representative democracy as it was first conceived by Enlight-
enment philosophers included a recognition of a living web of citizen-to-citizen
communications known as civil society or the public sphere. Although elections
are the most visible fundamental characteristics of democratic societies, those
elections are assumed to be supported by discussions among citizens at all levels
of society about issues of importance to the nation.

The origins of the idea of the public sphere and its central role in demo-
cracy can be traced to ancient Greece, and even today Western democratic
ideals often incorporate similar notions. This in turn strongly influences
our understanding of what the public sphere should be.
Habermas (1989) extends this notion through the development of a
normative understanding of the public sphere as a part of social life, in
which citizens can contribute to public opinion through the exchange of
viewpoints on important issues for the common good. This public sphere
exists when individuals meet to discuss political issues. Of course, Haber-
mas’s work is based on the description of historical moments during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which cafés, salons, and
other meeting places had become debate centers. However, he extends
these concepts to an ideal of participation for the current discourse on
the public sphere. That is, he suggests that the discussion process should
adopt the form of a critical and rational debate, in which participants
have a common interest—truth.
Habermas stresses the fact that a citizen’s individual opinions, when given
as an answer to a specific demand (e.g., a public opinion survey), do not
constitute the public sphere, because they are not inscribed in a process
through which public opinion is constructed. Arguing against the “envy of
Community Networks Go Virtual 153

Athens,” he states that if “democracy is implemented in the present huge,

complex societies, the idea of a physical collective of consenting members
should be overcome” (Habermas, in Porter 1996). Developing this point,
Habermas proposes that citizens who are not necessarily present can develop
other nonphysical forms of communication.
Far from the Athenian model of democracy, the Internet holds the
potential to build public opinion, according to Habermasian ideals. Since
the public sphere depends on free discussion and the communication of
ideas, Rheingold (1993, 282) argues that “as soon as a political entity grows
larger than the number of citizens that can get into the meeting room of a
modest City Hall, this ‘marketplace,’ vital for the generation and discussion
of political ideas, can be powerfully influenced by changes in communi-
cation technologies.” Virtual communities may help citizens revitalize
democracy, by enabling massive participation in the political process, or
they may cheat them into buying attractively packaged substitutes for
democratic discourse.
It is not yet clear whether the Argentinean population will continue to
use the Internet for social organization, or whether the Uruguayan people
will continue on the collaborative path they set out on. What is certain is
that in late 2001, a remarkable increase in the use of home banking,
cybercafés, Internet booths, and community technology centers or CTCs
(free public-access places to connect to the Internet) occurred in
Argentina. Despite Uruguay’s embracing of monetarist economic policies,
civil society has continued to be a driving force behind ICT communica-
tions diffusion and adoption in that country as well. Whether ICT and
Internet use will continue to grow in Argentina, where the middle class has
become impoverished through unemployment, a shortage of new revenue
sources, and lack of access to their savings, remains to be seen. A recent
study suggests that one million telephone users have canceled their
telephone service, while many others have cut their Internet connections
and drastically reduced their telephone expenses since February 2002
(Prince and Cooke 2002).
At the same time, bandwidth availability has decreased, because many
ISPs found it difficult to pay for it, and international carriers have reduced
the bandwidth of international connections. Under such extreme condi-
tions, Argentina runs the risk of becoming a giant intranet, without links
to the external cyberworld.
154 Susana Finquelievich

Another risk is the rapid increase in the cost of informatics goods and
services, which are imported and valued in U.S. dollars. The Chamber of
Computer Services Companies (CESSI) has already warned of the danger
of informatics and telecommunications supplies drying up as a result of
current economic policies.
It is not certain whether the current socioeconomic situation will reduce
the appropriation and spread of ICT. Clearly domestic connections to the
Internet could be replaced by CTCs. At present, of the original 1,300 CTCs,
900 still survive, coordinated by the National Communications Secretariat
(SECOM). CTCs would be an excellent solution for citizens’ networks, but
even this is a complex situation. CTCs have become a hot political issue
recently. The Communications Secretary resigned, and SECOM remained
without its highest officials for almost four months. CTCs have also
become desirable prey for the politicians and local leaders who favor the
patronage system, with CTC resources being granted only to specific
neighborhood leaders who belong to their political parties.

ICT, Democracy, and Social Capital

The “Information Society should be mainly about people. We should put

people in charge of the information,instead of using this to control them”
(Tsagariousianou, Tambini, and Bryan 1998, 204). However, harmonizing
social, administrative, and technological policies can be problematic, and
in many countries in which “electronic democracy” is being implemented,
the results have not been faithful to these concepts. Several reasons exist
for this situation:

1. The decision-making area in the field of science and technology has been histor-
ically, and is still, less democratic than other types of policy decisions (Sclove 1995).
The very technical nature of policy formulation in this area excludes non-
experts and prevents their involvement in decision making. On the other
hand, areas such as transportation, economics, environment, health, security,
and education are often subject to intervention from social groups or com-
munity organizations that may influence decisions. Similar intervention with
scientific and technological issues has not been possible until recently.
2. In general terms, government initiatives that use the language of democ-
racy are not based on a corpus of academic research from which theories on
democracy in the network society can emerge and develop. The shortage of
Community Networks Go Virtual 155

intellectual criticism of the supposed democratic qualities of ICT stems

partly from the lack of empirical research from which critical debate can
arise. This is reflected in the resistance, by much of the academic com-
munity, to the notion that the social impact of ICT is a topic deserving
sustained attention. However, it should be noted that this resistance by
academics is largely the result of a refusal by government officials to
support and consult academics working in these areas.
3. Technological innovations are taking place in a changing political atmos-
phere, in which rigid government control of the organizations and institutions
that implement and disseminate these technologies is no longer accepted as a
structure of political control. The necessary investment to keep up to date in
technological development is beyond the reach of many government bud-
gets, especially at the local level. The monetarist philosophy currently in
vogue, with its emphasis on control and cuts in public expenditures,
makes the financing of technological development by private capital
inevitable (Tsagariousianou, Tambini, and Bryan 1998, 310).

The emergence of different types of ICT-supported social movements, at

both the local and global levels, suggests an urgent need to develop more
and better research on the empirical base of electronic government and
electronic democracy.
Our research reveals that electronic government in Argentina and
Uruguay will not develop fully if government policies are not informed by
a deep-rooted understanding of citizens communication needs and their
need to participate in the network society. Other prerequisites to the suc-
cessful development of the electronic government include the transforma-
tion of institutional cultures and the intervention of civic organizations
and the academic sector in social and technological policies. On the other
hand, many of the objectives pursued by civic organizations will not be
reached without a fundamental transformation of the regulation of
telecommunications technology.
Technological tools accelerate a network-structuring process that depends
largely (but not exclusively) on shared values, a participatory culture, the
capacity to act synergistically, and the ability to regenerate networks, invig-
orate horizontal communication, build partnerships between different
social actors in the pursuit of common goals, and forge agreements suc-
cessfully. ICT-supported social networks do not necessarily ensure effective
communication or create communities where they do not exist. They do,
156 Susana Finquelievich

however, facilitate the contacts and the necessary knowledge to strengthen

the integration of organizations and the promotion of new social spaces.
ICT-supported social networks possess the potential to protect, maintain,
and promote social capital in our societies. In general terms, social capital
refers to the social organization as a system of networks, norms, and trust,
which facilitates coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. As has
been seen with the emergence of Neighborhood Assemblies in Buenos Aires,
electronic networks can favor the invigoration of local organizational cultures
sustained by models of horizontal communication associated with the global
organizational culture. They can also accelerate learning processes configured
around a networking culture in organizations that generates and reinforces
links between institutions and facilitates participatory mechanisms:
The importance that innovations introduced by information and communication tech-
nologies have for citizenship is most relevant. The public and private spheres are alter-
natively intertwined and redefined. To inhabit freely the physical city and the political
city demands that, in diverse places and moments, one can enjoy the conditions of
“invisibility,” reserved before only at the moment of voting. Control about our own
information, access to relevant social data and the possibility of uninterrupted com-
munication, become necessary conditions for the preservation of individuality, and for
collective action. The possession of the technological dimension is born from literacy
and it finishes in the reconstruction of the democratic procedures. (Rodotá 2000, 137)

Issues to Debate

Based on the research I have conducted and coordinated, as well as on other

findings, I believe that these social movements are representative of major
trends in society today. As Litz Vieira (2001, 12) states, “The democratization
process has stopped being fleeting and functional and become a permanent
form. It is a process of adjustment between legality and genuineness, between
morals and law. This new interpretation opens a space for the social move-
ments and civil society organizations, while it incorporates new concepts,
including a revision of the public sphere, in the democratization process.”
He adds: “The processes of reproduction of cultural patterns become politi-
cal forms in the public space.” This is space that, as the antiglobalization
movements have shown, belongs as much in the physical space of streets
and cities, as in the space flowing around the web.
These social organizations are extending the concept of public space
beyond the limits of political parties. They are adding new topics to
Community Networks Go Virtual 157

political agendas and playing a fundamental part in the construction of

a new public sphere supported by electronic networks. In this sense, they
are movements that are neither radical nor conservative but socially
innovative. They have been successful in generating social and cultural
changes in their target populations and in society in general. In a wider
sense they are contributing to the creation of a new concept of democ-
ratization, identified with the practice of citizenship. This concept high-
lights the limitations of both state and market and allows for the concept
of democracy as a social practice in which citizens are direct actors.
One of the most direct cultural impacts—a process and a tool—is the
social appropriation and dissemination of the tools of the network society.
No longer are these tools available only to an elite class. Another result is
the construction of a social, public subjectivity. The emerging values and
actions in civil society are opposed to the characteristic values of state and
market, and are generating new forms of sociability, reciprocal changes in
social practice, and the production of subjectivity. Another development is
the practice of operational solidarity, through which the “Neighbors” have
provided help to retirement homes and nursing homes, street children,
unemployed parents, and other groups in social need. At the economic
level, however, little impact has been registered so far.
The technological and social changes have left less of a mark in the
formal political sphere, and a word of warning is appropriate. As Vieira
explains, the plural occupation of public space can entail an imbalance in
the relationship between actors. The hegemony of political society is some-
times maintained by the insertion or participation of civil associations in
the state, so that they acquire semipublic status (Vieira 2001). Despite this
risk that undemocratic and outdated regimes will be legitimized, one thing
is certain. At least some of the political and social claims promoted by civil
society will find an enduring place in the political agendas of national and
international organizations in the years ahead.

Notes

The data for this chapter was collected and analyzed by Pablo Baumann, Alejandra Jara,
Silvia Lago Martínez, Alén Pérez Casas, Raquel Turrubiates, and Martín Zamalvide.

1. MERCOSUR, the Common Market of the South, is an economic alliance of

Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Chile and Bolivia recently have become
associate members.
158 Susana Finquelievich

2. Petropolos-Tecnopolis, a technopole located sixty-nine miles from Rio de

Janeiro, is currently the first Latin American technopole specializing in software and
hardware for e-government.

3. A “base” organization is defined as an association of people working for their

own local interests as a group, such as community improvement. Their scope and
target population are generally local. Base associations emerge from the community,
to solve local problems.

4. Intermediate entities are organizations—research centers, consultants, and so

on—that offer information and advice on technical and organizational issues, to
base and support organizations.

5. Support organizations are defined as associations of people working to help base

organizations, as well as the community, in a larger sense. Their target population
is generally large and their scope usually national or international. Support associa-
tions emerge from universities, international organizations, and research centers,
and are dedicated to supporting community organizations.

6. National Center of Community Organizations.

7. This data pertains to the year 2001.

8. Cacerolazo: slang for a citizens’ demonstration, clattering their pots and pans,
either from their windows and doorsteps, or marching in the streets.

9. Aerolineas Argentinas (Argentine Airlines, formerly an Argentine firm) was pri-

vatized in 1997, and acquired by Spanish capital. In 2001, the enterprise declared
bankruptcy and fired most of the employees. The employees protested vehemently.
Finally, Aerolíneas reopened, financed by Spanish and Argentine capital.

10. Corralito (little corral) is the popular name given to the system implemented by
the government to inhibit financial outflow from the banks, on December 21, 2001.
The system freezes the bank accounts, so that account holders cannot touch their
own savings.

11. These statistics are from the year 2001.

12. Source: Association for Progress in Communications, (APC), http://www.apc.org/

espanol/index.shtml.

13. http://www.cusoft.org.uy/docs97/agenda.zip.

14. Source: interviews with key informants.

8 Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment: Experiences
in the Former Yugoslavia

Veran Matic

[This chapter tells the fascinating—and inspirational—story of how media

systems can be threatened, and of how they can be resourceful and resilient
in the face of threats. This chapter is constructed using selections written
over a two-and-a-half-year period and begins with a BBC Online news story.
—Editors]

“Press Freedom Hero” Award

BOSTON, May 3, 2000—In Boston today, on the 50th anniversary of the Vienna-based
International Press Institute, IPI, an elite organisation of directors and editors-in-chief
of world media, World Press Freedom Hero awards have been awarded for each of the
last 50 years. Alongside Veran Matic, other award recipients were Adam Michnik, Jiri
Dienstbier, Catherine Graham and more. At the press conference, Matic launched an
international campaign to help the media in Yugoslavia. To illustrate the plight of the
media, he spoke about media repression in the former Yugoslavia over the past few
years: 26 employees of the media have been killed or died in accidents, none of which
has ever been fully investigated; fifteen journalists have been arrested and at least 6 of
them have been given sentences ranging from 10 days to one year imprisonment; at
least seven journalists have been beaten up and physically injured; 178 public requests
for radio station licences have been refused.

Yugoslavia began falling apart following the death of “the immortal son”
of the Yugoslav people—Josip Broz Tito, on May 4, 1980. Undoubtedly,
Slobodan Milosevic provided crucial momentum in the disintegration
process after his accession to power in 1988. The following year, at the
celebration of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo near the
province’s capital of Pristina, Milosevic first announced that the Serbs
might have to wage a new battle for their freedom. In 1991 the final stage
of the Yugoslav disintegration began to unfold—first skirmishes and short-
lived armed conflict in Slovenia, the northernmost Yugoslav republic, then
war in Croatia, and finally, in 1992, war in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well.
160 Veran Matic

Macedonia managed to escape unscathed from Yugoslavia and declared

independence. The signing of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord put a stop to
bloodshed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. From 1998 onward, another armed
conflict escalated in the predominantly Albanian-populated southern
Serbian province of Kosovo. After the failure of the peace negotiations in
Rambouillet, France, NATO launched a sustained air-strike campaign
against Yugoslavia. Yugoslav armed forces subsequently expelled about
800,000 ethnic Albanians from the province.
This is the shortest possible summary of the tragic events spanning the
last decade of the twentieth century in the former Yugoslavia. Of course,
Serbia is the focal point. Complex political conflicts were taking place as a
consequence of a “discovery” of national sentiment and erosion of com-
munist ideology, but the clash between traditional and modern values also
played a role. The first multiparty elections in 1990 were marked by a
gloomy atmosphere imbued with a sense of impending doom, fear, and
alleged threats to national identity as perceived by the general public.
In March 1991 mass protests against the regime took place in Belgrade.
These demonstrations were the first sign of citizens’ deep-seated discon-
tent. After the failure of the first demonstrations, civil protests recurred
almost each year. However, this did not seriously threaten Milosevic’s
regime, which was relying on several pillars of power: total control of
economy, judiciary, police, and army as well as a monopoly of the
media—television and radio broadcasters in particular. The first real polit-
ical challenge to the regime were the 1996–1997 mass civil protests
sparked by Milosevic’s brazen attempt to rig the local elections. Milosevic
ultimately lost power in about forty major cities and towns in Serbia.
Thus, the momentum of resistance was transferred to the grassroots level.
Independent media were becoming increasingly more important in this
process in comparison with democratic political parties. Radio B92
expanded its network to additional thirty local radio broadcasters
throughout the country. Local print media also formed their own profes-
sional association.
Radio B92 was founded in 1989 as a small, urban youth radio station. In
a short period of time, this local urban broadcaster—cherishing a specific
style and taste in its approach and manner of communication with its
listeners—developed into a radio station featuring the best, the most credi-
ble, and the most objective current affairs and news program. While its
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 161

popularity skyrocketed, B92 was also launching public campaigns against

war, hatred, poverty, and politicians’ manipulation of ordinary people.
Radio B92 quickly expanded its activities to encompass publishing,
cultural affairs, music and film production, and the Internet. With each
new field of activity, we were not only attracting larger audiences but
expanding our potential impact on society.
Repression against the independent media was particularly conspicuous
in times of severe political crises. The independent media were never a
mouthpiece for disunited and fragmented political opposition but an
authentic, genuine voice of the entire civil sector. They were constantly
targeted by the regime by way of police force and abuse of legal powers. In
November 1998, the Serbian parliament adopted the notorious Public Infor-
mation Act intended to suppress any critical voice in the country. This was
a part of the preparations for the war in Kosovo. On March 24, 1999, the
state introduced censorship, Radio B92 was banned, and persecution of
journalists and editors began. In April 1999, Slavko Curuvija, proprietor
and editor-in-chief of newsmagazine Evropljanin, was murdered. The perpe-
trators of this crime have never been found.
When the war in Kosovo came to an end, B92 had to start from scratch—
searching for new premises, new transmitters, even a “temporary” new
name—B2-92. The media once again gave crucial impetus and energy to
the discouraged opposition to the political elite.

Statement Delivered in Seattle

[The raid and closure of Studio B and Radio B92 prevented Veran Matic
from attending the “Shaping the Network Society” symposium in Seattle
on May 20, 2000. Douglas Schuler read the statement that Matic had sent
via e-mail. Matic’s chair was left vacant and his name card was left on the
table as a visible reminder of his absence.]
This is the speech that was delivered in Seattle in my absence:
When I began preparing for this trip to Seattle I had planned to discuss
the experiences of our radio and our media association with new tech-
nologies in resisting repression in Yugoslavia. We were also to discuss the
role of new technologies in the promotion of human rights, freedom of
expression, and all other freedoms. For me, the most important part had
to do with our development. We expected the repression to increase and
162 Veran Matic

we expected to be in a situation where we would have to be very creative

in order to survive and continue operating under a dictatorship.
We hoped to complete these important preparations and to be ready for
a steamy autumn when the first elections are due. I had wanted, here in
Seattle, to present the projects we hoped would help us operate much more
efficiently. These include new networking technology and new means of
distributing information, research, training, and other projects.
In the meantime, unfortunately, we have been banned for the fourth
time in our history. Several other media outlets went down with us. We
have had to resort to every possible alternative form of broadcasting. In sit-
uations such as this, it is extremely important that the lines of communi-
cation are maintained. During the ban of 1996, we fought back alone with
the help of the Internet and satellite. Radio programs were sent via Inter-
net to Amsterdam (and later London) and them beamed back to local radio
stations and individual listeners via satellite (Pantic 1999). Our position is
now much easier because we have a network of more than fifty radio and
television stations that continuously receive our programs, produced by
journalists in various locations.
Within hours of the police occupation of our studios we were able to
resume production of news programs. These are relayed to local stations
around the country via satellite. Net-Radio has been launched and we are
preparing for 24-hour-a-day satellite broadcasts. We also deliver packages
of our television program to local stations. Where necessary these are
distributed on ordinary VHS cassettes, which are then screened in town
squares, clubs, and cafés. Our text news bulletin is printed out from our
website and distributed by hand in Belgrade and in towns in the heartland
of Serbia. We hope to be able to secure FM coverage of Belgrade within a
couple of days, effectively overcoming the ban.
Each of these moves, of course, increases the danger to us. The regime can
no longer back down. It has accused us of terrorism and all that that entails.
This is a clear signal that we have entered the final stage of the struggle for
democracy and that the regime has entered the final stage of its struggle
against everyone who wants to see democracy in Yugoslavia today.
If the opposition fails to achieve greater unity we will reach a situation
in which we will be isolated, even from one another.
Every broadcaster today needs help so that everyone could put up resistance
to bans and restrictions imposed on their work as successfully as possible.
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 163

Large-capacity, higher internet bandwidth as well as the means for electronic

communications are essential prerequisites.
Each new attack can be expected to be more brutal than the last. In
order to be able to respond rapidly and decisively we need the best possi-
ble communication technology.
Just yesterday Deputy Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj announced
that he would never again allow B2-92 back on the air and that the Asso-
ciation of Independent Electronic Media, of which B2-92 is the founder,
would also be banned. He went on to say that we would be reduced to
satellite broadcasts.
I don’t suffer from the delusion that Serbia will be a paradise after the
change of government. It is going to be very difficult after that change, and
the experience and knowledge we have and will acquire will be very impor-
tant in the promotion of human rights and freedoms in the period of tran-
sition. This will be a time when we will have to struggle against the dangers
of modern totalitarianism, commercialism, the drive for profit, soft democ-
racy, and pseudofreedom. What we are able to acquire now as assistance in
a technological sense will enable us make up for the years we now lag
behind in comparison to developments in the rest of the world.

Methods of Media Resistance—the Example of Radio B2-92

[Originally dated 10/22/2000]

Even though a certain amount of coordination and joint planning between
the independent media and the representatives of the Democratic Opposi-
tion of Serbia (DOS) was in place, the lion’s share of the job was done by
the independent media themselves. Support provided by international
organizations and donors was certainly important but not crucial. All the
planning, organizational structure, and methods of struggle of the inde-
pendent media against Milosevic’s regime were the result of their own
creativity, ingenuity, and effective strategizing. The example of Radio B92
and the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) clearly shows
how our own experiences, technological innovations, and creativity in our
programming contributed to the creation of a parallel and powerful infor-
mation system. Despite the repression, this system ultimately developed
into a source not only of unbiased and balanced news and information, but
of new social values as well.
164 Veran Matic

Even before it became clear that DOS achieved a historical victory in the
federal and presidential elections on September 29, 2000, the regime’s
preparations for the final showdown were already underway. Everyone
knew that Milosevic would not accept defeat and hand over the reins of
power peacefully. This was why illegally mounted links and powerful radio
and TV transmitters, above all in Belgrade, were activated precisely on
October 5. The first images of dramatic events in Belgrade on October 5
were broadcast from one of these RTV B92 transmitters in downtown
Belgrade. This was the footage rebroadcast by CNN that the whole world
could see. At the same time, this was the official launch of TV B92. Another
radio transmitter was set up by Radio Pancevo in Zemun as part of our
contingency plan—in case the police shut down our own radio transmitter.
The circulation of the independent press almost doubled during the period
from September 29 until October 5. Undoubtedly, this translated into
enormous political pressure on the regime.
As chair of ANEM in the former Yugoslavia, and former chief editor of
Belgrade’s leading independent radio station, Radio B92, I have often
heard questions such as the following: “How have you managed to
survive and develop the independent media in spite of the oppression
Milosevic’s regime has imposed for the last thirteen years?” Besides
displaying curiosity, the question often reveals reservations about
the authenticity of the local media scene. The answer is simple: our
actions have been inspired by a devotion to the original principles of
human rights, by the principles derived from the best tradition of jour-
nalism, and by a readiness to make changes regardless of the level of
oppression. Nevertheless, I have to emphasize that without the use of new
technologies, continuous experiments, and endless efforts to connect the
media and the entire network of independent organizations, mostly by
creating new media, it would never have been possible to develop media
networking and keep it alive. A number of situations have demonstrated
the crucial role of the Internet in overcoming censorship and other prob-
lems, as well as in strengthening and intensifying the democratization
process within the media, because now almost everyone can have their
own electronic media thanks to the Internet. However, the Internet is
not capable of providing solutions on its own. On almost every occasion,
it is necessary to merge the latest technologies with traditional media
techniques.
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 165

At present, we are trying to begin at the beginning. The Pact for Stability
in Southeast Europe has presented a usable model. The Stability Pact was
founded for the purpose of supporting democratic processes, peace, and
stability in this part of Europe. The underlying concept is reminiscent of
the Marshall Plan, which helped spur economic recovery and restore demo-
cratic values in Western Europe after World War II. An increase in local
cooperation among media could lead to the development of structures that
would help to eliminate border barriers in distributing free information
when free speech is radically choked.
The interconnection of regional media is necessary to resolve the cen-
sorship problem and combat other forms of oppression. The connection
between political and economic events within the region is extremely
high, and the fallout from radical political events leads to substantial inter-
ference. The attempt to clog the “infected” space from the outside has not
produced the expected results, while it has produced even bigger problems,
spreading them from the “contagion” epicenter. As a result, an inverted
“therapy” has to be applied—a broad opening. This can be achieved, above
all, by increasing the range of broadcast information. Having access to a
broad range of information, with in-depth quality, is extremely important
for any society that has experienced serious trauma stemming from war
and totalitarianism. Information resources of this type must originate
locally, since ordinary citizens are still very suspicious of anything coming
from abroad. At the same time, news and information from local sources
help suppress and root out the xenophobic frame of mind developed
under the former regime. Nationalist and neofascist political forces are
constantly endeavoring to present the “outer” world as hostile, alien envi-
ronment and recent history as a complex story of conspiracies and vicious
schemes. Radio B92 particularly sought to create programs aimed at pro-
tecting minority groups and at reinforcing the concept of diversity,
emphasizing that a diverse heritage is an advantage for the country we live
in. Often, such an approach was quite risky, but in time this became a
trademark of the projects Radio B92 was working on.
After the information epicenter of Radio B92 had been banned four
times, along with a number of stations within ANEM (there are more than
fifty of them), we were forced to resort to distribution using a combination
of many methods. It is of prime importance that the editorial staff remain
in Belgrade despite the daily menace. At present we have three dominant
166 Veran Matic

ways of broadcasting—radio, television, and the Internet—and we com-

bine them all.
The radio is broadcast on the Internet in RealAudio and MP3 formats.
Text-based news is distributed on the Internet in Serbian, Albanian,
Hungarian, and English. These announcements are designed in such a
way that they can immediately be printed and distributed as bulletins
in areas where there is no access to the Internet (which has been done
in a number of cases).
Apart from providing the news, the site offers analyses and daily discus-
sions of several topical issues.
Radio B2-92 is downloaded from the Internet and distributed via satellite
as an analog broadcast from the BBC satellite, and digitally using com-
mercially leased satellite time. In this way the satellite and Internet perform
two simultaneous functions. First, they broadcast information directly, and
second, they act as a “prosthesis” enabling simple rebroadcasting. As a
result, thirty radio stations in the country and ten or so within the region
are rebroadcasting the radio program, which is important because for most
citizens this is the only way of accessing B2-92. The stations cover parts
of Serbia, including Belgrade, and in this way they compensate for the
lack of free electronic media in Serbia. The idea of free regional program
transmission has practically been accomplished, and this transmission is
important for freedom of speech, for democracy, for resistance to war and
terror, and so on. The entire distribution is administered by media struc-
tures within the country, in cooperation with partners in the region. This
increases independence, the best strategies are used, and the imposition of
other strategies and distribution systems is avoided.
Apart from receiving the signal through ground transmitters, there are
numerous alternative ways of distributing the signal. A great many inde-
pendent television stations broadcast the B2-92 current affairs programs
covered as teletext from the website at http://www.freeb92.net. A huge
number of nongovernmental organizations arrange public access to the
program by receiving the signal from the Internet and rebroadcasting it
through public address systems in city squares, coffee shops, and clubs.
This has been the radio’s destiny for the past five years—an ongoing com-
bination of both supersophisticated and primitive means of transmission.
Such a range offers myriad combinations depending on local possibilities
and on one’s imagination. The production centers have been organized
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 167

flexibly. If the police storm the offices again, the program can be immedi-
ately produced from different locations connected with ISDN and from sites
where journalists trained in editing and live distribution can send material
to the main server. The server is controlled remotely and located in a place
where no staff are located. In case Internet traffic is disrupted or the tele-
phone lines are disconnected, the most important locations have wireless
connections (this has already been established as a parallel network) and
the broadcast will be resumed within ten minutes.
Television broadcasts can be arranged in various ways. Since the tech-
nology is complex, it is difficult to conceive of simple strategies and to
protect the production center. For the time being, production is based in
various minicenters. As for the main news, each center, branch office, and
local transmitter has equipment that enables it to broadcast material
through ISDN to the coordination center, where it is packaged into the
integrated current affairs programs. At the same time, a PC dish allows the
downloading of reports from other television stations. The center sends
the packaged news program via the Internet through a rented tunnel to the
center abroad. From there it is forwarded via satellite to local stations.
These later transmit the program via ground transmitters. In the same way,
the program reaches stations within the region from which it has been
rebroadcast, so that it can be watched in Serbia, including Belgrade. In this
case too, we are forced to combine the sophisticated and the primitive, so
the program is sent, often by car, to a center for satellite distribution
because of possible interference and frequent telephone traffic cutoffs.
In addition to the ground rebroadcast, the program is screened on video
projectors in squares, coffee shops, and clubs or at specialized video
projections in cinemas. Some private cable systems also rebroadcast the
program. The television program uses the site http://www.freeb92.net
and its news services and converts it into teletext format. The content of
other sites is also presented, which enables users to obtain very full infor-
mation. This is extremely important, because few people can afford to buy
newspapers, while independent newspapers are suffering newsprint short-
ages that limit their circulation. In some cities, with no local television
stations, rebroadcast via video senders is being used. The program is
received via satellite dish and recorded onto a VHS tape. Later, by means
of a video sender it is broadcast throughout the entire neighborhood at a
scheduled time published on leaflets and distributed as part of the scheme.
168 Veran Matic

In this way, it is possible to cover entire towns with the program, depend-
ing on the topography.
An additional level of communication and information provision is a
regular information service distribution through mobile-telephone short
message services (SMS). SMS is free of charge in Yugoslavia, and the most
important news from the site is packed into appropriate packages and sent
to interested mobile-phone owners. SMS is also used as means of com-
munication in extraordinary circumstances, during protests, periods of
violence, and so on. In addition, a lot more citizens in Yugoslavia own
mobile phones than computers. Thus this form of information infrastruc-
ture is of major importance, and can be averted only by preventing all
SMS distributors from accessing the local mobile-telephone system. In
this case the website is a central news checkpoint, which, beside being a
regular website, provides information to the classical distribution systems:
radio, television, satellite, microtransmitters, SMS, print, public-address
systems, cinemas, and so on.
Since the regime has threatened to take over control of the Internet or to
supervise Internet communication more rigorously, developing secure web
mail with the help of XS4ALL and MDLF is in progress. All appropriate
organizations and individuals will be able to use the freeb92.net domain
services, and traffic among those supplied with an address will be absolutely
safe, which is of great importance in Serbia nowadays. The only require-
ment is Internet access through any provider. A possibility for alternative
access is being prepared in case the state blocks the classic Internet access
(though this is hard to carry out, it is always necessary to have couple of
alternative options in order to prevent panic and to provide security).
The existing exchange of materials and programs, which has been
done in a traditional way via satellite, is moving to the Internet as well.
Correspondents from the province have been provided with laptop com-
puters and have been trained in editing and posting material prepared
for broadcasting. Like the central studio, all individual stations will be
able to use the material. To ensure security, servers outside the country
will be used. This will increase communications opportunities. Because
of similar projects developed by One World and the Baltic Media Center,
this form of communication will cover the entire region, which will also
increase the transfer of free information and will advance the spread of
media communications.
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 169

Sets of DV cameras and editing equipment have been provided to branch

offices and material distribution is carried out as if it were radio: the mate-
rial is sent directly to the central studio, but also posted onto servers so
that the stations within the network may use them and download them by
means of PC dishes. It is possible to combine DV cameras, laptops, and
satellite phones in cases where communication is unusually restricted.
Ongoing education is of major importance. Training journalists in
using the Internet, computers and software, digital recorders, and DV
cameras creates an integrated system in which a journalist turns out to be
a powerful medium for news production and distribution. Another aspect
of education is connected with training representatives of NGOs and
similar organizations in the use of the Internet as a tool for the creation
of their own media that can fit into broader information systems. At the
same time they would take responsibility for the information posted.
Media decentralization like this creates systems that can lessen the force
and influence of monopolies and processes that marginalize minorities
and marginal groups. Coordinating the central program with local pro-
grams by supplementing and synchronizing the information content ren-
ders the artificial issue of viability of local media pointless. A networked
local media loses its mark of locality—at the same time it is both national
and regional, minority and urban.
The possibility of carrying out these developing projects leads us to the
conclusion that it is necessary to create a new kind of journalist who, apart
from having elementary journalism skills, possesses a high level of respon-
sibility and knowledge of how all the media function. Such multiformat
skills are essential for a media system such as B2-92. It is in practice neces-
sary to introduce the concept of a universal journalist, not an encyclopedic
polymath familiar with a broad range of fields, but a professional familiar
with print journalism, radio and television, online journalism, and infor-
mation-distribution mechanisms (of his or her personal product). This
should be someone who knows how to take advantage of the technological
capabilities of the equipment and how to use the information available in
the most efficient way.
These new abilities are not all that is required, because the need for legal
protection increases with increased information transfer. Legal interpreta-
tion of the consequences of providing certain information is also needed,
as is information on legal regulations, on the results of expanding the
170 Veran Matic

limits of intellectual freedom, and so on. For this reason, a virtual network
of lawyers and legal media experts is being created to enable faster protec-
tion of journalists through the existing and real ANEM lawyers’ network.
By regionalizing the project, a more efficient network for monitoring the
threats to media and to freedom of speech is being developed.
Radio networks, television networks, print-media networks, and the
Internet media can only come together as an integrated media system if
they are connected with the Internet.
The controlling element that prevents this network of networks from
turning into a dangerous media monopoly is the network of nongovern-
mental organizations and movements. This is especially true of the cul-
tural and subculture institutions, which promote numerous progressive
causes but are neglected and marginalized in the main media arena as
media outsiders. This kind of networking is the only way to establish a
balance with the monopolized media controlled by a few people. If we
manage to preserve the media as communications channels independent
of business and government, the interests of diverse social groups can be
represented.
This is extremely difficult to achieve among public, state-owned facilities
and where other private or ideological monopolies exist—but in some peri-
ods, Radio B2-92 managed to function as a commercially successful
medium without losing its basic characteristics: political and financial
independence. The ANEM network also demonstrates that it is possible to
establish dynamic communication between public and private media
within the same network with the aim of cooperating in support of the
universal principles of human rights and of good journalism. Interaction
with other media networks and media from other countries is becoming
necessary for media functioning, which makes media isolation on the part
of a society quite impossible.
We are aware of the difficulties this kind of utopian project will face
in order to survive the period of transition and the conflicts that will
emerge from the free market once the authoritarian state and the
walled-off society are a thing of the past. We will do our best to preserve
these models in spite of all the misfortunes the transition period brings.
To do this we will rely on the same subversive use of new media and
new technologies that we now employ in pursuit of freedom in a hostile
environment.
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 171

B92 Today, between the Past and the Future

[Written in July 2000; supplemented in 2002]

In July 2000, the social and political climate in Serbia was rather paradox-
ical. The entire civil sector and independent media radiated positive energy
and optimism that a historical breakthrough would take place in the elec-
tions on September 29, but at the same time, the representatives of the
Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) were much more restrained. How-
ever, this picture slowly began to change for the better. It looked like the
independent media and the civil sector managed in time to transfer their
energy and optimism to opposition politicians. One of the key elements in
the crucial turning point was the regime’s brutal repression of the mem-
bers of the People’s Movement “Otpor” (Resistance). Torture, harassment,
and beating of young Otpor activists by the police and ruthless mercenary
thugs sparked popular revolt against the regime.
The media served as a particularly important fulcrum for the rebellion.
They were not only reporting on all the incidents, but also published infor-
mation and analyses of the ongoing changes in public opinion. Thus,
hopelessness and despair were replaced by optimism and determination to
bring about necessary changes.
To be able to speak a little longer on the subject of “B92 Today, between
the Past and the Future,” I will present a brief overview of B92 and its most
important projects.
B92 today consists of a diverse range of civic communications activities.
Radio B92 is the most successful radio station in Serbia, with the highest
ratings in the region it covers. Through the ANEM network, the program
is rebroadcast by up to seventy other radio stations in Serbia, Montenegro,
Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the entire world, via the Internet in MP3
and RealAudio format.
Television B92 has been the most interesting media product in Belgrade
in the last few years. It has one of the highest ratings in its viewing area,
with credible news programs, debate on formerly taboo issues, quality
popular science programs, cartoons, and live coverage of war-crimes trials
from The Hague. In terms of content, TV B92 may be seen as a public
service that has tried to develop a model through which it pays for itself.
Another key component is B92.net, a website serving as the shop
front for all B92’s projects. This site has the heaviest traffic of any site in
172 Veran Matic

the former Yugoslavia and is the only medium carrying news in Albanian,
Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and of course English. Its forum opens daily
debates among people of different nations and points of view and of vari-
ous political, social, and sexual orientations.
B92 publishing brings out more than forty books a year and two
magazines.
More than ten new CDs of the most popular local rock bands are
released each year under the B92 music label. The best known B92 DJs are
Boza Podunavac, Gordan Paunovic, and Vlada Janjic.
B92.Rex is a cultural center, with the international Ring-Ring festival
of world music, alternative theater, political debates, and provocative
presentations.
B92.wars 91–99 is a documentation center dealing with activities such as
the archiving of documents, books, studies, films, and oral histories of the
wars of the last decade. This program is designed to launch news as well
as educational and science projects in order to provide the public with
extensive information about events buried by state propaganda.
The B92.concert agency now hosts a series of concerts by the big names
in Roma music from around the region, as well as celebrated musicians and
DJs from all over the world—acts like Giles Peterson and Manu Chao.
B92 also organized two large concert tours. The “Silence Won’t Do” rock
tour was conceived as a protest tour with the three best young Serbian
bands at the time, to mark the first anniversary of the draconian 1998
Public Information Act intended to choke the independent media in the
country. The bands of the moment were Sunshine, Darkwood Dub, and
Kanda, Kodza, and Nebojsa, and they toured twelve Serbian cities and
towns in November and December 1999, with the extensive logistical
support of the ANEM network. Rock shows throughout Serbia repre-
sented miracles in themselves, after years of steady economic collapse that
rendered any efforts of local promoters to organize such events infeasible.
It was obvious that such spectacles would attract large audiences of young
people, and we took advantage of the momentum to organize parallel
roundtable discussions focusing on the state of the Serbian media in order
to stir up a nationwide public discussion on the issue.
Our “Rock for Vote” tour was even more ambitious, and the B92/ANEM
team pulled off another miracle—the biggest rock tour in the history of
pop music in Serbia, a traveling festival with six to eight bands playing in
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 173

twenty-five cities and towns throughout the country. All of this was organ-
ized despite enormous political pressure on the part of the regime while
Otpor activists (providing essential logistical support in the field) were
being molested, harassed, and detained by the police on a daily basis. We
managed to capture the attention of 150,000 young Serbian citizens, and
the final outcome of the 2000 parliamentary and presidential elections
proved that the main objective was achieved—80 percent of first-time
voters did go to the polls after all . . . casting their ballots to bring about
fundamental change in the country.
A rock tour, part of Save the Children and RTV B92’s “I Have a Say, Too”
campaign, was organized in June and July 2001. The tour of local bands
included cities with children’s centers. The campaign was aimed at edu-
cating the public on the issue of children’s rights. All profits went to
orphans and other children in need.
B92.communications is responsible for Internet provision and satellite
links. This involves technical support for our other activities as well as
commercial Internet provision. Increased communications capacity is
crucial for professional journalism, democratic processes, social reform,
NGO operations, the process of facing the past, links to other media,
and the exchange and dissemination of information.
B92’s idea to launch the truth and reconciliation process began to take
shape during Milosevic’s rule. In addition to producing the radio shows
“The Hourglass” and “Catharsis,” B92 published a whole series of books
about the wars and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Thus,
a translation of the book on the Srebrenica crimes was first published in
Belgrade, and only later in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In early 2000 the first
international conference, titled “In Search of Truth and Reconciliation,”
was organized. Journalists, intellectuals, and representatives of NGOs from
all the former Yugoslav republics took part. In May 2001 another interna-
tional conference, “Truth, Responsibility, and Reconciliation,” took place
in Belgrade. It featured the experiences of other countries going through
similar processes, particularly the experiences of the South African Truth
and Reconciliation Commission. Radio B92 set up a special documentation
archive on the wars from 1991 to 1999, collecting testimony, documen-
taries, video footage, books, and various documents related to this tragic
period. At the same time, exhibitions, screenings of documentaries, and
public discussions on these topics were being organized throughout Serbia.
174 Veran Matic

At this time, B92 is broadcasting the following programs:

Radio on
■
One FM frequency, certain segments of which are rebroadcast on more
than seventy radio stations that are members of ANEM
■
One satellite channel for the whole region, certain segments of which are
broadcast on more than thirty television stations belonging to ANEM
■
The Internet in MP3 and RealAudio format

Television via
■
Four television channels, with another twelve in the pipeline
■
Satellite
■
Another satellite for live coverage from The Hague
■
A third satellite is to be activated soon for the regional daily exchange of
news packages intended for a central news program with CCN in Croatia
and Mreza Plus in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

B92 Montenegro and B92 Kosovo are both in the pipeline.

The media group must be organized in this way in order to be able to
present its programming as efficiently and successfully as possible, so that
the content may have the broadest influence possible. If the distribution
goes awry, the quality programming could go unnoticed, which immedi-
ately means the entire project is unsuccessful. This often results in more
than just one unsuccessful project: it usually involves compromising the
goals that should have been achieved.

Basic Features of the B92 Program Concept

Some of B92’s activities in the past have functioned as an informal truth-

and-responsibility commission.

B92 Radio
B92 radio has for years broadcast a weekly program called “Catharsis.” This
uses investigative reporting and professional radio reports to reveal war
crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. The idea behind this is to “put
your own house in order first.” But it does not balk—usually in coproduc-
tions—at discussing crimes committed by other nations.
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 175

B92, for example, works with the media outlets and production houses
from Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. It has just finished a documentary on
the crimes committed in the territory of Kosovo, in Suva Reka (in copro-
duction with Kohavision, Albanian TV station from Kosovo) and on the
crimes committed in Western Slavonia (in coproduction with the Croatian
independent newspaper Feral Tribune).
The weekly program “The Hourglass” has won a large number of awards
for the two journalists who produce it. The program has tackled a series of
taboos, critically and without compromise, generating an ongoing polemic
on topics such as crimes, both actual and spiritual, as well as the issue of
lustration. By “lustration” we mean preventing those who breached the
laws and caused great tragedies in the region from continuing to work in
state and public institutions. For example, journalists who were actively
involved in the Milosevic propaganda machine are still working in state
television and receiving salaries from the state budget. They should be
allowed to work in private media outlets, but they should be forbidden by
the act of lustration to work in the media that should serve as a public
service and that are being financed by the taxes of the citizens.
Such topics are also a priority in our regular news programs.

B92 Television
One of our highest-rated programs is the series “Truth, Responsibility, and
Reconciliation.” This presents the most significant films on war crimes,
and films that present an analytic and documented view of the fall of
Yugoslavia. The films are followed by live debate among witnesses, victims,
and perpetrators of the events with experts, historians, and the like.
We produce television documentaries as research on individual cases.
These have included films about crimes in the Croatian region of Slavonia
and films about the role of state television in inciting crimes. A film inves-
tigation of crimes against Muslims in Strpci and Sjeverin has been com-
pleted. In that investigation the crime against sixteen Muslims is
reconstructed and the murderers are discovered. After the film was
released, charges were brought against them; two of the men were arrested
and are currently facing court trial in Belgrade. This is a very good exam-
ple of how investigative journalism can initiate change within a society.
Through this film, the Muslims in this region can witness how the Serbs
exposed the crimes and found the murderers, thus creating the mechanism
176 Veran Matic

for their later trial. By this gesture, although it is painful for them to go
through this horror again, they still have a feeling that the matter is over;
no matter how hard it is for them, they also feel that justice can be satis-
fied. This may be the best example what we want to accomplish through
such initiatives.
These projects frequently rely on coproductions. We are currently collab-
orating with Pristina’s Kohavision TV on a major documentary about
crimes against forty-eight Albanian civilians in Suva Reka in Kosovo.
Through our coproductions we are building professionalism and empha-
sizing the dynamics of collaboration. This is often necessary—for instance,
B92 does not have access to material on crimes committed in Kosovo,
while Kohavision cannot work on the story of mass graves around Belgrade
without serious risk.
Direct live coverage of the trials in The Hague as a joint project with
IREX is one of our largest undertakings. This is not only because of the
technical requirements of covering the trial itself, but also because we
are able to produce a whole raft of supplementary material. This includes
live reports from our correspondents as well as programs about the way the
court works and about the prosecution and detention center. This serves
as an educational program for the entire society on the way justice works
in the West. It is a chance to see a court that has integrity and to under-
stand how that integrity is achieved. This project also includes programs
about the crimes, interviews with experts on the trial, and coverage of past
trials in which sentences have already been handed down. We have also
produced programs about the media corruption of the past under the title
“Lest We Forget.”

B92 Documentation Center

The B92 Documentation Center organizes public debates that are filmed
and then broadcast on television. Debates are organized throughout Serbia
via our website. Thus, for example, several debates on the topics featured
in the book How Did I End Up in a War?, published in Croatia, were organ-
ized. Participants from all sides in the wars in the former Yugoslavia took
part in these panel discussions. The exhibition of photographs by Ron
Haviv also caused a tumultuous response on the part of some members of
the public, which, in turn, was the occasion for organizing several debates
on this issue. These are only some of the issues raised by RTV B92.
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 177

B92 Publishing
B92 Publishing produces books on war crimes and the experiences of other
nations in the process of confronting the past.
B92 also organizes conferences on truth, responsibility, and reconcilia-
tion. In terms of sheer volume we have done much more than the state in
this area to date. This kind of engagement is based on the belief that
■
If we do not grasp our recent past, we will build our present and our
future on false assumptions, beliefs, and stereotypes.
■
If we do not face the errors of our past, we will again seek excuses for our
present in the same place Milosevic sought them—in the guilt of others,
global conspiracy, and so on—rather than in the weaknesses of the society.
These weaknesses must be faced in order to understand reality.
■
If we do not fully comprehend our reality, reform programs will be based
on false premises.
■
The problems of the repressed past will boomerang, like the permanent
problem of lack of cooperation with the tribunal in The Hague, or the
problem of Mafia and police links, or problems with the business elite who
amassed their wealth through privileges granted by Milosevic.
■
Without a radical break with the past there will be no change in the
cultural model under Milosevic, which has overwhelmed the entire society,
from culture, through education, to the media.
■
Unless we face the past, we will never know what is good for us and what
is bad for us.
■
By not facing the past, we neglect our duty to the future, leaving new
generations to pay our debts, just as our generations have paid for the
repression of World War II in our country. This gave rise to new vengeance
forty years later.
■
And, finally, without engagement we will be unable to demonstrate
authentic belief and strong will to institute changes that should benefit
every single individual.

This is a very difficult project. People are finding it very difficult to face
the past. The wounds are still open and people’s reactions are often highly
emotional. Pressure from the right is disrupting some events, such as the
exhibition of photographs by Ron Haviv and certain debates. But some very
noble human characteristics have also emerged from these debates. This is
178 Veran Matic

a promising sign, indicating that it is possible to undertake a program of

cleansing and healing, both of the society and of the individual.

The Present

For the past year and a half, B92 has been trying to obtain licenses for
national coverage of the whole of Serbia. After a series of skirmishes and
our refusal to compromise, some progress has been achieved and we have
received temporary licenses. We are now working on implementing our
project for national coverage that will enable us to be competitive in the
market. We ignored the prime minister’s refusal to extend our coverage,
when he said “We’ll give them medals, but not frequencies.”
We have leased a building in which we will bring together all our oper-
ations, which at present are scattered throughout six locations around the
city. This will increase our efficiency and cut costs and, by interaction
among the different media, will result in a stronger influence on the
audience.
We have recently finished the privatization of the part of government
owned capital, and MDLF (Media Development Loan Fund) became one of
the owners. B92 employees now own 70 percent of the capital, and MDLF
owns the remaining 30 percent. (MDLF is known for supporting ideas and
initiatives in the media sector worldwide). In this way, we will succeed in
keeping an independent editorial and business policy as well as shield
ourselves from media moguls and the media monopoly.
Our progressive and critical concept of the media as a watchdog fighting
for the public interest remains unchanged.
B92 has managed to keep its balance in a position where it has had to
participate in the changes taking place in society, to expedite reforms and
other aspects of the transition, and to educate the public about the
inevitable hardships they are living through—in other words to support
the establishment of a legal, efficient, democratic state. At the same time it
must act as a watchdog and be uncompromising in its criticism of the
shortcomings of the authorities, along with any irregularities, injustices,
and abuses that may occur.
We are now hard at work transforming our management, bringing in new
people who are not burdened by the legacy of the past and by a guerrilla
mentality. Intensive training and exposure to new experiences are assisting
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 179

us in formulating new strategies and structures, which is all part of our day-
to-day job. The constant attention of experts brought in by IREX (the Inter-
national Research & Exchanges Board is the premier U.S. nonprofit
organization specializing in higher education, independent media, Internet
development, and civil-society programs in the United States, Europe,
Eurasia, the Near East, and Asia) and of those who have been connected
to the B92 project for a long time gives us an opportunity to evaluate these
changes ourselves.

The Future

A series of public-service-style programs on B92 radio and television are

being planned on the following topics.
■
On privatization, in cooperation with Ministry of Privatization
■
On savings, with the Yugoslav national bank
■
On the rational consumption of electricity, with the Ministry for Energy
■
On the badly needed new cultural model
■
On the development of local-government democracy, which is impossi-
ble without professional local media
■
On the fight against corruption, which is impossible without constant
public questions, investigations, and checks and balances
■
On the freedom of speech and the need to monitor the repression of
journalists and the media
■
On young people and the challenges they face
■
On the transition, as a public educational service
■
On nonviolent conflict resolution
■
On violence and terrorism, and on the radical right and their ideas and
development
■
On new technologies and opportunities to catch up with the rest of the
world

To a large extent the independent media have retained the credibility and
confidence of the public. This is why they are the simplest tool for the
democratization of society and for the establishment of peace and stability.
By opening up the region, B92 is attempting to create channels of
communication for all the processes involved in stabilizing the region.
180 Veran Matic

Without the flow of information from credible institutions, of which the

region has precious few, there will be no open communication on other
levels.
It is most important that B92 cooperate with nongovernmental organ-
izations, as well as with government and state bodies, cultural institutions,
and international organizations, in a series of programs and projects that
demonstrate the people’s resolve for uncompromising reform and change.
This has been a very brief glance at a complex project that has been built
up over thirteen years. It will continue to develop, as a genuine project that
encourages a range of initiatives and that supports individuals and groups
in any country, in any part of the world under the yoke of dictatorships
and tyranny, any place where there are problems with political and social
transition and with the vision of the future.

Confronting the Past, Facing the Future

This chapter was written several months before ( July 2000) the peaceful
revolution in Serbia on October 5, 2000, which toppled Slobodan Milosevic
and his regime.
What is the real contribution of Radio B92 to the development and
strengthening of civil society in Yugoslavia? It would be very difficult to
assess the contribution of various participants in this lengthy, painful, and,
quite often, extremely risky process. However, it is possible to present an
outline of Radio B92’s impact. The process of social transformation—from
extreme nationalism, xenophobia, and widespread fear to democratiza-
tion, tolerance, and optimism—is still an almost alchemical mystery. But
these are the challenges that every serious analyst of social and political
processes and of the traumas of the past has to confront. During the
Milosevic regime, Radio B92 was something of a shelter for all minority
groups—antiwar activists, opponents of nationalism and war, members of
ethnic minorities, young draft dodgers, refugees who found themselves in
Serbia after suffering the horrors of war, and NGOs fighting for basic
human rights. The voice of truth and reason in such times involves not
only encouragement but also a call for action. This was why Radio B92 was
under constant pressure from the regime. Thousands of well-educated and
creative people have been a part of B92 for the past decade. Their crea-
tivity, as exemplified in the programming of Radio B92, was a precious
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 181

experience and the best antidote to hopelessness and despair. Harboring

hope and keeping it alive was the most essential task of Radio B92, which
helped interconnect and develop citizens’ consciousness and social
progress in Serbia and Yugoslavia.
Radio B92 was founded in 1989 and banned four times—in March 1991,
then in 1996, in 1999, and the last time in 2000.
After B92 was taken over by the apparatchiks of the Milosevic regime in
the midst of the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, an international
campaign under the name of Help B92 was launched. The epicenter of this
campaign was in Amsterdam, with the support of the Dutch ISP XS4ALL,
with which OpenNet (B92’s Internet department) had been cooperating
since 1995, and with help from the cultural center De Balie. The ultimate
objective of this campaign was, above all, to attract the attention of the
international public, which was at the time riveted to the refugee crisis in
Kosovo and to the NATO bombing, to the fate of B92 and its staff. Help B92
was also intended to show to the B92 staff that despite the war, they had not
been forgotten and still enjoyed the support of international media activists.
One of the actions organized by Help B92 was NetAid, a twenty-four-hour
nonstop program on the Internet (netcast) consisting of messages of support
and music dedicated to B92. The well-known musicians and DJs who gave
their support included REM, Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys), Sonic Youth,
Mike Watt (Minutemen/Firehose), Kruder & Dorfmeister, Sofa Surfers, John
Acquaviva, and many others. Radio B92 celebrated its tenth birthday in exile
with its first NetAid organized on May 15, 1999. NetAid events were held five
times in all; the last ban was on May 17, 2000, several days before I was
due to appear as a guest in Seattle at Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility’s (CPSR) “Shaping the Network Society” symposium. During
the following five months we managed to implement a strategy that was
instrumental in the way the dictator was overthrown.
At that time B92 was known as B2-92 because the regime, during the
previous banning, had hijacked our premises, our name, our equipment, and
everything we had. Within hours of that banning we had resumed trans-
mission from an illegal location (where our studio is still located) via an
Internet connection to an uplink outside the country. This distributed our
signal to about thirty local stations inside Serbia. Interest in our news pro-
gram was growing daily. We rapidly created a situation in which, for the first
time, the rest of the country was receiving better information than the
182 Veran Matic

capital. This was the beginning of the end for Milosevic, because this is when
we began creating the concept of the march on Belgrade, which happened
on October 5. We knew we had to cover as much territory as possible and so
began creating the Pebbles project, a ring of transmitters outside Serbia’s bor-
ders that would supplement the broadcasts from local stations in Serbia. We
also launched a television program from an illegal location in Belgrade.
We established:
■
Several illegal studios in Belgrade for the preparation and broadcast of
radio and television programs and web content.
■
A studio in Bosnia that enabled the repackaging of programs and trans-
mission to the satellite; we combined distribution of television programs
on cassette with distribution via the Internet; the radio station was oper-
ated remotely via the Internet from Belgrade.
■
A satellite uplink in Bosnia-Herzegovina from which the radio and tele-
vision programs were distributed to the transmitters of local stations and
to NGOs in places where there were no independent stations.
■
We installed a powerful radio and television transmitter directed to
Belgrade and Vojvodina on a mountain in Bosnia (this was blown up,
probably by supporters of Milosevic or Karadzic and Mladic on the first day
of transmission; however, we quickly restored the system and set up new
transmitters).
■
We established a news system on a high mountain in Romania that
covered the territory of Serbia.
■
We established an illegal television transmitter in central Belgrade in a
municipal building housing many opposition representatives who could
mount a defense of the transmitter, which began broadcasting on October 5
in agreement with opposition leaders.

We acquired mobile equipment that did not weigh journalists down too
heavily. We also insisted on several sets of communication equipment to
connect journalists, which was extremely important for the safety of each
journalist and editor. We leased a number of illegal apartments in which
journalists and editors could hide from possible danger.
When the march on Belgrade began, we had organized total coverage in
order to create a winning atmosphere, to show the resolve of the demon-
strators to see it through to the end, and to present every incident involv-
ing the police, so that the world would be aware of what was happening
Civil Networking in a Hostile Environment 183

moment by moment. By that time the ANEM network covered almost all
of Serbia. On October 5 we managed to reclaim our premises that had been
seized by the regime eighteen months earlier.
That day marked a new period in the development of B92 (we are using
our original name again).
We resumed operations as a multimedia platform, the highest-rated
radio station in Belgrade, the emerging television channel, and the most-
visited website in Serbia. All of these operate as separate media, but with a
high degree of interaction, in order for each of them to become more
efficient and stronger together.
The new democratic authorities have not realized the importance of the
independent media in the transition period; they have not grasped the fact
that these media can become a dynamo for reform and change. Instead of
redressing the injustices done to the independent media by the Milosevic
regime, the government decided to freeze the situation. This left the inde-
pendent media in a disadvantaged situation, because most of them still do
not have the licenses they were denied, for political reasons, by the Milo-
sevic regime. Meantime, those broadcasters who had acquired privileges
under the Milosevic regime continued to enjoy these privileges under the
new authorities in exchange for their loyalty and their propaganda
services. Subservience was regarded as of higher value than professionalism
and unbiased reporting. The independents continued to struggle.
Today, a year and a half later, new broadcasting legislation is being
adopted. Under this legislation the government will again have a predom-
inant influence on the allocation of frequencies. There is a measure of
disappointment among the media, but also great maneuvering space for
new battles for unbiased journalism.
B92 has not changed its concept: it still plays the role of watchdog of
democracy as well as actively assisting and supporting reform processes.
We are trying to present B92 as a regional project because it is the only
media company that has positioned itself in a balanced way between the
past, the present, and the future. Only B92 has provided comprehensive,
live coverage of the Milosevic trial in The Hague, through our own satellite
system with a crew covering all the events from The Hague.
Without properly facing the crimes of the past, without acquainting all
citizens with what was done in their name, it is impossible to create a
concept of a better future. A repressed past will always return.
9 Rethinking Telecenters: Microbanks and Remittance
Flows—Reflections from Mexico

Scott S. Robinson

The community telecenter movement is barely underway in Latin America

(see www.tele-centros.org). Telecenters share many different labels
(e.g., Centros Tecnológicos Comunitarios in Argentina, Infocentros in El
Salvador, Cabinas Públicas in Peru, Centros Comunitarios in Mexico). But
in essence, they are public places where for a reasonable fee users have
access to the digital resources of the Internet, some information technol-
ogy (IT) training, and local content development. Telecenters can be inter-
preted as cybercafés with a social conscience, and may be perceived to be
in competition with each other. Both offer Internet access, but telecen-
ters are grounded in community protests and organizations while cyber-
cafés are strictly commercial. While the first phase of pilot telecenter
projects (1997–2001) is now over, or should be, many of the lessons
learned have yet to be assimilated by policymakers and funding agencies,
domestic and international, allegedly concerned about digital inclusion (or
the conventional misnomer, “divide”).
Meanwhile, public schools and libraries languish without connectivity,
and in the name of privatization and structural adjustment throughout
the region social services have been curtailed across the board. At the
same time, the let’s-get-everybody-connected slogans, such as those that
appeared in an April 2000 Time Latin American edition, confuse public
opinion. Moreover, costly, hardware-based, high-profile, difficult-to-
replicate pilot programs may be polarizing the development business
(or is it the business of development?).
The World Bank is galvanizing a Global Development Portal,
www.worldbank.org/gateway, which is encountering significant opposi-
tion among nongovernmental organizations. Current funding sources and
186 Scott S. Robinson

independent websites may be displaced by the institutional megainertia of

one of the world’s foremost development agencies, whose actions (and
inactions) influence many agendas everywhere. The major players, both in
the IT industry and in the public sector, are trying to position themselves
to benefit from rolling out connectivity to the digital have-nots through-
out the region. And all of this is taking place in a context of countries with
limited if not null economic growth.
Few are lobbying for public policies that employ the public sphere to cat-
alyze social development with Internet-based financial institutions linked
to local organizations. These organizations would provide the connectivity
allowing diaspora groups from many lands to finance projects they design
and control (there are precedents far away: www.communitybank.com.au).
And it may turn out that without these policies, fewer than expected can
play in the “new economy,” because the entrance fee is exorbitant for the
majority who today and tomorrow will have no telephone, no personal
computer at home, and no credit to acquire the basic components of
knowledge-society participants.
The argument here is simple: community telecenters represent a cost-
effective strategy for offering digital services (especially nowadays, when
bidirectional Internet by satellite access is becoming an affordable reality
in the region). When paired with microbanks, telecenters can be paid for in
large part by migrant organizations, which may invest in this mechanism
to lower their communication costs with kin at home while dramatically
lowering their remittance-transfer costs as well.
In today’s world where borders are porous, just lines on maps, the savings
on costly telephone calls and the usurious transfer tax currently being paid
to Western Union, Money Gram, and fellow competitors could more than
pay for the dual telecenter networks. This strategy would work among the
transnational migrant neighborhoods in the North and in the villages,
towns, and urban slums in the New South (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Haiti, parts of Colombia and
Ecuador, to cite Latin American examples). To be fair, there are analogous
networks of migrants inside and ringing São Paolo, Buenos Aires, and
Santiago, all centers for low-skill jobs in the southern cone of the Western
Hemisphere, drawing migrants from Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and beyond.
The impediments to this proposal are regulatory—that is, political—no
longer technological.
Rethinking Telecenters 187

If the Second (socialist) World disappeared after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
perhaps that label may now be transferred to those migrant populations
beyond another wall—one that separates those with connectivity from those
without. Certainly, the millions of foreign migrants working in flourishing
industrial and service economies in the North (including the Gulf states) and
far South (e.g., Johannesburg, Capetown, Singapore, and Sydney) represent
the perverse, new Second World created by the surging capitalist economy
and today’s consolidated global labor-migration patterns. However, these
minorities are today spread throughout many lands, and live on the fringes,
often sharing an illegal status. They are relatively unconnected to digital
services, are increasingly organized in hometown associations (HTAs), and
share a purchasing power not found at home, in everybody’s Third World.
Meanwhile, the connectivity rate, or digital density, is growing for the
inhabitants of the First World and their cultural cousins among the elites
throughout the class-and-ethnically-polarized Third World, whose masses
are obliged to migrate so that families may survive. A strong argument
could be made that we are witnessing a return to the colonial dual
economies of yore. The metropolitan capitals and ports generate wealth
and work, feeding their own while exporting value abroad, while in
the traditional industrial and new technological cores, a Second World
provides cheap labor for the First.
Remittance economies now drive families’ subsistence strategies at home
in the South while fueling labor-intensive service and assembly industries
in the North (and far South). These economies exploit the migrants’ illegal
status and adaptability to harsh conditions as a result of their cultural and
kinship networking (an asset the economists label as social capital). In fact,
the migrant networks are a de facto employment agency subsidizing many
companies and regional economies.
In Latin America to date, digital inclusion is not a priority (some critics even
question the elites’ commitment to this process). For example, mediocre pub-
lic school systems and their dropouts are not being equipped with, nor are
their teachers and students being trained to use, today’s digital tools. While
some vanguard cities in the North offer free wireless connectivity (WiFi,
802.11b), most of rural Latin America is only watching television. Or, if they
are fortunate, they are chatting and superficially surfing the Net from strictly
commercial (and expensive from the perspective of local purchasing power)
cybercafés, where the available digital resources are vastly underutilized.
188 Scott S. Robinson

Similarly, public libraries, abounding in the North, are either nonexistent

or subsist with few books and services in the South. Nurses, always on the
underequipped, underpaid, and gender-sensitive front line of public health
services, staff rustic clinics in which medicines are scarce, work demands are
overwhelming, epidemics are underreported, and continuing education
courses are often unknown. Some migrants’ hometown associations are
supporting improvements to health services back home.
A few privileged public universities offer online extension courses, but
duplication of expensive efforts is rampant and planning for economies of
scale often nonexistent (even among U.N. agencies). Providing public-
domain information and training in its production and use is not a prior-
ity for policymakers in Latin America today, with the exception of the
unique INFOCENTROS project in El Salvador at www.infocentros.org.sv
and perhaps the www.telecentro.cl project in Chile. Argentina is retooling
the destiny of its incipient national network of community technology
centers (www.ctc.net.ar). Before the October 2002 federal election, Brazil
failed to open a transparent funding spigot with the vast resources avail-
able in its FUST program (Fondo Universal Servicios de Telecomunicacoes).
Colombia is launching Compartel with Telefónica de España at the
helm (experiencing technical and financial problems with its partner,
GILAT). Mexico has announced an ambitious e-Mexico program (www.
emexico.gob.mx)that may become a gold mine for hardware and software
providers, in accord with a top-down plan, dumping computers into local-
government installations without trained staff and without some degree of
consensus around the central query: What can the Internet do for us and
our community?
Thus, it should come as no surprise that universal access, microbanking,
and community telecenter services, as well as content creation attuned to
public, local needs, are either absent or are low priorities among public
telecommunications agendas throughout the region. Meanwhile, commer-
cial television generates demands for the delivery of knowledge and skills
that few countries in the South are committed to providing, much less
equipped to supply in the short term. This frustrated, pent-up demand for
access to the jobs, resources, infotainment, and opportunities implicit in
the new information economy may be one of the elements subtly fueling
widespread rural and urban discontent, understood to be more than the
everyday indignity of widespread poverty.
Rethinking Telecenters 189

The reality of capital (profits and loan repayments) and migrant-exporting

economies in the South conflicts with the rhetoric of expensive-to-maintain
Dot Forces, Digital Dividends, U.N. task forces (and documents) calling for
more attention to digital inclusion and exhortations preaching market-
driven development from the North. Increasing globalization appears to
translate into more food insecurity and environmental degradation, as
traditional farmers get forced off the best lands so that these can be used for
profitable export crops. In Mexico, for example, half the population lives
from and in the informal economy, and over half the population is by
official reckoning poor.
It should come as no surprise, then, that vast regions in many countries
now live from remittances from émigré family members obliged by condi-
tions at home to move abroad, with papers or without. These resources
now account for the majority of aggregate incomes in many small towns
and villages throughout the region (www.worldbank.org/wdr/2000).
This chapter proposes a novel use of ICT, linking the First and Third
Worlds via the transnational Second World of extensive migrant popu-
lations who already bridge the poles. As noted above, the idea is
straightforward: expand the extant, fledgling network of community
telecenters using either satellite or local Internet service provider (ISP)
Internet connections linked with local and regional microbanks. These
facilities can provide digital remittance services while offering a set of
generic financial, communication, education, informational, insurance,
and even e-commerce resources. For more information on telecenters,
see (www.idrc.ca/pan/telecentres.html.)
To begin, we need to ask who would use a rural or community telecenter,
especially if the best and the brightest have already left the village. Observing
the pattern of telephone usage in rural, migrant-exporting regions, we can see
that significant resources are invested in communicating with kin abroad.
Many of these communication exchanges, we assume, fall into the category
of “when-are-you-sending-money-home?” conversations. In Mexico reliable
estimates peg the total transfer costs of remittances at an average of 18 per-
cent of the more than U.S. $10 billion sent home every year by the more than
18 million Mexicanos who are living north of border, 10 million of whom are
relatively recent (25 years) migrants. This is now the second source of
foreign exchange for the Mexican economy, ahead of income from the
tourism industry in the national accounts.
190 Scott S. Robinson

In addition to having to deal with a poor exchange rate—one usually

below the going market of currency conversion—migrants pay a service
charge on both ends of the transaction. Together the transfer and com-
munication costs represent a significant chunk of capital that could be
redirected to create a rural microfinance system currently absent in most
regions of the Third World. The operational premise here is that practical
people will use the system if it represents a significant savings over current
practices and if it is secure, user friendly, linked to hometown associations,
and available close to home on both ends (see www.cap.org for a profile of
microfinance institutions).
The microbanks required to handle digital remittance transfers can assist
their clientele in exploiting certain benefits of electronic commerce and
can operate back to back with telecenters offering ICT training and skills,
which are useful in the migrant job markets. In addition, local people may
be trained to create and maintain a public domain of local information
and decision support systems, which are yet unavailable in Mexico and
other migrant-exporting countries, for example. The telecenter, on the
back side of the microbank, may also offer voice over the Internet proto-
cols (VoIP), distance-education services (www.icde.org), and access to basic
medical insurance for those who today have nothing. Simply put, this ini-
tiative could represent a win-win scenario for migrant communities North
and South.
What is required to jump-start this telecenters-cum-microbanks proposal?
Because migration networks are community based, each microregion is the
hub for its respective network of citizens who have left to work elsewhere.
Therefore, research needs to detail each migrant-exporting hub (regions
tend to share an overlap in destinations and patterns) as well as the
location of migrant clusters and the credibility of hometown associations.
Information would also be needed on the existence and location of credible
institutions open to negotiating low-cost digital alternatives for sending
money home with state-of-the art tools (credit unions in California, for
example), as well as on the community’s commitment to collaborating with
the proposal.
The goal is to develop a managed and secure system that drops the trans-
fer cost to a minimum, estimated to be about 2.5 percent of amounts sent,
while providing a series of Internet technology–based benefits and services
as well as an introduction to the culture of information, as asset by itself.
Rethinking Telecenters 191

In effect, the marginal condition of domestic and international migrant

communities, the Second World, remains a social liability. However, their
increasing political clout can be transformed into an asset—the motor for
local and regional development at home—by a judicious application of
ICT in conjunction with community will and local organizations. The
Mexican government for one now seems to understand the strategic value
of working closely with migrants and their organizations inside the United
States.
The issue of connectivity is being resolved by what promises to be a com-
petitive market in Internet-by-satellite services recently announced for
Latin America (see, for example, www.panamsat.com, www.gilat.com, and
www.newskies.com).
Whether connectivity is achieved by satellite or by dedicated lines
(which the Red Cientifica Peruana first demonstrated to be feasible in Peru
around 1995 and with joint ventures elsewhere), this proposal is no
utopian fancy. Instead it is a function of local infrastructure, the portal
players and their carriers, and, oftentimes, regulatory caprice.
A complicating issue is the lack of a clear and public commitment on the
part of Latin American national telecommunications regulatory bodies,
whereby universal access and competitive markets and pricing may be
induced by the rules of engagement and politics in each domestic market.
It is almost redundant to remind ourselves that the public sphere requires
such commitment from the appropriate agency of the state charged with
advancing and protecting the universal-access policy goal. Nor should we
forget the historical impotencey of civil society and/or nongovernmental
organizations’ (NGOs’) policy proposals in the increasingly lucrative and
oligopolistic Latin American telecommunications scenarios. This is cause
for major concern and debate. In addition, the latent complicity of the
regional development banks (for example, the Inter American Development
Bank) should call our attention to their lack of any systematic proactive
policy regarding the regional telecom services’ regulatory environment.
It may not be farfetched to suggest this waffling on such a key issue is
deliberate, employing the handy argument that we cannot violate
“national sovereignty” in this age of blatant globalization of capital flows
and market access. Without this pressure from the multilateral financial
institutions, local accountability, and citizen input, national regulatory
commissions are beholden to their clients: ruling elites, the small group of
192 Scott S. Robinson

international carriers and their associated portal players. This does not bode
well for the future public sphere and innovative proposals therein. One
option to counteract the closed-shop script now in play involves using
existing international organizations, such as the Internet Society, together
with coalitions of activist NGOs and progressive international funding
agencies (for example, the Canadian IDRC; see www.idrc.ca). These groups
could create countervailing pressures and credible policy proposals difficult
to ignore by all of the institutional and corporate actors involved.
The issue of the appropriate software for secure remittance transfers
and other banking and commercial functions is central to a project of
this nature. It requires an effective public key infrastructure (PKI) (www.
pkiforum.org), which consists of three components: a certificate authority
(CA), preferably to be installed in each country where operative; a registry
authority (RA) for each institutional and individual actor in the network;
and a repository of all certificates. Such a system also implies using a
personal digital ID card (readable with a biometric device, for example) to
be installed at both ends of the system. This is no small challenge, and
there are currently efforts to resolve the formidable cross-certification
issues (CA-to-CA operations, issues also linked to permissible encryption
software exports). Making secure remittance transfers possible on a large
scale requires resolution of the problems inherent in designing a PKI with
CA cross-certification (Moskowitz 2000).
Low-cost digital remittance transfers permit the creation of microbanks
on a broad scale in home towns, villages, and periurban neighborhoods. In
effect, each migrant could administer a personal account at a terminal with
an IP connection, from anywhere. To be sure, the established commercial
banking community in migrant-exporting countries such as Mexico and
others understandably do not embrace this financial innovation with
enthusiasm (although some innovations have been announced as the
competition increases). It is a situation analogous to the legacy technology
telephone (POTS) companies, pressing regulators to outlaw (as long as they
dare) VoIP or Internet telephony. There may not yet be a generic
microbanking model with the requisite off-the-shelf accounting and oper-
ational software, but the present convergence of interests and proposals is
today historically unique (see www.soc.titech.ac.jp/icm/icm.html). Again,
the points of resistance are regulatory, hence political—not a function of
the available technology.
Rethinking Telecenters 193

International NGOs and some of the major foundations assume

microcredit and banking to be a central issue on today’s agenda (see, e.g.,
www.gsips.miis.edu/ips1/ips1d7_IS581.html). In sum, digital remittance
transfers can capitalize local and regional microbanks in migrant-exporting
communities and countries. These microbanks and their associated money
transfer operations, once approved by national financial regulatory agencies
in each country, may be an appendix to established credit unions or local
savings and loan institutions. Each branch requires the requisite PC with
a reliable connection to the Internet and the PKI CA and RA software, as
well as the means for dispensing cash to clients. This latter function can be
the most problematic component of the proposed system, because the cost
of secure armored-car service to remote regions in Latin America is almost
prohibitive and logistically complex.
Until key local merchants are willing to accept debit cards issued by
microbanks, for example, the cash-dispensing function will remain an
obstacle for bank clients in the villages and small towns without regular
bank branches and orthodox automated teller machines. (In Mexico,
two-thirds of the nation’s 2,443 municipalities do not have a branch bank.)
The development of a low-cost, third-generation ATM for microbanks in
Latin America is an innovation waiting to happen.
The issue of “community currency” is relevant here. The concept of
“open money,” analogous to “free software” and hinged on trusting social
networks, may become an operational fulcrum of future microbanks
offering many services in the “virtual capitalism” predicted by today’s
visionaries (see www.openmoney.org.) While such speculation is far
removed from today’s context, it should remind us that money is a sym-
bolic system, and the rather closed circuits of migrant organizations from
the same set of villages and small towns offer a potentially fertile ground
for experiments relating to community currencies (Hart 2000).
On the back side of each village microbank there will be a telecenter—
a public, low-cost access point for the Internet and IP services, including
telephony. The voice over the Internet protocol service together with web-
cams alone will pay for the operation of the fully equipped telecenter. Each
telecenter may have five or six PCs in a LAN connected to the Net—some
by satellite and dedicated lines where available—and others may be
obliged to use dial-up services to regional ISPs in the meantime. Regional
fixed wireless options are also becoming viable, whereby microregions
194 Scott S. Robinson

share a single medium-speed Net connection while linking themselves

with unlicensed 2.4-GHz fixed wireless modems and antennas. Telecenter
users may not only communicate and see their relatives for less cost than
long-distance POTS calls involve, but also may have the wealth of Internet-
supplied information and content services at their disposal.
It is, however, important to distinguish a telecenter from a cybercafé.
A telecenter offers IT training and generates reliable local and regional
information, placing it on a website for public consumption. Cybercafés
offer Net access, but they have no or a very limited role in local institutions
and training programs. A telecenter may become a key auxiliary to schools
and clinics, offering continuing education for local teachers, nurses, and
doctors, if any. As noted above, a telecenter is a cybercafé with a local
heart, user training programs, and commitments to social programs.
The issue of who will create and maintain the continuing education courses
as well as lobby for their certification on the part of national education and
health authorities is central to the microbank-cum-telecenter strategy. The
issue cuts to the heart of the potential transnationalization of public services,
a process certain to raise the hackles of legacy bureaucracies. Basic and
intermediate IT training packages plus decision support systems—in addition
to elementary PC software usage plus Internet browsing—can be another
component of each telecenter’s menu of content services. For example, a
three-telecenter project in Morelos state, Mexico (www.telecentros.org.mx),
demonstrated a pressing need for decision support systems for small farmers,
high school students considering university study options, and municipal
employees navigating state and federal rules and resources.
Given the current rates of out-migration, the growing strength of home-
town associations, the improbability of major changes in the current
skewed global development model, plus the impossibility of attenuating
the observable and widespread ecological impoverishment in the diverse
regions, it makes sense to offer job skills that will be useful in the future
workplaces in the North (yes, online training for migration!). This is a need
that younger returning migrants have expressed to me in a number of
different locations within Mexico.
Viewed in this fashion, local telecenters complement microbanks by offer-
ing communication services, IT and other skills training, and continuing
education for local professionals who staff local institutions. (See www.
telecentros.org for information regarding Latin America–wide efforts to
Rethinking Telecenters 195

create telecenters, and www.telecentros.org.mx for access to a pilot microre-

gional community telecenter project in Morelos state, Mexico.) It remains to
be seen if cybercafé owners and operators are keen to collaborate with the
more socially oriented community telecenters, but if they do the resulting
network offers ample connectivity today for Mexican migrants. Paradoxi-
cally, the obstacle is the lack of points of amicable access inside the United
States, where the hometown associations have been slow to innovate with
Internet connectivity services for their respective constituencies. Public
libraries tend to not be user friendly points of Internet access for Latino
migrants.
On balance, microbanks capitalized by digital transfers from Second
World migrants in the North sharing Internet connectivity with telecen-
ters in small towns and villages in the South translates into another level
of consolidation of today’s parallel migration-fed remittance economies.
This regional dual economy wherein migrants are feeding their extended
families at home and subsidizing small and medium-size manufacturers
with their cheap labor in the North is now a vast, regional if not global
phenomenon. The geography is impressive, as noted; it extends from the
U.S.-Mexico border, around the Caribbean, and down the Central America
isthmus, in pockets throughout Colombia and Ecuador, and as far south as
Peru. And the Africa-Europe and South Asia–Middle East Gulf States’
energy economy–based networks are analogous.
Today this is a U.S. $100-billion-plus volume of transfers, larger than for-
eign aid and development loans combined. In order for the novel public-
sphere initiative proposed here to move forward, considerable research is
necessary to investigate these “markets,” and to create the series of reliable
databases for each community-based overlapping social network in each
national migrant stream. The Inter American Development Bank has begun
this task, via its Multilateral Investment Fund. In fact, this research has estab-
lished that the migrant-exporting Latin American and Caribbean countries
received U.S. $23 billion in 2001, an amount surpassing all the bilateral and
multilateral aid budgets for the region (Fernández-Vega 2002).
Today, that research is neither uniform in its coverage and detail, nor
available for many countries’ migrants. Research in Mexico has produced an
enormous body of materials (see www.embassyofmexico.org/english/4/3/
migration3.htm, as well as www.thedialogue.org/publications/lowell.pdf).
This information is often updated, because the government has finally
196 Scott S. Robinson

publicly recognized the importance in the national income accounts of the

more than U.S. $10 billion that Mexican migrants send home every year.
(This sum includes over $8 billion via commercial courier services, registered
by the banking system, and an estimated $2 billion by personal messengers;
accurate figures do not exist.) While the statistics are uneven, nevertheless
there are a few overview reports in the public domain offering current
data and profiles of migrant networks, remittance-sending patterns, and
resource use in home villages (see www.pop.upenn.edu/mexmig/, www.
globalexchange.org/economy/alternatives/americas/Immigration.html, as
well as www.thedialogue.org/publications).
For example, El Salvador is now considered a full-blown remittance econ-
omy, receiving approximately $1.5 billion a year from its transnational
community abroad (www.jhu.edu/~soc/pcid/papers/18.htm). Guatemala,
Honduras, and Nicaragua rank in the same category, although their respec-
tive national financial elites refuse to disclose accurate national-accounts
figures. For example, available El Salvadoran online data and analysis contrast
dramatically with those of its neighbor, Guatemala, where few credible
contemporary studies of the pattern of native Mayan out-migration and
remittance transfers appear at www.gtz.de/orboden/thiesenh/thi4_b.htm and
di.uca.edu.sv/publica/proceso/proc755.html. The same statement applies to
the rest of the Central American countries, with the exception of Costa Rica,
which receives many migrants (rough estimates peg it at 800,000 people)
from neighboring Nicaragua. Not too many of the million-plus Panamanians
leave home.
In sum, a substantive public sphere attuned to the needs of the extensive
migrant communities has yet to appear in most of the nations with
remittance-driven economies in the South. Given the current cyber–gold
rush underway whereby carriers, megaportals, cable companies, satellite ser-
vice providers, franchise ISPs, and all of the major IT players enjoy a feeding
frenzy in high-carat markets, many loosely regulated at best, it is unlikely
much priority will be assigned to the public sphere and the priorities of
underrepresented diaspora Latino migrant communities spread around the
United States, Canada, and Europe (often ignored or discriminated against
by their respective consular officers).
It may be that the extensive migrant communities and organizations,
today’s Second World, will create and pay for a network of microbanks and
telecenters to serve their own needs while simultaneously crafting a new
Rethinking Telecenters 197

digital public sphere in their home countries. This is not as far-fetched as

it sounds. Each telecenter would generate a menu of local and regional
information that municipal and provincial governments do not offer in
the public domain at this time. In effect, the telecenters would substitute
for certain functions of local government as well as educational and health
institutions (see som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/articles/villages.htm).
Again, it is paradoxical that those with the least may creatively gain the
most while generating a public sphere of information and accessible online
opportunities that national elites today are reluctant to offer, much less
support, with investments of the public resources they control. The Second
World may hold the key to an effective multiplier effect for their kin at
home, as well as for the balance of their respective national populations.
In addition, remittances today assure balance of payments’ stability. The
irony of this linchpin effect, linking the First and Third Worlds, should not
go unnoticed.
If the migrant organizations catalyze the telecenter and microbank
rollout in their countries, this would constitute a globalization irony bar
none. This scenario may soon turn into a reality in key Latin American
regions, given the following prerequisites: the convergence of IT-conscious
transnational migrant organizations, the growing rural microcredit move-
ment, a few pilot telecenter projects, an extensive network of cybercafés
throughout the region, some enlightened regulatory agencies on both
ends, available connectivity and open-source shareware, plus increased
innovation by IT-savvy local entrepreneurs. I trust it will happen soon.
How can you participate?

Notes

An earlier version of this chapter appeared in OnTheInternet magazine, 6(2) (fall/winter

2000): 20–24.
10 The Role of Community Networks in Shaping the
Network Society: Enabling People to Develop Their Own
Projects

Fiorella de Cindio

Many attempts have been made to provide a definition for “community

network” (see, e.g., Center for Civic Networking, 1993; Schuler 1994; Beamish
1995) or related initiatives, such as “free nets” and “civic nets.” Furthermore,
over the years, community networks (CNs) have addressed a variety of goals
and evolved along several paths. The original idea, the subsequent initiatives
and their evolution, their successes, and their failures, lead to a concept of CN
that includes:
■
Initiatives that guarantee everybody Net access, thus granting everybody
citizenship in the networked society (Gurstein 2000)
■
A free online environment designed to promote and favor communica-
tion, cooperation, and the exchange of services among citizens and all the
public and private members of a local community (nonprofit organizations,
government institutions, and companies), while simultaneously opening
the local community to online communication with other parts of the
world (De Cindio, Sonnante, and Cannada 1997); from this perspective, the
expression “community portal” has been applied
■
Virtual cities, interwoven with the real city, that support communication
and work, thus extending the city into a new dimension where time and
space constraints are reduced (De Kerchkove 1998)
■
Intelligence systems for local communities (Civille 2000; Schuler 2001).

All these characterizations are accurate, in the sense that they focus on
different aspects of CNs. However, probably the most adequate and pow-
erful way of representing CNs is as enabling environments that promote
“citizen participation in community affairs” (Schuler 2000). Going a bit
further, we could say that they incite citizens to conceive and implement
200 Fiorella de Cindio

projects of their own that are relevant to civic life through the interplay of
four elements:
■
The net—typically through thematic forums—brings people with related
interests together and encourages them to collaborate.
■
Civic/community networks focus on a specific geographic area, and this,
in turn, implies that online encounters of those who share an interest are
easily translated into face-to-face meetings.
■
The attention paid by civic/community networks to promoting “citizen
participation in community affairs” increases the likelihood that virtual
and real relationships will generate ideas for action and projects designed
to improve the quality of life for all the members of the local community,
a feature that does not rule out the possible business nature of the projects,
which may have an impact on people’s professional life in any event.
■
The community network provides a technological, organizational, and
possibly institutional context—that is, a computer-based cooperative
environment—that fosters the accomplishment of projects.

Briefly stated, CNs can be seen as the appropriate sociotechnical envi-

ronment for enabling citizens to develop their own projects that shape the
network society. I will try to give evidence for this on the basis of the nine
years of activity of the Milan Community Network (Rete Civica di Milano,
or RCM for short).
I first present RCM’s initial goals and design principles. Then, after a short
summary of RCM’s state of development, I describe several projects that have
been carried out over the years on RCM. These projects concern government
institutions as well as schools and nonprofit associations, but they are pre-
sented through their promoters’ stories and words. Finally, I summarize the
outcome of these projects and discuss whether and how they can be seen as
ways to shape the network society.

Declared Goals and Design Genes of RCM

When we started RCM, in September 1994, our “declaration of inspirational

principles,” designed as the network’s online presentation, stated that
RCM intends to make available to citizens an online and free environment designed to
promote and favor communication, cooperation, and the exchange of services among
various components of the local community: citizens, their groups and associations,
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 201

public-sector organizations and companies, enterprises that operate in various sectors

of the market, and information providers; thus helping guarantee the de facto right of
online citizenship to all, while opening the local community to online communication
with the rest of the world.

The above sentence includes the three basic goals we declared for RCM:
■
To provide citizens with access to the Net: a free and easy-to-use
environment offering everybody hands-on learning in information and
communication technology
■
To offer the various elements of the local community, especially its citizens,
a shared field for mutual cooperation
■
To affirm, two centuries after the French Revolution, the right of citizenship
in the global networked society

These three goals are largely shared, with different focus, by nearly all the
experiments in community networking. If we wish to extrapolate the pecu-
liarities of the Milan experience that make it significantly different from other
similar experiences, especially in Italy and elsewhere in Europe,1 it is proba-
bly most important to describe a set of features that are, to some extent, all
mutually related. I will call them the genes to stress that they come from the
origins of RCM and played a fundamental role in its development. It is no
accident that several authors, including Winograd and Flores (1986) and
Rheingold (1993), point out that the images and conceptual apparatus of
biology are well suited to a description and study of the evolution of the Net.
We realized “ex post” the fundamental role of these genes in explaining the
strengths and weaknesses, and successes and failures, of our initiative.

The University Gene

RCM was launched as an initiative of a university laboratory, within the
Information and Computer Science Department, rather than being pro-
moted by a local governmental institution (municipality or province,
roughly equivalent to a county) as was the case with the vast majority of
CNs in Italy and other European countries.
Like schools and libraries, universities are public bodies, but unlike local
governmental institutions, they are free from the direct influence of politics.
Especially in Italy, where every action, project, and idea is immediately
labeled either as “on the left” or “on the right,” this independence from pol-
itics has been a fundamental feature. As part of its university heritage, RCM
202 Fiorella de Cindio

adopted the institutional and “universal” approach. It believes it has a duty

to relate to all, starting with the local governments democratically elected by
the citizenry, and is committed to avoiding discrimination or favoritism and
instead to offering opportunities to everyone. RCM is financially poorer than
other Italian CNs directly supported by their municipalities but is richer in
terms of freedom (since the financial support the other CNs receive comes at
a price: they are ultimately controlled by politically oriented local govern-
ment). We believe that in the medium to long term, RCM is healthier
because of this freedom. Often, as new local administrations have been
elected, those coming to power have viewed the local CN as a project of their
predecessors that was not likely to reward the new administration, and they
have thus neglected the general interest and left their town’s CN to its own
devices. Where such CNs had not developed an independent identity of
their own and become self-supporting, they had to reconfigure themselves
along new guidelines (usually turning into the institutional website of the
municipality (Miani 2000), or they withered or closed down (Luisi 2001).
Universities—like schools and libraries—have education and the spread of
knowledge and culture to everybody as their major goals and activity. More-
over, the university, especially a computer science department, promotes
research and innovation. Unfortunately, research often is merely academic
and does not relate to the local community. The Department of Information
and Computer Science (DSI) of the University of Milan has a long tradition of
research and experience in networking technologies, in the culture of
computer-mediated communication, in security, and in the computer-
supported cooperative work (CSCW) that has been the cradle of development
for the prototypes of many of today’s most widespread network applications.
The ability to distill the best of the many ideas and products offered by the
world of information technology (IT) and, later, of information and commu-
nication technology (ICT), is not the exclusive property of the university
context, nor is it guaranteed by it. However, if things work as they should, the
university provides greater opportunities not only to stay abreast of the rapid
pace of innovation but also to keep a pulse on the situation in order to under-
stand which ideas have a future and which do not. This ability to understand
and evaluate innovation arises only if and when good and reliable commu-
nication channels exist among teaching faculty and researchers (who have
developed an ability to think in abstract terms), students (who have the
energy and enthusiasm for the new that the former may tend to lose over
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 203

time), and the outside world of enterprise, professionals, and alumni who
compel the university to develop new projects. Students and graduates in
computer science and other degree programs working as interns at the Labo-
ratory of Civic Informatics (LIC) have always been the resource that enables
RCM to tap new talent and new ideas,2 allowing for what might be termed an
“amortized” and enriched turnover. And, because managing a CN (like, more
generally, any virtual community) usually is extremely stressful and leads
even the most resilient to burn out, this factor may be the key to avoiding
death by fatigue and abandonment.

The CSCW Gene

RCM began in a university laboratory that inherited know-how and per-
spective from CSCW with a twofold focus. On the one hand, Winograd
and Flores (1986) and others (De Cindio et al. 1986) focus on conversa-
tions, semistructured patterns of speech acts, through which people make
commitments and shape the social relationships of the group. On the
other hand, C. A. Petri (1977) and others (De Cindio, De Michelis, and
Simone 1992) emphasize the pragmatics of communication, through com-
munication disciplines that must be considered in order to understand
communication problems within social contexts. From these backgrounds
RCM inherits its continuous, dogged insistence on not wanting to reduce
the Net to a new broadcasting medium. Instead, the Net is seen as a com-
munication, cooperative, and knowledge-sharing environment. In turn,
RCM’s experience, according to Schuler 1997a, contributes to extending
CSCW concepts and technologies from their original emphasis on work to
a broader focus on all facets of human activity.

The Participatory-Design Gene

The second fundamental background element that the RCM laboratory
inherits from its “parent” laboratory is participatory design. Computer sci-
entists and professionals learned at their own expense that computer-based
(CB) systems have to be designed not only for the users (as trivially under-
stood by any systems designer and software developer who wants her or his
application used by those who need it), or with the users (as promoted by the
sociotechnical design tradition). The development of such systems, to be
successful, requires the direct and active involvement of users—that is, CB
systems must also be designed by their users (Briefs, Ciborra, and Schneider
204 Fiorella de Cindio

1983). Participatory design has evolved over the years (Schuler and Namioka
1993; Blomberg and Kensing 1998). As with CSCW, the need—imposed by
the emergence of the network as the common platform for any computer-
based application—is to extend the process from its original emphasis on
work to all facets of human activity. The slogan that has always been on the
RCM desktop and home page— “La rete siete voi” (“You are the network”)—
springs from this tradition and aims to inspire everyone logging onto the
network to be an active member and promoter.
The choice of developing RCM from the bottom up, according to people’s
interests and needs, was further stressed at RCM’s launch. In September
1994, RCM consisted of only a couple of forums filled with a certain amount
of content by about fifty beta members. But it also included an empty folder
called “RCM che vorremmo” (“The RCM We’d Like to Have”) with subfo-
rums such as “The City of Women,” “The City of Kids,” “The City of Cin-
ema,” or “Palazzo Marino” (the name of the building that serves as Milan’s
city hall) to declare the possibility of opening these areas under the condi-
tion that one of the community members was interested in moderating and
promoting them. Adopting Winograd and Flores’s terminology (Winograd
and Flores 1986), we presented RCM as “a declaration of possibility,” which
was another way to stress the participatory-design approach. It is interesting
to note that even today “RCM che vorremmo” is a lively RCM forum where
the community’s most active members discuss RCM’s future. If the broad
categories classifying groups of forums that appear on RCM’s home page
today (www.retecivica.milano.it) are substantially the same as those of all
the major portals, they do not arise, as do those of the portals, from an a
priori definition of possible areas of interest or discussion. Instead they are
the fruit of a process of budding and dividing akin to what took place among
Internet newsgroups, with the important distinction that moderation—
applied from the outset—has guaranteed that discussion is kept relevant.
As a final consequence of the participatory-design gene, the RCM staff
has always conceived of and presented itself to the community as enablers
of the social actors, dedicated to:
■
Guaranteeing that the network stays up
■
Monitoring the dynamic articulation of the network in sections and sub-
sections and providing maintenance such as reorganization and the
replacement of moderators who are no longer active
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 205

■
Keeping the relational dynamics of the network under control3
■
Supporting the realization of the projects that are proposed from time to
time by both individuals and groups, needing “only” (but what a hard thing
to do!) to assign priorities in allocating constantly insufficient resources

The Civic-Engagement Gene

The three genes above would not entirely explain RCM’s origins. There is
a fourth gene, the civic engagement of its promoters. My own civic engage-
ment dates from the time of my master’s thesis, which discussed what was
then the initial impact of computerization on the public sector. In the
early 1980s I collaborated with Italian trade unions in enabling workers to
participate in redesigning work that was changing due to the effects of IT
(De Cindio et al. 1983). The project paid special attention to the particular
problems and opportunities that such changes presented for women (De
Cindio and Simone 1985).
In Italy, the initial spread of the network outside the enclave of research
coincided with the most significant moment of political change since the
Second World War. In 1992 and 1993 a group of public prosecutors from
the Milan court (known as the “Clean Hands” Pool) revealed the corrup-
tion that had characterized Italian democracy. The political class was thus
forced into radical change, while civil society—known in those days as the
“fax people” because its voice was heard through the faxes people sent to
the newspapers—asked to play a greater role. These events transported the
country from the First to the Second Italian Republic.
The social and political climate of those years made it imperative to
understand whether and how ICT might foster this process of change in
Italian politics. The technology not only looked as though it might give
a voice to those who had had none so far but also appeared likely to play
a role in freeing politics from the overweening influence of large parties. It
seemed poised to increase direct communication between people who,
despite differing views, wished to exchange opinions outside the confines
of ideological prejudice.
Milan was the ideal setting for an experiment of this type: the “Clean
Hands” movement was rooted in Milan, which had—and still has—the great-
est penetration of ICT of any city or town in Italy, both in offices and in
private homes.
206 Fiorella de Cindio

The initial RCM staff consisted of the writer and two young people, one
who had already chalked up ten years’ experience in the world of free BBSs
and one who had just finished his master’s thesis in the field of CSCW. We
were joined by a newspaper reporter well known in the ICT environment
in Milan, who provided us with the first contacts with ICT companies
through which we were able to obtain hardware and software donations.
All of us, and many of RCM’s early members, wanted to verify in action
whether the network could improve civic communication in our city
(among citizens and between citizens and local government), bring
together people with shared interests and projects, and thus increase the
quality of life in Milan and the Milan area.

RCM’s Evolution

Declared (explicit) goals and (implicit) genes have driven our activity
from September 1994 to the present. The evolution of RCM can be
described:
■
In quantitative terms, through statistics
■
In qualitative terms: first, by describing the relevant organizational
change that occurred in December 1998; second, by presenting the most
relevant projects carried out over the years

This latter point is the most relevant one, and most of the rest of the chap-
ter is devoted to it. Before that the two following paragraphs cover the
former points.
An overview of RCM’s development can be gleaned from a few numbers,
as of the summer of 2003—that is, after nearly nine years of operation:

1. RCM now has nearly 15,000 registered members4 among the approxi-
mately 1.3 million citizens resident in Milan, so that the ratio of RCM
members to the larger population is 1 to 87.5
2. The growth curve has been essentially constant at a rate of about 200
citizens per month (for 11 months per year).
3. The number of different accounts logging onto the RCM server provides
an estimate of how many of these registered members are active today:
■
From September 2001 to June 2002 (10 months), 6,397 different
accounts logged on.
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 207

■
From April 2002 to June 2002 (3 months), 3,677 different accounts
logged on.
■
During May 2002 (1 month), 2,784 different accounts logged on.
4. The RCM server handles messages organized in moderated forums with
different access rights: a forum is public if all registered users can read and
send messages to it, and semipublic if this right is reserved for specific
groups of users and generic registered members can only read the mes-
sages. The semipublic forums allow nonprofit, public, or business organi-
zations to publish information and to inform people about their activities.
In RCM there are about6
■
187 public forums directly managed by community members
■
348 informational forums managed by nonprofit, public, or business
organizations
■
179 discussion forums managed by nonprofit, public, or business orga-
nizations for communicating publicly and transparently with citizens: we
call these “direct lines”7
5. The core RCM staff now consists of three full-time people (although
under different contracts, which is outside the scope of this discussion) and
a secretary:
■
A community manager, who follows online discussions, manages the
discussion forums, intervenes in case of flames, and tries to keep the
discussion as fair and polite as possible
■
A webmaster
■
A system administrator who maintains all the RCM computers
■
A half-time secretary

In addition, RCM relies on several outside paid consultants dedicated to

specific issues or projects. It is worth mentioning that one of these consul-
tants is RCM’s lawyer, who plays a significant role in supporting the com-
munity manager in keeping the dialogue fair. (On this crucial issue, see
De Cindio et al., 2003.)

The RCM Participatory Foundation

Since December 1998, RCM has no longer been just an initiative of a univer-
sity laboratory, because it acquired independent legal status as a participatory
foundation.
208 Fiorella de Cindio

The idea of a foundation was taken from Amsterdam’s Digital City, which
also became a foundation, in 1998. It was our good fortune to come into
contact with Enrico Bellezza and Francesco Florian, who were bringing to the
Italian legislative framework the participatory foundation, which is more
widespread in the United Kingdom (Bellezza and Florian, 2001). A participa-
tory foundation is a cross between a traditional foundation—usually set up
by public and/or private bodies to manage investment income to be used for
social purposes—and an association of people who share some interest or
goal and desire a legal framework to pursue it. Bellezza and Florian propose
participatory foundations as an appropriate institutional form to lend stabil-
ity to various cultural initiatives: local government bodies put in the capital
that makes up the participatory foundation’s endowment, while citizens
contribute through membership dues and/or voluntary work. Other exam-
ples of participatory foundations include one whose mission is maintaining
a theater in Milan, one that conserves historical documents, and so forth
(more about participatory foundations and other examples can be found at
http://www.studiobellezza.it/servizi/fondazioni.htm).
The RCM Participatory Foundation (FRCM) was set up to “(a) sustain,
also economically, and manage the Milan Community Network (RCM) . . . ;
(b) promote the network, spreading its use among citizens, public and
private bodies through initiatives which encourage its use by those people
who have less opportunities because of age or social condition; (c) become
a center of technological, cultural and social innovation” (quoted from
article 2 of the FRCM Statute). Local government organizations (the region,
the province, and the Chamber of Commerce—while we continue to await
the municipality) and the University of Milan, where RCM maintains its
operational headquarters, are charter members: each of them has a repre-
sentative on the FRCM board. Private enterprises are supporting members,
contribute a fee equivalent to roughly U.S. $5,000, and elect a representa-
tive to the board. By becoming participants (simple members) of the
foundation, citizens (who pay dues of about $25), nonprofit associations
and school (dues are about $100), as well as small and medium-size private
companies (for dues of about $500) acquire the right to participate in man-
aging the foundation by electing a representative to the foundation board.
We believe that this structure is entirely consistent with the foundation’s
overall project, as well as with RCM’s goal of favoring communication and
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 209

cooperation among the various components of the local community. The

foundation that manages RCM is based on the participation, in different
roles, of the various bodies and of citizens.
So far, in addition to the charter members mentioned above, RCM has
3 supporting members and 111 participants (99 individuals, 8 associations
and schools, 4 small and medium-size enterprises). We believe that this
percentage, which is low compared both to the total number of registered
RCM members and to the number of its active members, can be attributed
partly to the fact that the context of the “free Internet” leads people to
view the network as a free service, save for the one inevitable toll of local
phone-connection charges. The low percentage may also be due partly to
the fact that the staff has not yet dedicated the necessary attention and
resources to the foundation’s membership drive.

People’s Projects through People’s Words

When I find myself, in a broad variety of contexts, having to give a public pre-
sentation on RCM’s activities, I repeatedly end up realizing that behind those
operations, which often take on institutional importance, there was originally
a person who came across RCM, devised a project, and carried it out with
varying degrees of involvement on the part of the staff. It is as though, by
opening and running RCM according to the principles outlined above, we
had randomly sown the seeds and then, over time, put our energies into cul-
tivating those that had sprouted on their own initiative. As a result, we would
essentially be in a position to present the projects conceived of and led by
some of the most active members of the community without directly involv-
ing the RCM members who had thought them up and brought them about
(usually the most active volunteer moderators who have used the CN as
a platform for projects with implications beyond RCM itself).
However, in the spirit of this work, I decided to ask—once more—for
their collaboration. I sent a questionnaire consisting of seven questions
with multiple-choice and open-ended answers to a selected sample (eleven
people) of community leaders engaged in different sectors of activity.
I received eight answers, and all of them authorized me to publish their
comments and names. Because of space limitations, I have had to omit one
of the answers.
210 Fiorella de Cindio

Voluntary-Sector Projects
Maurizio is one of the preeminent figures in RCM. He works full time run-
ning a volunteer association that aids drug addicts and immigrants located
near the central railway station. His organization, SOS Droga Milano (SOS
Drugs Milan), is one of the most active such groups in Milan. Maurizio
came across RCM at the outset of the CN, after SOS Droga Milano charged
him with developing its online presence. Maurizio writes:
In RCM I have developed several social-awareness and communication projects:
■
The SOS Droga Milano initiative is aimed at informing people and preventing sub-
stance abuse. This initiative is currently on the Internet as the Osservatorio
Nazionale sulle Tossicodipendenze (Italian National Observatory on Drug Addic-
tion) and has a forum, which was originally started on RCM itself as the hotline of
the SOS conference.
■
In 1996 we also started a project named Solidarietà, whose objective was to group the
various Milanese associations and volunteer organizations that were sensitive to the
issues of social solidarity. This project gradually grew to focus especially on disabilities,
immigration, and societal exclusion.
■
At the end of 2000 we opened a new online forum known as “Ricerca Sociale e
Storica” (“Historical and Social Research”), whose purpose is to gather material and
documentation in areas of specific interest that do not receive the attention they
deserve. This forum has also made it possible to develop an in-depth discussion of
themes such as immigration, undocumented work, and the relationship between
politics and violence.

“Some of these projects,” continues Maurizio, “have been redesigned and

reworked over time. For example, the project that was originally known
as Droga Milano SOS has now become the forum of the Osservatorio
Nazionale, while the second project, the Solidarietà space, was fairly suc-
cessful in obtaining the cooperation of various associations. But the
awareness-building and facilitator-communication initiative on social
solidarity never really took off.”
Maurizio makes an interesting observation about the role of a CN in build-
ing activities and socially significant campaigns compared with that played
by other media: “I am more often recognized by everyone for my activities
on RCM than for my activities on the Internet, in newspapers (and there are
many of these), or on television (likewise).” According to Maurizio, one of
the reasons is that “countless projects designed to build awareness and social
communication are off limits in other media, where they simply cannot
overcome the filtering imposed by communication through the mass media,
newspaper editorial boards, and TV content managers.”
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 211

The results are not earth-shattering “though we need not be discouraged

because this tool often helps raise the awareness needed to get other media
with larger audiences and more users involved. I could cite many cases: the
campaign to stop the Province of Milan from closing the Centro Idroscalo
Sud,8 when pressure was originally brought to bear through RCM, and
several other cases in which RCM was the means of communication that
created the basis for discussion and attention that was then taken up and
amplified by other media.”
Maurizio finds that RCM plays a fundamental role by making the network
platform available and because it provides the projects with a laboratory or
experimental context, although the flames that tend to flare on the com-
munity network can be harmful. In personal terms, he says that the RCM
projects he has worked on have been “positive because they have enabled
me—in spite of many obstacles (indifference, small audience, lack of concern
for social problems)—to maintain a thread of continuity with the commit-
ment I had made, and negative, as was to be expected in a communicative
gamble of this sort, because this confirms how little attention people pay to
these social problems.”
Mauruzio’s work has gained recognition at the national level. The Italian
National Drug Addiction Observatory is now linked on the websites of the
Health Ministry and of the Welfare Ministry, and access statistics show
that it has become a common reference point for people in this field.

Projects in Education
Not even at the time of start-up in 1994, long before the era of the “free
Internet,” did RCM think of itself solely as a provider: even the free distrib-
ution of e-mail addresses was only the first step in a series of opportunities
for the guided use of the network in an easy-to-use environment. We used
a metaphor rooted in Italian tradition but one that many may recall thanks
to the 1953 movie Roman Holiday, in which Gregory Peck drives Audrey
Hepburn around Rome on a motor scooter. In the postwar period, the
growth of Italian private motorized transportation was fostered by the use of
motor scooters, inexpensive and easy to use. In the Internet era, we offered
RCM as the scooter that makes it possible to learn to drive in the city. After
people gain confidence and mastery of the vehicle, they can venture onto
the Internet information highway. The driving instructors were the RCM
staff members and the “helpers”—the participants in the community with
greater expertise in ICT and willing to offer assistance to others.
212 Fiorella de Cindio

Things are substantially unchanged in the era of the (seemingly9) free

Internet: Clement and Shade (2000) claim that the access problem is not
totally solved because access must be secured at several levels. Mere con-
nectivity does not suffice; people need primary and continuing education
in an appropriate sociotechnical, virtual, and real environment. We
believe that CNs in general, and RCM in particular, provide such an edu-
cational environment in which people approach the Net and find—not
once and for all, but over time—ways of understanding how the Net can
support individual interests or personal and professional needs. That is to
say that CNs can be seen as a learning community in which to gain confi-
dence with the communicative opportunities offered by ICT and to stay
abreast of their evolution in a context that provides room for judgment
and evaluation free from conditioning.
This original emphasis on education explains the vast number of educa-
tional projects started within RCM. Loredana, Cesare, Laura, Attilio, and
Philip have promoted educational projects in three different segments:
compulsory education (Loredana, Cesare, and Laura); adult learning
(Attilio); and Philip’s original project of “online assistance in using English
as a foreign language.”
Loredana, Cesare, and Laura can certainly claim the greatest “objective”
success for “their” project, Scopri il Tesoro (Discover the Treasure).10
They explain that thanks to the experience accumulated over the years in RCM and
to the concrete cooperation developed among a group of teachers and schools, dur-
ing the 1998–99 school year a project named ‘Scopri il Tesoro’) was launched as a
free, practical learning space. This took the form of an online treasure hunt designed
to increase awareness and encourage students, teachers, and parents to gain practi-
cal experience in the use of ICT for study and research activities. Alongside the warm
and family-oriented environment of the RCM conferences, we set up a website,
www.retecivica.mi.it/tesoro. This site was designed according to current standards
for access and usability, as a working tool for all—children and adults, computer
whizzes and pupils with disabilities—that develops both the use of new media or
online communication and skills in editing texts, images, and sounds. This repre-
sented a natural outgrowth of teaching plans usually applied in the classroom and
the abilities needed to do “homework.”
The project makes available to schools a complete and flexible teaching plan that
covers all subjects through online quizzes and logic games. Teachers and parents can
attend distance-training courses to learn how to build multimedia sites, with the
support of tutors, and publish their creations.
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 213

“The results,” according to Loredana, Cesare, and Laura—who make up

the Scopri il Tesoro team—“are more than satisfactory and of higher qual-
ity than expected. In the three years the project has been underway, the
level of participation of students and classes has been extremely high;
more than 600 groups and 6,000 pupils from 350 schools in Italy and
abroad have taken part. In addition to Italy, the countries represented
include Switzerland, Germany, Uruguay, Belgium, France, the United
Kingdom, and Costa Rica.” About the role of RCM, the team points out
that the CN offers “a protected family environment that appeals to chil-
dren, to schools, and to families.” Yet the Scopri il Tesoro team bemoans
the “meager attention of scholastic institutions,” which affects their
strictly personal evaluation: “This has been a positive experience because
it has made it possible to build a community of cooperative teaching that
becomes a concrete stimulus for sharing experiences, drawing schools,
classes, and teachers to interactive online communication.” They add that
“it has been an incentive for our group of teachers and specialists to seek
additional professional training and has multiplied the relationships with
schools, training centers, and sponsoring companies.” However, the sup-
port in the form of lip service from “the educational authorities that have
underwritten the project” led to “an unfortunately excessive financial
commitment for the self-supporting project and too great a burden on the
educators (because the project is too large to be developed during our free
time and the organizations that ought to have undertaken its development
failed to assign the necessary human resources).”
Attilio also reports on a project “that sprang from my imagination and
was then put together with a group of teachers”—a project that has con-
stantly grown “while nevertheless remaining small,” as he modestly
phrases it. The idea, simple in and of itself, is to provide adults who reen-
ter training programs and continuing education the ICT skills necessary to
guide them in acquiring a knowledge of RCM and then the rest of the
Internet. The project stresses the aspects of two-way communication,
involvement, and participation. But, as Attilio specifies, it also teaches
“civic informatics as a social science that trains people to educate them-
selves as well as to do remote collaborative work.” Attilio emphasizes that
RCM lends the project an experimental and laboratory framework and
points out that “the success and acclaim of the initiatives proposed have
far outstripped my own expectations. The objective has now shifted to
214 Fiorella de Cindio

other colleagues of mine who may be interested in working on this

independently. They need training and the limiting factor is the resources,
the time needed to coach them and make them independent.” Attilio
expresses a decided optimism about the chances for putting this into
practice: it is a viable route “that can be taken with more than satisfactory
results.”
Philip has “launched several projects on RCM and nearly all have enjoyed
modest success.” However, this evaluation perhaps needs to be calibrated
against an extremely ambitions original objective: “My original mission
statement—making global culture seem less foreign by feeling ourselves a part
of it—has been adopted by others both inside and outside the scope of my
original project for online assistance in using English as a foreign language.”
Furthermore, the context in which Philip’s project was originally launched has
not helped. The city-run schools, directly managed by the municipality, were
in danger of closing in precisely those years. They were not in fact shut down,
but the education department was certainly not a priority of the municipal
administration, to the point that, when city offices were wired, city schools
were not included, leaving them with modem connections to RCM as their
only access to the Net. Indeed, Philip writes that “city government has been
reluctant to allow the adoption of new technologies to influence organiza-
tional structure. This reluctance has largely been the product of two fears, a
nondescript fear of innovation and a hierarchical fear of individual empower-
ment. Nevertheless, RCM has certainly improved the quality of city-run
schools, especially continuing education, because it has reduced isolation.”
The idea of reduced isolation crops up again in his personal evaluation: “The
project offered me career growth because networked communication has
altered the landscape from one of impoverished resources where the educator
was a lone combatant in the wilderness to one of exploitable resources in
which effort partly is distributed.” And I would add that the project promoted
through RCM in the city-run schools was a qualification on his résumé in
his appointment as a temporary professor teaching technical English in the
digital communication degree program at the University of Milan.

Projects in Public Communication

Philip’s observations on the reluctance of the city government, echoing
the remark by the Scopri il Tesoro team on the lack of attention from the
school boards, lead us to key questions for CNs, especially in countries,
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 215

like many in Europe, in which the role of the state is greater than in
English-speaking countries.
At the outset RCM had no formal relations with local governments. This
was no accident: we wished to start up independently both economically
and in terms of content. The sections of the network potentially reserved
for local government were part of our “declaration of possibilities,” but our
intention was to seek a relationship with government organizations predi-
cated on our independent existence. We invited the municipality to speak
at the RCM inaugural press conference, but at the last minute no one
showed up. Thence a long story of basically troubled relations with the City
of Milan administration ensued, although RCM has always had much bet-
ter relations with a large number of city employees. We met with leading
figures from the other local government bodies, the province, the region,
and the Chamber of Commerce, shortly after RCM was launched. All these
organizations are now among the founding members of the RCM Founda-
tion (though we are still waiting for the city), but the CN’s relationship with
each of them is constantly evolving. Periods of significant collaboration
alternate with long silences. Even in cases where the relationship seems
consolidated, trifles are often enough to strain it.
All this does not come as a surprise: anyone who has had to deal with
government bodies in Italy is used to the ups and downs that often depend
on behind-the-scenes politics. Thus we can truly claim that what good
RCM has done in the field of comunicazione pubblica11 is thanks to the work
of functionaries and officials of the given government body—at any given
moment—who viewed RCM as their own tool and resource for accom-
plishing innovative projects and initiatives. If kept within the framework
of the government organization, these projects and initiatives would have
required much longer to develop and would not have allowed individual
officials to take such a leading role. Nevertheless, the “tool” remained part
of the public sector, given its position inside the university, and, moreover,
part of a public institution that was unbiased because it was shielded from
the dictates of politics.
Likewise, difficulties cropped up when these key officials began to show
signs of the inevitable weariness that comes with the effort to overcome the
“reluctance” noted by Philip. Especially problematic were attempts to use the
network not merely for publishing existing information online or supplying
electronically services that already exist but also to increase accountability in
216 Fiorella de Cindio

the relationships between government bodies and citizens. The weariness just
mentioned is due to a variety of factors: the inevitable comparison with the
glittering portals of the Net economy, where hits are counted in the millions
rather than the thousands of community members who send a limited num-
ber of questions; the effort required to manage dialogue with the citizenry in
a public forum where not all messages are complimentary; and the resistance
encountered from politicians, who are still vastly more inclined to pay lip
service to the importance of the Internet than to make it truly part of the
infrastructure for communicating with citizens. The bottom line is that
a press release or a press conference or a short interview with local television,
given the filtering provided by reporters and editors, enables politicians to
expose less of themselves and to tell only their own version of the truth.
Despite these difficulties, RCM can claim remarkable results in public
communication. We have already presented (in Casapulla et al. 1998) the
positive results of the projects carried out in cooperation with officials and
functionaries of the City of Milan and of the Region of Lombardy. Elda was
the key player in the collaboration between City Hall and RCM: “I was a
complete newcomer to networking and the ease of using RCM opened the
online world to me, thanks to the support of its system administrators.
That enabled me to have significant experience under my belt when it
came time for my administration to open its Internet site.” That experi-
ence was truly very significant, given that Elda, who had no prior online
experience, is now the de facto content manager of the City of Milan web-
site. And indeed she doesn’t hesitate to consider the experience decidedly
satisfactory “as long as the organization I work for carried through with its
project.” The collaboration with RCM is actually not completely termi-
nated because RCM continues to host the still-active “direct line”
between the citizens and the city council chair www.retecivica.milano.it/
vicesindaco-ld. However, this is not linked on the city’s website—certainly
not by Elda’s choice. In June 2001, a new direct line was opened with the
city council chair (www.retecivica.milano.it/presidenteMarra-ld).
These direct lines are a characteristic feature of RCM’s collaboration with
local government bodies. A direct line is nothing other than a public
forum for discussion and dialogue between citizens registered on RCM—or,
at any rate, citizens using an Internet account who have accepted the RCM
netiquette known as “Galateo”12—and government offices, administrators,
public officials, or experts in a certain field (such as tax consultants,
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 217

lawyers, or labor arbitrators). For those familiar with the network, but not
for most people, there is an obvious difference between opening a direct
line and simply publishing an e-mail address, as happens on nearly all
Italian public-sector websites that provide the e-mail addresses of the
mayor, the city-council committee chairpersons, and some or all City Hall
employees. Sending a private e-mail is rather like sending a private letter
or a fax: it may fall into a black hole and no one will be the wiser.
The dialogue that a direct line makes possible, on the other hand, is pre-
cisely that of a newsgroup: here we find the “game of shared gain,” the sense
of community (I spend time replying to your posting because a query or reply
of yours may be helpful to me in discovering and understanding what citi-
zens think) that is the “mother lode of the Internet.” It is true that an effec-
tively designed public-service website is an advantage for Italian citizens, who
are often forced to waste time asking for certificates and filling in forms, and
generally following the complex course of bureaucratic procedures that are
required for the most mundane tasks. But what is needed in a country with
an intrusive state apparatus like Italy’s is the utmost exploitation of the
opportunities inherent in ICT for putting institutions in immediate touch
with their partners in the social pact:13 citizens, nonprofit organizations that
contribute to the general welfare, professionals, and small, medium, and large
enterprises.
The Province of Milan is the local government body least familiar to cit-
izens. The group of officials in charge of communication saw the network
as an ideal tool to increase citizens’ awareness of the province’s activities
and initiatives. It sought to use the website to spread information, espe-
cially the more static information, while using RCM’s direct lines for
a more direct and immediate dialogue with citizens, especially the opinion
leaders that spontaneously emerge. The success of the direct lines with the
province (run by the officials in the communication department) and of
direct lines with many other offices led to the opening of a direct line with
the president of the province, as far as we know the highest public office
on any Italian website committed to publicly answering citizens’ questions
(www.retecivica.milano.it/PresidenteColli-ld).
The direct line with Province President Ombretta Colli is managed by
members of her staff who read citizens’ messages and help the president
reply. The replies are at times signed by the president (i.e., posted from her
e-mail account) and at times posted by her online alter egos, who, as
218 Fiorella de Cindio

is clear to all, provide official replies in any event. The direct line with
provincial President Colli has been the locus of animated discussions about
measures adopted by the provincial administration (e.g., the campaign
against closing the Centro Idroscalo Sud that Maurizio mentioned above).
One thing that clearly emerged from that episode is that the participation
of a politician or public official in an online forum is no simple matter,
requires the politician’s time, and must be desired and enacted with a
series of steps that make it real and not merely for appearance’s sake. With
the help of Daniela, the RCM Foundation lawyer as well as an active mem-
ber of the community, and of Chiara, who is the officer of the province
coordinating the direct lines, we drafted a clause for the Galateo that serves
to orient citizens in their use of the direct lines with government bodies. If
we want the network to truly bring together administrators and “admin-
istrees,” citizens and politicians, to become an instrument of democ-
racy, we need to understand that those who reply in an institutional role
cannot answer immediately or in the informal terms that have tradition-
ally characterized online discourse, even while we are watchful not to give
rise to online gobbledygook or fall back into the geological time frames
typical of communication with government authorities.
Another interesting example of the fruitful cooperation between the
Province of Milan and RCM can be seen in a service that went online in
June 2000 and is now being extended to the entire Region of Lombardy.
“@ppuntamenti Metropolitani” (Metropolitan Events, www.retecivica.
milano.it/appuntamenti) provides information about what is going on in
and around Milan on the web and via SMS (short messages). What is rele-
vant for our purposes here is that the province itself took up a service that
had been a characteristic of RCM from its outset and was subsequently long
managed in collaboration with municipal officials under Elda’s direction.
The service consists of enabling announcements of events to be posted not
only by institutional officials but also by individual citizens or organiza-
tions. This makes it possible to obtain information not only about major
happenings but also about minor events, which, though worthwhile, often
end up being ignored, totally or nearly, by other media. This achieves the
goal that, thanks to an appropriate use of the network, anyone may not
only be informed but may also provide information.
The value of these direct lines and the efforts to use the network in order
truly to bring government bodies and citizens together gained recognition
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 219

for the province in the form of an award at a major national exhibition on

ICT in the public sector. However, it must also be noted that the opportuni-
ties offered—dialogue with major public officials, the chance to contribute
to the “@ppuntamenti Metropolitani” service with one’s own postings—
have so far met with a cooler reception from citizens than might have been
expected. Chiara notes that “when measured against the effort required to
convince administrators and offices to open a direct line, receiving only a
few public questions compared to the avalanche of private e-mail pouring
into the president’s mailbox is not very fulfilling. There are still not many
citizens who appreciate the difference between a direct line and e-mail. This
is partly due to the fact that other local government organizations—that is,
the municipalities and the region—may not be using direct lines.”14
This situation brings us back to the issue of mass education about online
communication opportunities. It is hard to overcome the habit of using
media passively, not only for politicians but also for citizens in whom the
preference for private dialogue with their leaders is now ingrained. More-
over, citizens so inured tend to view being informed as a service that is
owed them rather than an asset to develop and to which they can con-
tribute. This issue, however, led those of us who manage RCM to recognize
the need to promote the services we develop directly. For a long time we
subscribed to and put into practice Rheingold’s (1993) statement that vir-
tual communities make themselves known through word of mouth. But if
CNs really expect to play a significant role on the local level, this approach,
as Philip rightly points out, “pales beside the influence of the overweening
trailblazing accomplished by the profit-driven rush of enterprise along the
toll-free information highway.” It also mandates that word of mouth be
bolstered by clear—albeit as inexpensive as possible—marketing initiatives.

Community Networks for Shaping the Network Society

In the 1960s and 1970s, the introduction of information technologies in

manufacturing and offices gave occasion for a radical redesign of work.
Participatory design arose, along the lines pioneered by Enid Mumford’s
sociotechnical approach, to avoid the failures to which the redesign of work
is condemned if it is driven by top management without involving and
listening to those who are experts in the work: the workers and employees.
However, years of experience have shown that collecting workers’ knowledge
220 Fiorella de Cindio

and exploiting it to innovate work practices in a computer-supported

environment is not an individual process. Success comes from knowledge
sharing, in project teams, in quality circles, and so forth. This social context
also supports the negotiation of inevitably different, possibly conflicting
opinions and suggestions, and offers a way to arrive at agreed-on solutions
(De Cindio et al. 1983).
Today, ICT is not only continuously redesigning work, but is shaping life
and society, while humankind is called on to address a multitude of prob-
lems, both minor (however relevant at the local level) and major (typically,
the environment and globalization). These points are made in the so-called
Seattle Statement (Seattle Statement, 2000) developed at Computer Profes-
sionals for Social Responsibilitiy’s (CPSR) 2000 “Direction and Implications
of Advanced Computing” symposium.
A redesign of social institutions and processes that emphasizes top-down
planning, based on directives from the decision makers (politicians, influ-
ential businesspeople from multinational corporations, opinion leaders in
the broadcast media, even a few representatives and spokespersons from
civil society) is condemned to failure. To succeed, it must involve and
employ the skills and suggestions of the true experts in living, the women
and men who are the citizens of the world, whether they live in the First,
Second, or Third World.
Nevertheless, gathering and putting to use the experiences and abilities of
the citizens of the world and creating the right conditions so that the
inevitable contradictions and conflicts can find a means of expression,
comparison, and consensus are extremely complex tasks. Redesigning work,
in contrast, essentially takes place on a local level, in one factory, office, or
company.
In other words, this goal of inclusiveness involves finding the equivalent
of project teams and quality circles. It is not even imaginable to implement
the sharing of their knowledge and experience without relying on commu-
nication technologies that make it possible to reduce barriers of space and
time and enable knowledge sharing so as to effectively exploit the complex
content made available to a multitude of content providers.
I believe that the experiences I presented in this chapter—and others left
out for reasons of space—show that CNs can provide a platform that should
be seriously considered from this point of view. By conceiving of citizens as
neither “subjects” (as occurred in the past) nor “clients” (the role they play
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 221

as visitors to and consumers of online public or private services at glittering

websites) but as independent actors, owners of a sovereignty and therefore
entitled to play a key role in shaping the network society, CNs actually
make it possible, on a local level, to:
■
Conceive of experiences of social innovation that collect and utilize the
experiences and abilities of the citizens of the world, starting locally, where
they have greater planning capacity and a greater opportunity to make
a difference
■
Lead people to the discovery of the potential of ICT, in the broad sense, but
with special emphasis on technologies for communication, cooperation, and
knowledge management
■
Share projects and experiences, extending involvement to individuals and
groups beyond the initial promoters, which also guarantees continuity in
the face of burnout or other obstacles
■
Draw inspiration from others’ projects in imagining one’s own

We believe that it can reasonably be claimed that these are projects

for shaping the network society from the bottom up, by utilizing people’s
“creativity, compassion, intelligence, and dedication, which can help address
the multitude of major problems the human race is faced with” (Seattle State-
ment, 2000). In this sense, we agree with Schuler (2000) that CNs support
“smaller communities within the larger community”: the point is that these
smaller communities act as a kind of sociotechnical laboratory. It matters
little that they may not involve the whole or even a majority of the popula-
tion of a given area; what matters is that the members of the CN be active
promoters of projects that are relevant to all.

Community Networks as New Social Enterprises

Conceiving CNs as sociotechnical environments for supporting the citizens

of the world in shaping the network society is an ambitious and demanding
goal. Comments from project leaders again shed light on this process.
Davide’s project in RCM is the “Progetto Associazioni: laying the founda-
tions for the birth and development of a ‘portal of the associations,’ through
which hosting, tools, and services are to be offered to nonprofit organiza-
tions in the Province of Milan. The project grew out of the union of my per-
sonal interest in the nonprofit sector with the Rete Civica’s desire to increase
222 Fiorella de Cindio

and reevaluate the support given to nonprofit organizations on the Net.” In

responding to the survey, Davide looks to the future of the project and raises
a delicate point:
Community networks are a unique area in which to germinate projects and initia-
tives that would be hard to accomplish otherwise. In a few cases, however, CNs risk
stunting growth, as projects that originate in this context outgrow it. Such projects
may need a more stable web presence and find that bringing more resources into play
requires a qualitative leap. In my opinion, this is the most delicate point. At the out-
set, the resources and the assistance given by the Rete Civica are viewed as heaven-
sent. They become the basic soil on which to nurture a tender sapling. As the plant
grows, it needs a larger pot where it can grow stronger roots to become a tree that
is recognized and respected throughout the forest. In the Rete Civica pot, the loam is
of better quality, rich in stimuli, and extremely fertile. But in order to grow as fast
as required a project may require greater resources (not just economic resources but
human resources as well). In this sense, I am a bit worried about the future of the
Progetto Associazioni. I hope that a way will be found to give it the economic and
human resources to develop and to serve as a guide in the long run, guarding against
the risk, which always lies in wait on the Net, of stalling prematurely.

Just as the creative capacity for redesigning work was often undervalued
or even opposed by shortsighted managers, so today’s citizens’ expertise is
often not utilized. Even projects that can claim undeniable success strug-
gle to find—and often do not find at all—the support needed to grow
beyond the experimental stage and consolidate. The Scopri il Tesoro team,
Philip, Elda, and Davide, say so openly, and many others would agree.
Because of this—Davide concludes—“after having used RCM to take off,
there is a tendency on the part of those who have launched a project to
want to break away, diving into the commercial world to propose the idea
again and seek possible routes for independent development.” However,
this rarely occurs with any success. The world of the so-called Net economy
has so far been a gravel crusher for people and ideas. The crisis in this
model of exploiting the network has caused many of those who had left to
come back to the “fertile ground” of the CNs.
That does not make it any less important, but actually makes it more
urgent, to find strategies to enable the public and private organizations that
claim to be interested in the development of the network society to provide,
through community networks, decisive and not marginal support to the pro-
jects that develop there and that would have trouble finding the conditions
to take root elsewhere. Public institutions and private enterprise, including
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 223

the broadcast media, need to be made aware that the resources they would
have to invest would still be far less than what they spend year after year for
generic promotion on the Net.
The decision to consolidate the RCM experience in a participatory foun-
dation appeared to show that an awareness had been reached—within the
local Milan community—that building the network society requires the
presence of a variety of players: government organizations, private enter-
prise, and individual citizens. The RCM Participatory Foundation indeed
looks like the kind of “new social enterprise” envisaged in “Community
Networking Gets Interesting” (Civille 2000). However, five years after it
was founded, it has to be admitted that such an awareness has not attained
a satisfactory level either within local governments or in the private sector
or, frankly speaking, among RCM members, who have joined the founda-
tion in very limited numbers. So far we have only come across a few for-
ward–looking individuals within certain local government organizations
or at one of the few companies that became sponsors of the foundation.
Their support for community networking—along with the determination
of people like those mentioned in this chapter and the RCM staff, boosted
by the enthusiasm of the students who succeed one another in the Civic
Informatics Laboratory—have kept RCM alive until now. This does not
address the problem posed by Davide, but it does make it possible to con-
tinue to seek a response, which, in our view, must spring from a theoreti-
cal grounding (what might be termed a model of sustainability) that is not
abstract but rooted in practical experience.
A further open question is whether the RCM experience can be repli-
cated elsewhere. At the outset, in the 1995–1997 period, in Lombardy and
other parts of Italy, there was an outpouring of initiatives that explicitly
drew inspiration from the experience of RCM and attempted to reproduce
its success while adapting it to local needs. Some of these projects have
now shut down. Others are barely surviving (though with some hope of
revitalization). Many have turned into the institutional website of the
municipality. Only a few are still active and vital CNs. In attempting to
identify the key survival factors, I believe that the four genes discussed in
this chapter must continue to play vital roles. We must focus on the abil-
ity to avoid falling into a fatal embrace with local government, remaining
independent of it while maintaining open doors for dialogue and for ways
to collaborate on specific projects with the public sector.
224 Fiorella de Cindio

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the people who responded to the RCM questionnaire;
Philip Grew, the patient and precise reviewer of my faltering English; the
RCM staff who supported this work with their tenacious, continuous, and
indefatigable efforts; and the editors of this book.

Notes

1. A comparison of the CN experiences in Italy and other European countries is

beyond the scope of this chapter; the interested reader is referred to De Cindio 2000.

2. In exchange, the CN represents an extraordinary playground for these students to

learn about ICT that is not merely a technological playground but also an environment
that cares about the needs and relations of its “users.”

3. This aspect is, however, not managed by the staff alone but in cooperation with
the moderators, according to guidelines that have evolved over the years but that
cannot be explained here in detail.

4. The total number of citizens who have ever registered on RCM is actually nearly
15,000, with the difference due to the fact that, in the early years because of the cost
of software licenses, those who had not logged on in more than a year were removed
from the list of registered users. That also seemed in keeping with the idea of wanting
a community of active citizens, although in hindsight that policy proved less reason-
able than it seemed at the time. Often, those who had left RCM, especially at the time
of the Internet boom and the rise of the Net economy, rediscovered RCM after a long
hiatus and logged on again. Finding one’s “old” account still active eases reentry.

5. However, this ratio is not very significant because RCM, unlike some other com-
munity networks run by municipalities, does not register as members only those
who have their legal residence in the city. Such a policy would exclude, for exam-
ple, the many students who come to town to attend classes at the university or peo-
ple who live in the suburbs but work in the city. And the same holds true for the
figures regarding the resident population.

6. RCM also makes it possible to open private areas that are accessible only to mem-
bers who are part of an organization, association, or other group, either real or virtual,
be it permanent or temporary—for example, a project workgroup. Such private areas
represent the group’s intranet.

7. We discuss this is detail later, in the section “Projects in Public Communication.”

8. The Centro Idroscalo Sud was an arrival center that hosted new immigrants to Italy.
The area was initially provided by the Province of Milan, while support services and
Community Networks Shaping Network Society 225

activities (from food to job-placement help) depended on volunteers. The problem

arose when the province decided to use the area for a different purpose, namely,
summer recreational activities.

9. In Italy, “free Internet” has meant that no paid subscription was required to
connect to a provider, although substantial per-minute charges for local phone calls
still applied.

10. Further information on the Scopri il Tesoro project and its origin in the context
of RCM can be found in Casapulla, De Cindio, and Ripamonti 2001.

11. In Italian, public communication denotes communication between government

bodies and citizens, in the widest sense, both as individuals and more generally as
partners in the social pact who interact with government organizations.

12. In Italian, galateo (from an eponymous sixteenth-century bishop) is the generic

term for good manners. In RCM, the word was applied to a localized version of the neti-
quette enshrined in the service agreement that all CN members must sign, obliging
them to abide by certain rules, including tolerance for differing points of view. The role
of Galateo in RCM’s evolution is widely discussed in De Cindio et al. 2003.

13. This recommendation involves more than simply alleviating the weight of proce-
dural obligations that inspired the moves made by successive center-left governments
from 1996 to 2001, and the e-government program of the present right government.
It was described effectively in the report of the president of the prestigious young
industrialists’ association Giovani Imprenditori (Garrone 2000).

14. Actually, as noted above, there are direct lines with some of the leading figures
in city government. However, unlike the province’s direct lines, which are linked
from the official website, the city’s direct lines are not linked from the official city
site. Space would not allow us to go into the reasons here, but in the final analysis,
this reflects a conscious choice on the part of the province, whereas the city’s direct
lines are isolated initiatives amidst a strategy that prefers broadcast communication
through the official city website.
III Building a New Public Sphere in Cyberspace
11 Information Technology and the International Public
Sphere

Craig Calhoun

Information technology (IT) and globalization have each been the object
of enormous hope and considerable disappointment. So too is their combi-
nation in the notion of an international public sphere supported by the
Internet and other communications media. This is basic to the dream of
international civil society that has flourished since the early 1990s, with
the collapse of communism and opening of capitalist markets. And indeed,
such an international public sphere clearly already exists. Equally clearly,
however, it has not yet provided the basis for cosmopolitan democracy its
advocates have hoped.
The task of this chapter is to outline something of the stakes of thinking
about an international public sphere, the role that IT can play in it, and
some of the challenges that lie in the way of realizing its potential. I will
discuss IT and the international public sphere against the background of
globalization and the shifting bases of the production and dissemination
of knowledge. I will not attempt to review the empirical specifics of where
and how and by whom the Internet is used, or how public communication
based on one technology compares to that based on others. While this
would be useful and there are beginning to be interesting case studies to
complement the usual journalistic anecdotes, social-science research on
the Internet has barely started.1 The present chapter does not offer findings
so much as attempt to orient questions.

Globalization

Information technology has of course been an important basis for global-

ization. This did not start with the Internet, despite its hype. From the
sextant to the map to the invention of calculus, the development of early
230 Craig Calhoun

modern navigation was centrally a matter of information technology—and

the ships circulated information as well as goods and helped to link the
globe in networks of exchange and control. Telegraphs, radio, and televi-
sion, as well as trains, cars, and airplanes, all helped to establish links
across space and shorten the time lags to action at a distance. The devel-
opment of national and international highway infrastructures paved the
way to flows of information long before the “information superhighway”
existed. Colonial empires were pioneers in IT from at least the
sixteenth century. They developed bureaucracies, accounting systems, file-
management hardware and software, and both open and secret networks
of communication. They also remind us that new forms of war figure cen-
trally in the story of modern globalization—with new weaponry, certainly,
but also military reliance on ever more complex systems of control and
coordination managed by technologies that evolved quickly from carrier
pigeons to coded telegraph messages to satellite transmissions. As the last
suggests, too, globalization has all along included an element of surveil-
lance, which has always been a matter of data management and analysis
as much as observation, and which has benefited from technologies to
improve these activities.
Old though some of the trends are, the last twenty years’ innovations in
computer and communications technologies have also been powerful.
Modern financial markets are inconceivable without computer-mediated
communication—and action. Not only are there nearly instant flows of
money through global networks, but ever more complex forms of derivatives
are driven by algorithms their “owners” never know and trading is done
indirectly by software “robots” programmed by their human “supervisors.”
Satellite transmissions and electronic filing of stories speed up the flow of
information through broadcast and print media. New Internet media com-
plement older forms of circulation of public (and sometimes not-so-public)
information. Migrants maintain global diasporic cultures and translocal
communities partly by e-mail and websites. The Internet is an important
support also for global social movements and for local social movements
seeking global attention or support. It is important, though, not to imagine
that with electronic help popular forces can easily get the jump on more cen-
tralized or elite powers—whether economic or political. For all the energy
and innovation of global activism challenging neoliberalism or inequality,
at least as much and often a good deal more resources are deployed in
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 231

support of global capitalism. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) focus

not just on human rights or the environment but on accountancy standards,
corporate advocacy, and arbitration between firms. And IT is employed
intensively in organizing global production processes as well as global mar-
kets. It makes possible not only just-in-time shipping but centralized control
of manufacturing facilities that are physically dispersed throughout the
world. What distinguishes the last thirty years or so, as Manuel Castells
(1996, 1: 92) puts it, is the creation of “an economy with the capacity to
work as a unit in real time on a planetary scale.” This is a “global” rather than
merely a “world” economy. It is also the basis for Castells’s metaphor of the
“network society,” which refers not simply to the fact of global connections
but also to the adaptive advantage of flexible, network-based forms of
organization in relation to dynamic, global capitalism.
It is also important to note the extent to which global discussions of IT
and its regulation have come to be embedded in security concerns. Espe-
cially since September 11, security (and military, intelligence, and police
cooperation) have moved to the forefront of the agenda among those orga-
nizing interstate connections. This is likely to have long-term implications
for the development of IT use, which is contingent in important ways on
the legal-regulatory infrastructure created. This involves issues about secu-
rity and surveillance as well as property rights, which are seldom openly
debated in the public sphere.
Disease also figures prominently in the “dark side” of globalization. This
is not just a matter of possible bioterrorism. More people die daily of AIDS
than died in the World Trade Center attacks. And if the spread of deadly
viruses from the less well developed (and thus less healthy and less vacci-
nated) world is a source of anxiety in rich countries, it is nonetheless the
poor who suffer disproportionately from nearly all diseases. And disparities
in access to treatment become one of the most dramatic faces of global
inequality. Here too IT matters, though what we see most is the weakness
of the global public sphere in spurring effective action. We see also the
power of Western and especially American media. These have portrayed
AIDS largely as a gay disease, thus adding a stigma to the difficulties of
fighting it in the rest of the world—where homosexual contact is a minor
vector compared to heterosexual transmission, drug use, and unsafe blood
supplies—and as more or less “handled” by drugs available only at a cost
prohibitive to much of the world.
232 Craig Calhoun

In this context, it is worth noting that the most influential of electronic

media is not yet the Internet or any form of computer-mediated commu-
nication but still television. Even its reach is not altogether global, but it
comes close. Access to and use of the Internet are still much more uneven,
and although usage of the Internet grows, it is less basic to shaping the
broad “information background” to all public discourse. The different
technologies are mutually intertwined, of course, not only with Internet
sites run by television broadcasters but with news reports gathered by the
Internet. Just as television often alerts people to stories they will read in
newspapers, so an e-mail message can tell someone to turn on the TV or
a TV show can send someone to the web for more detail.2 Aside from
inequalities of access, there may be even more telling inequalities in pro-
duction of content for various media. Though access to the Internet is
uneven, it does allow for point-to-point communication, dispersed access
to common information resources, and relatively inexpensive posting of
new content. Broadcast media remain almost completely one-directional,
with broadcasters determining the form in which content appears and
with the costs of competitive entry high. On the other hand, while more
and more information is available on the Internet, there is a wealth of
globally significant knowledge still accessible only in the libraries and
computer data centers of rich countries. The results of most social-science
research on the world’s less developed countries, for example, are accessi-
ble only in the knowledge centers of the rich countries. Moreover,
commercial sites tend to drown out nonprofit ones oriented to the public
good, and search engines not only miss much of the web but generally
relegate small-scale sites to their back pages.
Global news media are heavily controlled by a small number of Western
corporations and public broadcasters from a few Western governments.3
This is mitigated somewhat by the prevalence of national broadcasters,
though without their own substantial news-gathering operations the global
content these broadcasters can provide is limited to what they can acquire
from the major global providers. One of the interesting sidebars to the
post–September 11 “war on terrorism” was the emergence of Al Jazeera as an
important global media player. This Arabic network not only broadcasts
throughout the Arabic-speaking world, but it has become a key source of con-
tent for the major American networks and European broadcasters. Much
Western commentary initially treated Al Jazeera with suspicion, viewing it as
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 233

“an Arab voice” while the Western media were treated as neutral or universal.
That Al Jazeera became a conduit for the messages of Osama bin Laden fueled
this perception, but it may be more appropriate to see Al Jazeera as part of the
emergence of a transnational Arabic-language public sphere.
All the electronic media, like books, newspapers, and the International
Postal Union before them play a crucial role in extending communication
beyond local, face-to-face contexts. They thus underwrite globalization.
Again, though, there is a tendency in some of the speculative literature of
early enthusiasts to imagine that the new media turn the tables on tradi-
tional inequality of access to information and effectiveness of communi-
cation more than they do. It is certainly true that the international
activism of indigenous peoples, environmentalists, and opponents of the
World Trade Organization (WTO) has been organized in new ways and
with greater efficacy because of the Internet. It is equally certainly not the
case that such use yet rivals the efficacy of information control by transna-
tional corporations. Both the corporate control of much public content
provision and the corporate use of IT to manage internal production and
private financial transactions so far considerably outstrip insurgent and
activist uses of the new technologies. This does not make the latter
unimportant, but it should encourage a certain realism. As with other
technologies, the ability to use IT varies not just with the potential of the
technology but with the resources different users can invest.
The very ubiquity of IT has another curious effect on the global public
sphere. It is part of a construction of globalization as an inevitable result of
technological progress. From different national vantage points, the ques-
tion is commonly posed not as whether to join in this globalization but
as how to adapt to it. Challenges to the dominant Western—indeed
American—neoliberal, capitalist forms appear simply as backward-looking
traditionalism. This was perhaps especially true during the economic
boom of the late 1990s; how visions of the future and struggle over capi-
talism will fare in less soaring economic times is unclear. But IT continues
to play a double role—as the visible face of high technology and as part of
the technical underpinning of a greater awareness of global trends.
In many countries around the world, the response is to try to adopt new
technology as rapidly as possible, while simultaneously trying to protect
traditional culture. Contemporary Indian politicians thus project their
country as a potential IT superpower at the same time that they encourage
234 Craig Calhoun

a renewal of studying the Vedas and a more or less fundamentalist embrace

of Hinduism. It is precisely the most culturally conservative party to lead
the country in its modern history that announces the most high-tech
economic plans—as part of its “Vision 2020” proposals. The very phrase
“Vision 2020” is not uniquely Indian, however, having been employed in
Malaysia and elsewhere. The common rhetoric pairs technology-grounded
progress with protection or renewal of cultural traditions. The formula is
old, being something of an update of the nineteenth-century Chinese
response to the West: “Western learning for material progress, Eastern
learning for spiritual values” (a phrase commonly summarized by the
syllables ti-yong). But as the Qing emperors learned, it was hard to import
railways and telegraphs without bringing Western values along. China’s
communist leaders worried about the same issue in the 1980s, and both
their successors and some contributors to China’s popular websites worry
about the same thing today.4 Even Canadian politicians echo the same
theme, showing that anxiety about local identity has as much to do with
American—that is, U.S.—power as with a clash between the West and the
rest. As government officials told Financial Times reporters, “The country
wants to become a lean global competitor while maintaining traditional
local values” (Morrison and Warn 2001, 1).
Politicians presenting globalization as an irresistible force commonly
embrace neoliberal policies as the necessary response. Global economic
competition demands, citizens are told, that public-sector jobs be cut,
taxes lowered, state-owned resources privatized. The same IT that poten-
tially makes possible a more vigorous public sphere is cited as an example
of global pressures before which public opinion should bow down; it is
used to squelch dissent. Ironically perhaps, the IT industry itself often
backs this neoliberal rhetoric, focusing on the image of freedom and seeing
states and bureaucracies only as possible fetters on innovation (rather than
also as embodiments of social achievements such as public education or
health care). The result is to reduce the chances of the socially transforma-
tive and publicly engaged use of IT, while encouraging its domination and
domestication by commercial interests.
Nonetheless, IT use does escape being harnessed entirely by capitalism.
Some of this depends on slipping out of the net of property rights in order
to enter the World Wide Web. In India, by some estimates, the majority of
the people obtain access to the Internet illegally, from informal-sector
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 235

Internet vendors who establish hidden or black-market access to the

system’s backbone or trunk lines.5 Without this—and a variety of other
shady but creative adaptations around the world—IT access would be even
more asymmetrically distributed than it is. But the solution is only partial.
It enables e-mail and bulletin boards and access to public information. But
it does not speak to the extent to which the provision of content on the
web is itself ever more commercialized.
Both the flow of information and the financial value of Internet
communications put IT on the agenda of government and multilateral
regulators. Information flows on the Internet raise concerns about security,
manipulation, and crises of unintended consequences (such as the finan-
cial flows that were central to the East Asian fiscal crisis of 1997). So
far, there has been relatively little public discourse about the nature of this
regulation. Indeed, nongovernmental advocates for the public interest
have largely been excluded from the discussion. When the G7 powers
established a working group on Internet policies in 2000, for example, they
determined that each government would have one representative and that
there would be a representative of each national private business estab-
lishment. Only under pressure did they agree to “observers” from less
developed countries. Efforts to secure representation for the nonprofit
sectors in the different countries failed. This brings up the basic issue of
whether there is an effective way for nonbusiness civil-society interests to
be heard. The open-source software movement has made remarkable
strides, but advocates for this sort of vision of large-scale cooperation in
the creative process, and of a more democratic approach to developing
a technological infrastructure, are not significantly represented in core
discussions of legal and political regulation. National public spheres and
the nascent international public sphere alike are sharply challenged by the
partnership of corporate powers and national governments, backed up
by international agencies serving that partnership and a global culture
heavily shaped by neoliberalism.
To the extent that there is a direct response to self-organized public
communication, it comes mostly from nation-states. Though businesses
are susceptible to campaigns focused on their public image (famously
pioneered by the Nestlé boycott), they are much less directly attentive to
public opinion when it is expressed in nonfinancial terms. It is the trans-
lation of opinion into either consumer purchasing patterns or capital
236 Craig Calhoun

investment patterns or occasionally the willingness of other firms to work

cooperatively that matters. Likewise, multilateral organizations like the
World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO can be challenged by public outcry,
but are governed largely by states and operated along technocratic lines,
with expertise conceived mainly within the terms of neoliberal ideology.
Accordingly, it is a mistake for democrats to accept too readily the idea that
the growth of a global civil society makes states unimportant. States still
matter, they still wield considerable power, and this is at least in part
a good thing, not least because they are the main locus for democracy.
It is common to speak of globalization as though the fact of worldwide
interconnections meant that there was really a single, seamless whole.6 I have
done this to some extent here, but it can be misleading. Globalization looks
different from different regions and localities in the world. It is both an
opportunity for the European Union and a pressure behind European
unification. The implications are more ambiguous in much of Africa, where
access to the benefits of globalization has been minimal and the legacy of
colonialism and other ills have in some cases been exacerbated by it. Instead
of wondering whether states will lose their familiar power, for example, many
Africans must wonder instead whether states will become strong enough to
manage public services and unite countries. Likewise, senders and receivers of
migrants must view migration differently. And while unequal access to IT is
an issue everywhere, the inequality is between countries and regions as well
as within them. And the term access can be misleading, since even countries
that are in a good position to make access to the web universal may not be in
a strong position to become suppliers of global information resources.
To a large extent, the notion of a single, uniform global culture or
economy is an illusion encouraged by the way dominant Western media
present information about the world. From other vantage points, the
divergences are readily visible. Globalization is made up of a variety of dif-
ferent projects that clash with each other in varying degrees and combine
in different ways in different places. Western dominance is contested. This
is not to say that what happens elsewhere is simply survival or a response
to Western-initiated trends; it is rather the creative development of alter-
native modernities (Gaonkar 2001). This is something of what has been at
stake in clashes between Islamists and the West in recent years—not tradi-
tion versus modernity so much as struggle over whether Western trends
can control the whole of the modern. Is the freedom to make pornography
predominant in the content available on the web inherent in modernity,
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 237

or a contingent choice the West has made in constructing modernity—not

only in terms of sex and gender but in terms of minimally restricted
commercialization? Moreover, Western-dominated globalization is not all
of a piece—the WTO and the anti-WTO protests have both been Western-
dominated. Neither is there simply a tension between the West and the
rest, as though the latter were uniform. Regional and local differences
still matter, along with religious, cultural, class, and other differences
that crosscut regions. Even nationalism is commonly a response to global-
ization, not its other, something old and passing away.
Globalization is a heterogeneous process, in short, which produces
multiple and overlapping layers of interconnection. It is a matter of enmi-
ties and rivalries as well as interdependence. Moreover, the other side of
connectivity is exclusion. The more densely certain networks are woven
together, the more difficult it is for outliers to find a way in.
International civil society has grown as part of globalization, but its enthu-
siasts must be careful not to overstate its strength. It is sometimes suggested
that IT is a great equalizer, but as we have noted, IT is used by corporations
at least as effectively as by protesters (if not a good deal more so). Describing
the surge of global protest over capitalist hegemony, unequal development,
and the environment, some writers seem almost to imply that the protesters
outside the WTO meeting in Seattle came close to overpowering the global
elite within. In fact, of course, they were able to get a message heard and to
create a disruption but not to assume significant organizational power.
IT plays an important role, finally, in making it possible for globalization
to combine decentralization and dispersal of activity with concentration of
power (Calhoun 1992b). As Saskia Sassen (1996) notes, much of what
official statistics present as global trade among seemingly independent
nations is in fact coordinated production within individual global corpo-
rations. Carburetors may seem to be sold from Mexico to the United
States, but this is just one link in Ford’s new global assembly line, with
computer-assisted control systems and financial management as important
as computer-assisted design or robotics.

Networks and Knowledge

IT is powerful, but not all powerful. It is introduced into a world of exist-

ing social relations, culture, capitalism, and inequalities. These shape what
will be made of it. So does the creativity of engineers, designers, and users.
238 Craig Calhoun

So too, potentially, can the creative work of artists and others for whom
the Internet provides a new medium for both production and circulation
of work. Indeed, the aesthetic potential of IT is both important in itself,
and potentially part of the contribution of IT to the public sphere. The
latter is never simply a matter of rational-critical argument but also of
cultural creativity; the reimagining of the nature of social relations can be
as important as debate in the life of the public sphere. Through most of the
twentieth century, for example, the public sphere joined an aesthetic and
a distributive critique of capitalism, a bohemian discourse with the social-
ist, hopes for a more beautiful world with hopes for a more egalitarian
world. To a considerable extent this combination came unstuck in the
1990s (see the useful discussion in Boltanski and Chapiello 1999).
Egalitarian ideals were tarred with the brush of defunct Soviet-style bureau-
cratization and notions that government regulation was excessive even in
the West. Conversely, capitalism appeared often in the aesthetically
appealing guise of the high-tech corporate campus rather than the pollut-
ing factory. For a time, at least, its paradigmatic occupation became
website designer, and not only its economic but its aesthetic potentials
seemed unlimited. There was more artistic freedom offered by the dot-
coms than by government (and even universities looked awfully stodgy).
How much of the changed attitude will survive the dot-com crash is
unclear, but the example nonetheless illustrates the ways in which the
revision of cultural images is important to the construction of public opin-
ion. And of course, it was not an accident. The hybridization of Madison
Avenue and Bellevue, Washington, was central to the dot-com era, and
focused precisely on the revision of public opinion by aesthetic means.
Attempts by states and others to regulate the Internet and similar
technologies may reflect purely bureaucratic concerns or may respond
to such public discourse. A significant gap in this process, so far, is that
IT has been the object of a great deal of speculation—often utopian but
sometimes dystopian—and not much serious social research. Such
research will advance best if there are more researchers with serious
knowledge of both IT and social science. Such “cross-training” is not
encouraged in contemporary universities, but it is not impossible. In
any case, for the public to make informed choices about the develop-
ment and deployment of IT—and perhaps about remedying inequalities
in access or impacts—knowledge is crucial.
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 239

Sticking only to the American example (though versions of this process

are widespread), several different changes are intertwined and are funda-
mentally changing the character of higher education. The changes are not
evenly distributed, to be sure. Most especially, wealthy institutions have
more capacity to shape their own futures—and to maintain attractive
features of their current character. Thus it is not likely that Harvard
University or Williams College will employ IT simply to cut costs, reduce
faculty, or teach students online. They may use their “brand names” to
offer profitable distance-education programs. But their endowments and
social status will enable them to continue to serve a privileged segment of
the student population with residential programs that reach far beyond
the formal curricula and that include face-to-face relations among students
and between them and the faculty. The options open to less well-endowed
institutions are different, and so too the pressures shaping them. One
reason we know less about the overall transformation of higher education
is that researchers tend to be drawn from the upper tier of schools and
reflect mainly on what has gone on in the institutions in which they were
educated or work. But higher education in the United States is a highly
differentiated system in which schools have different missions, student
bodies, places in academic labor markets, and resources.
Colleges and universities have commonly maintained that even techni-
cal education was best pursued in the context of the broader liberal arts
and sciences, that it was important to train citizens as well as technicians,
and that students needed to develop critical-thinking skills for both roles.
In relation to IT, many have pointed out the difference between mastering
a specific software package or hardware configuration, both of which are
likely to change quickly, and mastering the underlying principles that will
enable students and workers to learn about new systems in the future.
Absent a much greater social investment, though, this broader vision
of higher education is inevitably somewhat elitist; it speaks less well to
students worried about the fastest, surest course to a good job.
Traditional colleges and universities are expensive—and are under chal-
lenge from “rationalizers”—not only because they are inefficient, but because
they bundle together a number of different activities and functions. They
house libraries and sometimes publishing companies, counseling services and
sports teams, computer centers and hospitals. They provide entertainment,
housing, and at least implicitly dating services. One of the basic questions
240 Craig Calhoun

today is which institutions can—or should—maintain this bundling together

of disparate activities. Perhaps most basically, the ideal of the university has
combined the production and dissemination of knowledge, research, and
teaching. Some efficiencies are available by unbundling these activities,
and this is happening. Like many of the changes, it is happening within
traditional institutions as well as in a redistribution of activities among
institutions. Some faculty are able to negotiate privileged reductions in their
teaching loads because of their research productivity; others make up the
difference. The most extreme dimension of this trend is the rise in employ-
ment of temporary and part-time teachers, usually with low salaries, minimal
benefits, and marginal status within the institutions. Though transformations
in higher education are often described in terms of “privatization,” this
shift appears in public institutions as well, and market pressures are felt
throughout the system.7
Indeed, profit and nonprofit orientations are being intermingled. Not-for-
profit universities have established for-profit corporations to try to make
money from online offerings. University presses long subsidized because of
the academic value of their publications are being asked to pay their way as
businesses. Charges for some library resources, especially those provided elec-
tronically, are becoming more widespread. The primary products of scholarly
research—journal articles and books—are increasingly accessible only for
a price. The institutions most immune from pressure are in fact not the pub-
lic universities but the very well-endowed private ones. MIT and Princeton
have thus, made their online offerings free—both seeing them as more valu-
able for public relations and alumni loyalty than as profit centers, and
suggesting that there may not be as much profit in this kind of offering as is
sometimes thought. On the other hand, such well-endowed institutions are
also operated partly as for-profit businesses, not least when they get into joint
ventures based on the inventions and innovations of their faculty.
In this as in other areas where IT is part of a larger change, inequalities
are growing but masked. Not only individuals but institutions are unequal
when facing technological innovation. Around the world, privatization of
higher education is part of the more general process of reducing state
support of social goods. This is encouraged by the neoliberal ideology
dominant in contemporary globalization (Bourdieu 1998, 2001).8 But it
means that states—the institutions best placed to defend the gains workers
and other popular forces have made in previous struggles—are instead
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 241

abandoning them. Some of those struggles—such as for low-cost, equitably

or perhaps meritocratically distributed public education—have been waged
in part through the public sphere, with material pressures complemented
by shifts in public opinion. The supporters of neoliberal capitalism have
effectively dominated elite public opinion, including the ways in which
the most powerful states perceive the implications of globalization. This
means that debate in the broader public sphere is an important test for the
capacity of civil society to resist the imperatives of capitalism. The debate
influences not only current state actions but the availability of knowledge
for future public discourse.
The Internet will always be a supplement to, not a replacement for, other
connections. Those who already have power can make more effective
immediate use of the technology—so those with less power have to work
harder to make it effective on their side. The Internet thus makes it easier
to find things out, but often harder to find out what we do not know. I do
not mean simply that it adds to volume and creates new demands for the
ability to discriminate and evaluate sources, though this is certainly true.
I mean also that it makes new forms of surveillance possible that are inher-
ently hard for ordinary people to observe and that may nonetheless
dramatically enhance the control others have over their lives. Despite the
fact that privacy issues have received more research and public attention
than almost any other dimension of IT, surprisingly little public outcry has
greeted U.S. government proposals—and actions—to reduce restrictions on
such surveillance. People still seem to think mainly in terms of new infor-
mation being gathered rather than recognizing the immense quantity of
information already produced as by-products of computer use but (usually)
not linked across datasets. The privacy label is thus partly misleading, since
the issues involve not just “exposure” but control.
Control is also important in another way. It is usually unclear to users
who is editorially shaping the content available on seemingly open public
websites. China, for example, has a range of extremely lively web-based dis-
cussions about issues from international affairs to government corruption.
Content that offends the government usually disappears quickly, however,
and there is presumably also a good deal of self-censorship. The result is
that sites apparently offering a glimpse of public opinion are skewed repre-
sentations. Unlike a newspaper that can be read in certain ways based on
the assumption that it is censored and its content controlled, websites give
242 Craig Calhoun

the impression of consisting simply of the spontaneous postings of the

public. This does not mean that the web does not bring a gain in sharing
information. Indeed, journalists on official Chinese newspapers have been
known to anonymously post to the web stories censors would stop them
from publishing—and these get some airing even if they are quickly cen-
sored. And, to complicate the matter further, the government sometimes
tolerates web content that it would censor from print publication. The
reason seems to be that it assumes that the Internet reaches a relatively elite
part of the population within which it is willing to see issues aired. This
may offer a kind of safety valve. It may be monitored by the government to
see what its more publicly informed and vocal citizens think; it has the
advantage that it does not seem as official as what appears in government-
owned publications. Perhaps most basically, the government may simply
recognize that it cannot effectively restrict all information from reaching
this elite—but may still wish to restrict what reaches the broader
population. In the information age, it may be all but impossible to stop
information flows—including across borders—but it may be more possible
to keep them relatively elite. In other settings, censorship may ultimately
be less of a factor in determining the accessibility of information on the web
than invisibility (because of the limits of search engines, the extent to
which commercial sites push public ones to the margin, and the costs of
advertising or maintaining links).
One argument has been that web-based “communities” are effective
organizational counterparts to corporations, governments, and other more
formally organized structures of power and action. There is some truth to
this—organization is always crucial to making otherwise dispersed popular
voices heard. Electronic communication is extremely effective at facilitat-
ing links among strangers—for example, facilitating both widely distrib-
uted protests and participation from widely distributed groups in
demonstrations or other shared events. It is a useful vehicle for sharing
information that can either motivate or inform action. At the same time,
we need to note the ambiguity of the language of community in this
regard. Writers seem to refer without clear distinction to dense networks of
personal ties, broad but loosely linked categories of people linked by
shared information, and IT users who derive their social connections from
some other basis (say, trade-union membership) but then communicate
partly online. If we mean the first of these, the most sociologically specific
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 243

use of community, then communities are effective only on relatively small

scales; density of connections—everyone knowing (and potentially trust-
ing) everyone else—necessarily declines with scale. Precisely because social
life began to be organized on ever-larger scales in the modern era, com-
munity could organize proportionately less of it. States, markets, and other
kinds of connections among people came to predominate—even when
people still valued community a great deal. Much of what IT facilitates is
linkage among relative strangers—the second and third usages above—
though I would hesitate to use the term community with its connotations
of dense social networks. The term community is misleading, moreover,
because it implies that collectivities formed in web-based discourse are
somehow equivalent to local communities grounded in face-to-face rela-
tionships (Calhoun 1998). Here too the reality is that the Internet is most
effective as a complement to face-to-face communication, not as a replace-
ment for it. It empowers local activists who would otherwise find it harder
to reach others with similar concerns in remote locations. It enables both
lateral sharing of information and better access to information controlled
by centralized providers (including government agencies). Here it is worth
noting that how effective the technology is in this regard depends a great
deal on institutional arrangements over which there can be political
struggle. Are government agencies required to make all their data effec-
tively accessible, for example? What laws and regulations govern public
provision of data by other actors?
More generally, community is a misleading term for thinking about the
Internet’s role in social solidarity. It may be true, as William Mitchell
(1995) puts it, that his keyboard is his café. Internet communications
provide many of the functions that coffeehouses (and newspapers) played
in Habermas’s model of the eighteenth-century public sphere. At the same
time, neither is necessarily best understood through the notion of com-
munity. Part of what Habermas described as important to coffeehouse
society was precisely that it provided a setting for interactions among
strangers, for discussions among those who were not knit to each other by
communal ties. The same goes for various sorts of multiuser domains
(MUDs) and is part of the basis for the creative identity work that Sherry
Turkle (1997) has described. MUDs may evoke a sense of community
for participants, and may be given metaphorical topographies complete
with “neighborhoods.” But it is also misleading to apply the warm, fuzzy
244 Craig Calhoun

language of the local without regard to scale. There is a crucial difference

among MUDs that provide occasions for strangers to fantasize, listservs
and websites that enable political organization among strangers, and web
resources that provide supplemental communication channels for people
also joined in directly interpersonal relationships. The three (and other
variants) can shade into each other, but are distinct not just in conception
but in implications. A particularly important part of the distinction comes
with the difference between categorical identifications (categories of
people with similar interests or identities) and network ties (more or less
dense webs of actual relationships, especially multiplex ones) (White 1992;
Calhoun 1992b, 2002). The latter join more or less “whole” people; the
former tend to join people one issue or identity at a time. The former,
however, transcend locality much more easily.
The point is not that one mode of interconnection is better or worse
than the other, but that they have different implications. The Internet can
make local community less isolated, or it can lead people to substitute
online ties to relative strangers for interaction with neighbors. It can
promote both enclaves and connectivity, nations and cosmopolitanism.
Heavy reliance on the term community to describe computer-mediated
groupings borrows from the warm and fuzzy connotations that the idea of
community has in everyday life and especially in nostalgia. But it also
obscures one of the most important potential roles for electronic commu-
nication, which is enhancing public discourse—a form of discourse that
joins strangers and enables large collectivities to make informed choices
about their institutions and their future.

The Idea of the Public Sphere

To say that a public exists is mainly to say that there is more or less open,
self-organized communication among strangers. There are settings in
which such public communication is minimal, in which strangers feel
sharply constrained in what they can or should say to each other, or in
which external regimentation of who may speak to whom or what may be
the topics of communication prohibits self-organization of publics. So this
minimal sense of publicness says a good deal.9 It does not, however, give
an adequate sense of the stakes of the idea of the public sphere. These focus
not simply on the general existence of public communication, but on its
capacity to guide social life.
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 245

The most famous study of the public sphere, Jürgen Habermas’s (1989)
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, focuses on the emergence in
the eighteenth century of a widespread ideal—and partially successful
actual practice—of open debate concerning questions about the public
good and policies for pursuing it.10 This debate was conducted by individ-
uals with autonomous bases in civil society—that is, with their own
sources of income and identity—but the debate achieved rationality to the
extent that the wealth and identities of the individuals did not intrude
on the argument itself. The public sphere was thus crucial to the capacity
of civil society to influence the state; it was political, but not part of the
state. Habermas (1989) describes the development of this political public
sphere out of an earlier literary one, in which the formation of opinion
about works of literature was elevated by rational-critical discourse. He
also points to the importance of institutional supports for public commu-
nication, notably the newspaper and the coffeehouse.”
In Habermas’s analysis, however, the ideal of the public sphere was
shown to mask a contradiction. It aspired equally to openness—in manner
of communication and in entrance to the discourse itself—and to the
critical use of reason to form opinion. Its successive structural transforma-
tions, however, reflected the extent to which expanding the scale of
the public sphere led to a degeneration in the processes of opinion forma-
tion. Instead of individuals debating, public communication became
increasingly a matter of organized interest groups—corporations, trade
unions, political parties—using the techniques of advertising and mass
communications. Opinion was formed less rationally on the basis of manip-
ulation. The advent of opinion polls did nothing to arrest this, since they
simply asked the opinion of discrete individuals without providing an occa-
sion for different individuals to inform each other through discussion. Such
opinions were less likely, therefore, to be based on knowledge. Indeed,
opinion polls simply gave better information on people to those who would
seek to influence or control them—treating them as “objects”—rather than
enabling people to become better subjects of public discourse.
Behind both Habermas’s optimistic account of the eighteenth century and
his pessimistic account of subsequent transformations lie the same issues.
Can public communication be a means of forming opinions based on reason
and improved by critical discourse? Can these opinions then inform the
creation or operation of social institutions and more generally the constitu-
tion of social life.12 In other words, can ordinary people use their faculties for
246 Craig Calhoun

reason and communication to choose the nature of their lives together—even

on a relatively large scale in which most are strangers to each other—rather
than having this imposed on them by inherited tradition, political power, or
economic wealth. For Habermas, the main issue was whether citizens could
guide a state, which helps to explain why public sphere appears in the
singular—it is the sum of the ways in which the open, rational-critical dis-
course of citizens at large can inform the (singular) state. The same broader
questions can be asked of international public discourse, however, and with
regard to influencing a multiplicity of states, of multilateral organizations, of
quasi- or nongovernmental bodies, and indeed, of business corporations.
Communication among strangers in the public sphere thus appears as
one of the various mechanisms by which social integration is achieved and
social institutions are shaped and guided. Shared participation in public
life itself can be a form of social solidarity, joining people in relation
to each other and to the public projects they debate—even when they
disagree about specifics. Among the various forms of social integration,
public communication is distinctive because, more than any of the others,
it offers the possibility of ordering collective life on the basis of reasoned
choice. People are joined together by functional interdependence, as in
markets, by subjection to political power, and by commonalities of culture.
The public sphere has the potential to shape each of these other forms of
connection, as well as offering a kind of connection of its own. It comple-
ments the realms of directly interpersonal relationships—family, friend-
ship, neighborhood. These are open in varying degrees to choice and to
construction through interpersonal communication. But they can join
only modest numbers of people; they cannot organize relations among
strangers. Moreover, when they steer affairs of state this is usually the ille-
gitimate influence of one part of a polity over the rest. The public sphere
distinctively offers the chance for the whole citizenry—or at least a large
part of it—to participate in guiding the state, thus conferring legitimacy on
it. This of course implies that legitimacy is based on the will of the people.
While this is a predominant conception in the modern world, it is not the
only possibility. Other approaches to legitimacy base it on divine will, on
inheritance, or on the formal excellence of institutional arrangements.
When legitimacy is based on the will of the people, though, a key question
is how that will is formed. Is it a matter of inheritance or of a tradition that
should be above question—as some proponents of ethnic nationalism
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 247

would argue? Is it a matter of manipulation by those who can draw power

from control over the media, or over jobs, or over the members of
self-interested organizations? Or is this will of the people formed through
discussion and debate among the people?
This is not the place to pursue questions of political theory, like how to
balance unity and diversity, the sense of common commitment implied by
the phrase “will of the people,” and the need for tolerance and mutual
engagement across lines of difference required by liberal democracy. But it
is crucial to see that these questions are made pressing by any appeal to the
public sphere as a basis for organizing life together. Take simply the
relationship to nation as an example. Nationalist ideology commonly
presents individuals as joined directly and identically to a common whole;
differentiation appears as a threat to national unity. Such an ideology can
have popular appeal and can be supported by masses of public communi-
cation—messages posted to both American and Chinese websites during
the spy-plane crisis of 2000 demonstrated this. But this sort of public
demonstration of unity and identity is different from public discourse in
which rational-critical debate improves the quality of opinions, educates
the participants, and forms a collective understanding of issues that
advances beyond preexisting definitions of interests or identities.13 Among
other things, the mass version of popular nationalism is eminently open
to manipulation by demagogues, the government, and other forces. Recall,
indeed, that democracy can mean mass rule, not protection of rights, and
that publicity and expansion of the media can be tactics in mobilizing
such masses (and not just in Nazi Germany or Maoist China).
More or less open, self-organized public communication among strangers
is evident in both mass nationalism and more rational-critical public
discourse. The minimal definition of the public sphere does not adequately
make the distinction (though to the extent that mass nationalism is manip-
ulated by the state or others, it is not “self-organized”). It is recognizing the
deeper stakes of the question of the public sphere that makes the tension
between these two “ideal types” of public communication evident and
important. And yet it should not be imagined that the realities to which they
refer are completely distinct. There is no communication that is not also
participation in the production or reproduction of culture. Even the most
rational-critical of public debates, organized by the fairest rules of procedure
and pursued in the least self-interested spirit, are thus conditioned by the
248 Craig Calhoun

cultural idioms in which they are conducted and contribute to the formation
of common culture (as well as the recognition of cultural differences) among
participants. Moreover, common culture is important in the commitment of
participants to each other and to the process of public discourse. Recogni-
zing the difference between simple affirmation of commonality and differ-
entiated public debate should not lead us to imagine that the ideal of
reasoned discourse is sufficient in itself to account for what goes on in any
public sphere. Conversely, we should see also that popular nationalism (and
other cultural or political traditions) is not immune from rational-critical
discourse. It can be shaped and reshaped both by the culture-forming and
the rational-critical dimensions of public discourse. Even when ideologues
assert that there is one true and correct way to be American or Chinese or
anything else, they tend always to offer distinct visions of that one and true
way. This opens the possibility of debate even in the midst of affirmations of
unity. And different nationalisms may incorporate greater recognition
of internal diversity, of the importance of reason, or of debate as part of the
self-understanding of the nation.
The existence of public communication, vital as it is, does not answer the
questions we need to ask about public spheres. We need to know not only how
active the communication is and how inclusive and open the participation is,
but what the qualities of the communication are. We need to attend to the
processes by which culture is produced and reproduced in public, not treat it
as a mere inheritance or private product of individuals or small groups. We
need to ask how responsive public opinion is to reasoned argument, how well
any public sphere benefits from the potential for self-correction and collective
education implicit in the possibilities of rational-critical discourse. And we
need to inquire how committed participants are to the processes of public
discourse and through it to each other. Finally, and not least of all, we need to
ask how effectively the public opinion formed can in fact influence social insti-
tutions and wielders of economic, political, or indeed cultural power.
These questions should all be basic to inquiry into the implications of
new information technology for public life and democracy. Various tech-
nologies have the potential to constrain or facilitate openness, reason, cul-
tural creativity, self-organization, solidarity. This is as true internationally
as domestically. Moreover, questions of unequal access, cultural diversity,
and perhaps most basically, the multiplicity of agents of power and poten-
tial objects of public influence loom even larger in the global arena.
Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 249

Conclusion

The implications of IT for the global public sphere are still being determined.
Whether it will be put to use in ways that open and encourage public
communication as much as in ways that facilitate commerce and control
is an open question. If not, then web-based resistance to power—viruses,
hacking, site flooding, and other IT and web-based strategies for attacking
corporations, states, other users—may become more prominent. There is no
perfect “firewall” between systems of public communication and infrastruc-
tural systems. Accordingly, the stakes are high should cyberterrorism become
more prominent. At the same time, opportunities for democratic choice
about how sociotechnical systems are organized are limited. And it is often
the sense of being excluded from choices about the future than fans the
flames of discontent.
Prospects for democratization of the global order depend crucially on the
development of a global public sphere, as well as on attention to global
inequities within the public discourse of individual societies. There are
opportunities for activism. This need not always involve a leap to the truly
global, but may involve the building of transnational communications
networks on a regional scale—as has happened to some extent around
Latin America and South Asia. It will be important for those who would
open up the public sphere to figure out how to work within organizations
(including corporations and states), not just against them or in seemingly
separate and autonomous “communities.” It may also be possible to choose
at least some aspects of the transformation of colleges and universities
instead of just letting it happen, and thus to choose to have stronger bases
for producing and sharing knowledge to inform the public. In this regard,
one of the most important actions may be to do real research to help
replace the contest of anecdotes and speculations with a reasoned debate
in the public sphere.

Notes

A draft of this chapter was presented to the International Sociological Association,

Brisbane, Australia, July 11, 2002. An earlier version was presented at Directions and
Implications of Advanced Computing 2000, Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility, Seattle, May 20, 2000.
250 Craig Calhoun

1. See DiMaggio et al. 2001 for a useful review (though an overwhelmingly North
American one). Even where there is serious research on the Internet, it is more likely to
address the behavior of individual users than social processes or public communication
as such, and it is commonly contained within national contexts (and within the global
North). For a useful account of the research see Wellman 1999, as well as Wellmen and
Haythornthwaite 2003, though this account remains heavily oriented to the processes
of sociability. Important as this is, it is distinct from reorganization of power, the
construction of more or less autopoetic systems, and the problems of design of complex
technical infrastructures.

2. It is important to recognize, though, the extent to which broadcast media subsi-

dize the provision of news by the Internet—because the latter is not yet
autonomously profitable.

3. The literature on media concentration is huge; see, among the best examples (but
still heavily U.S. focused), McChesney 1999 and Compaine and Gomery 2000.

4. For more on China’s Internet-based public discourse and especially the interpen-
etration of domestic and international themes, see Yang 2002.

5. I am informed here by the work of Ravi Sundaram and colleagues in Serai,

a research institute on IT at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in
New Delhi.

6. Interestingly, it is an illusion that informs critics as well as celebrants. In their

influential book Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000) present a picture
of a fully sutured and self-sufficient dominant world order, one that lacks the inter-
nal contradictions to generate immanent transformation.

7. Privatization may be a more precise term for discussing changes in higher educa-
tion in some other countries. In many of these cases, it is more closely correlated
with a for-profit orientation than in the United States, which has a long history of
private, but not-for-profit higher education. And in many of these cases, neoliberal
state policies are leading to efforts not just to found new private institutions but to
reduce public support for existing institutions.

8. A translation of the first essay in Contre-feux II appears in Items and Issues, 1(3),
winter 2002 (available at www.ssrc.org).

9. Warner (2002) offers a more elaborate version of this minimal definition:

1. A public is self-organizing.
2. A public is a relation among strangers.
3. The address of public speech is both personal and impersonal.
4. A public is the social space created by the circulation of discourse.
5. Publics exist historically according to the temporality of their circulation.

For more history of the concept see Calhoun 2001a, 2001b.

Information Technology and the International Public Sphere 251

10. For several critical analyses of the issues Habermas raises, see Calhoun 1992a.

11. A website imaginatively devoted to coffee includes a discussion of “Habermas,

the coffee houses and the public sphere” (http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~english/
personal/Coffeehome.html).

12. Habermas focuses mainly on political life and assumes the existence of a state
to be influenced. Writing slightly earlier, Hannah Arendt (1958) emphasized the
broader process of creating social institutions and also the moments of creation of
states in acts of founding and revolutions.

13. For a study that addresses the interrelationships of the two dimensions, see
Rajogopal 2001.
12 What Do We Need to Know about the Future We’re
Creating? Technobiographical Reflections

Howard Rheingold

A crucial turning point comes when one is able to acknowledge that modern technics,
much more than politics as conventionally understood, now legislates the conditions
of human existence. New technologies are institutionalized structures within an exist-
ing constitution that gives shape to a new polity, the technopolis in which we do
increasingly live. For the most part, this constitution still evolves with little public
scrutiny or debate. Shielded by the conviction that technology is neutral and tool-like,
a whole new order is built—piecemeal, step by step, with the parts and pieces linked
together in novel ways, without the slightest public awareness or opportunity to
dispute the character of the changes underway. It is somnambulism (rather than deter-
minism) that characterizes technological politics—on the left, right, and center equally.
—Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology

Are we awake to the world we are building, or are we, as an old Sufi saying
goes, merely asleep in life’s waiting room?
The petroleum economy, aviation, nuclear power, biotechnology, lasers,
organ transplants, telephone and television, and personal computer net-
works—today’s technologies have put staggering amounts of power into the
hands of millions. More power is on its way in the next several decades, as
present scientific knowledge drives future technological capability. Do we
know what to do with the powers over matter, mind, and life that tomorrow’s
technologies will grant us? If we do not already know the answers to these
questions, what do we need to know before we can design, deploy, control,
and live humanely and sustainably with the tools we are creating?
Like millions of others who came of age in the last half of the twentieth
century, the evolution of technology is not just something I study; it has
been the backdrop of my life. Interstate highways and the transformation
of American life by the automobile were just shifting into high gear when
I was born in 1947. When I was an infant, television and nuclear power
254 Howard Rheingold

were also in their infancy. I can remember using propeller-driven aircraft

and vinyl record albums. I can remember black-and-white TV. Like most
Americans, the foundation of my beliefs about the future was a strong faith
in “progress”—the assurance that tomorrow will be different and better
than today because of new technologies.
I am still immersed in technologies. They fascinate me. I make a good
living using computers and networks to write about computers and net-
works. Somewhere along the way, I started spending hours of my day in
front of a computer screen. But I have been paying more attention to the
cracks in my worldview lately, especially the place where progress and
somnambulism meet.
I am compelled to begin with a confession of not just my complicity in
the creation of today’s digital culture, but my outright seduction by high-
tech tools. I am honor-bound to describe my love for mind-extending
technologies before I can describe how I started to think more critically
about tools, minds, and civilizations.
I speak now directly to others like myself who are admitted, even enthu-
siastic, technophiles. For that reason, I do not want anyone to mistake this
for an orthodox neo-Luddite rant. I lack the certainty of the true believ-
ers—both the orthodox technophiles and the convinced technophobes.
I confess up front that I know of no theology or ideology that will answer
the questions I can no longer avoid asking.
Where are we going? Do we want to go there? Is there anything we can
do about it? I have written this because I hope we can think together about
where these questions lead. Perhaps there are solutions that can only be
found by many of us, working together. I offer a brief technological auto-
biography as a means of reflecting and discussing what humans do not yet
know about our tools.

When Enlightenment Runs Out of Control, Nobody Notices

Thinking critically about the technosphere we inhabit, which defines who

we are and dictates how we live and die, is scary—like thinking about per-
forming surgery on yourself. Your internal denial alarms are going off
already, I know. I entreat you to repress the urge to rise to the defense of
penicillin and civilization, and consider for just a moment how I came to
rethink my attitudes.
The Future We’re Creating 255

We are all partaking in, and many of us are helping to build, something
that none of us understands. There are taboos against looking too critically at
the real politics of technology. Although a relatively few people understand
the urgency and relevance of the history of technologies, most people are not
even aware that progress was not always our most important product.
One of the things that makes technology dangerous is that most people
never learn where tools come from, what they were originally designed to
do, and how people have evolved, appropriated, subverted, perverted, and
augmented them from their original purposes and designs.
For the practical and irresistible reason that there is much money in sell-
ing tools and much less in critiquing them, the real and imagined benefits
of technologies are trumpeted, while their histories and social impacts are
not nearly as widely taught or discussed. Least discussed is how people
think about certain things, because that way of thinking was invented by
someone. The vast majority of the people who use technologies, and are
affected by them, know little about the origins and provenance of the fun-
damental thinking tools we all benefit from—for example, the methods of
rationality, the notion of progress, democratic self-governance, and the
universal belief in the superiority of the scientific method to other ways of
knowing.
That “science” equals “truth” is not viewed as a belief but as a funda-
mental assumption about the nature of reality. Few think of it as an
invention—but as a mode of thinking, it has been the most world-
changing technology of the past few world-changing centuries. A specific
manner of systematically examining the world, extracting knowledge,
and applying that knowledge to extend power, a system that was devel-
oped only a few hundred years ago, has been so extraordinarily successful
that it has dominated our attention.
Our technologized culture shapes and fascinates us to the extent that we
have ceased to perceive other ways of knowing and interacting with the
world and each other. As Langdon Winner claims above, people in indus-
trial, megatechnological civilization seem to sleepwalk through the world
we have created, oblivious to the worlds that have been destroyed, rarely
thinking about what new technologies will engender in years to come.
I have long been one of the oblivious, but now I know I am oblivious.
One crashes into a fundamental paradox when one tries to determine
whether one is sleepwalking, so I ask you to stipulate only that most
256 Howard Rheingold

people in the world are unaware of the true dimensions of the revolution
that has taken place since the time of Descartes and Bacon. We know we
live in a world of 747s and heart transplants and perpetual change, but we
do not know—are not taught—how we got here. Knowing how we got here
is particularly important now because civilization is facing a crisis about
thinking about tools that was caused, in part, because we learned how to
create tools for thinking.
People did not know how to think systematically about the material
world until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, despite millennia of
attempts by philosophers to understand the nature of energy and matter.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in an unpleasant era of
plagues, witch burnings, Inquisitions, devastating religious wars and civil
conflicts, a small number of European philosophers proposed that if we
could discover a better method of thinking about the world—a systematic
means of discovering truth—we could govern ourselves in a more equi-
table manner. That is, we could relieve the suffering of disease and hunger
and improve the living conditions of many, if not all.
These thinkers postulated, not too many centuries ago, that the human
condition could be improved by way of a magical mental operation that at
that time was yet to be discovered. In their search for this mind magic, the
founders of modern science drew their hints from the alchemic, hermetic,
cabalist magical traditions of the past. The search for meaning in the stars
or in the manipulation of magical symbols turned to the search for meaning
in matter and the manipulation of mathematical symbols.
Newton’s astrological speculations are forgotten, but every schoolchild
learns what Newton discovered about gravity and motion. Science and
technology seem to have trumped metaphysics, but it is important to
know that metaphysical inquiry is what triggered the quest that led to sci-
ence and technology. Rooted in Platonic transcendental idealism and
Christian eschatology, with a strong tributary of Gnostic heresies, the
notion that history has a direction prepared the way for the “new method”
of recent centuries. Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews, and Christians all con-
tributed to the foundations of science, but the idea of scientific progress
emerged as something wholly new. We take it for granted now, but the
premise of this quest was a radically new view of human nature when it
emerged, 400 years ago: humans are perfectible, are capable of discovering
The Future We’re Creating 257

the means of our own perfection, and human institutions thereafter can be
improved by perfected people. Our collective empirical understanding of
nature can increase our knowledge, and from that knowledge, create bet-
ter ways to live. This was the blueprint for the modern idea of progress, in
its original form.
One key aspect of progress has been what Lewis Mumford called the
invention of the “myth of the machine”—the mode of organizing and
training people in hierarchies to perform tasks that add up to pyramids,
empires, factories. When a system emerges that rewards everyone for treat-
ing individuals as components in a machine, some people are going to be
crushed.
One of the reasons technology’s shadow side is more or less invisible is
because progress has been such a winner—although the growth of what
Jacques Ellul called la technique has systematically created winners and
losers. Another reason is that technology is magical. The mystical seekers
of the sixteenth century found something in reality as potent as the
alchemist’s philosopher’s stone had promised to be in imagination. Intro-
ducing rationalism and empiricism into human affairs and scientific enter-
prise was a noble vision, with many successes in the material world. A great
deal of human misery has been relieved because those European thinkers
began concocting this notion of perpetual discovery, perpetual change,
perpetual improvement—and inventing tools for bringing about this
transformation of the human condition. At the same time, a great deal of
misery has been perpetrated by rational thinkers, using sophisticated tools.
Some claim that the nature of tools transforms us into components, but
I consider technological determinism to be enervating and drearily lacking
in free will. However, it must be kept in mind that thinking that we can
improve on the ways we use technology is just what a rationally trained
mind would suggest as an answer to suffering caused by technological
civilization.
In response to that call for what came to be known as “the Enlightenment
Project,” thinkers including Descartes, Bacon, Newton, and Galileo applied
themselves to the task of thinking in a wholly new manner. Between their
individual insights, this small number of European intellectual adventurers
came up with a “new method” that was extraordinarily successful for many
(if not for those who labored in the infernal factories or suffered the effects of
258 Howard Rheingold

smog, pollution, industrial accidents, redundancy). The fundamentals of the

new method are so simple that they seem self-evident, once you know them.
First, doubt everything. Then gather evidence by examining the world and
performing systematic experiments. Finally, formulate theories, preferably
with mathematical formulas, that allow you to explain the evidence and
predict the outcome of further experiments. In the beginning, few foresaw
the limitations of this discovery. We can see now, however, how this trans-
formation of human thought caused side effects that were not visible for
centuries. And we have seen that the methods so powerfully predictive in the
physical sciences did not turn out to be so amenable to the production of
knowledge in the social sciences.
At the end of the twentieth century, it became easier to see that techno-
logical progress based on systematically gathered scientific knowledge,
coupled with industrial capitalism (or socialism, for that matter), requires
continuous growth, damages the environment that supports life, dimin-
ishes both biological and social diversity, and everywhere seems to move
us toward societies in which humans learn how to be components in larger
social machines. No matter how convenient it makes life for billions, this
process of extracting resources, expanding power, and stimulating perpet-
ual growth in energy consumption seems to be headed for ecological,
political, and economic catastrophe within the next few decades, at most.
In the last twenty years of unparalleled technological development the gap
between rich and poor has become enormous and continues to grow. Des-
peration and ideology fuel war and terror. It is no longer as easy to assume
that life will get better as technology marches on.
Although our present crisis is so threatening precisely because it plays
out on the physical plane, where our bodies and other creatures live, it is
a crisis of knowledge. We lack a crucial mental skill. I contend that our
position today regarding the way we make decisions about technologies is
similar to the dilemma that pre-Enlightenment scientists faced in the six-
teenth century. We simply do not have a good method for thinking and
making decisions about how to apply (and not apply) the powerful tools
of rationality, the scientific method, reductionism, the combination of
logic and efficiency embodied by technology. Cost-benefit analyses and
economic simulations are insufficient methods for those who lose their
way of life as a cost of providing benefits to others—those who live in lands
where molybdenum or petroleum, forests or ores are to be found. The new
The Future We’re Creating 259

way of thinking we now require is difficult to imagine precisely because it

cannot be easily quantified or manipulated mechanically.
That we do not now know how to think publicly and make collective deci-
sions about technology does not mean we are incapable of discovering a “new
method” or new methods for thinking about technology. If ever our species
needed thinkers of the caliber of Descartes and Newton, it is now, but first we
need to think about a new way to think about technology. I strongly suspect
that the solution must be collective—another Descartes or Newton will not
be good enough this time. I am convinced that it helps to encourage a more
widespread public discourse about the problem, in the hope that our process
of thinking together can help lead to this future mindset. This mindset
should ensure that the people who design and distribute tomorrow’s tech-
nologies will do so with a more thorough knowledge of the systemic effects
of their enterprise than their educations now provide.
We must be careful that we do not destroy what we set out to save. The
assumption that there is a rational solution to every problem is at the heart
of Enlightenment rationalism. Relentless and successful problem solving is
what brought us from Mesopotamia to metropolis in five thousand years.
Let us begin by not mistaking “thinking together” for “rushing for a solu-
tion.” Perhaps the answer is not in the realm of “define problem → for-
mulate solution.” Perhaps we need to think/feel outside that frame.
Without claiming I have an answer to the problems of technology, I would
like to tell other technology lovers, technology designers, and technology
users about a few of the things I have learned.
I have to start with my own fascination with technologies, especially
those that amplify intellectual functions. I know that many people have
fallen in love with the virtual life, as I have, and suspect that you and I are
the people—the ones who are designing tomorrow’s technologies—who
most actively need to know about what I have been learning.
I think our compulsion and talent for changing our world and ourselves
is hardwired in our frontal lobes and opposable thumbs; our extremities
evolved to walk on and grasp the world, to roam it and use it. If the Devil
is in the details, so is God, or at least the Demiurge. The seduction of dig-
ital technology in particular is not demonic, but Faustian. Faust did not sell
his soul for ordinary wealth or power, but for the transformative develop-
ment of progress, his and society’s. Faust’s problem was not in the nature
of his goal, but in the coin he paid. All our stories these days are Faustian.
260 Howard Rheingold

Seduction by Mind Amplifier

Like falling in love, my involvement with personal computer technology has

been both a long slide and a series of abrupt, memorable, life-changing
epiphanies. The first time I used WordStar to move a block of text, after ten
years of retyping the entire page to switch two paragraphs, I was hooked.
Then I saw the Alto, with its mice, windows, and point-and-click interface.
I saw a need to tell an interesting story, about a group of dreamers and rebels
who wanted to build mind amplifiers and who swam against the currents of
mainstream computer industries and academic computer science. When
I started digging into the history, I realized that a decent overview of the ori-
gins of personal computers would have to include something about Boole,
Babbage, Turing, von Neumann, and Wiener. I ended up writing a book,
Tools for Thought (1985). Looking back, I can see that I had begun the trans-
formation from freelance writer to technology commentator—and that I had
become a consumer, guinea pig, and (sometimes uncritical) advocate for the
technological changes that were emerging from the information technology
(IT) industries.
Over the past fifteen years, personal computer hardware, software, and
ways of doing intellectual work have evolved far beyond the Alto. In 1984,
I got my hands on a Macintosh and started playing with Macpaint. In Mac-
paint there is a tool that enables you to zoom in on a graphic and turn on
and off the individual pixels that make up the details of a bit-mapped
image. “Fat Bits” was the name of the pixel-twiddling tool in Macpaint.
I think I sat down for three hours without getting up, as soon as I started
playing with Macpaint and discovered Fat Bits.
Fat Bits was a kind of trance. Hours would go by and I could keep my
consciousness focused at the pixel level. It was a type of abstraction exer-
cise. My consciousness began to change. The Gutenberg trance began to
change into another one. In some ways, the changes were instantaneous;
in other ways, the changes took years. Yes, the screen became a kind of
reality, an extension of my mind. A space that was both cognitive and
social. I started spending most of the day there, and as I learned to use it,
I learned to exercise my cognitive faculties in ways that took advantage of
the screen-mind trance. Abstraction requires a certain amount of som-
nambulism: forget about all the detailed underpinnings, once you have
clumped them into an abstraction; continually strive to change your focus
The Future We’re Creating 261

to the next level of abstraction, where you can clump abstractions together
to create the even higher levels. It is a breathtaking game but you have to
remember you are playing it, or you run the risk of forfeiting part of your
humanity. We all learn to build hierarchies of abstractions when we learn
to put the intrinsically meaningless symbols of alphabetical characters into
the higher-level abstractions of words (then forget thereafter that we are
stringing together letters). We then use words as building blocks for the
higher-yet levels of abstraction inherent in sentences, paragraphs, essays,
and books.
A computer is a hierarchy of abstractions. At the bottom of the hierarchy
is the electrical microcircuitry. As Claude Shannon demonstrated, on-and-off
switches can be arranged in circuits that emulate the functions of Boolean
algebra. Those arrangements of switches, which can be thought of as “and,”
“or,” and “not” logical gates, constitute the first level of abstraction. The
“machine language” of any computer is composed of these abstractions.
Machine languages are clumped and processed through software compilers
and interpreters and other virtual machines to become higher-level lan-
guages. Then those higher-level languages write the text display and
windowing and mousing behaviors that make up the graphical user inter-
face—the level of abstraction where personal computer users spend our time.
Fat Bits zoomed in to an even higher level of abstraction, and today’s state-
of-the-art image-manipulation software, PhotoShop, is a toolkit of graphical
abstractions, orders of magnitude more complex than 1984’s Macpaint.
The particular entrancement induced by computer-based tools combines
sensory entrancement via high-resolution media with abstraction languages
that enable human minds to play with symbolic structures we are not able to
manipulate by means of our unaugmented brains. A contemporary critic of
computer technology, Sven Birkerts, in The Gutenberg Elegies (1994), noted
this abstraction entrancement focused on computer screens. What such cri-
tics, and Birkerts in particular, fail to acknowledge is that abstraction
entrancement did not begin with computers (he could have taken a hint from
the title of his book). If you want to identify the culprit who shunted the
human race into millennia of symbol intoxication, it was the person or per-
sons unknown who created the alphabetic-phonetic alphabet in the vicinity
of Sumer, around 5,000 years ago. Plato warned that the written word would
destroy the traditions of memorization and direct teacher-to-student
pedagogy, and Marshall McLuhan pointed out that the alphabet was an
262 Howard Rheingold

enabling technology for the Roman Empire. Every technology has a shadow,
but I was too dazzled by the radiance of the benefits of computer-assisted
abstraction to think about the shadows at that time.

Jumping into the Virtual World

Connecting my modem to my telephone was another epiphany that actu-

ally preceded my seduction by Macintosh. I was familiar with local area
networks and servers from the Alto and Ethernet I had used at PARC, but
I was not granted an ARPAnet account. I had stored and retrieved and
printed documents on a network, but I had never used the computer as
a communication device. As soon as I discovered that my mind amplifier
could plug into other minds via a kind of groupmind amplifier, I spent the
next fifteen years too enthralled to pay a great deal of attention to other
effects the technology was having on me and the rest of the world.
It was an easy leap from the experience of my own empowerment to the
conclusion, heartily supported by Engelbart (1963), and others, that per-
sonal computers and networks were empowering technologies. The
answer to the question of whether these tools really empower individuals
is “yes and no.” There is no question that they added to my ability to
think, communicate, and make a living. When something makes you
happier and more prosperous, you are not strongly motivated to think
critically about it.
In 1983 I bought a 300/1200-baud modem for $500 in order to ship text
back and forth with a collaborator. I was helping write a book with a part-
ner who worked at night. He insisted that I buy a modem and get an MCI
mail account. I remember the exact moment of that epiphany. It came
when I got to my computer, the first morning after activating my account,
to see words, words, words streaming across the screen and onto my hard
disk. At 1200 baud, it is possible to read it as it goes by. It did not take me
long to start exploring BBSs and online services such as The Source. I wrote
about those experiences in the last chapter of Tools for Thought. In 1985,
I joined the Whole Earth Lectronic Link (WELL), and I have probably spent
an average of four hours a day online ever since.
After more than a decade alone in my room, staring at a blank page in
my typewriter (or, more recently, a blank file on a computer monitor),
I was ripe for online communication. When I started out to be a writer, it
The Future We’re Creating 263

had not occurred to me that I was sentencing myself to a life term in soli-
tary confinement. My wife worked at her own jobs, outside the house. All
the other people my age were going to offices, campuses, factories, or fields
where they would see other humans (whether they liked them or not),
hear the sound of other voices, feel somehow connected to others.
Like many inhabitants of modern civilization, my wife and I moved
around the United States—Portland, Oregon, Boston, and New York—
before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s. After we
moved to San Francisco, we changed houses and neighbors a half dozen
times in the first ten years we were there. We got to know a few neighbors,
and continued to see one or two of them after moving from the old neigh-
borhood. A few friends from college were in the area. We did not belong
to any organized religion. Like many others, we found that our mobility,
the seclusion necessitated by my profession, and the social atomization of
urban life left us with a dearth of social and intellectual affiliations.
Falling into social cyberspace was easy for me. I was sitting there in front
of the computer for hours a day, anyway. It was not long before the
modem had a dedicated telephone line. All I had to do was type a few key-
strokes and I was connected to other people who were talking about every-
thing under the sun. At first, I only did it in the evenings. I was fascinated
by BBS culture. I still know two people I first met in 1984 via the Skate-
board BBS. There were only about a dozen of us who regularly talked about
life, art, jokes, and current events, via a BBS that ran off a PC in somebody’s
bedroom. However, it only took weeks before we started meeting regularly
at a Chinese restaurant. BBS culture, however, is like a vast collection of
small towns. No single online discussion offers much social or intellectual
diversity. The Source was a much larger national service (later assimilated
by CompuServe), but it cost as much as $15 an hour during prime time,
and playing around with ideas online is no fun with the meter ticking.
My social isolation, fascination and dissatisfaction with BBSs, and inabil-
ity to pay premium rates set me up for instant seduction when the WELL
opened in 1985, offering a kind of freewheeling online salon of techies,
writers, activists, deadheads, and other early adopters of technology
culture—at $2 an hour. Where did the last seventeen years go? I had no idea
at the time that reading, typing, thinking about, laughing at, crying over,
and fretting over WELL postings would involve a significant amount, if not
a majority, of my waking hours for more than a decade to come. I ended
264 Howard Rheingold

up traveling around the world to research the book I wrote about social
cyberspaces, The Virtual Community, and traveling around it a half dozen
more times after the book was published in 1993. Years of talking with
people everywhere about this notion of virtual communities—an idea, I
discovered, that many people find disturbing—pushed me to ask of
myself some of the questions critics kept asking me in Tokyo and Sydney,
Amsterdam and Vancouver, London and Stockholm.
The first such question I have been asked many times in many places is
whether such groups are “really” communities. My answer is: “No, virtual
communities are not ‘really’ communities, but it is important to extend the
question.” The same can be said of most apartment buildings, many neigh-
borhoods, and all large cities. The question of what to do about increasing
human alienation within the increasingly larger-and-faster-than-human
environment is a serious one. People who communicate via computer net-
works definitely should be instructed about the danger of mistaking mes-
sages on computer screens for fully authentic human relationships.
Similarly, we definitely need to be skeptical of claims that online discourse
can effectively substitute for or revitalize the public sphere that was
enclosed and fragmented by mass-media technology and public relations
techniques. Every symbolic communication medium distances people in
some ways while it connects them in others.
Two important qualifications must be considered before critiquing the
phenomenon of virtual communities. First, for some people, online com-
munication is a lifeline, a way of improving their quality of life, and one
should think hard and long before appointing oneself the arbiter of
whether it is healthy for an Alzheimer’s caregiver, an AIDS patient, a quad-
riplegic, or a bright student in a remote location to spend time online. If
one’s critique does not take these people into account, there is the danger
of doing real damage to the lives of people who might otherwise have no
social life at all.
The second thing to keep in mind when critiquing virtual communities
is that alienation is real and important but it did not begin with comput-
ers, nor should our critique end there. I would be the first to stipulate that
in many cases, the availability of online social interaction can exacerbate
the isolation and dehumanization of people who live in the modern world.
If we are going to look unblinkingly at whether it is humane to support a
world where more and more people spend more of our time driving
The Future We’re Creating 265

single-passenger, petroleum-fueled vehicles through concrete landscapes

to our cubicles inside big ugly buildings, where we spend our time staring
at computer screens, manipulating symbols, and exercising our fingers—
we need to look closely at the room, the building, the urban landscape,
the entire civilization that computer screen is situated within, as well as
questioning whether life in front of a screen is healthy.
The most important critiques of virtual communities are those that
attack the validity of claims that many-to-many communication media
have the potential for being used as a democratizing tool in the political
sphere. Now that every desktop is potentially a printing press, a broad-
casting station, and a place of assembly, has an important decentralization
of the power to inform, witness, influence, and persuade taken place?
Certainly, for the Serbian opposition who put their radio station B92 on
the Net when the government shut down their broadcasts, and for the
Zapatistas who effectively disseminated news and influenced world opin-
ion via the Net, this claim is not wholly false. Minnesota’s “E-democracy”
project and the California Voter Foundation are excellent experiments. But
whether computer bulletin boards, mailing lists, and e-mail can effectively
counter the power of the global mass-media disinfotainment complex is a
pragmatic question to ask.
I believe it is too early for a definitive answer. Indeed, a “definitive
answer” may be impossible; it may be a matter of critical discussions rather
than definitive answers, which are artifacts of our historical fascination
with rationalism and science. The most intelligent critiques of this concept
are Fernbach and Thompson’s “Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Fail-
ure?” (1995) and Langdon Winner’s essay “Mythinformation,” reprinted
in his book The Whale and the Reactor (1986).
We should not close the books on the debate about the mental or social
health of virtual communities and their relationship to the nonvirtual
world. And neither should we stop at a shallow level of analysis. It is time
to look at today’s questions about digital life as instances of the same ques-
tions Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford asked about technological civiliza-
tion half a century ago, and which Marx, Weber, and Veblen dealt with
even earlier.
It would be wrong to conclude that I am an uncritical enthusiast of
virtual communities. Like all technologies, this medium has its shadow
side, and there are ways to abuse it. Like all communication media, virtual
266 Howard Rheingold

communities enable people to misunderstand each other in new ways.

Since the publication of the first edition of The Virtual Community in 1993,
I have learned a great deal from my further experiences online and from
the more intelligent critiques of the book. The MIT Press gave me the rare
opportunity to amend my thinking in a long new chapter, including many
more critical questions about the role of online social networks, in the
2000 edition. In general, I have learned two things. First, virtual commu-
nities are a subset of online social networks (Wellman and Guilia 1995).
Most social networks have nothing to do with cyberspace, but the Internet
provides an ideal medium for promoting social networks. Some but cer-
tainly not all social networks engender the kind of ongoing personal com-
munications, caring, and offline activity that make the use of the word
community appropriate, and not all social cyberspaces are pleasant, healthy,
or productive.
If I had known about social-network analysis in 1993, I might have
avoided nearly a decade of debate about whether virtual communities are
real or not. In coming years, I believe the far more important questions will
have to do with the nature of collective action in social cyberspaces, a
more precise nomenclature (community is a notoriously slippery word) and
a field amenable to social-science methodology.

From Thinking Tools to Thinking about Tools

It took years for me to understand the outlines of the problem and see
that the problems of technology in which I began to suspect I shared com-
plicity were inseparable from the powers granted me by my mastery of
personal computers and online media. I still use and appreciate the same
tools, but I was definitely more intoxicated back then with the sheer pace
of change. A new world was emerging and it was fun, empowering,
enriching—and most of all, cool.
When I was not hanging out online or writing about hanging out
online, I maintained a professional interest in the evolution of computer
technology. In 1990, I traveled from MIT and NASA to laboratories in
Tokyo, London, and Grenoble, in order to research a book about a new
computer technology that was threatening to create totally artificial
worlds for people to pretend to inhabit: virtual reality. First, the com-
puter came out of nowhere to dominate our lives. It looked like the next
The Future We’re Creating 267

step might be for people to live inside the computer. In the process of
writing my book Virtual Reality (1992), and in my reading of the book’s
reviews, I began to wonder whether the ultimate direction of personal
computer development would really be the empowering mind amplifica-
tion I had hoped for, or whether it might instead devolve into hypnotic
disinfotainment. When someone can make a business out of selling
everyone in the world a tool for telling them what else to buy next, do
other potential applications for any new medium have a chance to
compete?
At the time I was writing about virtual reality, I received an invitation
from Kevin Kelly, who became the executive editor of the Wired magazine
but was at that time the editor of the Whole Earth Review. I took over the
job of editor of the Whole Earth Review when Kelly took off to write his
book Out of Control (1995). Finding myself at the vortex of the Whole
Earth community certainly accelerated my critical thinking about tech-
nology. I was immersed in an atmosphere that deliberately widened its
focus from just the details of digital technology to include the biosphere
and technologies of agriculture, energy, transportation, medicine, and
urban planning.
Stewart Brand, the founder of Wired and the Whole Earth Catalog (1969)—
the counterculture bestseller from which the magazine descended—was
a biologist who shared my fascination with mind amplifiers. Indeed, when
Douglas Engelbart produced his famous 1968 demonstration of the future
of computer technology, his audiovisual coordinator was Stewart Brand.
Brand’s early writings about Xerox PARC helped steer me there, although
I did not meet him for years to come. Brand’s mentors, Ken Kesey and
Gregory Bateson, were iconoclasts, pranksters, and whole-systems thinkers.
Putting deep ecologists together with software engineers and questioning
the fundamental premises of both camps was just the kind of thing Stewart
Brand or Whole Earth would do. Over the years, the Whole Earth organiza-
tion created cultural experiments such as the New Games Tournament,
Cyberthon (a kind of geekstock for the protodigerati of 1992), the Hackers’
Conference, and the WELL computer conferencing system.
Although “Access to Tools” was the magazine’s slogan, the Whole
Earth Review editorial staff certainly included several strong and know-
ledgeable advocates for radically different ways of thinking about tech-
nology. In fact, founder Stewart Brand became an adviser in the early
268 Howard Rheingold

1980s to California’s Governor Jerry Brown, who had created an “Office

of Appropriate Technology.”
The Whole Earth gang’s funky old office in Sausalito was where I started
thinking about where the technology I appreciated so much might all be
going and where I began to suspect that a price of my technology intoxi-
cation was a kind of somnambulism regarding its dark side. I was outraged,
during my tenure as editor, when William Irwin Thompson, in The Ameri-
can Replacement of Nature (1991, 44), accused Stewart Brand and me, by
name, of being agents of the Zoroastrian demon of mindless mechanism.
Richard Nilsen, Whole Earth’s late “land-use” editor, put my face in the
contradictions of ecology and technology every time I talked to him.
Whenever people say “you can’t stop progress,” my friend J. Baldwin,
Whole Earth’s “tools guy” and a former student of Whole Earth guru
R. Buckminster Fuller, advises asking the counterquestion: “progress
toward WHAT?” One of my first issues of the Whole Earth Review was
devoted to “Questioning Technology,” an activity most people do not
want to engage in, even as a thought experiment.
As soon as I finished editing The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, the lat-
est version of the decades-long succession of these catalogs, the World
Wide Web came along, and I got sucked into a fascination within a fasci-
nation that consumed the next several years of my life. In the summer of
1994 I left Whole Earth and joined a young publishing enterprise, Wired
Ventures, the publishers of Wired magazine. Kevin Kelly, ever my
Mephistopheles, invited me to talk to the publisher of Wired about start-
ing an online version, which was originally supposed to be called @Wired
but ended up as HotWired, the first commercial webzine. I quit my job as
HotWired’s executive editor because I wanted something more collabora-
tive, a community rather than a publication. So I created a business plan,
searched for and found $2 million in financing, launched Electric Minds,
named by Time magazine as one of the ten best websites of 1996, lost
financing when our backers found themselves in trouble, and folded the
business in the summer of 1997.
In 1998, I teamed up with a company that turns cable television fran-
chises into high-speed Internet service providers—we tried to test the
notion that many-to-many communication media can help people build
healthy local communities of the nonvirtual kind. I flew and ferried to
Bainbridge Island, Washington, drove across the Arizona desert to Lake
The Future We’re Creating 269

Havasu City, and found that it took marketing budgets, legwork, and
patience to make virtual communities work in small towns, under the
sponsorship of cable stations. One of those communities I helped encour-
age still thrives, however: Palo Alto Online. In 1999 I designed virtual
communities and online social networks for other clients, and in 2000
instigated a consultancy among a worldwide network of experienced
virtual-community builders (http://www.rheingold.com/associates).
In retrospect, my career over the last fifteen years has been an unplanned
curriculum in self-taught technology criticism—from the Institute of
Noetic Sciences to Xerox PARC to Whole Earth to Wired, from Tools for
Thought to Virtual Reality to The Virtual Community, to firsthand participa-
tion in the creation, rise, and fall of an Internet start-up, to direct work in
civic community building as an online social-network consultant. I have
shared my story as an observer of and participant in the digital revolution
of the 1980s and 1990s, as a way of explaining some of what I have learned
from reading and meeting people, and from getting my hands dirty (and
burned) in pursuit of a few simple questions about technology: What are
PCs and networks good for, and what are they bad for? Where are we going
as individuals, communities, societies? Do we want to go there? Is there
anything we can do about it?

Civilizing Virtual Communities

As Langdon Winner pointed out in his book Autonomous Technology

(1978), the main question in the philosophy of technology now is whether
to believe it is possible for humans to maximize the noble part and mini-
mize the worst, whether technological progress is autonomous and there-
fore there is little we can do to influence it, or whether it is possible to
separate the benefits from the liabilities. The evidence thus far is not good.
I have been looking for examples of humans recognizing a problem caused
by technological intervention in their lives, finding a solution, and mak-
ing it work in action. Such people can be found, and they have much to
say to us about what we need to know to find a solution that is democra-
tic, humane, and workable. Right now, I think the first struggle is to get
more than a tiny minority of people to recognize it is important to try to
think together, as a civilization, about where technology came from, where
it is going, and how to have a say in what happens next.
270 Howard Rheingold

The social side of the Net has its shadow side, and it is not hard to find.
I have seen that the relative anonymity of the medium, where nobody can
see your face or hear your voice, has a disinhibiting function that cuts both
ways—people who might not ordinarily be heard in oral discourse can con-
tribute meaningfully, and people who might not ordinarily be rude to
one’s face can become frighteningly abusive online. As the Net has grown,
the original norms of netiquette and collaborative, cooperative mainte-
nance of an information commons that enriches everyone have been
assaulted by waves of clueless newbies and sociopaths, spammers, charla-
tans, and loudmouths. Maintaining civility in the midst of the very
conflicts we must solve together as citizens is not easy. The Net is the
world’s greatest source of information—misinformation and disinforma-
tion, community and character assassination—and we have very little but
our own wits to sort out the valid from the bogus.
As with real-world communities, there is no single formula for success in
virtual-community building, but there are several clear pitfalls, any one of
which can cause the effort to fail. In order for a virtual community to suc-
ceed, the software must have a usable human interface, something that
was not available until relatively recently. Unfortunately, many virtual-
community organizers do not know better, or are sold on something by
their investors and use older paradigms for online communication, which
drives away those who have something to communicate but are not com-
pelled to spend their time fiddling with technology. Another necessity for
success is a clearly stated policy regarding online behavior that all partici-
pants must agree to. Having such a policy will not guarantee success, but
not having such a policy probably guarantees failure.
Give people sensible rules and most of them will be very happy with
that. Some communities will have very loose rules, some will be far more
formal and controlled; the most important point of the exercise is that
every participant agrees to a clear written statement of the rules before
joining. People sometimes want to make up their own rules. If a subgroup
wants a community with different rules, then they should formulate and
agree on those rules and roll their own listserv, web conference, or IRC
(chat) channel. A warning: “policy thrashing” over metaissues such as how
to elect the people who make the rules can swallow up other forms of dis-
course. Face-to-face meetings are still far superior to online discussion for
resolving conflicts and coming to agreement where consensus is not clear.
The Future We’re Creating 271

Most importantly, people who have had experience in dealing with

online discourse need to participate, moderate, and host. Facilitating con-
vivial and useful online discourse is a skill, one best learned through direct
experience. Because behavior online tends to degenerate in the absence of
conversational cues such as tone of voice, facial expression, or body lan-
guage, it is necessary for experienced chatters or BBSers to model the
behavior that the medium requires in order to maintain civility. Without
a cadre of experienced users to help point out the pitfalls and the preferred
paths, online populations are doomed to fall into the same cycles of flame,
thrash, mindless chatter, and eventual dissolution.
The social and informational treasures of cyberspace are what drew me into
the world of virtual communities. However, when I began to study the sig-
nificance of these new media for our culture, I realized that the most impor-
tant questions had to do with the political implications of global
many-to-many media. Who would gain wealth and power? Who would lose?

Community Development in Cybersociety

The quality of community in tomorrow’s wired world is an important con-

cern. It is not, however, the first question we need to ask. The prefix cyber,
from the Greek word for “steersman,” implies that cybersociety will be steered
in some manner. The first question to ask is: Who will be doing the steering?
Decades before computers existed, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley
wrote about future dystopias where an elite, who use advanced communi-
cation tools to control the population, commands society. The malevolent
dictator Big Brother and the paternalistic dictator Mustapha Mond used
technologies of surveillance and persuasion to steer the societies of Nine-
teen Eighty-Four (Orwell [1949]) and Brave New World (Huxley [1932]).
E.M. Forster, also writing years before digital technology emerged, wrote a
novella, The Machine Stops (1963), that painted a future society steered by
the machines themselves.
Today’s world is a combination of all three visions, with a surprisingly
democratic twist. The Orwellian portion is the invasion and commodifica-
tion of privacy, aided and abetted by digital information-gathering and
surveillance tools. The Huxley portion is the disinfotainment machinery
that sells experiences, beliefs, issues, and candidates to a world that will-
ingly pays for the illusion of information in the guise of entertainment.
272 Howard Rheingold

The Forster part is the globalized economy, where liquid electronic capital
has become detached from humanly recognizable goods and services and
technology has taken over mediating more and more social relationships.
The global economy depends on a rapidly self-innovating technologi-
cal infrastructure. Superheated economic competition requires the
biggest players to concentrate massive resources on technology develop-
ment. For these reasons, the only thing we can know with any degree of
certainty about tomorrow’s world is that technologies will be more pow-
erful than they are today. And communication technologies, because of
their ability to influence human perceptions and beliefs as well as their
power to command and control automatic machinery, will continue to
grow more powerful and persuasive, if not more true, authentic, and
humane.
The democratic twist is that more people today have more to say about
how their world is steered than at any other time in history. Structurally,
the Internet has inverted the few-to-many architecture of the broadcast
age, in which a small number of people were able to influence and shape
the perceptions and beliefs of entire nations. In the many-to-many envi-
ronment of the Net, every desktop is a printing press, a broadcasting sta-
tion, and a place of assembly. Mass media will continue to exist and so will
journalism, but these institutions will no longer monopolize attention and
access to the attention of others.
It is not yet clear how this democratization of publishing power will
translate into political change. The critical uncertainties today are whether
the citizenry will learn to use the new tools to strengthen the public sphere
and whether citizens are going to be any match for the concentrations of
money, technology, and power emerging in the Internet era.
One important point of leverage where these critical uncertainties can
be influenced is the role of journalism in civic affairs. If public broadcas-
ting does not take the lead in this regard, it is difficult to see who will. In
that respect I want to pose a couple of longer-term questions (Grossman
and Minow 2001). First, how will new media affect the free and open dis-
course that forms the bedrock of democracy? Second, can professionally
gathered news stories and civil-citizen discourse be blended in a way that
enhances democracy? What is the role for traditional journalism in a
world where the power to publish and communicate is radically diffused
and disintermediated?
The Future We’re Creating 273

I am still hopeful that informed and committed people can influence the
shape of tomorrow’s cybersociety in a positive manner, although it has
become increasingly clear that democratic outcomes will not emerge auto-
matically. A humane and sustainable cybersociety will only come about if
it is deliberately understood, discussed, and planned now—by a larger pro-
portion of the population and not just the big business, media, or policy
elites. Intelligent and democratic leadership is desperately needed at this
historical moment, while the situation is still somewhat fluid. Ten years
from now, the uncertainties will have resolved into one kind of power or
another.
The public sphere is where people, through their communications,
become citizens. The printing press did not cause democracy, but it made
a literate population possible, and literate populations, who are free to
communicate among one another, came up with the idea that they could
govern themselves. As radio and television each had effects on the public
sphere, so the Internet will affect democratic discourse in an evolving pub-
lic sphere. However, I suspect that we simply do not yet know what form
the public sphere will take in cyberspace. There certainly are strong signs
that power and capital are moving swiftly to control and shape the way
people use the emerging media.
Will the Internet strengthen civic life, community, and democracy, or
will it weaken them? Failure to make the importance of this question clear
to the public has been a shameful episode in the history of journalism. As
one of the people who gets called for quotes on a daily basis, I can tell you
that I have been talking about this issue for years, but all that ends up on
the air or in print is something about porno or hackers or bomb recipes on
the Internet. How do we introduce this truly important matter to popular
discourse?
Because the public sphere depends on free communication and discus-
sion of ideas, clearly this vital marketplace for political ideas can be pow-
erfully influenced by changes in communications technology. According
to the political philosopher Jürgen Habermas
When the public is large, this kind of communication requires certain means of dis-
semination and influence; today, newspapers and periodicals, radio and television
are the media of the public sphere. . . . The term “public opinion” refers to the func-
tions of criticism and control or organized state authority that the public exercises
informally, as well as formally during periodic elections. Regulations concerning the
274 Howard Rheingold

publicness (or publicity [Publizität]) in its original meaning of state-related activities,

as, for instance, the public accessibility required of legal proceedings, are also
connected with this function of public opinion. To the public sphere as a sphere
mediating between state and society, a sphere in which the public as the vehicle of
publicness—the publicness that once had to win out against the secret politics of
monarchs and that since then has permitted democratic control of state activity.

The sophisticated and wholesale manufacture of public opinion and the

domination of popular media by electronic spectacles have damaged the
public sphere, just as industrial pollution has damaged the biosphere.
I believe the foundations of democracy have been eroded, for the reasons
Neil Postman cited in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1986). The immense
power of television as a broadcaster of emotion-laden images, combined
with the ownership of more and more news media by fewer and fewer
global entertainment conglomerates, has reduced much public discourse,
including discussions of vital issues, to sound bites and images.
Opinion-shaping techniques originated in the print era but truly grew
into their present degree of power during the era of broadcast media. Will
citizen communications via the Internet be commodified, co-opted, or
shaped? Have citizen forums been neutralized already, or were they never
a threat to centralized control of public opinion? Are many-to-many media
less easily manipulable than mass media, or does the manipulation simply
come in a different form? Which way can the Internet go? When the pre-
sent turbulence clears, who will have more power because of the Internet?
Is there a concrete way of preserving a universally accessible public area in
a rapidly privatizing Internet?
Civil society, a web of informal relationships that exist independently of
government institutions or business organizations, is the social adhesive
necessary to bind divergent communities of interest together into democ-
ratic societies. Until recently, the future of civil society in America and else-
where was thought to be uncertain, gloomy even. However, around the
world advocacy and action networks, community groups, and voluntary
organizations are reemerging as a social force. Interestingly, many are
beginning to utilize the Internet and other communication technologies
to make their voices heard.
Can virtual communities help revitalize civil society, or are online
debates nothing more than distracting simulations of authentic dis-
course? Enthusiasts—and I was one of the earliest—point at examples of
The Future We’re Creating 275

many-to-many communication that appear to leverage power in the real

world of politics. But how certain can we be, sitting at our desks, tap-
ping on our keyboards, about the reality and limits of the Net’s political
effectiveness? Would you bet your liberty on it?
If, as citizens, we lose our freedom to communicate without fear of state
censorship, then the Net’s potential power to facilitate “electronic democ-
racy” will stand revealed as a fatal illusion. Because the rights of citizens to
communicate online are under direct political attack, Net activists are
broadcasting action alerts, directing citizens’ attention to the implications
of proposed legislation, and furnishing contact information for key legis-
lators on crucial votes. However, even if freedom of expression was not
under attack, it is healthy to ask ourselves whether the kind of discourse
facilitated by computer bulletin-board systems will bring together or fur-
ther fragment the competing constituencies of the American republic.
Robert Putnam (2000b) has prominently claimed that the civil society
that Alexis de Tocqueville (1990) noted 200 years ago in Democracy in
America as the hallmark of the American experiment—the active involve-
ment of citizens in voluntary associations for “the public good”—appears
to be deteriorating. Is the Net really an effective answer to the mass hyp-
nosis of the mass-media era? Talking at each other online seems to be at
least marginally better than sitting stupefied in front of the tube, but we
need to know how far, exactly, all that talk can carry us. Will worldwide
Usenet discussions, up-to-the-minute legislative news listservs, World
Wide Web pages, and e-mail chain-letter petitions add to civic life, or
remove people from it?
The best critique of the democratic potential of virtual communities
I have found so far is “Computer-Mediated Communication and the Ameri-
can Collectivity: The Dimensions of Community within Cyberspace,” a paper
presented at the 1995 meeting of the International Communication
Association by Jan Fernback and Brad Thompson (1995). This paper
inspired me to sharpen my own critical perceptions regarding virtual
communities.
Fernback and Thompson cite past outbreaks of technological utopi-
anism to question the claim that online communications can strengthen
civil society: “Citizenship via cyberspace has not proven to be the
panacea for the problems of democratic representation within American
society; although communities of interest have been formed and
276 Howard Rheingold

strengthened . . . and have demonstrated a sense of solidarity, they

have nevertheless contributed to the fragmented cultural and political
landscape of the United States.”
The authors cite several arguments against believing in the democratiz-
ing power of virtual communities: the disjunction with geographically
based neighborhoods can create phony communities, the cost of the tech-
nology and knowledge of how to use computers will always exclude much
of society, and virtual communities are helping make direct, face-to-face
conversation less common, among other arguments. Their conclusions
are bleak: “It seems most likely that the virtual public sphere brought
about by [computer-mediated communication] will serve a cathartic role,
allowing the public to feel involved rather than to advance actual
participation.”
I believe the conclusion of their paper is wrong. I think there is time
to prove the democratic potential of the medium by using it properly,
as many authors in this book are now attempting. Electronic communi-
cations do not offer a utopia, but they do offer a unique channel for
publishing and communicating, and the power to publish and commu-
nicate is fundamental to democracy. Communication media are neces-
sary but not sufficient for self-governance and healthy societies. The
important stuff still requires turning off the computer and braving the
uncertainties of the offline world. When we are called to action through
the virtual community, we need to keep in mind how much depends on
whether we simply “feel involved” or whether we take the steps to actu-
ally participate in the lives of our neighbors, and in the civic life of our
communities.
Online social networks constitute an important technology-enabled
practice that has the potential to shape society. As a means of critical
inquiry into how this technology affects our lives, I believe that it is
more important to examine the nature of collective action in cyberspace
than to debate whether virtual communities are real communities. The
point is to understand how many-to-many media enable people to
act together to create public goods or to behave destructively in more
efficient ways.
As promised, this brief sketch of my own flirtation with technology has
not presented any definitive answers. I hope that it has raised good
questions. Just as we experienced the social changes associated with use
The Future We’re Creating 277

of the personal computer in the 1980s and the changes enabled by

the Internet in the 1990s, I believe we are at the threshold of a new
technology that combines the powers and effects of mobile communica-
tions, pervasive computing, and peer-to-peer social networks. A new
social sphere, new medium, new way of seeing the world will accompany
the emergence of the new technology. Can we think critically about this
next round of change in a way that maximizes our ability to influence it?
13 Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society

Nancy Kranich

For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans
into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades
ago—silently, without warning—that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a
treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from
one another and from our communities over the last third of the century
—Putnam, Bowling Alone

In this chapter, I discuss the importance of social capital as a catalyst to

rekindle civil society, as well as the key role of the library as an informa-
tion commons for engaging citizens and encouraging participation in
community life. For more than two centuries, libraries have served com-
munities in the United States and abroad as information commons. In that
role, they have helped promote an informed citizenry, offering safe spaces
for deliberation and exchange of a wide spectrum of ideas. For a democ-
racy of the digital age to flourish, citizens need free and open access to
ideas more than ever. The salient tension of our times stems from those
barriers that deny citizens their full information rights. In the conclusion
to this chapter, I suggest an action agenda aimed at ensuring that everyone
has the opportunity to participate in a digital-age democracy.

Social Capital and Civil Society

To Vaclav Havel (1997) “Civil Society . . . means a society that makes

room for the richest possible self-structuring and the richest possible par-
ticipation in public life.” Civil society began to blossom in Havel’s Czech
Republic over the last two decades. But in America, the associations and
activities that create the glue that strengthens civil society, notably
280 Nancy Kranich

described by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, (1838) have

ensured a structure and climate for more than two centuries of active citi-
zen participation in our democratic system. By the late twentieth century,
however, journalists, political scientists, philanthropists, and citizens alike
were documenting a declining public sphere, diminishing civic engage-
ment, and eroding social capital. In response, social scientists have
proposed new models to invigorate a weakened democracy and to encour-
age more active citizen involvement with governance. Among the most
prominent voices is that of Benjamin Barber (1984, 148), who prescribes
“strong democracy” as a remedy for incivility and apathy, where “active cit-
izens govern themselves in the only form that is genuinely and completely
democratic.” Barber claims that “community grows out of participation and
at the same time makes participation possible,” and that “strong democracy
is the politics of amateurs, where every [person] is compelled to encounter
every other [person] without the intermediary of expertise” (p. 152). From
his perspective, “Citizens are neighbors bound together neither by blood
nor by contract but by their common concerns and common participation
in the search for common solutions to common conflicts” (p. 219). In a
later work, Barber calls for “a place for us in civil society, a place really for us,
for what we share and who, in sharing we become. That place must be
democratic: both public and free” (p. 38). David Mathews (1984, 1999;
Mathews and McAfee, 2001) applies practical techniques to this active-
citizenship model, engaging lay citizens in deliberation about issues of com-
mon concern. As president of the Kettering Foundation, he has developed
a national network for civic forums, teaching citizens to frame issues, make
choices, find common ground, and act in their community’s best interest.
James Fishkin (1995, 1997), has also helped pioneer this framework for
citizen deliberation, joined by Daniel Yankelovich (1991, 1999) and his
colleagues at Public Agenda. Harry Boyte, another political scientist instru-
mental in developing theories of active citizenship, has advanced new
models for reinvigorating communities through the creation of free spaces
or commons for public discourse and deliberation (see Boyte 1980, 1989;
Boyte, Booth and Max 1986; Boyte and Evans 1986; Boyte and Kari 1996).
These civil-society theorists were joined by a rash of other scholars in the
last decade of the twentieth and into the early years of the twenty-first
century (Edwards, Foley and Diani 2001; Ehrenberg 1999; Elkin and Soltan
1999; McConnell 1999; Seligman 1992; Verba, Scholzman and Brady 1995).
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 281

These and other scholars have documented and debated the state of civil
society, both in the United States and abroad. Most notable is Robert
Putnam, whose provocative article and bestselling book Bowling Alone
(1995, 2000b) and his Saguaro Seminar, published as Better Together (2000a),
have popularized the importance of reviving community by rebuilding
social capital and increasing civic engagement.

The Information Commons

Information is essential to civic participation, and also encourages the

development of civil society. When people are better informed, they are
more likely to participate in policy discussions where they can communi-
cate their ideas and concerns freely. Most importantly, citizens need civic
commons where they can speak freely, discern different perspectives,
share similar interests and concerns, and pursue what they believe is in
their and the public’s interest. Effective citizen action is possible when
citizens develop the skills to gain access to information of all kinds and to
put such information to effective use. Members of the community must
have the real and virtual spaces to exchange ideas—ideas fundamental to
democratic participation and civil society. Ultimately, discourse among
informed citizens ensures civil society, and civil society provides the
social capital necessary to achieve sovereignty of the people, by the
people, and for the people.
Many of the theorists who focus their scholarship on new forms of citizen
participation have recognized the importance of an information commons to
bolster civic engagement. Boyte devotes a chapter of his book Commonwealth
(1989) to the information age, elaborating the importance of schooling citi-
zens in democracy by informing them about issues and utilizing public spaces
to listen, negotiate, exchange, act, and hold officials accountable. Likewise,
Hardt and Negro elaborate on the importance of the information commons
to the evolution of the postmodern state and the emergence of new social
movements in their book Empire (2000). With the rise of the Internet,
commentators who focus on civil society in the digital age have identified the
electronic information commons as underpinning equitable participation in
a cyberdemocracy (Grossman 1995; Tsagarousianou, Tambini and Bryan
1998; Wilhelm 2000). Since 2000, civic-minded organizations have convened
conferences and launched projects to design information commons for the
282 Nancy Kranich

digital age. Harry Boyte’s Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the
University of Minnesota hosted a New Information Commons Conference
where participants from organizations such as the Project for Public Spaces
and Libraries for the Future sketched out a plan for building new spaces by
citizens in partnership with community organizations (Friedland and Boyte
2000). About the same time, the New America Foundation launched its Infor-
mation Commons Project, directed by David Bollier, a prolific writer who
focuses on intellectual property issues (Bollier 2001b). Bollier has also
cofounded Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization that will represent the
public interest in intellectual property law and Internet policies. In the fall of
2001, the American Library Association sponsored a conference on the Infor-
mation Commons, with commissioned papers on information equity, copy-
right and fair use, and public access, immediately followed by a similar
meeting held at Duke University Law School’s Center for the Public
Domain, with papers on copyright and the information commons. Over just
a two-year period, the role of the information commons has assumed a new
dimension in the twentyfirst Century.

Libraries as Information Commons

Libraries provide the real and virtual spaces in communities for free and
open exchange of ideas fundamental to democratic participation and civil
society. In almost every school, college, and community, libraries in the
Western world make knowledge and information available to all. They are
the place where people can find differing opinions on controversial ques-
tions and dissent from current orthodoxy. Even beyond the United States,
Canada, and Europe, and in emerging democracies, libraries serve as the
source—often the sole source—for the pursuit of independent thought,
critical attitudes, and in-depth information. And in so doing, they guard
against the tyranny of ignorance, the Achilles heel of every democracy.
As community forums, many libraries present thoughtful, engaging,
and enlightening programs about problems facing our democratic way of
life—programs that have a vast potential to renew communities and encour-
age active citizenship. From librarians, we can learn how to identify and
evaluate information that is essential for making decisions that affect the
way we live, work, learn, and govern ourselves. Libraries are ideally suited to
play a critical role in rekindling civic spirit by providing not only
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 283

information, but also the expanded opportunities for dialogue and delibera-
tion that we need to make decisions about common concerns.
America’s libraries, at the heart of every community, stand in defense of
freedom. Benjamin Franklin founded the first lending subscription library
even before he helped form the new republic. Franklin, James Madison,
and Thomas Jefferson were among the nation’s founders who believed that
a free society must ensure the preservation and provision of accessible
knowledge for all its citizens. When they turned their attention to design-
ing a government capable of preserving freedom for the citizenry, they
looked to an institution with the potential for realizing their ideal. For if
an informed public is the very foundation of American democracy, then
America’s libraries are the cornerstone of that democracy. As Madison
(1822, 276) eloquently stated, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance
and that people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves
with the power that knowledge gives. A popular government without
popular information or means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or
tragedy or perhaps both.”
Benjamin Franklin’s novel idea of sharing information resources was
a radical one. In the rest of the civilized world, libraries were the property
of the ruling classes and religious institutions. American democracy was
founded on the principles of freedom of information and the public’s right
to know. America’s libraries ensure the freedom of speech, the freedom to
read, the freedom to view. The mission of libraries is to provide the
resources the public needs to be well informed and to participate fully
in every aspect of the information society. In many parts of the world,
countries have adopted this centuries-old American tradition.
As libraries serve to prepare citizens for a lifetime of civic participation,
they also encourage the development of civil society. They provide the
information and the opportunities for dialogue that the public needs to
make decisions about common concerns. As community forums, they
encourage active citizenship and renew communities. Libraries build social
capital and encourage civic engagement by developing community part-
nerships, facilitating local dialogue, and disseminating local data.
Ever since their proliferation in the nineteenth century, American libraries
have played a key role in educating immigrants for citizenship. They have
also supported education by providing resources for curriculum-based and
lifelong learning. As the new millennium unfolds, a number of librarians
284 Nancy Kranich

have published new texts underscoring the key role that libraries play in
building civil society, paralleling the surge of social-science scholarship cited
previously in this chapter. Redmond Kathleen Molz and Phyllis Dain (1999),
faculty members at Columbia University, present a new history of the public
library as a civic space, updated for the information age; Kathleen de la Peña
McCook (2000), a professor at the University of South Florida, spells out the
key role libraries play in community building; and Ronald McCabe (2001),
a public library director in Wisconsin, provides a historic and theoretical
framework for understanding the ways libraries enhance citizen involve-
ment in renewing and strengthening communities. When millennial
president of the American Library Association, I chose the theme of libraries:
the cornerstone of democracy, which serves as the subject of a published
collection of essays on equitable access and the public’s right to know
(Kranich 2001b).
Today, libraries throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia,
and beyond are undertaking a vast array of innovative, creative programs
that support civil society and build social capital in their communities.
They are convening groups to consider local issues and teach civic skills;
building community information-literacy partnerships; coordinating local
literacy training; hosting communitywide reading programs in cities like
Chicago, Rochester, Seattle, Syracuse, and Buffalo; creating digital neigh-
borhood directories that link residents and services; and partnering with
local museums and public broadcasting stations. These collaborative
efforts increase social capital—the glue that binds people together and
enables them to build bridges to others.
According to Putnam (2000b, 341), “Just as one cannot restart a heart
with one’s remote control, one cannot jump-start republican citizenship
without direct, face-to-face participation. Citizenship is not a spectator
sport.” The challenge for the information age is to find new ways to
encourage citizens to participate in democracy and renew communities.
Working closely with a rich and diverse array of citizens, libraries are a key
institution that can help communities rekindle civil society and expand
public participation in our democracy.
For centuries, libraries have served as the information commons in
communities across America. They have offered free and open spaces to
all—amateurs and experts alike. They embody many of the ideals of the
public sphere envisioned by Jürgen Habermas (1992a; see also Calhoun
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 285

1992a). They are inclusive—offering universal service—and they encourage

public participation and deliberation. In the digital age, libraries through-
out the world serve communities as information commons within the
public sphere: commons that promote economic well-being, global under-
standing, the advancement of learning, information literacy, digital inclu-
sion, and public participation in the democratic process—essential
ingredients of a civil society.

Libraries in the Digital Age

At the dawn of the information age, libraries are experiencing new vigor at
the same time that they are helping rekindle civil society. Online or in
person, today’s libraries are more popular than ever. Polls estimate that
more than two-thirds of the public uses America’s libraries every year.
Why are America’s 115,000 public, school, academic, and special libraries
gaining in popularity? Libraries are the only place where an information
commons is freely available for everyone in every community. Libraries
provide communities with precise, replicable discovery tools and materials
on every subject from all perspectives in a full range of formats and
languages. Users can readily identify and link to these resources from home,
work, or their local libraries and then borrow or copy them. Libraries also
archive and preserve older titles. Best of all, professional librarians provide
personalized help and training—in some cases twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week. One innovative way libraries are cooperating around the
world is the project undertaken by the Library of Congress, the British
Library, and the National Library of Australia to provide round-the-clock
reference service to English speakers wherever they reside.
Thanks to technology and worldwide collaboration, many of today’s
libraries have migrated from a state of scarcity to a state of abundance, tran-
scending their geographic, legal, and political boundaries, with librarians
serving as knowledge navigators and learning facilitators. What began in the
1950s as the automation of materials processing led to the deployment of
computerized databases for locating information in the 1970s. More recently,
libraries have offered direct public access to the Internet, supplemented by
purchased commercial databases, plus unique local collections converted to
digital formats, thereby creating digital libraries available anywhere, anytime.
This capacity to deliver information directly and just-in-time to users helps
286 Nancy Kranich

connect collections and reference services directly to a population with an

insatiable demand for information access. Over the years ahead, libraries will
share more and more resources, offering seamless access to a rich collection
of valuable, interesting resources. Experts will guide users precisely to the
materials that meet their particular needs. It will no longer matter where
digital content resides. All kinds of libraries, government agencies, and
cultural institutions will work together with commercial and nonprofit pro-
ducers to create, convert, index, archive, preserve, and make accessible digital
resources. Several proposals to create national digital collections of cultural
resources to enhance civil society have surfaced in recent years. One, the
Digital Promise Project, recommends setting aside revenues from the auction
of the publicy owned electromagnetic spectrum to finance digitization to
enhance learning, encourage an informed citizenry, and make available the
best of America’s cultural resources (Grossman and Minow 2001). In the
future, such projects will foster the creation of just-in-time virtual communi-
ties with such benefits as equitable access, reduced barriers of distance, time-
liness, shared resources, and content delivery. But numerous impediments to
equitable access face communities as they struggle to realize the true poten-
tial and power of the twenty first-century information society.

The Tendencies and Tensions of Public Access

Access to information is fragile. All sorts of barriers can restrict the pub-
lic’s access to ideas. Best known are blatant book-banning attempts. But
every link in the information chain can either strengthen or weaken
public access. The chain begins with information creators. Without
doubt, the elite are far more likely to assume this role than those who
are less advantaged. The marketplace for ideas is another key link in
determining which voices will be heard—and which will be heard the
loudest. But after the sale of an idea, information and knowledge are not
used up or consumed like other commodities, even though many pro-
ducers would prefer them to behave that way. They still have many
chances to influence thought when they are collected, archived and pre-
served for future generations. Among the various barriers to sustained
public access are classification, copyright or other licensing restrictions,
funding, and filtering as well as other censoring actions. Any of these
actions can limit the public’s access to critical information and the
opportunity to participate in civil society.
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 287

Because the information revolution has changed the way we live, learn,
work, and govern, we simply cannot assume that libraries and other
cultural institutions are capable of ensuring equitable access to all the
resources and points of view that we desire. Access to abundance does not
ensure access to diversity. Instead, we now have access to more and more
of the same ideas, with alternatives marginalized more and more by such
forces as corporate profiteering, political expediency, and the whimsy of
the marketplace. The promise of new technologies is imperiled by power-
ful political and economic forces. Schement and Curtis (1995) argue that
the tendencies and tensions of the information society stem directly from
the organizing principles of industrialization and the realities of capital-
ism. These tensions confront the public as citizens struggle to reclaim the
public sphere and their information rights in the digital age. Attempts to
restrict the public’s right to know and unfettered public access to informa-
tion keep accelerating. Now more than ever we face serious threats to
public access and the free flow of ideas. What is at stake is not only the
basic and fundamental role of libraries as the information commons in our
communities, but also the public’s access to information and knowledge—
the basic underpinnings of democracy.

The Information Rich and the Information Poor

The Internet promises to bridge the gap between the information haves
and have-nots in our society. No longer divided by geographic, linguistic,
or economic barriers, electronic information can span boundaries and
reach into any neighborhood with just the click of a mouse. Truly, the
dream of an equitable information society offers new hope for rekindling
the democratic principles put forth by the founding fathers in the U.S.
Constitution and by the authors of Article 19 of the International Declara-
tion of Human Rights. Even if an American household cannot afford or
chooses not to connect to the Internet, families have the option of logging
on at a library or school. Under the universal-service provisions of the U.S.
Telecommunications Act of 1996, nearly every community is now
connected, thus ensuring an on-ramp to the information superhighway
and an opportunity for all Americans to participate in their communities’
economic, educational, social, political, and leisure activities.
The Clinton administration drew the nation’s attention to the “digital
divide” and the gap between the information rich and poor in America.
288 Nancy Kranich

Recent research indicates that, despite a significant increase in computer

ownership and overall usage, many low-income, minority, disabled, rural,
older, and inner-city groups are falling behind in their ownership of
computers and access to telecommunications networks (Benton Founda-
tion, 1998; Novak and Hoffman 1998; U.S. National Telecommunications
and Information Administration, 1995–2002). Beyond providing for the
purchase of hardware and connectivity to the Internet, librarians and
other public-interest groups have stepped into this gap to ensure public
access to a broad array of information resources, promoting literacy in the
twenty-first century and reducing barriers to intellectual freedom and fair
use throughout the world. Particularly impressive is the work undertaken
in this area beyond the United States by the International Federation of
Library Associations (IFLA) through its Committees on Freedom of Access
to Information and Free Expression (FAIFE) and Copyright and Other Legal
Matters (IFLA/FAIFE, 2001).

The Digital-Content Divide

Into the milieu of this new century comes the Internet, with affordable and
accessible content—content that was previously unavailable to many com-
munities, both in the United States and abroad. Access to an abundance of
information does not necessarily mean access to a diversity of sources.
Cyberspace is sparse when it comes to local information, particularly for
rural communities and those living at or near the poverty level. The vast
majority of Internet sites are designed for people with average or advanced
literacy levels. For the more than 20 percent of Americans whose reading lev-
els limit them to poverty wages and for the thirty million Americans speak-
ing a language other than English, few websites are readily comprehended
(Children’s Partnership, 2000). Residents of countries where English is not
spoken are at even more of a disadvantage. Furthermore, ethnic and racial
minorities are unlikely to find content about the uniqueness of their cul-
tures. The Children’s Partnership has estimated that at least fifty million
Americans—roughly 20 percent—face a content-related barrier standing
between them and the benefits of the Internet. That same study also indi-
cates that adults want practical information focusing on local community,
information at a basic literacy level, content for non–English speakers, and
racial and ethnic cultural information. In addition, the study found that
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 289

Internet use among low-income Americans was for self-improvement,

whether for online courses, job search, or other information. In short, the
poor and marginalized individuals seek information that helps them with
their day-to-day problems and enables them to participate as members of
their democratic community.
An information commons is well suited to meet the needs of the popu-
lations cited by the Children’s Partnership. Libraries and other community
institutions can target websites and digitize materials of interest to special
populations as part of the process of ensuring widespread participation in
the information society. They can also create sites that are easy to navigate,
translated into languages spoken by residents, and responsive to local
needs. Information equity, a community priority, requires local organiza-
tions and institutions to join forces to bridge the digital-content divide.

Information Literacy in a Highly Mediated World

The public needs sophisticated information-literacy skills to succeed in the

twenty-first century and to fulfill their roles as engaged citizens. Even
those already proficient at finding, evaluating, and applying information
to solve daily problems can be overwhelmed by the proliferation of infor-
mation and the difficulty of sorting through it. To cope successfully,
citizens must be able to identify, evaluate, apply, and communicate infor-
mation efficiently, effectively, and responsibly. They will have to become
information literate to flourish in the workplace as well as to carry out the
day-to-day activities of citizens in a developed, democratic society. Many
libraries now work in collaboration with community and education groups
to identify information needs, initiate a dialogue aimed at encouraging a
more information-literate populace, and facilitate the development of
skills to utilize information strategically. Granted, the need for informa-
tion-literacy skills has been around for generations. But the dawning of the
information age forces the development of broader information skills if
people are to separate the wheat from the chaff, the true from the untrue,
the rumor from the real.
Registrations now exceed 560,000 per year at the U.S. Library of
Congress Copyright Office. New book titles published annually in the
United States have jumped more than 30 percent since 1990. Worldwide,
publishing output has reached close to one million titles annually. More
290 Nancy Kranich

than 100,000 U.S. and 10,000 U.N. documents enter circulation annually,
along with untold numbers of state, local, and international docu-
ments. Even more astounding is the exponential growth of the World
Wide Web. A February 1999 study reported in Nature concluded there were
about 800 million publicly available web pages, with about 15 trillion
bytes of textual information and 180 million images weighing in at about
3 trillion bytes of data. The growth rate of the web is estimated to double
every year, though some sources estimate this level of growth every six
months (Lawrence and Giles 1998, 1999).
Not surprisingly, the complexity of finding, evaluating, and utilizing
information in the electronic age has become a major challenge for the
60 percent of the American workforce that engages in some information-
related activity. Librarians, teachers, and other professionals are needed
more than ever to ensure that the public has the information-literacy skills
it needs to live, learn, work, and govern in the digital age. In the contem-
porary environment of rapid technological change and proliferating infor-
mation resources, communities face diverse, abundant information
choices. The uncertain quality and expanding quantity of information
pose large challenges for society. The sheer abundance of information will
not in itself create a more informed citizenry without a complementary
cluster of abilities necessary to use information effectively. Every commu-
nity must promote the development of information-literate citizens,
beginning at the elementary school level, progressing through high school
and college, and commencing with adults through partnerships with
community organizations (American Association of School Librarians and
the Association for Educational Communication and Technology, 1998;
American Library Association, 1989, 2000; Association of College and
Research Libraries, Instruction Task Force, 2000; see also Marcoux 2001).

The Electoral Process

For years in the United States, the public has registered to vote and cast
election ballots in libraries, schools, and community centers. Citizens
attend local forums with candidates to learn more about their positions
and voting records. They monitor the work of both elected and appointed
officials through the reports housed in depositories of government
information, where they also gather data to help them take positions on
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 291

various issues facing their communities. During campaign seasons, citizens

find voter guides and other relevant information about elections and ref-
erenda in libraries and other community organizations, and they engage
with authors who write about political issues at locally sponsored events.
They also seek local information about deadlines for voter registration,
locations of polling places, and valuable electronic links to high-quality
electoral information in print as well as on the web.
One key way libraries and other civic organizations support democratic
action and citizen participation is through the development of electronic
websites that guide users to valid and reliable information informing their
choices about candidates and issues. Publicly accessible sites offer a com-
prehensive map of civic issues and the electoral process, including links to
political-history sites, political search engines, candidates’ voting records,
campaign finance information, past election results and speeches, political
statistics, media coverage, advocacy and lobby groups, and political-party
platforms and conventions. Information must be available in a variety of
media ranging from books and magazines to videos, audio recordings, and
electronic resources that inform the public about the political process—
resources that can be used either in libraries and community centers or
outside with community groups and schoolchildren. Community and
nonpartisan groups must collaborate to promote greater political partici-
pation in the digital age in conjunction with such groups as the League of
Women Voters and a newer electronic organization—Project Vote Smart,
which offers electronic access to candidate and voting information
(Kranich 2000b, 2000c).
In March 2000, the Democratic Party of the state of Arizona pioneered
a new frontier in America’s oldest ritual. Over four days, members of the
party cast ballots for their party’s presidential candidate, many of them
doing so electronically through the medium of the Internet. Total voter
turnout increased from 13,000 in the primary of 1996 to 89,000 (even
though only one candidate remained on the ballot); 40 percent cast Inter-
net ballots. In Arizona, a major concern of the Democratic Party and
voting-rights advocates was the potential for excluding voters who lacked
computer access. To ensure that as many eligible Democrats could vote as
possible, twenty-five Arizona public libraries served as polling places for
electronic voting—a contemporary use of the information commons as
civic spaces. “We think that there is something wonderfully symbolic
292 Nancy Kranich

about public libraries being used as polling places,” said Gladys Ann Wells,
State Librarian. She noted that “libraries have always been places where
everyone in a community can find common ground, so it is logical that
libraries would be places where people without computers could come to
vote.” Judy Register, Scottsdale City Librarian, added that “libraries are
determined to play a leading role in helping people bridge the so-called
‘digital divide.’ Now, helping bridge this ‘electoral divide’ is a great use of
the technology available in public libraries in Arizona.”

Community Networks

Comparable to libraries, community networks, such as free nets, create

channels of communication for public dialogue. The movement toward
community networks reflects the desire for a democratic institution capa-
ble of recognizing the centrality of information access and communication
to modern life. Community networks offer many of the services provided
by libraries, including training, e-mail, web-page development, and small-
business assistance. They also focus users on local assets and services,
pulling together essential information and communication resources that
might otherwise be difficult to identify or locate. Of special interest here,
they offer opportunities for community institutions to collaborate and
build partnerships in support of local-history projects, civic-education
programs, and community enterprises, such as information and referral
services, that might be overlooked by the commercial sector. Finally,
community networks offer an exceptional opportunity to forge new roles
locally for libraries as well as other public, educational, and cultural
institutions and organizations in the digital age (Durrance et al. 2001;
Durrance and Pettigrew 2000; Schuler 1997b; 1996a).

Government Information

Over the last decade, the persistent voice of librarians and public-interest
groups and the promise of new technologies have improved access to
government information. The result has been the promotion of the
public’s right to know along with the advancement of citizens’ involve-
ment in governance. A fifteen-year struggle to promote equitable and effi-
cient access to government information culminated in the 1990s in the
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 293

passage of the GPO Access Act, the Electronic Freedom of Information Act,
and other statutes that strengthen public access in the digital age. Still,
these victories are incomplete. Even though the public has benefited from
ever more direct access to government records and documents, more and
more data is slipping into private hands, getting classified under the guise
of national security, or exempted from release under the Freedom of
Information Act. Furthermore, a proposal before Congress to ensure per-
manent public access to electronic government documents has gone
unheeded as links to important documents disappear unnoticed. So, while
public access to government information produced at taxpayer expense is
more freely available than ever before, the threat to public access persists.
Even more vulnerable, state, local, and foreign electronic government
information rarely falls under depository and other open-access statutes.
Attempts to implement electronic government statutes could improve
access, but may rely on the private sector for dissemination, resulting in
higher prices, limited dissemination, and escape from the public domain.
A civil society must be a transparent society with equal and ready access to
government information if citizens are to trust, oversee, evaluate, and
interact with public officials (Davis and Splichal 2000; Heanue 2001;
Hernon, McClure, and Relyea 1996; see also American Library Association,
2002c).

Copyright and Fair Use

Against the promise of easy access to networked electronic information loom

new technological protection measures. The ubiquity of digital information,
the widespread use of networks, and the proliferation of the World Wide Web
create new tensions in the intellectual property arena. The ease with which
data may be copied impels information producers to seek ways of protecting
their investments. Their intentions are perfectly understandable. Unfortu-
nately, measures proposed to protect creators endanger users’ fair-use rights
to view, reproduce, and quote limited amounts of copyrighted materials. This
high-stakes international policy debate might well result in a pay-per-view,
or—even more chilling—a pay-per-slice digital-information economy where
only those willing and able to pay can access electronic information. With
librarians in the vanguard, the delicate balance between creators’ and users’
rights to information has been carefully negotiated for print materials over
294 Nancy Kranich

the past century. In the information age, however, the balance has tilted
toward intellectual property owners. Should this imbalance persist, it will
endanger free speech, the advancement of learning and research, the infor-
mation commons, and the rekindling of civil society.
One statute in particular that places new limits on the public’s access to
information in the United States is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
of 1998, which criminalizes illegal use of digital materials for the first time
and places additional limits on the rights of electronic information users.
As a consequence, the widespread deployment of pay-per-view systems
could effectively reduce libraries and other repositories of valuable knowl-
edge to mere marketing platforms for content distributors. Fair use for elec-
tronic publications barely survived in this legislation as new restrictions
were imposed on unauthorized access to technologically restricted work.
The act prohibits the “circumvention” of any effective “technological
protection measure” (TPMs) used by a copyright holder to restrict access to
its material unless adverse affects on the fair use of any class of work can
be demonstrated. Thus, the burden of proof rests with those seeking open
access and the free flow of information.
Numerous attempts to regulate and restrict public access to information
under the umbrella of intellectual property protection persist in Congress and
in international tribunals. One in particular, a proposal to copyright data-
bases in the United States, will safeguard investment rather than creativity for
information companies and overturn over 200 years of information policy
that has consistently supported unfettered access to factual information. Such
an act will allow a producer or publisher unprecedented control over the uses
of information, including factual information as well as government works.
Even though the Supreme Court has held that constitutional copyright
principles prohibit ownership of facts or works of the federal government and
current copyright law already protects database companies, some producers
continue to press hard for this over-broad protectionist legislation. Should
they succeed, they will accomplish a radical departure from the current intel-
lectual property framework that protects expression—not investment—and
thereby endanger the doctrine of fair use. If these special interests prevail,
a digital economy will emerge where the free flow of ideas is limited to the
obsolescent world of print and photocopy machines, and where citizen dis-
course is relegated to the backseat of democracy (Bollier 2001a, 2001b, 2002;
National Research Council, 2000; Vaidhyanathan 2001a, 2001b, 2001c; see
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 295

also American Library Association, 2001d). Equally disturbing, precedents

such as these set the tone for similar policy development in the European
Union and through the World International Property Organization (WIPO).

Universal Service and Filtering

Since the early decades of the twentieth century, Americans have held the
belief that maximum access to public information sources and channels
of communication is necessary for political, economic, and social partici-
pation in a vigorous civil society. Everyone must have access to informa-
tion and communication networks in order to participate in democracy.
Under the universal-service provisions of the U.S. Telecommunications
Act of 1996 (Section 254), the Federal Communications Commission has
authorized a program to ensure equitable access to telecommunications
technologies by offering schools and libraries discounted rates that were
once reserved for only the largest corporate customers. In this way,
schools and libraries may be connected as a first step toward widespread
public access. Known as the E-Rate, over $2 billion in discounts and grants
is now earmarked annually for distribution from fees collected by long-
distance phone carriers. In addition, the E-Rate helps bridge the digital
divide by expanding access and connectivity to needy communities
(EdLiNC, 2000; McClure and Bertot 2000; Urban Institute, 2000; see also
American Library Association, 2002e). Still, it took some horse trading to
gain acceptance for the E-Rate. Telecommunications companies agreed
to this amendment to the 1996 Telecommunications Act in return for
deregulation of their markets. Even so, several of the major carriers who
benefited most from deregulation have tried to sabotage this program
through court challenges and by highlighting the universal-service charge
on consumer bills without explanation, thereby inciting the anger of their
enormous customer base.
Where corporate attempts to stop the flow of subsidies to schools and
libraries ended, Congress has added its own twists. A law passed in Decem-
ber 2000, the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), requires local
schools and libraries to install filters to protect both children and adults
from viewing obscenity and child pornography in order to receive E-Rate
and other federal subsidies. Both the American Library Association (ALA)
and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have brought suits to
296 Nancy Kranich

challenge the constitutionality of this law (American Library Association

and the American Civil Liberties Union, 2001; see also American Library
Association, 2002b). Attempts to tie federal funding to content restrictions
raise serious constitutional questions similar to those brought forward in
ACLU v. Reno, which succeeded in challenging the constitutionality of the
Communications Decency Act. CIPA will impose federal regulations over
local, community control of information access. First Amendment protec-
tions must extend to the digital sphere if we are to ensure open dialogue
across the full spectrum of opinion in the information age.
Many states have proposed and some have passed similar laws to restrict
Internet access in schools and libraries by mandating a filtering requirement
in order for these institutions to receive state and local funding. Unfortu-
nately, filters do more harm than good; they sweep too broadly, blocking
only some of the sites with indecent materials while restricting access to
legal and useful resources. Users complain that filters block such home
pages as the Super Bowl XXX, the Mars Exploration site (MARSEXPL), swan
migration in Alma, Wisconsin (swANALma), Mother Jones magazine, the
National Rifle Association, the Quakers, thirty Congressional candidates,
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the American Association of University
Women, Beanie Babies, and millions of other sites of legitimate interest.
Filtering systems have trouble distinguishing between users who are six and
sixteen years old; they apply the common denominator of the youngest
users at the expense of all others. Furthermore, filters are not effective in
blocking much material that some consider undesirable for children; they
gives parents a false sense of security, leading them to believe that their
children are protected from harm. Most importantly, they do not take the
place of preferred routes that include the development of community-based
Internet-access policies, user education programs, links to great sites
(white/green lists), and safety guidelines.
The extraordinary benefits of Internet access are too often overshadowed
by controversies fueled by groups who stoke imagined fears about the power
of images and words in an effort to control access to information. According
to a study by the National Coalition Against Censorship (1999), “The evi-
dence of harm from Internet access at public institutions is at best equivocal,
and the blunt-edged approach advocated by pro-censorship advocates
ignores the individualized needs of children and their parents. Fortunately,
most libraries have found ways of balancing the interests of all parties
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 297

effectively, without censorship.” Surely those relying on public institutions

for connectivity deserve access rights equivalent to those enjoyed by con-
sumers who can afford access at home, and should not be subjected to yet
another digital-content divide (Kranich 2001a, 2000a; see also American
Library Association, 2002a, 2002b, and Freedom to Read 2002).

The Tide of the Information Age

The emergence of personal computers and telecommunications technolo-

gies over the last twenty years has transformed information creation,
transport, and dissemination industries from independent operators
mostly involved with infrastructure to a highly integrated, multinational
private sphere of megacompanies looking to optimize profits and domi-
nate access to homes and businesses. Throughout the world, a period of
deregulation and privatization has shifted the information policymaking
arena to the private sector, where questions of the public interest are
harder to raise.
What is at stake is not only the availability and affordability of informa-
tion essential to the public interest, but also the very basis on which citi-
zens’ information needs are met. As communications and media industry
giants stake their claims in cyberspace, the public interest must not be
overlooked. The new information infrastructure must ensure free spaces
that are filled by educational and research institutions, libraries, nonprof-
its, and governmental organizations charged with promoting and fulfilling
public-policy goals. The new information commons must constitute a
public sphere of free speech and open intellectual discourse that enhances
democracy.

An Action Agenda for a Twenty-First-Century Information Commons

Everyone must have the opportunity to participate in a digital-age democ-

racy. Citizens need safe gathering places where they can share interests and
concerns, find information essential to civic involvement, and connect
with fellow citizens. If the public’s right to know is to be protected within
a free-market global-information infrastructure, citizens must stand up and
speak out to promote an information commons in the public interest. As
Brian McConnell (1999, 125), former president of the Independent Sector,
298 Nancy Kranich

has warned, “The greatest dangers to civil society and democracy arise
from neglect by the very citizens who expect privileges and rights without
exercising responsibility to protect them.”
Librarians are well positioned to lead the charge to ensure that citizens
can exercise their twenty-first-century information rights. Why? Because
librarians are committed to ensuring the free flow of information in our
society and understand what is at stake. And they represent more than half
of the country’s adults as well as three-quarters of its children, who use
libraries every year. They have extensive experience working with com-
munity groups in building social capital, strengthening civil society, and
championing the public’s information rights. Furthermore, librarians pre-
serve the community’s historic, cultural, political, and social record and
provide free spaces for reflection and deliberation by local citizens.
Librarians must pick up the gauntlet and join forces with computer
professionals, educators, cultural organizations, journalists, public officials,
public-interest groups, and the general public to ensure that everyone has
access to a free and open information commons. Neutrality will not work;
the stakes are very high—namely, our democratic way of life that depends
on an informed electorate. Working together in communities throughout
the world, we must recognize the importance of an information commons
to the advancement of civil society. We must be well informed about the
issues and the players on all sides. We must undertake research that
demonstrates the contributions of public access to the advancement of
science and the arts. We must map public opinion.
We must compile anecdotes about the positive effects of access to infor-
mation and the negative impact when access is denied. We must articulate
the positive economic value of the social outcomes of the commons and
how it outweighs the negative impacts on the market.
We must enter the struggle adequately armed. We must identify indi-
viduals and groups with common concerns, looking far beyond the
normal sources for allies. We must build coalitions to promote public
access, to extend our reach, to increase our strength and influence, and
to galvanize grassroots action. We must seek opportunities to testify at
relevant hearings and forums and urge that public-interest representa-
tives be named to various task forces and advisory councils on informa-
tion issues at the local, national, and international levels. We must
support growth, connectivity, and digitization by local libraries,
Libraries: The Information Commons of Civil Society 299

schools, and other cultural organizations and make their valuable

resources readily available over the network.
We must focus more attention on the importance of the information
commons and attempts to erode the public sphere. We must collect data
about “Where’s the harm?”; assemble facts and document the case; make
the issues local; and use good examples, anecdotes, and stories. We must
tell the story about why access to information helps and how the lack of it
hurts.
We must take every opportunity to educate the public. We must develop
a public-awareness action plan that mobilizes support, holds politicians
accountable for their views, and encourages community involvement. To
connect with citizens, we can circulate petitions and launch letter-writing
campaigns; distribute flyers, buttons, and banners; develop a recognizable
logo; organize special celebration days and events; sponsor lectures and
events; mount exhibits; and commemorate Freedom of Information Day
with award ceremonies and other events. We must also find citizens who
will speak out about their concerns and communicate them to policymak-
ers. And finally, we must establish local free nets and other communica-
tion vehicles to share community concerns, information, events, and
opportunities.
Without a technologically sophisticated information commons in every
community, the gulf between the information rich and the information
poor will widen. If we are to revive communities and restore civic virtue
and democratic participation, we must advocate for a public sphere with a
rich, vibrant information commons—a commons where citizens are free
to engage in civic life. Otherwise, we will endanger our most
precious assets in a democratic society: our rights of free speech, inquiry,
and self-governance.
14 The Soil of Cyberspace: Historical Archaeologies of the
Blacksburg Electronic Village and the Seattle Community
Network

David Silver

Using Benedikt’s appropriately titled Cyberspace: First Steps (1991) as one

bookend and Bell and Kennedy’s equally appropriately titled The Cybercul-
tures Reader (2000) as another, we find a decade’s worth of rich scholarship
in what is tentatively called cyberculture studies, Internet studies, or new-
media studies. As the field of study continues to grow, patterns of
approaches appear, beginning with journalistic descriptions in the early
1990s, a fascination with virtual communities and online identities in the
mid-1990s, and critical explorations into issues of cultural diversity in the
late 1990s (Bell 2001; Silver 2000a).
In the chapter that follows, I wish to suggest a new approach, one that
borrows heavily from recent American studies and cultural studies schol-
arship, which, in turn, borrows from what is often referred to as “con-
structivist studies of technology.” During the 1980s, historians of
technology began examining technology within the culture and society
that created it (Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch 1987; Corn 1986; Pacey 1983).
As Downey (1998, 21) explains, constructivist studies of technology “make
visible the diverse activities of individuals and groups involved in techno-
logical development, making it difficult to think of ‘invention’ and ‘inno-
vation’ as singular events or fixed processes.” Within such a framework,
new technologies are neither positive, negative, nor neutral, but rather
products of multiple agendas situated within a particular time and place.
Building on the work of the constructivists, American studies and cul-
tural studies scholars have explored the social and cultural constructions
of new and once-new communication technologies. For example, in the
introduction to the influential anthology Technoculture, Penley and Ross
(1991, xiv) note that
302 David Silver

technologies are not repressively foisted upon passive populations, any more than the
power to realize their repressive potential is in the hands of a conspiring few. They are
developed at any one time and place in accord with a complex set of existing rules or
rational procedures, institutional histories, technical possibilities, and, last, but not
least, popular desires. All kinds of negotiations are necessary to prepare the way for
new technologies, many of which are not particularly useful or successful.

Surprisingly, while the field of cyberculture studies continues to grow,

there are no book-length attempts to historically contextualize online
culture. Although Abbate (1995) and Salus (1995) trace the historical devel-
opment of the Internet, they stop short of addressing critically the cultural
and social practices stemming from such developments. Conversely, while
Dibbell’s My Tiny Life (1998), Horn’s Cyberville (1998), and Rheingold’s The
Virtual Community (1993) explore the cultural and social practices of spe-
cific online communities, they pay little, if any, attention to the historical
development of such environments. Dibbell devotes a few pages to the his-
tory of multiuser domains, or MUDs, and exactly one page to the history
of LambdaMOO, his book’s site of inquiry; Horn offers no formal history
of ECHO, an online community based in New York; and Rheingold pro-
vides a brief, cursory history of the WELL, a virtual community rooted in
the San Francisco Bay Area. This reluctance to link culture with history is
dangerous, for it casts the Net as a neutral, barren frontier: rootless,
settlerless, waiting to be civilized.
In an attempt to lend proper context to the study of online cultures, this
chapter traces the institutional histories of two of the best-known and most
popular community networks: the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) and
the Seattle Community Network (SCN). Working under the assumption
that cyberculture, like all forms of culture, is developed within a particular
time and space and distributed and used via numerous cultural, economic,
and political negotiations, I outline the community networks’ initial incep-
tions, structural developments, and institutional contributions. I also exam-
ine the networks’ implementation, focusing especially on community
involvement, organizational structures, and content development.
Throughout the chapter, I pay special attention to the respective roles, con-
tributions, and interests of the projects’ various partners. As I hope to
reveal, although the BEV and the SCN share a common goal—to network a
community—the ways and means by which they have sought to achieve
that goal differ drastically, and have produced significantly different results.
The Soil of Cyberspace 303

I develop these histories from four major sources. First, I have consulted
a number of online archives assembled by the networks’ program and
design teams. These archives include the BEV HistoryBase, the BEV News-
letter Archive, and the Seattle Community Network Association’s Meetings
Minutes Archives. Second, I have examined dozens of local and national
newspaper and magazine articles that detail, among other topics, the net-
works’ development. It is important to note at the outset, however, that
while the organizers of the BEV made efforts to nurture and promote pub-
licity, volunteers for the SCN seldom courted the press. Accordingly, articles
on the SCN are far less numerous than those on the BEV. Third, I have
drawn significantly from three studies on the two community networks:
Cohill and Kavanaugh’s Community Networks: Lessons from Blacksburg,
Virginia (1997), an interesting yet particularly boosteresque account of the
BEV; Schorger’s Ph.D. dissertation, “A Qualitative Study of the Develop-
ment and First Year of Implementation of the Blacksburg Electronic Village”
(1997), an examination limited to the network’s early origins and rooted in
educational technology; and Schuler’s New Community Networks: Wired for
Change (1996a), a how-to manual on community networks with a minor
focus on the SCN. Fourth, I have conducted a number of oral histories—
both face to face and via e-mail—with key players from both networks.

The Blacksburg Electronic Village

The BEV is a test bed of services that will be demanded by customers in the future.
—John W. Knapp, Jr., spokesman for Bell Atlantic (quoted in T. Farragher, “In
Blacksburg, Va., There’s No Wired Place Like Home”)

The origins of the BEV are found in Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University. In 1987, Virginia Tech, a university that hosts nationally
ranked programs in computer science and engineering, jump-started its
campuswide computer network. With a $16 million bond issue authorized
by the General Assembly, the university constructed a state-of-the-art
telecommunications system out of digitized telephone networks and high-
speed modems. After the system was completed, Virginia Tech faculty,
staff, and on-campus students enjoyed direct network access at a speed of
19,200 baud, a dramatic improvement over the then-normal 1200 baud
(Bowden, Blythe, and Cohill 1997; Harrison 1995).
304 David Silver

Two results followed. First, Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone of

Virginia—now Bell Atlantic of Virginia—lost operation of the Virginia Tech
telecommunications system, resulting in a considerable loss in revenue and
a strained relationship between the two institutions (Bowden, Blythe, and
Cohill 1997; Schorger 1997). Moreover, in turn, the town of Blacksburg lost
a significant revenue tax. As Town Manager Ronald Secrist notes, “When
C & P Telephone, now Bell Atlantic, was removed from providing telephone
services on campus the loss in revenues in our consumer utility tax was
upward of $90,000” (Schorger 1997, 32). The second result was widespread
adoption of and increased demand for the network on the part of Virginia
Tech students and faculty. Equipped with rocket-fast connection speeds,
members of the Virginia Tech community spent a significant portion of the
late 1980s online, e-mailing friends and colleagues, participating in mailing
lists and bulletin boards for academic courses and social groups, and down-
loading documents, files, and programs from the university’s mainframe
computer (Harrison 1995; Rothenberg 1996).
Persistent requests from students and faculty for off-campus connectiv-
ity was the seed of the BEV. As Harrison (1995, A4) notes, “The electronic
village project came about when local residents, most of them connected
to the university, approached school officials about gaining access to a
computer network off campus.” (See also Blumenstyk 1997; Stepanek
1999.)
To solve the problem, the university, headed by Robert Heterick, then
vice president for computing and information systems at Virginia Tech,
considered a number of options. First, they investigated the possibility of
working with the town of Blacksburg to propose a bond issue to construct
a network. The idea garnered little interest. Second, Virginia Tech explored
the option of partnering with a local cable television company, generating,
again, sparse support. Finally, university officials considered renewing
their ties with Bell Atlantic, which, in fall 1990, approached Virginia Tech
to propose a campuswide telecommunications network. The university
selected the third option and appointed Joseph Wiencko, then senior net-
work consultant for Virginia Tech, to chair a series of meetings between
the university and Bell Atlantic (Bowden, Blythe, and Cohill 1997;
Schorger 1997).
On April 17, 1991, Wiencko delivered a presentation at Bell Atlantic’s
main office in Richmond, where the two parties agreed in principle to
The Soil of Cyberspace 305

pursue what was then called the “Blacksburg Community Network.” As

Wiencko notes, “The main point of the presentation was to outline
formation of a community network project that would serve as a test bed
for industry and a stimulus for personal and regional enrichment for
Blacksburg” (Schorger 1997, 33). Believing the project to be a window to
tomorrow or, as described by John W. Knapp, Jr, a spokesperson for Bell
Atlantic, a “test bed of services that will be demanded by customers in the
future,” the telephone company jumped at the opportunity (Farragher
1995, D1). With Bell Atlantic on board, Wiencko and his associates
approached Mayor Roger Hedgepath and Secrist to invite the town to
become a project partner. Hedgepath and Secrist were enthusiastic and
secured the support of the town council (Huff and Syrcek 1997).
On January 20, 1992, a press conference was held at the Continuing
Education Center on the campus of Virginia Tech. Accompanying Con-
gressman Rick Boucher, representatives for the three project partners—Hugh
Stallard, president of Bell Atlantic of Virginia; James McComas, president of
Virginia Tech; and Hedgepath, mayor of Blacksburg—spoke to a standing-
room-only audience and outlined their vision of the future. Judging from
the official press release, the event focused on the project’s uniqueness (“A
university town nestled in the scenic Virginia mountains could become one
of the nation’s first ‘electronic villages’”) and on the collaborative efforts
between the university, the town, and the telephone company (Blacksburg
Electronic Village, 1992; Bowden, Blythe, and Cohill 1997; McCue and
Rosenberg 1992; Schorger 1997). The conference concluded by announcing
the launch of a comprehensive six-month feasibility study.
The largest local paper, the Roanoke Times & World-News, immediately
championed the project. Two days before the press conference, a front-
page article alerted readers about the project, exclaiming “this town may
be the first in the country to be completely linked, house to house, busi-
ness to business, by fiber optics” (Rosenberg 1992a; A1). A day after the
press conference, the paper continued the celebration, publishing a glow-
ing article on the project, remarking that “perhaps within just a few years
every home, apartment, business and school in Blacksburg would be
electronically linked with banks, pharmacies, grocery stores, libraries,
stockmarkets and one another” (McCue and Rosenberg 1992, B1).
Led by Robert Morris of Bell Atlantic, the six-month feasibility study
stretched to a year. Unfortunately, because the findings were never made
306 David Silver

public, the official results of the study are unclear.1 There is, however, an
online document titled “Why a Network in Blacksburg?” (Blacksburg Elec-
tronic Village 1995b), which is commonly featured in BEV press materials
and public presentations. From this document, we can derive three main
qualities that, in 1992, made the town of Blacksburg an ideal test site for
Bell Atlantic. First, the town of Blacksburg is compact. Nestled in the
foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Blacksburg’s 36,000 residents live
within a small geographic area. Unlike metropolitan cities with their
dispersed geographies and large populations, Blacksburg’s small size
and compact nature promote what sociologists call a relatively “closed
community,” an advantageous characteristic when attempting to establish
a critical mass of participants. As the project developers note, “The most
frequent social and cultural contacts by the people of Blacksburg are with
other people in Blacksburg; most routine business transactions by residents
are with local Blacksburg businesses.”
The second quality was Virginia Tech. In addition to constructing the
state-of-the-art telecommunications system in 1987, the university built
a number of fully equipped computer labs distributed throughout campus.
As Paul Gherman, a special assistant to the vice president for information
systems at Virginia Tech, noted in 1992: “There are 15,000 to 17,000 com-
puters on campus. We have more computers than telephones” (Watkins
1992, A26). As a result, the computer-literacy rate of Blacksburg residents
was, in 1992, well above the national average. Further, accompanying the
high computer-literacy rate was a high computer-ownership rate: “Because
Virginia Tech is a large university in a relatively small town, it is likely that
the per-capita usage rate of computers in Blacksburg is the highest of any
town or city of Virginia; it is possibly the highest in the country or the
world” (Blacksburg Electronic Village, 1995b; see also Heterick 1993;
Holusha 1994).
The third quality making Blacksburg an ideal test site for a community
network was the town’s somewhat international composition. In addition
to the approximately 1,500 international students enrolled at Virginia Tech
in 1992, there were visiting faculty members from many countries. Seem-
ingly uninterested in the multicultural flavor such an international com-
munity brings, the project partners were instead thrilled with the publicity
such visitors could generate: “This international aspect is advantageous in
disseminating, through individual user experiences, the ideas of commu-
The Soil of Cyberspace 307

nity networking throughout the world” (Blacksburg Electronic Village,

1995b).
Apparently the three qualities were enough. On January 11, 1993, a second
press conference was held, this time migrating from the university to the
town’s Municipal Building. Bell Atlantic President Hugh Stallard joined
Boucher, McComas, and Hedgepath to announce the formation of a partner-
ship to create “the most comprehensive ‘electronic village’ in the nation.”
Congressman Boucher added: “This is the first time a local government,
major state university, and local telephone company have joined together for
the purpose of making information services available for an entire commu-
nity” (Blacksburg Electronic Village, 1993). Finally, Bell Atlantic reported that
it had contributed over $6 million to the project, largely in the form of a
digital switch for the town, an essential ingredient for a high-speed data
network (Rosenberg 1993).
While a number of community networks began taking shape during the
same time, the BEV was unique due to the nature of its partnership. As
originally conceived and presented at the second press conference, the
project brought together three entities, each assuming different yet
complementary roles. First, Bell Atlantic was responsible for building and
operating the network’s infrastructure. This included upgrading switching
equipment, constructing a fiber-optic backbone, and installing a network
built primarily of ISDN lines and Ethernet that would cover both the
campus and the town of Blacksburg. Further, Bell Atlantic installed inter-
nal wiring in several apartment complexes (approximately 450 individual
apartment units), allowing occupants to link directly to the network via a
T1 line. Finally, it connected the Blacksburg Public Library with high-speed
network connections (Bowden, Blythe, and Cohill 1997; Chandrasekaran
1995; Holusha 1994; Zajac 1999).
Second, essentially fulfilling the role of project manager, Virginia Tech
was responsible for both the development and assessment of the BEV. As
agreed on, faculty, students, and staff from the university would develop
the network, maintain its servers, package software and user-support guides,
create local information resources, and handle user registration. Further,
Virginia Tech’s Student Telecommunications Society would serve as the
network’s guinea pigs, or beta group. They would also be in charge of assess-
ment and coordinate several research groups from across the disciplines to
assess the project (Bowden, Blythe, and Cohill 1997; Rosenberg 1992b).
308 David Silver

And finally, the town of Blacksburg was responsible for community

outreach and public relations. As originally conceived, community outreach
would take the form of a series of presentations, seminars, and computer
workshops conducted by the town for Blacksburg citizens, classrooms, and
community groups. The town would also serve as a conduit through which
members of the community could request particular services and resources.
Finally, the town would be in charge of publicity, primarily in the form of
public lectures and presentations to community groups (“BEV Project Part-
ners,” 1999; Bowden, Blythe, and Cohill 1997).
Directly following the second press conference and throughout 1993,
the BEV rapidly took shape. In March, a beta version of the BEV software
was developed and tested by a group of computer-savvy users, most of
whom came from the Student Telecommunications Society, a Virginia
Tech student organization consisting primarily of graduate students major-
ing in electrical engineering.2 The testing process focused primarily on
technical issues, including ease of software installation and configuration.
As Patterson (1997, 55) notes, “to facilitate the evaluation effort, BEV
designers gathered together a range of experts in computer-mediated com-
munication systems from Virginia Tech.” During the same period, Bell
Atlantic installed Ethernet connections in four apartment complexes as
well as ISDN lines throughout campus (Bowden, Blythe, and Cohill 1997;
Martin 1997; Rosenberg 1992b).
By summer, things began to snowball. On July 1, members of the project
formed the official BEV development group. As Schorger (1997, 37) notes,
The formation of this group gave a persona to BEV as well as staffing resources. Up
to this point development had been on an ad hoc basis within the University com-
munity. . . . This changed when the BEV group was formed. Andrew Cohill, named
the director of BEV at this time, and some members from a related project group
[ERIS], at Virginia Tech, were brought in and became responsible for the develop-
ment and implementation of BEV on a full time basis.

On October 25, with Cohill in charge, the group opened the BEV office, a
small space located in the lobby of the Information Systems Building at
Virginia Tech. Although the space was small and temporary, it was real.
The BEV was in business, both online and offline.
Much of the next two years was spent fixing bugs, generating content,
increasing access, and recruiting businesses. Indeed, the early sailing was
not always smooth. Although the BEV software was beta tested a year
The Soil of Cyberspace 309

earlier, the testers were computer-savvy students from Virginia Tech. As

less computer-literate students and members of the town arrived, so did
the headaches. As Madelyn Rosenberg (1994, NRV2), an assistant editor for
the Roanoke Times & World-News, wrote in a March 1994 editorial, the BEV
was anything but user-friendly: “‘How’s it going with BEV?’ one [friend]
asked when we met for darts last week. I made a faint hacking sound. She
nodded. She’s known BEV much longer than I have. ‘Your frustrations are
only beginning,’ she said.”
While Cohill and his team were busy fixing bugs, the town of Blacksburg
began its efforts to increase community participation in the BEV. The
Blacksburg Telecommunications Advisory Committee (BTAC), a citizens’
committee originally formed in 1983 to address issues of poor cable tele-
vision services, coordinated much of this work. On October 6, 1994, the
BTAC approved the “Plan of Action for Putting Town on the BEV,” a three-
phase plan “to enhance communication amongst citizens and in particu-
lar to be proactive and a catalyst for empowering citizens to interact with
their local government” (Blacksburg Electronic Village, 1995a). The first
phase, contracted out to BizNet, a local Internet company, and imple-
mented November 1, 1994, was titled “Town of Blacksburg Information”
and provided timely information about the town of Blacksburg coupled
with information on how to access town services. Among the avalanche of
information included in this first phase were directories of Blacksburg
boards, commissions, and town officials, extensive transportation guides,
emergency response documents, and the agendas and minutes for a
number of government meetings.
The second phase began on April 1, 1995. Titled “Electronic Access for
Services and Feedback,” the phase included putting online various town
services that could be requested and downloaded electronically and set-
ting up channels through which citizens could send electronic feedback
to the Town Council. This process allowed citizens to request via the
network police reports and vacation monitors, to reserve picnic shelters
and camping grounds, and to notify the Department of Public Works of
a dead animal or the need for a special pickup. Further, it allowed citi-
zens to send electronically their ideas and opinions regarding town plans
and ordinances to town officials. It never, however, considered how to
ensure that those officials received, not to mention responded to, such
ideas and opinions.
310 David Silver

The third phase, titled “Electronic Application, Registration, and

Payment for Town Services,” would consist of various registrations and
applications that citizens could complete electronically and send via com-
puter to the appropriate town department for processing (Huff and Syrcek
1997; Blacksburg Electronic Village, 1995a). Originally slated to appear by
1996, the third stage has yet to be implemented.
In addition to fixing bugs and generating content, project developers
worked to increase access to the network. The most significant event was
moving the office from the university to the town. In October 1994, the
BEV office moved into a space within the Virginia Tech Museum of
Natural History, conveniently located on Main Street in downtown
Blacksburg. As then–BEV operations manager Cortney V. Martin (1997,
237) observes, maintaining a physical presence was key to the project:
“The Main Street location was a real boon to the project, and the number
of walk-in customers increased. The Museum is a naturally inviting,
people-friendly place that encouraged people to stop by and find out
more about the BEV.”
In addition to the access afforded by the Main Street office, the local
library was perhaps the most instrumental factor in expanding participa-
tion. The Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library was involved in the BEV
from the beginning. Steve Helm, computer specialist for the library, and
Robert Heterick brainstormed possible collaborations in 1992; Bell Atlantic
installed a powerful T1 line in the library in September 1993; and discus-
sions between the library and the BEV group were common and fruitful
throughout the early stages of the project. This involvement escalated in
late 1993 when the library was awarded a 1993–1994 Library Services and
Construction Act (LSCA) subgrant for $57,000. Complementing the equip-
ment already donated by Bell Atlantic, the grant provided funds for ten
computer workstations, necessary software and hardware, Ethernet con-
nection fees, and a full-time librarian devoted to Internet training and
assistance. Further, the project was extended a year with support from a
$40,000 LSCA continuation subgrant for 1994–1995 (Cohill 1997; Helm
1994).
Complementing the new office and library access was a series of demon-
strations and workshops for the community. Usually held at the library or at
the New Media Center on the Virginia Tech campus, these events targeted
The Soil of Cyberspace 311

particular groups, including government officials, children, schoolteachers,

and, as we will see shortly, businesspeople. The workshops were designed
not only to show potential users the network, but also to let them explore it.
Further, the BEV project team conducted workshops outside the library and
university, often visiting local schools, senior-citizen homes, and the local
chapter of the Lions Club (“Blacksburg Electronic Village Classes Planned by
Libraries,” 1994; Cohill 1997; Foster 1994a; “Introduction to BEV Set at
Library,” 1994; Lindquist 1994).
Finally, in addition to handling technical troubleshooting, generating
content, and increasing access, much of 1994–1995 was spent recruiting
business. Indeed, commercial applications of the BEV were never far from
the developers’ thoughts, and members of the project team made extra
efforts to recruit local businesses. This recruitment took two forms. First, in
late 1994, the BEV group organized a series of hands-on workshops for
local businesspeople. Taking place in a university computer lab, the four
2-hour seminars filled quickly, with many businesses asking to enroll up to
fifteen of their employees. The second event that got local businesses on
board came from the town. In the summer of 1995, the town of Blacksburg
gave the BEV $15,000 in grant money to aid local businesses in creating
websites. The grants were extremely successful, and within a few months
the town of Blacksburg awarded forty-seven businesses funds ranging from
$90 to $390 (Silver 1999, 2000b).
By the end of 1995, two years after its initial launch, the BEV had fully
arrived. It gained international publicity, wired a significant portion of the
town’s citizens, services, and businesses, and secured many financial
returns. During 1995 alone, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, and
Washington Post featured articles on the network. Superlatives were diffi-
cult to avoid: the Philadelphia Inquirer called Blacksburg “perhaps America’s
most wired municipality” (Farragher 1995, D1); the Los Angeles Times
caught Cohill remarking that “this is the most connected town in the
world” (Harrison 1995, A4); and the Washington Post managed to hear
Cohill call Blacksburg “without a doubt, the most computer-connected
place, per capita, on the planet” (Chandrasekaran 1995, A12). Further, fol-
lowing a feature segment on the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw a year
earlier, the BEV was one of the main highlights in an hour-long Discovery
Channel program on cyberspace shown in April 1995 (“Electronic Village
Gets Discovered,” 1995; Foster 1994b).
312 David Silver

While publicity escalated offline, a community of users grew online.

It grew quickly: in January 1995, three months after its initial launch, 300
town residents signed onto the BEV; by February, 400 users called the BEV
home; and by April, 800 accounts were established. By its first anniversary
in October, the BEV contained accounts for one-fourth of the town’s
36,000 residents. By April 1995, one-third of Blacksburg residents partici-
pated in the BEV (Farragher 1995; Foster 1994a; Harrison 1995; Reed 1994;
Schultz 1994).
Although the widespread publicity and early adoption of the BEV are
impressive, the most dramatic development was commercial. As the Wall
Street Journal notes, “The network has triggered a flurry of high-tech eco-
nomic activity that exceeds what a town of 36,000 would normally sup-
port” (Choi 1996, B1). Symbolizing this flurry was the Corporate Research
Center, a 120-acre commercial office complex dominated by high-tech
industries. As the Chicago Tribune observes, “Most of the 11 brick offices are
occupied by innovative start-ups spun off from Virginia Tech or drawn to
the region by a tech-savvy workforce and fresh air” (Zajac 1999, C1).
Indeed, by 1997, a mere three years after its initial launch, eighteen new
Internet-related businesses opened in the Blacksburg area (Blumenstyk
1997).
Not to be left out, a number of Virginia Tech faculty members, working
in conjunction with the BEV, were awarded substantial grants. As noted in
the Chronicle of Higher Education, by 1997, Virginia Tech had received
support for over ten BEV-related research projects, involving nearly forty
faculty members and graduate students. In 1993, for example, a number
of Virginia Tech computer scientists received a $449,088 grant from the
National Science Foundation (NSF) for “Interactive Learning with a Digital
Library in Computer Science.” The following year, NSF awarded a planning
grant of $99,824 to Virginia Tech, the BEV, and the Montgomery County
Public Schools for “Planning for Virtual Schools in Electronic Villages,” an
attempt to develop and document an online school.
Significantly, the project called for a partnership with commercial educa-
tion providers, including Scholastic Network, Inc., and Busch Entertain-
ment. The principal investigators came from the departments of computer
science, education, and communication studies. The next year, the
Blacksburg Electronic Village, Incorporated was awarded a $266,710 grant
from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Telecommunications and
The Soil of Cyberspace 313

Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) for “Building Com-

munity in Rural America—A Replicable Model for Community Networks”
(Blumenstyk 1997; DeVaughn 1994; Milenky 1995).
And the grants kept coming. In 1996, the Network Infrastructure for
Education of the National Science Foundation awarded the BEV a $151,493
grant for “Evaluation of the Impact of Computer Networking in K–12
Education Reform.” The project, an attempt to assess the impact of net-
work resources and learner-centered teaching strategies, as well as the role
of networking for school-community interaction and involvement, was a
collaboration between the BEV and Virginia Tech’s College of Human
Resources and Education. And finally, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s
Public Telecommunications Facilities Program awarded the BEV a $75,000
planning grant for “Meeting the Needs of Rural Health and Education:
A Wireless Solution.” The project supports an exploratory team to plan
network connectivity and build educational content with community
partners in nearby Smyth and Floyd Counties.3

The Seattle Community Network

[The SCN] redefines what neighborhood is. This kind of forum allows people to talk
over the back fence with people of the same interests and concerns, rather than
based on some geographic boundaries.
—David Kinne of Washington Ceasefire (quoted in S. Maier, “New Computer
Network—The Talk of the Town”)

Computer technology and progressive politics came together in 1983 with

the formation of the Seattle chapter of Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility (CPSR). Originally conceived as an informal online discussion
group at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in late 1981, CPSR was—and
continues to be—a collection of computer professionals devoted to ensuring
socially responsible applications of computer technologies. Beginning as an
advisory group focused on increasing awareness of the risks associated with
nuclear weapons and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or “Star Wars”),
CPSR extended and expanded on these efforts by sponsoring annual meet-
ings and conferences. Fusing technology and politics, the conference
themes, which continue today, include the following: Computers, Freedom,
and Privacy; Directions and Implications in Advanced Computing; and
314 David Silver

Participatory Design (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility,

“CPSR History,” undated; Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility,
“CPSR Timeline,” 1998).
Among the nearly two dozen chapters, CPSR/Seattle is one of the most
active, a result no doubt of the city’s high-tech industries and progressive
politics. Beginning in 1983, CPSR/Seattle established a diverse agenda of
public awareness, community outreach, and policy. In turn, this agenda
translated into a series of public talks and seminars, the formation of Com-
puters for Activists, a group that provided high-tech help to nonprofit
organizations, and the founding of a special-interest group focused on
information-policy and information-privacy issues within the state of
Washington (“Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility—Seattle
Chapter,” undated). It was not until 1990, however, that one of CPSR
Seattle’s members found a single project on which to focus their efforts
collectively.
While the history of the BEV is rooted firmly in Virginia Tech, the
origins of the SCN are found in the Seattle chapter of CPSR. In 1990, CPSR
sponsored its biannual Directions and Implications of Advanced
Computing (DIAC) symposium. Following the conference, the proceed-
ings were published as Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing:
Proceedings from the DIAC ’90 Conference. Douglas Schuler, an engineer at
Boeing, an active member of CPSR/Seattle, and, in 1990, a future chair of
CPSR, read the proceedings and was particularly intrigued by “The Rain-
bow Pages: Building Community with Voice Technology,” a paper
submitted by Paul Resnick and Mel King. As Schuler (1993, online) recalls,
“This paper had exciting insights on using computers for community
development and communication. I looked deeper and discovered a small
but growing world of community-based computer projects including
pioneer systems such as Berkeley’s Community Memory and Montana’s
Big Sky Telegraph.”
On October 16, 1990, Schuler shared his interest in community net-
works at a CPSR/Seattle meeting at the home of member Jon Jacky. As part
of his presentation, he discussed a number of community networking pro-
jects, including Community Memory and Big Sky Telegraph, as well as the
Public Electronic Network (PEN) in Santa Monica, California, the New York
Youth Network in New York, and the Cleveland Free-Net in Ohio. While
no formal action took place, the presentation produced lively and
The Soil of Cyberspace 315

sustained discussion. It also generated a community of activists and

computer programmers—some who traveled from as far away as Portland,
Oregon—interested in learning more (Schuler 1996b; Westrich 1997).
A few false starts and a little over a year later, Schuler reintroduced the
idea of community networks at a January 1992 CPSR/Seattle meeting.
Members watched “If It Plays in Peoria . . . ,” a video about the Heartland
Free-Net in Peoria, Illinois. Produced by the National Public Telecomput-
ing Network, a nonprofit corporation located in Cleveland, Ohio, which
served (until its bankruptcy in the late 1990s) as the parent organization
for community networks around the world, the video examined the need
for and potential benefits of community-run, community-built computer
networks. According to Schuler, the video generated considerable excite-
ment among those present, including Ken Gillgren, Randy Groves, Phil
Harrison, Heather Holmback, Phil Hughes, Aki Namioka, Sharma Oliver,
Lorraine Pozzi, and, of course, Schuler himself. Before the meeting
adjourned, members voted unanimously to make the Seattle Community
Network an official project of CPSR/Seattle (Schuler 1993, 1996a, 1996b).
Fueled by CPSR/Seattle members’ interest, two crucial developments took
shape. First, Lorraine Pozzi suggested a meeting with local activist groups
and projects. After receiving resounding approval from the members, Pozzi,
Schuler, and others approached Kay Bullitt, a long-time Seattle activist
whose home often served as a political hub for progressive Seattleites. When
Bullitt enthusiastically agreed to host an event, organizers sent invitations
to over fifty local community leaders. The event was a huge success. Over
forty guests, representing a diverse spectrum of Seattle, including public
television station KCTS/9, Seattle Public Library, the University of Wash-
ington, and members of local educational, environmental, social services,
and commercial communities, attended the spring event. According to
Schuler (1996b), “Aki Namioka and I presented the vision of a free, public
access computer system that would help a community keep in touch with
itself. . . . Although the presentation was undoubtedly somewhat naive and
there was some skepticism the mood was optimistic and many attendees at
that early meeting are enthusiastic SCN supporters.” Following the presen-
tation, there was a free-flowing exchange of ideas as well as requests and
commitments to become involved (Schuler 1996a, 1996b).
The second development was an offshoot of the first. Among the attend-
ing community leaders were Yvonne Chen and Jim Taylor of the Seattle
316 David Silver

Public Library (SPL). Chen, the library’s advocate for reference services, and
Taylor, the coordinator of automated services, left the meeting convinced
of the need to collaborate: “It complements our mission as a library,” Chen
remarked to her colleagues (Griest 1994, C1). Over the next seven months,
Schuler and Groves met regularly with Chen and Taylor until a working
agreement was reached. As we will see, collaborations between the SCN
and the SPL made possible many of the network’s early and sustained
successes.
With a team of volunteers, interest from community activists and groups,
and a working agreement with the SPL, CPSR/Seattle members spent the
next two years focused on three activities: recruiting, organizing, and
fundraising. While the origins of the BEV were conceptualized behind the
closed doors of Bell Atlantic, members of the Seattle project opened the
brainstorming process to the public. For example, the July 16, 1992, issue of
the Seattle Times included a brief column on the nascent network. It read:
“A Seattle Community Free Network? It’s worked in other communities.
The goal is to link local organizations and agencies electronically in build-
ing a sense of civic involvement. The Seattle chapter of Computer Profes-
sionals for Social Responsibility is looking into the concept. Call———for
details” (Andrews 1992, B2).
Once brought together, the volunteers were organized into five com-
mittees. These included the following: Outreach, responsible for general
public relations, publicity, fundraising, and working with strategic part-
ners; Services, in charge of working with information providers and design-
ing the initial interface; Hardware/Software, responsible for all technical
elements, including recommending, evaluating, and installing system soft-
ware and debugging and maintaining the network; Policy, accountable for
general principles and user policies; and Staff and Facilities, in charge of
coordinating information providers, webmasters, and volunteers (Schuler
1996a, 1996b). As their name implies, none of the volunteers received
financial remuneration.
In addition to the five committees, a coordinating council (often referred
to as the steering committee) was established. The coordinating council
consisted of an elected representative from each of the five committees and
two members at large elected by all members.4 The role of the coordinating
council was “to respond quickly when necessary, to help determine strategic
directions for the group, and to make recommendations” (Schuler 1996a,
The Soil of Cyberspace 317

358). Finally, an advisory board was formed and assigned “to help SCN think
strategically on how better to make an impact in the community” (Schuler
1996b). Although more symbolic than active, the advisory board, initially
made up of representatives from Seattle’s progressive, educational, and
governmental communities, helped to legitimize the project.
Complementing their recruitment and organizational efforts was a grass-
roots fundraising campaign. As an early flyer noted, traditional grant
writing proved tricky and unproductive: “We have written several grants
but seem to be in the Catch-22 of needing money to build a system and
needing a system to get grant money” (Andrews 1993, D2). Instead, con-
tributions came from within; 80 percent of the network’s initial operating
budget came from CPSR members, SCN volunteers, and individual donors.
The rest arrived as financial and in-kind contributions from local software
and Internet companies (Griest 1994).
During the same time, the volunteers worked to ensure tangible
alliances and products. The first was a working agreement with the SPL,
a result of seven months of discussions and negotiations. In essence, the
SPL agreed to house SCN computers, provide a few phone lines for
access, and distribute SCN brochures. Further, they agreed to provide
the SCN with a small workspace within the library. Finally, and perhaps
most importantly, the SPL installed SCN as a menu choice on its public-
access system, affording visitors to the main library and its twenty-three
neighborhood branches free and public access to the community net-
work. In return, the SCN agreed to provide library visitors free computer
training, e-mail accounts, and web space, as well as develop online con-
tent relevant to the libraries and their patrons (Schuler 1997, 1996a,
1996b).
The second product was a set of documents. Put together during a series
of coordinating council meetings, the statement of principles serves not
only to define what the SCN is but also what it hoped to become. Accord-
ing to Schuler (1996a, 339), the group process of coming up with a “shared
vision” is absolutely essential, for that vision can and should be built into
the network and its operations.
The statement of principles serves as a guiding set of commitments. Influ-
enced heavily by the CPSR, the statement of principles privileges political
ideologies over technological configurations and focuses on five commit-
ments: to access; to service; to democracy; to the world community; and to
318 David Silver

the future. Accompanying the statement of principles was the policy

statement. Written by the Policy Committee chaired by Aki Namioka, the
policy statement would define what constitutes acceptable and unaccept-
able behavior within the SCN.
In January 1994, the SCN was launched as a pilot project. For the next
six months, the SCN took what Schuler called a “shakedown cruise,” an
open yet closely monitored series of forums developed, in part, to test the
system, look for and correct bugs, and build up online content, data, and
information (Maier 1994, A1). In addition to testing the system, the pilot
project was instrumental in building community. In early March, for
example, the SCN joined Washington Ceasefire, a Seattle-based gun con-
trol coalition, to sponsor an electronic forum on violence. As reported in
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the project sought to bridge the local with the
national: “In addition to offering a ‘bulletin board’ for people to exchange
ideas and comments on violence, the forum will provide a trove of local
and national statistics, including a directory of organizations that work
on violence issues and a calendar of community events” (“Discussion of
Violence Goes On-line in Seattle,” 1994, B2).
The importance of this forum cannot be underestimated. Because
computer-savvy users are most likely to find advanced network errors and
hard-to-find system bugs, most high-tech pilot projects, including the BEV,
target high-tech users. The SCN took a different course by privileging com-
munity rather than technology. As David Kinne of “Washington Ceasefire”
points out, communication, not communication technology, was the
focus: “People from the south, north, Eastside—[people] who normally
would not have any opportunity to meet each other and talk to each
other—come together in this electronic forum. . . . It redefines what neigh-
borhood is. This kind of forum allows people to talk over the back fence
with people of the same interests and concerns, rather than based on some
geographic boundaries” (Maier 1994, A1).
While still in the experimental stage, the project began to attract
attention. Deeming it worthy of front-page attention, the Seattle Post-
Intelligencer described the SCN as “a public computer exchange of ideas and
information” and stressed its proactive, socially conscious nature: “The
Seattle Community Network, two years in the making, started as a project
of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, a group that promotes
public access to computer information. The group hopes to ‘demonstrate
The Soil of Cyberspace 319

by example’ that electronic highways needn’t be the exclusive domain of

government and big business” (Maier 1994, A1).
In June 1994, the project became available to the public. Hosted on a
386 donated by a local retailer, PCN Computer, run off of a UNIX operat-
ing system donated by BSDI, and wired through an Internet connection
donated by Washington Library Network, the SCN was introduced to the
public from within the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library
(Schuler 1996a, 1996b; Westrich 1997). Unlike the opening of the BEV, the
inaugural launch was not a media spectacle. Further, unlike the event in
Blacksburg, no representatives from multimillion-dollar corporations
spoke in Seattle. Instead, Liz Stroup, the head librarian at the SPL, and Jim
Street, the president of the Seattle City Council, delivered introductory
speeches, followed by brief remarks from a few SCN volunteers and a short
demonstration of the community network. The event concluded with
three children using the SCN to send thank you e-mails to well-wishers. As
Schuler (1996a, 344) notes, “Although other communities have launched
their network with more fanfare (such as having the governor of the state
or Vice President Al Gore cut a ribbon), the SCN community introduc-
tion was attended by nearly one hundred people and seemed perfectly
appropriate for SCN.”
Much of 1994 was focused on three activities besides the launching of
the SCN: writing grants, upgrading hardware, and developing prototypical
projects. Early in the year, the SCN partnered with the local Public Broad-
casting System (PBS) affiliate KCTS/9 and Powerful Schools to submit a
“Community-Wide Education and Information System” proposal to the
Corporation of Public Broadcasting and USWest Foundation. In April, they
were notified that their project, “Puget Soundings,” had been awarded a
$115,000 grant (Taylor 1994). Although the SCN received only a portion
of the grant, it was enough to hire Nancy Kunitsugo to set up and host
online community forums devoted to local issues and public education.
First-year forums included “Ask the Governor” and “Teen Talk” (Schuler
1996a, 1996b).
As the network’s traffic continued to grow, the once-trusty 386 became
increasingly sluggish. In December, the coordinating council met and,
based on a recommendation from the Hardware/Software Committee,
purchased a Sun SPARCstation 5 for $5,000. After SCN’s purchase of the
high-end workstation, the local Sun Microsystem office, interested in the
320 David Silver

project, donated a Sun SLC, an even more powerful workstation (Schuler

1996a; Westrich 1997). Overnight, the SCN had become literally a new
network.
Yet perhaps more important than the grant and the upgrade was the
strategic partnership with a number of already-existing community pro-
jects, including Sustainable Seattle, the Homeless Network, and BaseCamp
Seattle. Sustainable Seattle is a group of environmental activists formed in
the early 1990s. Alarmed by what they perceived to be a steady degrada-
tion of Seattle’s environmental settings, they drew up a list of indicators
such as home gardening, the return of wild salmon to spawn, and partici-
pation in community arts. Interested in spreading the word, Sustainable
Seattle approached the SCN, which offered service space to host a website.
As Schuler notes, the SCN provides “an opportunity for activists acting as
lay-scientists to publish important community data that other people or
institutions have no interest in gathering or publishing” (Horvath,
undated). Similarly, under the direction of Lorraine Pozzi, the SCN hosted
the early versions of the Women’s Homeless Network, an online center
devoted to providing homeless women with civic and shelter-related
resources.
Yet perhaps the most inspired project was BaseCamp Seattle, a “grass-
roots gateway” for Seattle-based feminists attending and interested in the
United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, which took place in
Beijing in September 1995. A collaboration between WomensNet and the
SCN, BaseCamp Seattle was at once a community, a series of workshops,
an online discussion, and an informational archive. Before the conference
in Beijing, BaseCamp Seattle sponsored a four-day miniconference at
Seattle University. Combining political presentations with technological
workshops, the project was an attempt to network like-minded activists
and organizations and to listen proactively to marginalized voices
(Gelernter 1995; Pozzi 1995). Aware of the forbidding cost of a trip to
Beijing, BaseCamp Seattle organizers established a relatively low confer-
ence fee ($50) and offered free passes to the local miniconference for those
willing to volunteer (Gelernter 1995). While in Beijing, BaseCamp Seattle
hosted a number of Internet workshops and helped to provide electronic
communications onsite. Finally, before, during, and after the conference
in Beijing, BaseCamp Seattle sponsored online discussions focused on the
The Soil of Cyberspace 321

eleven “Critical Areas of Concern,” the official document governments

were asked to ratify in Beijing.
As the network grew, so did its community. In July 1994, the network
had over 700 registered users. By September, the population doubled to
over 1,500 users. Six months later, it doubled again to over 3,000 users. By
the end of 1995, over 6,500 users frequented the network. Within two
years, the number doubled again, and in November 1997, there were over
13,000 registered users (Griest 1994; Schuler 1996b; Seattle Community
Network 1996a). While project volunteers enthusiastically welcomed the
growth of the network, it soon became too large to sustain under the
limited nonprofit status of CPSR/Seattle, leading to the final chapter in our
history.
By late 1995, the SCN had outgrown CPSR/Seattle in two important
ways. The first was geographic. As Schuler (1996b) notes, “The organizers
felt that SCN needed a regional focus and that the issues facing SCN were
different (though usually complementary) than those facing CPSR.” The
second was financial. As noted in the “Seattle Community Network
Association’s Frequently Asked Questions List” (undated), the
Seattle community network was getting too big to be run as a project of the local
chapter of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), where it began.
One of the problems is that the local chapter has an exemption from certain kinds
of reporting via the national organization, but only if the chapter has an income
from donations that is less than $25,000 in one year. SCN has been lucky to be able
to draw more than that last year, and it looks like we’re on track to do that or better
this year.

SCN was getting like the tail wagging the dog. The solution was to establish
the Seattle Community Network Association, or SCNA, a nonprofit organi-
zation with 501(c)(3) status. The SCNA, therefore, assumed the roles of both
umbrella organization and fundraising arm, as reflected in its original mis-
sion statement: “SCNA provides, maintains and supports free community
computing resources primarily to the citizens of the King County area.
SCNA encourages community development and on-line citizenship by
promoting equal and diverse access to technology and educating the public,
including opinion leaders” (Seattle Community Network Association,
undated). On July 28, 1995, volunteers for the SCN incorporated the Seattle
Community Network Association.
322 David Silver

A one-day retreat, attended by about fifteen volunteers, was held to

hammer out the particulars. Significantly, it was decided that while use of
the SCN would remain free, membership in the SCNA would require a fee.
In turn, SCNA members would gain voting privileges and the right to run
for office. Membership fees were established on a sliding scale, as indicated
in the “Seattle Community Network Association’s Frequently asked Ques-
tions List”:

Standard Member 120.00

Sustaining Member 60.00
Basic Member 25.00
Low Income/Student 15.00

Later, in an attempt to be more inclusive, members of the SCNA board of

directors changed the bylaws to allow an alternative membership fee based on
service: “Resolved: ‘Volunteers who have donated five (5) hours of recorded
service to SCNA rendered within 30 days prior to application for SCNA
membership will qualify to have the minimum cash contribution waived’”
(Seattle Community Network, “SCNA Board Meeting Minutes,” 1998). A year
after its formation, the SCNA boasted nearly 1,000 members. On August 28,
1996, the first general meeting of the SCNA convened at the downtown
branch of the SPL to hold general elections. While the meeting was open to
the public, only SCNA members were allowed to vote. When the votes were
tallied, Aki Namioka was elected president, Randy Groves treasurer, and Doug
Schuler secretary (Schuler 1996b; Seattle Community Network, “SCNA First
Meeting and Elections,” 1996b). With an official governing body on board, the
SCN assumed its current form. Further, by means of membership dues, it estab-
lished a steady, albeit modest, revenue stream, an issue that has historically
plagued community networks (see, for example, Cisler 1993). In 1999, for
instance, the SCNA spent $500 publicizing its annual membership drive,
returning approximately $8,500 in new membership fees (Seattle Community
Network, “SCNA Board Meeting Minutes,” 1999).

Conclusion

Long before users logged onto the BEV and the SCN, crucial negotiations
took place. This chapter has attempted to trace these negotiations in order
to shed light on the positions and priorities of our two community
The Soil of Cyberspace 323

networks. As I have shown, the BEV was built largely as a collaborative

project between Virginia Tech and Bell Atlantic of Virginia. In general, this
community network was built from the top down: brainstormed behind
the closed doors of Bell Atlantic, tested on a focus group consisting of
computer-savvy graduate students from electrical engineering, and intro-
duced as an already-existing network. While the town of Blacksburg had a
nominal role in the development of the network, local businesses were
welcomed aboard from the beginning and given small grants to be a part
of the nascent network.
Conversely, lacking corporate sponsorship, the SCN was a product of a
group of progressive-minded volunteers, many of whom came from the
local branch of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Seeking
early collaboration with the Seattle Public Library, nonprofit organizations,
and activist groups, the volunteers behind the SCN welcomed future users
to become present designers, and built the network from the bottom up.
Unlike those who established the BEV, which served as “a test bed of ser-
vices that will be demanded by customers in the future,” the developers of
the SCN conceived their users as citizens rather than consumers. As such,
early experiments like Sustainable Seattle, the Homeless Network, and Base-
Camp Seattle focused on community involvement and civic engagement.
Similar to geographically based cities, online cities like the BEV and the
SCN contain and reflect complex histories. These histories are important to
uncover, for in many ways they inform and influence the kinds of inter-
actions, communications, and communities that exist within them. To
ignore such histories is to ignore the intricate cultural, economic, and
political negotiations that make the community networks possible—
negotiations that developers translate into what the Blacksburg Electronic
Village and Seattle Community Network intended to be, have become, and
could be in the future.

Notes

The research for this chapter was supported in part by a Nonprofit Sector Research
Fund Dissertation Fellowship from the Aspen Institute. The author wishes to thank
John Caughey for his helpful feedback and suggestions.

1. In an attempt to obtain the feasibility study, I emailed Dr. Andrea Kavanaugh,

Director of Research of the BEV. She replied, “The feasibility study you mention is
324 David Silver

not publicly available.” (Personal correspondence with Andrea Kavanaugh, Novem-

ber 29, 1999.) Further, unlike the other interviews conducted by John Schorger for
his dissertation, the one with Robert Morris is not public. When asked why,
Schorger replied: “Robert Morris’s interview is not available since he did not give
permission for it to be released. I was able to interview him but could not release the
interview.” (Personal correspondence with John Schorger, December 6, 1999.)
Finally, I emailed Robert Morris directly yet never received a reply.

2. For a discussion of the technical aspects of the BEV software, see Ward, 1997.

3. For additional information on many of the projects, see the broken-link infested
“Blacksburg Electronic Village-Research,” http://www.bev.net/project/research/.

4. Later, in October 1996, a representative from the Seattle Public Library was added.
See “SCNA Board Meeting Minutes,” http://www.scn.org/scna/oct96min.html.
15 Globalization and Media Democracy: The Case of
Indymedia

Douglas Morris

The economic globalization that accelerated in the late twentieth century is

generating a major transformation of capitalism. For the last century, power-
ful, nation-based corporations have dominated the international economic
system. Now, a system is emerging that is increasingly dominated by
transnational firms and their international neoliberal agencies such as the
World Trade Organization (WTO) and International Monetary Fund/World
Bank (IMF/WB) (Sklair 2000). The globalization of transnational capital has
depended on a number of technological innovations—such as micro-
processors and the Internet—that have provided the means to control vast
networks of information and commerce. A synthesis of capitalism and tech-
nology, globalized technocapitalism (Kellner 2002), has changed the nature
of technoscience (increasingly commercializing it), work, and organiza-
tions. Global technocapitalism, like previous forms of capitalism, continues
to foster a great deal of alienation and suffering. In dialectical opposition,
social movements are also globalizing, especially those already designed on
network models of organization such as women’s and environmental
movements (Castells 2001; Leon, Burch, and Tamayo 2001). These two
opposing trends in transnational society are mirrored in the centralized
control of commercial news media and the formation of alternative-media
networks.
The global-justice or antiglobalization movement burst into public atten-
tion during the protest in Seattle against the WTO in 1999.1 Global-justice
mobilizations gained increasing media coverage and public attention
through protests in Washington, D.C., Melbourne, Prague, Quebec, and
Genoa. The Seattle protest was an outgrowth of previous organizing efforts,
most immediately preceded by the efforts of People’s Global Action (PGA),
an international network of activists against neoliberal globalization. PGA
326 Douglas Morris

organized the J18 ( June 18) Carnival against Capitalism protests interna-
tionally in summer 1999, and for several years prior (and continues actively
today in Europe: see pgaconference.org). PGA combined major aspects of
the global-justice mobilizations: protests in multiple cities, the carnival
theme, grassroots democracy, and critique of globalization.
The history of antineoliberal globalization efforts goes back in the global
South to protests against the IMF/WB starting in the mid-1980s and back
further, considering the legacy of anticolonial struggles. With the Zapatista
movement, activists began to successfully use the Internet to generate
international support. Now, for social movements, the Internet has
become a primary medium for outreach, organizing, and news.
The Seattle Independent Media Center (IMC) was created to report on the
1999 WTO protest. Inspired by the Seattle IMC, a network of local media
centers, or “locals,” have developed that use a sophisticated array of media
practices to cover social-justice issues and movements.2 While growing
out of global-justice movement (GJM) coverage, the mission of the IMC
network, Indymedia for short, includes reporting on a wide variety of social
injustices, covering social-movement mobilizations, engaging in media
activism, and embodying participatory democracy in its actions and media
policies.
The mainstream media, dominated by politically conservative media
conglomerates, have often portrayed GJM protests as violent and opposed
to global progress. Since September 11, there have been attempts to liken
some of the more radical GJM groups to terrorists. Through a network of
volunteer street journalists and an online open-publishing system (any-
one with access to the Internet can upload a story to the IMC newswires),
Indymedia offers unique coverage of the GJM mobilizations and offers
activists a space to voice their profound concerns. Indymedia is a forum
for writers to express critical views about the severe consequences of eco-
nomic globalization and to provide constructive editorials about the glob-
alization of social justice and grassroots democracy. A growing readership
and, perhaps ironically, some commercial media now rely on Indymedia
as a primary news source on various social movement actions and issues
not reported in other media.
While Indymedia web pages paint the picture of a fairly unified process,
discussions with IMC participants revealed a wide variety of views about
the nature of Indymedia. Participants’ media philosophies include:
Globalization and Media Democracy 327

■
Holding an objective journalistic stance
■
Seeing Indymedia as reporting on GJMs as an activist press
■
Interpreting Indymedia as an experiment in confederating local press
efforts
■
Envisioning Indymedia as a new online grassroots media experiment
involving participants with diverse political views

Indymedia is all of these things and more. This is due in part to Indy-
media’s inclusive grassroots approach, inviting ever more diverse partici-
pants and views, and in part to the number of social movements that have
influenced Indymedia’s initial development.
This chapter is based on participant observation in Indymedia. The
objective of the chapter, in a nutshell, is to discuss some of the main inno-
vations and challenges in the organizing principles, practices, and flexible
structures of Indymedia. A theoretical framework is presented at the end—
a multiperspective approach, based on contemporary perspectives on the
critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

A History of the Independent Media Centers

Since its launch in Seattle in November 1999, Indymedia has multiplied

itself, rhizomatically branching out into a decentralized global network
of media collectives. The Indymedia network now comprises nonlocal
media working groups and over one hundred affiliated local media cen-
ters (96 active and 8 new IMCs approved as of October 2002, with over
60 more in formation). The network is very diverse. Media are created
in over twenty languages across over thirty nations in various stages
of technical development. Local, regional, and global organizing
processes are engaged extensively over the Internet. A global media cen-
ter, www.indymedia.org, and local IMC websites act as portals to the
information, communications, media collectives, and projects of the
network.3
Indymedia draws on the history and practices of several types of social
movements. At least four main types of social movements can be identified
as immediate sources of practices and strategies for Indymedia: grassroots
media projects and the liberated/free-software, radical-democratic, and
global-justice movements. Indymedia facilitators, individually and in small
328 Douglas Morris

groups, creatively integrated aspects and practices of these movements into

a diverse media network sharing common grassroots principles, practices,
and resources. While these movements (internally diverse as they are) are
common sources, additional factors are the diverse mix of movements
unique to local political cultures.
Indymedia depends on volunteer programmers, or techs, who adapt free-
software programming to IMC needs. Through donating endless hours of
programming, techs incorporate the values of the free-software movement
into the IMC culture. Indymedia’s free-software practices are based on the
Net hacker culture of both sharing of the source code of software and com-
munally producing code. This policy is manifest in the software of the
databases (a form of liberated, public technocapital—or democratic tech-
nology) underlying the interactive websites that are the backbone of the
IMC network and in IMC collectives’ consensual work processes.4 Several
Indymedia facilitators noted that IMC takes the same approach to freedom
of media that free-software networks do to software (Arnison 2001).
Also foundational to Indymedia are practices developed in previous
radical-media and online reporting projects (Downing et al. 2001). Halleck
(2002) writes that “many different streams came together [in Indymedia]:
the video activist community, the microradio pirates, the computer
hacker/codewriters, the ‘zine makers and the punk music world. These
multi-media activists were ignited by several gatherings called The Next
Five Minutes, organized by Geert Lovink, David Garcia and others in
Amsterdam during the 1990s. These meetings provided a window on
the possibilities of collaborative and participatory mega media events.” The
potential of online media was explored in various political venues in the
1990s, such as in the online media coverage by the CounterMedia during
the 1996 Democratic presidential convention in Chicago and the work
online in the mid-1990s to build Zapatista solidarity.
Indymedia activists mentioned that the Zapatista movement served as a
major inspiration and concrete example of people coordinating their local
collectives and actions with a diverse global community. On the founding
of Indymedia, Chris Burnett recounts:
We were all very conscious at the time of this type of electronic resistance that took
social, economic, and physical forms. . . . I remember being in Chicago for the
1996 Democratic National Convention, being impressed with CounterMedia.
But I also remember having discussions about Zapatista solidarity work using the
Globalization and Media Democracy 329

Internet. . . . The Zapatista solidarity work brought people from all over the planet
to work together in new ways, using the net for coordination and action (that I
don’t think happened in the same way with respect to Nicaragua solidarity work or
anti-apartheid work in the 1980s).5

Directly antecedent to creating IMC was programming work to offer

online coverage of the People’s Global Action protests in June 1999. On the
origins of the “active” software that runs many of the Indymedia websites,
Matthew Arnison writes:
I was part of a team of media activists who built the website, and kept it live.
The online activist media projects that influenced our work were in Chiapas,
Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and the US. The free software called “active” that
ran the original Indymedia website, which enabled automated multimedia open
publishing, was written in Sydney by Community Activist Technology in the first
half of 1999. We designed it for a mini-Indymedia-centre (of course we didn’t have
the name back then) that we set up to cover the Sydney protests as part of the J18
[ June 18] global day of action against corporate tyranny.6

New Indymedia locals, including Seattle, have been created sometimes

through networking among persons active in preexisting media projects. Ini-
tiators of the various media projects in Indymedia came from already-active
groups: Paper Tiger, Deep Dish, Headwaters Video Collective, Sleeping Giant,
Changing America, Speak Easy, Free Speech TV, and so on.7
Media activists started planning the Seattle IMC six months prior to the
WTO protest. The aim was to cooperatively organize a media center that
hosted many incoming media activists, over 300 people eventually, and
supported the use of various types of media. Seattle IMC had a daily news-
paper, thirty minutes of satellite TV every day, radio, miscellaneous other
coverage, and the website. The website was intended from the start, but its
details were decided only in the last few weeks.
In Seattle, the IMC provided extensive text, radio, and video coverage of
the protests, offering a unique frame on an important watershed event in
the history of modern social movements. During the WTO protest, the
IMC coverage mixed accounts of the street battles with notes by local
residents reporting outrage at having their neighborhoods gassed, editorial
commentaries about the wrongs of the WTO, and pronouncements of
success by protesters. Dorothy Kidd (2000) notes that international media
campaigns, such as that around the Seattle WTO contest, include “old and
new media—face-to-face communications, leafleting, and street art, along
330 Douglas Morris

with radio, video, and websites—to organize with social justice movements
at every level.” This is a general practice in Indymedia now, with print
newspapers, radio shows, and video for public-access TV being regularly
created to widen outreach and participation of activists from various
movements.
Interestingly, through the Internet, from the start, Indymedia has been an
interactive, global, grassroots project. During the Seattle WTO protests, the
IMC website often struggled with the load as the audience skyrocketed.
Along with the techs feverishly working on the ground in Seattle, support—
for help with installing, upgrading, and resuscitating the website several
times during that week—was provided over the Internet from Sydney. Long-
distance tech and editorial support has since become common practice in
Indymedia.
Through its many forms of outreach, Indymedia is getting the word out
about global-justice activism. According to the IMC technical collective,
the new Seattle IMC website received over one million hits during its
coverage of the November 1999 WTO protest. Internet traffic had grown to
ten million hits during the anti-G-8 protests in Genoa in July 2001.
Since Seattle, IMCs have offered thorough coverage of many of the GJM
mobilizations, such as those in Washington, D.C., Melbourne, Prague,
Quebec, Genoa, and so on. On such protests, Smith (2001) writes, “Global
Days of Action can cause major disruptions in numerous cities around the
world with very little in the way of centralized, visible organizational struc-
tures. . . . The Internet has not only helped popularize these global days,
but has also increased their potency.” During GJM protests, it is not
uncommon for notes to be posted to the network newswires from com-
panion protests from around the world, expressing solidarity with the
main protests. During the Genoa anti-G8 protest, the count was of over
200 solidarity protests in various cities—with many of those noted via
posts to the IMC network.
Major protests are mobilization and networking sites, where dozens of
IMC volunteers have gathered from many locals to offer coverage. Such con-
fluences of effort lead to the translation of friendships formed in cyberspace
to friendships sustained in comradeship in the press office and field, and vice
versa. These events also introduce new volunteers to technical media skills,
strategies for covering protests, and streetwise tactics of avoiding and
dealing with tear gas and on-the-spot reporting. Indymedia is developing
Globalization and Media Democracy 331

into not only a diverse global-media network, but also a committed

network of journalists seasoned in the challenges of covering protests and
activism.8
In addition to major global-justice mobilizations, the Indymedia net-
work (global and various locals) has offered extensive coverage of actions
and events such as May Day protests, the protests at the U.S. presidential
political party conventions in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, the European
Union protests in Nice and other cities, the World Social Forum (WSF) in
Porto Alegre, Brazil, events after September 11 and the War on Terrorism,
and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, as
well as a great variety of local issues.
As a new, decentralized people’s media, the posts to the newswires were
and still are in the larger protests rather “raw” news, live or nearly live from
the streets—reported by cell phone as police rush and tear gas billows
around, or by quickly uploaded audio and video at the nearby media cen-
ters, and even by text written sometimes midprotest at cybercafés. How-
ever raw the street news, editorial processes increasingly summarize
multiple issues, story lines, and events (e.g., see the global and local web-
site center-column features). The Indymedia network works in part as a
global-justice movement press, but the wide variety of social-justice issues
reported by Indymedia demonstrate its role in covering diverse peoples
and movements fighting injustice and in providing a challenge to the
corporate media’s role in maintaining social inequality.

Indymedia Locals, Principles, Processes, and Network

IMC Locals
Developing a local online media center to cover a large protest, which
mixes in-the-street coverage with background stories and analysis, is a pat-
tern that has been repeated in forming dozens of IMC collectives by the
efforts of local media activists. While a catalyzing reason for starting many
IMCs has been to cover various protests, increasingly IMCs are formed to
offer a local alternative press outlet using the Indymedia model of open
publishing coordinated through grassroots processes.
The media producers of IMC, including full-timers, are volunteers, who
take risks in their reporting. Through Internet-based communications and
in face-to-face meetings locally (and in gatherings), the activists engage the
332 Douglas Morris

media and process work of Indymedia in a generally collective manner.

Indeed, early Indymedia activists explicitly drew on the cooperative,
decentralist philosophies and practices of radical democratic movements.
The lineage of such movements can be traced from those of radical labor
in the nineteenth century to movements in the 1950s and 1960s, contin-
uing to women’s, radical peace, and left-green movements in the 1970s
and 1980s. Indymedia’s decision-making group-process roles and methods –
such as facilitator, timekeeper, stack (list) keeping, mood checking, rota-
tion of roles, and the consensus decision criteria used—are directly based
in practices of recent radical-democratic movements.
Local IMC groups are generally independent collectives, not part of
other media organizations. Some locals are based on the model of bringing
together a network of local media projects and producers to cooperate in
IMC work. Examples include Seattle, Vancouver, and a number of South
American IMCs such as in Argentina and Brazil.
The work of Indymedia in large GJM mobilizations has been much
noticed, informing coverage of events by alternative media and sometimes
by corporate media. However, local coverage of a variety of issues is equally
important and the bulk of organized media production is for such. Indy-
media has generated a growing press “buzz” about the potential of new
Net-based media.9 Due to Indymedia’s success in mobilizing coverage via
the Net, and its unique mix of organizing strategies and mission, the
network has grown quickly.
As of October, 2002, 104 IMC locals (96 active and 8 approved new
IMCs) in over 30 countries comprised the network. By geographic region,
the active IMCs include 2 IMCs in Africa (with 8 more requested), 4 in Asia,
6 in Australia and the Pacific, 12 in Central and South America, 21 in
Europe, and 51 in North America above Mexico. The locations of the
8 newly approved IMCs (with over 60 requested) illustrate the growing
diversity of the network: Andorra, Croatia, Istanbul, Nice (France), Peru,
Poland, Springfield (Illinois), Winnipeg (Canada). Among the largest active
“locals,” geographically, are the Brazil, India, Russia, and South Africa
IMCs, with the smallest being city-based IMCs (the main type in Canada
and the United States), such as Melbourne, Australia, Victoria, British
Columbia (Canada), and Madison, Wisconsin (U.S.).
A number of the large nation-level IMCs work through various local IMC
groups. The Brazil IMC is a coalition of five locals within the country. IMC
Globalization and Media Democracy 333

Aotearoa (New Zealand) has two locals, Otautahi and Wellington, generat-
ing print projects. The U.K., German, and Italian IMC also use the model
of numerous local IMC media collectives working through one national
IMC website. For this reason, IMC locals are undercounted outside of
North America. This undercounting may or may not become an issue as
global network planning and decision-making processes develop. Another
complication is that distinct IMC locals have formed that are subsets of an
IMC having a larger geographic area (e.g., nation/city as in India and
Mumbai IMCs, or region/city as in the Quebec and Montreal IMCs—
interestingly, the Quebec IMC is more French based and Montreal is more
English based). The complexity in Indymedia arises from having local
control of the boundaries rather than system-level definitions. Through
local control, different types of interlocal collaborations are developed that
are suited to different contexts. However, there are networkwide standards
for local membership, as is discussed next.

IMC Principles and Processes

IMC mission statements may differ in content between locals and change
over time. The Seattle IMC mission statement reads:
The Independent Media Center is a grassroots organization committed to using
media production and distribution as a tool for promoting social and economic
justice. It is our goal to further the self-determination of people underrepresented in
media production and content, and to illuminate and analyze local and global issues
that impact ecosystems, communities and individuals. We seek to generate alterna-
tives to the biases inherent in the corporate media controlled by profit, and to iden-
tify and create positive models for a sustainable and equitable society.10

This statement offers a clear sense of Indymedia as a democratic media pro-

ject working for social and economic justice. The Boston IMC mission
statement, which is by chance and legacy at the top of the global network
home page (see indymedia.org), because an IMC participant from Boston
put it there early on, reads: “Indymedia is a collective of independent
media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-
corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation
of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.” This shorter, more
emotionally evocative statement does not quite convey the media mission
as clearly as the Seattle statement does. Neither the Seattle nor the Boston
mission statement conveys explicitly the importance of decentralized,
334 Douglas Morris

consensus-based cooperative processes in Indymedia. Nor do these state-

ments mention the open-publishing approach. Consensus processes and
open publishing are defining aspects of the network (and “the” key aspects
for some members). The Principles of Unity developed in 2001 aim to
articulate the grassroots democratic nature of the network.
Issues of Indymedia’s goals, media policy, future development, network
structure, and decision processes were addressed at a meeting that took
place, April 28–29, 2001, at the twenty fifth annual “Press Freedom Con-
ference” hosted by Project Censored in San Francisco.11 The eighty
plus attending IMC participants came to consensus on criteria for approv-
ing new IMC locals. The criteria included statements of IMC network
Principles of Unity and local IMC collectives’ membership criteria, which
were sections in a draft IMC Network charter. Chris Burnett, an early
participant in Indymedia, drafted a “Proposed Charter of the Confeder-
ated Network of Independent Media Centers,” based on hundreds of
e-mail notes that discussed IMC principles and processes.12 At the confer-
ence, various initiatives, which were stated in the draft charter, were
elaborated. The initiatives included editorial policies, an open-publishing
policy, and networkwide communication and decision-making guide-
lines. These were forwarded to the IMC listservs for development. Some
initiatives were eventually approved by ad hoc decision-making processes.
To date, the issue of a formal network decision-making process continues
to be debated.
Indymedia’s media practices express the principles of unity—that is, the
principles guide media practices. The main principles include decentral-
ized democracy and tolerance for diversity, open publishing and informa-
tion flow, mutual support, and liberated software. These principles
generally parallel the four social-movement foundations for Indymedia
discussed above: the global-justice, media-activism, radical-democracy,
and free-software movements. In drawing inspiration from these democra-
tic movements, a foundational principle for Indymedia is to coordinate
activities in a grassroots participatory manner, where democratic means
are part of the ends of the movement. That is, a foundational motivation
in Indymedia is a mission to create a global grassroots media democracy.
Sheri Herndon (2001), an organizer active in Indymedia from Seattle
onward, voices this mission (specifically in the context of antidemocratic
U.S. Federal Communications Commission policies): “What is our version
Globalization and Media Democracy 335

of the future of communications? . . . While we work hard at opening up

the channels of communication and unleash the potential of handing over
the means of communication to anyone who wants to become a media
maker . . . there needs to be an information liberation manifesto.” Hern-
don cites previous human rights statements, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the Adbusters’ “Blueprint for a Revolution,”13 which
declares that we need a “Media Carta,” where “Every human being has the
‘right to communicate’—to receive and impart information through any
media.”
Indymedia expresses media democracy most directly through open pub-
lishing. Open publishing means that anybody with access to an Internet
account can post news (in form of digital video, audio, or text files) to any
of the network newswires. The IMCs are a network of open-publishing col-
lectives in terms of content and policy. Open publishing also means that
media creators and viewers can easily get involved in commenting, edit-
ing, highlighting stories, and even managing/facilitating the media pro-
duction through Indymedia’s open, (relatively) transparent grassroots
media processes.
The practice of open publishing on IMC newswires is a formal policy in
the network, adopted in summer 2001.14 This posting policy enables people
in general “to become the media.” Not only may people become the media,
but corporate interests are excluded. Part of the global-justice movement is
anticapitalism. The exclusion of the profit motive is defined in an IMC
unity principle that states that the IMCs must be not-for-profit. Hyde (2002)
summarizes this participatory and anticorporate aspect of Indymedia:
“Indymedias are restructuring the traditional news hierarchy. . . . The
relationship between the sources, journalists, and readers is all that mat-
ters. In the Indymedia community, publishers, advertisers, and corporate
interests are left out of the picture.”
The global website and most of the local and project websites are portals,
presenting links to many aspects of the network. The structures of the front
pages of the Indymedia websites symbolically maintain the identity of IMC
locals across very diverse societies. Ongoing internal debates are engaged
over Indymedia website structures. Common elements of front-page design
currently include a center column of news summaries (features), a newswire
of local IMC features, a calendar of upcoming actions, and a long list of
links to local IMC web pages and network information.
336 Douglas Morris

“Publish” links are prominently placed on most IMC home pages.

Lawson and Gleason (2002) write about the variety of experiences in
surfing IMC’s open-publishing environment: “Indymedia sites [are] a
mixed bag of thoughtful analyses, activist dispatches, on-the-street news
items, rants, and reprinted media from unknown publications or organ-
izations. Without a central editorial authority dispatching reporters (or
fact-checking stories), readers are obliged to think critically as they are
reading—to allow a story to provoke further research, further reading,
and—perhaps—further writing.” IMC posts have a comment function,
which invites the sharing of opinions, which readers use to sometimes
correct, affirm, or challenge points in posts.
The specifying of Indymedia policies is often done through IMC mailing
lists, of which there are over 600 (many of them for local IMCs). The mail-
ing lists, or e-mail listserves, are currently an important forum for coordi-
nating media creation and local and network-level functions, such as legal
issues, finance, large gatherings, and so on (particularly the various edito-
rial, communications, process, and tech listserves). To date, the listserves
are open to anyone interested. Over time various portals to Indymedia’s
processes have been developed, including the internal “process” (mostly
static), “global,” and “documentation”/“knowledge base” (very dynamic)
websites.15
Through summer 2002, the IMC network globally had relatively infor-
mal decision-making and coordination processes. Early on, some argued
that the Indymedia network was growing too fast. In late 2000, program-
mers placed a moratorium (essentially by decree) on accepting new IMC
locals into the network (though dozens were in the formation stage). The
moratorium was instituted due to a lack of a democratic process for setting
up new IMCs and because the main IMC computer servers were over-
loaded. The moratorium was lifted in summer 2001 after policies for the
formation of new IMCs were adopted.16 The IMC unity principles and
member criteria are points of agreement for all new IMCs-in-formation
wishing to join the IMC network.

The Indymedia Network: Challenges and Innovations

As noted in an IMC FAQ and an overview for new IMC collectives, the IMC
network is a loosely structured network, intentionally decentralized in its
Globalization and Media Democracy 337

processes.17 While Indymedia is an innovative media project in various

ways, key elements of a successful network are needed (according to some)
and are still in development.
There are a number of challenges for IMC in terms of planning and
strategy:

1. Decision making. The IMC network has repeatedly failed in attempts to

develop networkwide decision-making and planning processes. (See also
Lovink and Riemens, chapter 6, this volume.) This is due to various factors,
including the volunteer nature of the network, lack of funds, and many
linguistic barriers (over twenty languages in use). The global extent of the
network offers logistical barriers. At a level of principle, there is resistance
to large collective processes, especially by the youth in the network. For
instance, in September 2002, a plan to organize a series of regional gather-
ings for network planning was abandoned due to strong objections to the
funding of travel grants by a corporate foundation. Indymedia may, by
necessity, depend on donations, as the main source of funding, and
develop creative efforts in online planning communications. For now,
a density of communication processes is weaving the network together.
Issues are addressed and decisions made in an ad hoc way, at times quite
successfully and other times not.
2. Global versus local. There is a major difference in Indymedia between
“globalizers” and “localizers.” Globalizers seek to develop Indymedia as an
alternative form of media practice, globally. Localizers see local media col-
lectives as the fundamental mission of IMC and resist global projects. Some
see a need to balance global working-group projects and local efforts. In prac-
tice, the GJM mobilizations and reporting are a fusion of local and global
efforts. In general, it is possible that IMC may be finding a middle ground for
now between little or no organization and a global system. To use a prob-
lematic but very suggestive metaphor: just as in industry there is just-in-time
production and distribution, so in Indymedia there is just-in-time (or seat-
of-the-pants) organizing of issue coverage and just-in-time crisis manage-
ment at a network level. There are also unique experiments beyond the local
in terms of media reporting occurring at regional levels. For instance, the
Cyprus, Greek, and Turkish IMCs (some in formation) are cooperating to
form a dialogue to cover issues of regional solidarity. As noted above, IMCs—
such as those in Brazil, Aotearoa, and Germany—foster multiple local IMCs.
338 Douglas Morris

It is safe to say that Indymedia at this stage is developing an array of experi-

ments in shared projects by locals.
3. The role of organizers. There is an uneasy opinion within Indymedia cir-
cles about the role of the very dedicated, talented participants who facili-
tate the functioning and growth of various aspects of the network. This
issue is exacerbated by both of the above problems. The criticism has been
made that the ongoing role of a small group of organizers performing key
tasks centralizes power. Longtime facilitators may be gradually forming an
inner circle, with a culture of understandings about what works best (or
quickest or most strategically). This raises the classical organizational issue,
Roberto Michels’s (1962) iron law of oligarchy, which proposes that orga-
nizers, who arise out of a desire for a group to be effective, may develop
eventually into an elite cultivating professional interests inside the move-
ment. Not to emphasize these possibilities: Indymedia is working against
the general social tendency of movement leaderships to develop activist
“careers.” There are no salaries, though a few stipends for legal and
accounting work may be created. There is an informal practice of rotating
listserve moderators (when there are moderators) and of rotating liaisons
for global communications. There is an “organic” flow of coordinating
effort in various projects as volunteers move on and new persons take over.
However, unless balanced by regular planning and grassroots decision-
making processes, the gradual development of experienced organizers with
name recognition, many network ties, and hence power may be a serious
future challenge for Indymedia as a grassroots network. Counter to such
points are pragmatic arguments that organizers are simply required to facil-
itate something as technically and organizationally complex as Indymedia
(Rabble 2002). The principle of sharing and often rotating key tasks is
perhaps the best resolution to such a contradiction between grassroots
policy and organizational needs.
4. Challenges to unity principles. Some types of locals challenge various
Indymedia membership criteria and unity principles. The principle of open
publishing is constrained in some European states that have strong regula-
tions about civility in speech. The membership criteria stating there should
be no affiliation with political parties is debated in some IMCs in Latin
America, where the struggle against oppressive political structures by pro-
gressive political movements may be a necessary part of the fight for social
Globalization and Media Democracy 339

justice. As the Indymedia network matures, it is likely to be tested with the

choice of accepting partial adherence to principles, redefining principles,
or developing a way to enforce its principles, perhaps by severing ties with
divergent locals.
5. Digital divide. It would seem that the digital divide has played a role
in the distribution of Indymedia centers, in which half of the over 100
IMC locals are in Canada and the United States. According to a com-
monly cited source of online demographics, in Canada, the United
States, and Northern European nations, for the most part, over 50 per-
cent of people use the Net, whereas use is under 10 percent in most of
Africa and Latin America.18 However, there are political-cultural reasons
for the high numbers of IMCs in the global North. Techs familiar with
the setup of new IMCs cited security and collectivist cultures (vs. indi-
vidualist cultures in Anglo-America). And, as noted, many IMCs outside
of North America are organized on a nationwide scale. The pragmatics of
smaller population sizes and densities are also a noted factor. The choice
rests with local activists as to their local’s initial geographic reach. The
goal of crossing the digital divide in Indymedia is being pursued at a
number of levels. Some IMCs—Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis—have cre-
ated local media centers to offer media education and access. Techs and
organizers sometimes travel to the global South to assist local media
activists in the technical details of establishing IMCs. In one such effort,
IMC techs have procured 100 computers for Indymedia collectives in the
global South.
6. Countermovement forces. There is a history of direct suppression, legal
harassment, and counterintelligence programs against radical-democratic
social movements. Indymedia has experienced repeated arrests of its jour-
nalists, legal challenges (e.g., in Seattle and during the Quebec April 2001
protests), and confiscation of media materials and tools (e.g., during the
Genoa protests in July 2001). Indymedia so far has responded to such prob-
lems with extensive press coverage of the issues (generating sympathetic
press in other media) and with volunteer legal help. Some have claimed
that several internal local IMC conflicts (e.g., the cases of IMC-Palestine
and the Eugene and Portland IMCs created flame wars on IMC listserves in
summer and fall 2002) are the result of counterintelligence activities.
A conflict-resolution listserve has been initiated to deal with local conflicts.
340 Douglas Morris

7. Aim of IMC reporting. The IMC reporters who cover massive global-justice
mobilizations (Seattle, Washington, D.C., Prague, Quebec, Genoa, and so
on) often fail to cover one of the most important aspects of the mobiliza-
tions, the countersummits or social forums at each mobilization. This is
partly due to a generation and “career” gap (the countersummit participants
are older and often professionals). Another factor is radicalism, including
alienation from the perception of reformism and institutionalization (in
unions, NGOs, and social-movement organizations) of the GJM. There has
been a general tendency, during large protests, to cover the drama of street
conflict, arrests, and legal problems. There is some resistance to this trend in
the network, with some reporters offering coverage emphasizing that the
vast majority of protesters are nonviolent and that educational activities are
engaged in people’s forums. As noted, attention to local issues, various social
movements, and political-economic analysis is increasing in the network.

There are many positive innovations in Indymedia. (See table 15.1.)

Indymedia is unique in being a global volunteer grassroots media network
of locals and media activists. Indymedia has benefited from and developed

Table 15.1
Innovations in Indymedia

Principles
1. Global justice Indymedia grew out of the emerging global social-justice
movement that inegrates the social-justice concerns of many previous social
movements.
2. Grassroots democarcy Indymedia is rather unique in being a cooperative global
network of consensus-based media collectives.
3. Open publishing The “newswires” are open. Anyone can help run Indymedia.
This allows a great deal of creative and social freedom in the discourses on
Indymedia.
4. Copyleft A nonproprietary publishing criterion (no private ownership of
intellectual property), copyleft, is used for both the code running Indymedia
servers and for the original articles posted to Indymedia.
And, as discussed in the theory section below:
5. Unity and diversity Indymedia offers spaces to negotiate the dialectic of
difference and unity, a fundamental challenge of a globalizing world.
Media Practices and Processes
6. Interactivity Dialogue and debate about stories is encouraged through a
story-comment feature and the open wire. This is similar to a newsgroup
process, but oriented toward news reporting.
Globalization and Media Democracy 341

Table 15.1
(continued)

7. Online coordination Many discussions are conducted through listservs, chat

rooms, and e-mail: at local and expanded (national, regional, and global) levels.
8. Website design Most Indymedia Websites organize a wide variety of
information helpful to activists and readers.
9. Online documentation A documentation project (docs.indymedia.org)
uses group authorware to enable cocreation of documents, including an index of
Indymedia local histories, local organizing outlines, descriptions of various media
projects, and so on.
Networking
10. Network of networks Indymedia includes innovations at these levels and in
these ways:
■
Locally. Indymedia locals are sometimes formed among networks of media activists
and preexisting groups. Consensus decision-making processes are the norm, with
specific tasks often conducted in more ad hoc and individualized ways.
■
Nationally. Media activists and multiple local media groups in various countries
cooperate on press coverage. Exemplary cases include the Aotearoa (New Zealand),
Brazil, and Germany IMCs.
■
Regionally. Regional working groups are emerging in Indymedia. Latin American
IMCs dialogue about antiglobalization concerns. Activists in Greece-Cyprus-Turkey
are exploring common issues. At-large mobilizations, involving dozens of IMC
activists from many locals in the region, converge to share in making Indymedia
and making media.
■
Globally. Indymedia is a primary medium of the global-justice movements, yet
it is also more than this in adressing many social-justice and democratic issues at
local through global levels.
11. Media projects and working groups There are a number of ad hoc cooperative
media projects, often involving many media activists working through the Internet,
that create media for special events and in an ongoing way within specific media
platforms—for example, text, radio, and video.
12. Intermedia projects Media activists in various media are cooperating on media
production across media platforms.
13. Broad media networks Indymedia is participating in building broad
alternative-media networks.
And as discussed in the theory section below:
14. Alternative medias Indymedia is unique in serving, simultaneously, as
a social-movement medium, a broad alternative social-justice medium, a
network of local media centres, and a global forum for persons interested in
global justice.
15. Flexible, decentralized structure Indymedia is creating in its internal processes
three structural elements needed for a successful decentralized network:
strong local collectives, rich internal communication processes, and emerging
networkwide decentralized decision-making and planning processes.
342 Douglas Morris

innovative principles, practices, and networking strategies for democratiz-

ing the Internet.
It should be emphasized that in the era of globalization via the Internet
(as opposed to slower forms of international exchange in previous eras),
Indymedia, as a global network of networks, is cutting new ground for grass-
roots, internetworked media production and politics. An important innova-
tion in Indymedia at a broad scale of media networking is the interface of
activists using various types of alternative media, working in video, radio,
print, and online media. On a scale larger than Indymedia, some Indymedia
networkers and locals are branching out in widespread alternative-media
networking, and have actually done so for some time. Indymedia is often
discussed at media conferences and gatherings, such as the Press Freedom,
Underground Publishing, and Reclaim the Media conferences.
The visionaries and pragmatists in Indymedia are exploring many ways to
facilitate fruitful, democratic media on and off the Internet. In a nutshell,
through grassroots democratic practices and mutual support, Indymedia
activists are creating open media using free-software and media technolo-
gies. The Indymedia values and practices of decentralized media, online and
off, may increasingly inspire, vitalize, and challenge the work of left activists
and organizations to address the interconnection of justice issues and move-
ments unfolding in the global-justice movement (and in other social-justice
fronts, of course: third-wave feminism (Collins 2000), the greens (Capra
and Spretnak 1984), and the globalization and interconnection of social
movements in general).

Theories of Media and Democracy

Media Centralization and Decentralization

Media conglomerates with conservative, pro-capitalist agendas, as in corpo-
rations controlled (or once controlled) by Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner,
Conrad Black, Silvio Berlusconi, and so on, have formed to control much of
the world’s media. The corporate domination of mainstream media has led
to a more widespread advocacy of a conservative political philosophy of
individualizing social problems and to a tendency to ignore radical and pro-
gressive issues and the social causes of problems (McChesney 1997, 1999).
Bagdikian (1997) notes that as of the year 2000 only six corporations
controlled most of what citizens saw, heard, and read in America. This is
Globalization and Media Democracy 343

exacerbated by the fact that the majority of corporate leaders are

economically conservative, prioritizing profit making over all else.
Media conglomerates have been pursuing successfully a number of pri-
vatizing strategies such as vigorous lobbying for the deregulation of media-
ownership regulations and for decreases in public media funding. Media
corporations have pursued increasingly stringent ownership rights to intel-
lectual property, leading to a loss of control by journalists, writers, and so
on. This has resulted in a loss of depth and quality in the news and to a
limitation of subjects addressed. While some interventions by owners are
direct, corporate-media spin control is less obvious, as when employees
learn to shape their coverage in favor of owners’ biases. To make matters
worse, in the mid- to late 1990s, many local community papers and radio
stations in industrial societies (which expressed a wide range of political
views) were purchased by conglomerates, some of which now control
hundreds of local media “outlets.”
Today, power is contested increasingly through symbolic means circulated
through ever more pervasive information networks (Castells 1997). Social
movements generally include ideological efforts that disseminate new social
codes (values, ideals, and legitimations). Social movements in the industrial
era, such as labor in the nineteenth century, were often grounded in strug-
gles over material social inequalities and struggle for access to political par-
ticipation, as in the suffrage movements, but depended on raising class
consciousness and movement solidarity to succeed in mobilization efforts.
In the early twentieth century, Gramsci (1971) argued that societies per-
vaded by a cultural hegemony (domination of society through ideology that
favors elites) are best contested through counterhegemonic means (in a cul-
tural “war of position”). As business interests have increasingly dominated
politics, Melucci (1996) emphasizes that the global media industry has
become a central battleground for social equality.
Corporate-media reproductions of dominant social codes now play a cen-
tral role in structuring power relations today. For instance, Kellner (2001)
criticizes the corporate media for promoting George W. Bush in the 2000
election, mostly defending his administration and ignoring his egregious
faults after September 11. Also underplayed by the corporate media, after
September 11, are the collapses of corporations such as Enron and Andersen,
due to fraudulent accounting practices. As capital has internationalized, it
has moved in various ways beyond the domains of national-level protective
344 Douglas Morris

regulations (such as of workers and the environment) and actively sup-

pressed such. The media conglomerates, at least in the United States, tend
not to analyze transnational capital. The hegemony of media conglomerates
dialectically inspires the formation of new alternative-media projects online
to complement and extend the reach of existing political media.
An essential moment of democratization, as Castells (1997) notes, is the
diversification of media. The Internet offers a variety of new-media possi-
bilities. With a moderate level of resources or technocapital by the stan-
dards of advanced industrial society (a computer, Net access, and some
technical literacy), many individuals and organizations are creating new
media on the Internet. As a result, the Internet has increased and contin-
ues to increase the means and dialectical relations of both dominant and
alternative social codes (Melucci 1996, 36–37).
Media that have moved online include various general alternative
publications (e.g., in the United States: Z Magazine, The Nation), social-
movement media (e.g., websites for Greenpeace, ILO, and so on), and
the somewhat eroded field of independent local and regional media
(which in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries presented a wide
array of political perspectives through independent community papers
and radio stations). The Internet now allows a fourth type of alternative
media: direct participation of citizens in making and sharing news via
websites, newsgroups, listserves, informal e-mail networking, and so on.
The new online media create places where a variety of otherwise
silenced, marginalized voices may be heard. Many online media services
now offer alternatives to corporate news. And, similar to Indymedia,
there are various activist-oriented news websites and networks.19 How-
ever, technology or media availability is not sufficient to ameliorate
social inequality.
Political-economic practices that advance democracy are essential. Dyer-
Witheford (1999) in Cyber-Marx emphasizes that addressing economic and
political inequalities is a necessary basis for democratic culture, but that
such struggles may be engaged in various quasi-independent beachheads
such as redistributing income through living wages, creating universal
communication networks, decentralizing social planning, and democratiz-
ing control of decisions about technoscientific development. The inde-
pendent media online are creating global grassroots communication
networks and social spaces for such democratic struggles.
Globalization and Media Democracy 345

Virtual Public Spheres

In early modern Europe, mass literacy became an essential condition for
“civil society”: a space of interactions, discourses, and ideas distinct from
work, family, or newly emergent states. For Habermas (1989), a central
moment of civil society was its “public sphere,” where Enlightenment
ideas were debated publicly in printed media, pubs, salons, and so on.
Fraser (1989) argues that marginalized groups did not always have access
to the dominant public spheres and the rhetoric of the Enlightenment.
Hence, they developed alternative networks of discourse. While democracy,
equality, justice, and freedom are central to the European Enlightenment
(if only occasionally and imperfectly put into practice), similar principles
are also discernible in other cultures and publics. For example, the Native
American Iroquois confederacy practiced council decision making and
held property as public. Women’s networks have often relied on shared
knowledge and cooperative practices. Golden age Islamic societies were the
most progressive of their time in terms of social justice. Democratic princi-
ples, practices, and discourses have been created in various historical
contexts. Discerning if and how varying social-justice practices may exem-
plify underlying universal possibilities or how seemingly irreconcilable
concepts may require egalitarian multicultural dialogues is perhaps only
now being appreciated.
In Habermas’ analysis, in the eighteenth century, the bourgeois classes
defeated the aristocracy and assumed power—eventually hegemony—
partly through the mediating influence of the dominant public spheres.
The bourgeois classes, seeking modes of governance and cultural under-
standings more compatible with their economic practices, embraced
secular reason as a cultural ideology. Socially reflexive reason was trans-
lated into practices such as creating rational structures of administration
and principles such as the popular sovereignty of “equals” as the basis of
political legitimacy. After the bourgeoisie defeated the aristocracy and
instituted capitalist relations of production and bureaucratic, parliamen-
tary nation-states, new social contradictions emerged. Social movements
of the nineteenth century—labor, suffragist, and national—engaged in
liberation projects through using various public spheres. Similarly, in the
middle twentieth century, movements used a variety of grassroots media
and the mainstream mass media to spread political understandings and
agendas.
346 Douglas Morris

Just as the print and mass media (and related political-economic trans-
formations) enabled new political spheres and movements and new forms
of control, the new media of the Internet have made possible new “virtual
public spheres.” The Internet opens up the possibility for movements and
individuals to create their own printing press, broadcast center, and com-
munication network. But, through the Net, more global means of cultural
domination are possible. Just how the Internet will be used or constrained
is a point of ongoing struggle (Lessig 2001). To stick with discussing demo-
cratic trends, the new public spheres are informed by various constraints
and cultures, including: the reach of information technology and the
digital divide (in a nutshell: access and literacy); online cultures such as
pursuit of technical excellence and the hacker ethic of open sharing of
code and cooperative sharing of projects (Castells 2001); and in the case of
Indymedia—left press projects, communitarian social movements, and
consensus-based politics evolved from grassroots projects of the nine-
teenth century, some aspects of the movements of the 1960s (the civil
rights, new left, women’s, and gay liberation movements), the 1980s
(radical antinuclear activists and left greens and continuing 1960s
movements), and the youth and movements of today.
For a widespread democratization of society and media, there is need for
both the critical rationalism of Habermas (1984) and LaClau and Mouffe’s
(2001) celebration of difference.20 As a foundation for democratic commu-
nication, Habermas proposes that undistorted communicative interactions
enable a deepened understanding of social-liberation potentials in a given
culture. A central aim of independent media is to provide authentic, true,
undistorted reporting informed by critical reason. LaClau and Mouffe
advocate an open toleration of difference as manifest in the multiple cul-
tural bases in most societies today. It is important to note that a toleration
of diversity needs to be grounded in the principle of tolerance toward
groups/ideologies that are tolerant and intolerance of groups/ideologies
that are intolerant and oppressive (whether harsh exploiters like neoliberal
capitalists in sweatshops, imperial fascists like the Nazis, or militant fun-
damentalists like Al Qaeda). Just who will censure which excluders who are
oppressors is a fundamental debate—yet, notice progress in the formation
of the International Criminal Court.
Young (2000) argues that in a multicultural society, it is necessary to
engage in democratic politics in more inclusive ways. Linking a variety of
Globalization and Media Democracy 347

public spheres in democratic communication would best include both

philosophical traditions of deliberation and the positive merits of narra-
tive, rhetoric, and protest by marginalized communities. Similar to Dyer-
Witheford, Young argues that an inclusive democracy needs to engage
democratic communication practices, distributive justice, social-justice
issues, recognition, and links to “international” concerns for global justice.
In a similar vein, Fraser (1996) argues that recognition/identity (cultural
issues) and redistribution (political-economic issues) are most effective, as
democratic strategies, when pursued simultaneously. This points to the
idea of global justice as an inclusive democracy of liberation from multiple
types of oppression and positive democratic practices in various social
spheres—cultural, political, economic (Collins 2000; Benhabib 1996).
In the celebration of diversity, if there is not a stand against oppression
(capitalism, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, environmental
exploitation, and so on), then the principle of democracy as grounded in
a social contract that balances the negative freedom from oppression (a lib-
ertarian ethic) with the positive freedom to pursue interests in cooperation
with others (equality and democracy) will be severely undercut. Critical
depth in rationality and acceptance of many cultures are realized democ-
ratically in communication practices in public spaces that both disfavor
dominance and exclusion and favor tolerance and inclusion. The Indy-
media network advocates both radical freedom and democracy through its
unity principles. Indymedia activists struggle to enact these principles
through decentralized, democratic practices and processes.
Following Tarrow (1995) on the three necessary structural elements of
successful decentralized social movements in terms of political process,
Indymedia may be seen as combining these factors: strong local collec-
tives, rich internal communication processes, and emerging networkwide
decentralized decision-making and planning processes. A breakdown in
decision making often contributes to the failure of decentralized organiza-
tions. While Indymedia does have challenges and problems, already it is
a model of what is possible in cyberspace.
The first part of this chapter considered some of the promising and prob-
lematic aspects of Indymedia. In short, the Indymedia network integrates
online decentralized communication and coordination processes, mutual
support in media projects, democratic technology, and open publishing.
In accomplishing this (for a time), Indymedia is a rather unique instance
348 Douglas Morris

of grassroots media democracy, interconnecting virtual public spheres

across many languages and cultures, networked globally. More abstractly,
Indymedia is both an effective online, decentralized media network using
democratic technologies (cooperative open publishing) and a social space
(movement networks and cultures) for global justice. Indymedia points the
way to a more just future.

Conclusion

The centralization of corporate media has led to the increasing manage-

ment of power through symbolic means. People’s media on the Net give
marginalized communities, progressive and traditional, a place to voice
their concerns.
A critical social theory of media informed by the new social-movement
theory of Castells and Melucci brings to light this dialectic: (1) editorial
ignorance of social-justice issues in corporate media, whether willful or
unconscious, based on various forms of conservative ideology (blaming
the victim, locating the solution of social problems in individual actions
and education, and so on), works to perpetuate a hegemony over, and
pacification of, popular bases of potential resistance to oppression; (2) var-
ious alternative-media networks (formed effectively in the many-to-many
connections of Internet media) circulate counterhegemonic critiques of
domination, reporting on news that the mainstream corporate media
ignores and on a variety of social-movement causes in increasingly diverse
ways through the Internet. Alternative-media networks are now introducing
and awakening larger publics to global-justice issues and actions.
Indymedia is a complex instance of alternative media. It is a unique
integration of four types of alternative-media modalities. Indymedia
works as
■
A network for individual media activists and the general public
■
Local media produced by local collectives
■
A type of social-movement media covering the global-justice movement
■
An alternative-media network, serving diverse movements and interests

Considering these media aspects, Indymedia is at the forefront of creat-

ing new multifaceted, decentralized virtual public spheres that advance
democratic discourses and global-justice projects. Specific innovative
Globalization and Media Democracy 349

aspects of Indymedia are outlined at the end of the second part of the
chapter, titled “Indymedia Locals, Principles, Processes, and Networks.”
Indymedia is a people’s media in substance and process. Indymedia has
increasingly rich media coverage of a wide variety of social- and global-
justice issues. It is easy to self-publish there. Anyone can help run it.
Indymedia activists are taking some steps not often seen—until the advent
of the Internet and the creative struggle to interweave social movements
globally in transformative resistance.
As Indymedia is cooperatively facilitated and based on liberated democ-
ratic technology (free-software and copyleft publishing of media), it is a
realm of intensive democratic discourse, cooperative coordination, and
public ownership. Indymedia, with all its growing pains and faults, is an
example, in principle (if fallible in practice), of a holistic, direct democra-
tic organization in its communications, economics, and internal politics.
At the same time, Indymedia is part of a larger set of movements, includ-
ing but not limited to the global-justice movement. In helping cocreate a
decentralized participatory politics, a new nonpropriety media economy of
collective information goods, and a multifaceted network of cultures,
Indymedia is helping inspire a new social future for humanity and model
a new postcapitalist set of social relations.
In conclusion, Indymedia is a significant, global decentralized network
of public media spheres. Indymedia works to create democratic social
relations and media production through open communication and collab-
orative coordination (comanagement) of group processes, mutual support
in media collectives and networks, copyleft standards (coownership as
public property), and open publishing (anyone can publish and participate
in Indymedia). If Indymedia creates robust forms of these processes, con-
tinually refining them, it will have established a global, sustainable, grass-
roots democratic media network dedicated to realizing and reporting on
global justice. This movement is early in the cycle of creation. Indymedia’s
organizing as a global network is incomplete. The network is only four
years old. There are major challenges ahead. But much has been achieved
already. If Indymedia continues to develop, its media transformation
process toward social justice has the potential to widely inform interested
publics. Partly through Indymedia, the global-justice movement has a way
to define itself as such. Through Indymedia and independent grassroots
media in general, we can create a more just and democratic future.
350 Douglas Morris

Notes

This chapter is based on: the author’s longtime engagement in alternative-press pro-
jects; participant observation for over two years in various Indymedia meetings,
Indymedia organizing listserves, Indymedia online working groups; study of Indy-
media documents; discussions and interviews, online and off, with programmers,
reporters, and networkers from a number of Indymedia local collectives (Chicago,
Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Quebec, Seattle, Italy, and
more); and conversations with other independent journalists.

1. The term global justice is used in this chapter to designate the interaction of a wide
array of social-movement causes (labor, antiracism, feminism, gay liberation, envi-
ronmentalism, human rights, and so on). Networking among many movements in
resistance to neoliberal globalization and institutions of domination in general is a
characteristic of the global-justice movement. For a discussion of the emerging
global-justice movements (or antiglobalization movements, a misnomer in the eyes
of many global-justice activists), see Naming the Enemy by Amory Starr (2001) and
Globalization from Below by Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith (2000).
One World by William Greider (1998) is a powerful indictment of globalization.
Z Mag online (http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Globalism/GlobalEcon.htm,
linked from the Indymedia global front page) has extensive analyses of neoliberal
economic liberalization and of the global-justice movement. The term neoliberal
refers to the privatization agenda of international capitalism, which seeks to remove
barriers to trade (such as tariffs and labor and environmental laws) through
such instruments as the international treaties of the WTO, NAFTA, and the FTAA (if
ratified) and the loan requirements of the IMF/WB.

2. IMC local collectives, or “locals,” are groups of media activists who cooperate in
the running of a geographically identified website (e.g., for the Italy IMC, the website
is italia.indymedia.org) and associated multimedia. My thanks to Indymedia partici-
pants who have commented on this chapter. I apologize for the balance of North
American and English-language-based examples. This will be adjusted through
further research and collaboration. Additional work on the history, principles, and
processes of Indymedia is documented online at the “Indymedia Documentation
Site,” docs.indymedia.org.

3. A survey of www.indymedia.org would complement the reading of this chapter.

4. On the Free Software Foundation, see http://www.gnu.org/. See these articles on the
free-software origins of Indymedia programming: http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/
cat/imc-rave.html and http://www.active.org. au/doc/active/goals.html.

5. For CounterMedia, see http://www.cpsr.cs.uchicago.edu/countermedia/. For more

on the Zapatista rebellion and the views of Subcomandante Marcos, see Zapatismo
in Cyberspace: http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/cyber.html. The quote from
Globalization and Media Democracy 351

Chris Burns is from personal e-mail correspondence on September 28, 2002. Note:
Quotes from e-mail correspondence used in this chapter have been approved by the
writers.

6. The comments from Matthew Arnison in this chapter are based on personal
e-mail correspondence, September 29–30, 2002.

7. See Halleck 2002 for further discussion of alternative-media precursors to

Indymedia.

8. Related topics for further research include the following. As the global-justice
movement grows, radical practices are being developed in various professions,
trades, and needed services, such as action medical groups and legal support groups,
which have also developed in support of GJM protests. See Kidd, forthcoming;
Langman, Morris, and Zalewski 2003; and other forthcoming works by these
authors. These works discuss manifestations of GJMs propagated by cyberactivism
such as the GJM protests and Indymedia, as well as related events like the World
Social Forum.

9. See “Stories about Indymedia”: http://docs.indymedia.org/twiki/bin/view/Global/

StoriesAboutIndymedia.

10. The Seattle IMC network mission statement was downloaded September 30,
2002, from http://seattle.indymedia.org/. The global IMC network mission state-
ment was downloaded June 15, 2002, from the top of the “About Indymedia” web
page, http://indymedia.org/about.php3.

11. See www.projectcensored.org.

12. See Principles of Unity, http://global.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id  330;

the IMC network membership criteria, http://global.indymedia.org/front.php3?
article_id  331; and the draft IMC Charter, http://global.indymedia.org/front.php3?
article_id  198.

13. See “Blueprint for a Revolution,” by Kalle Lasu, founder of Adbusters magazine:
adbusters.org/magazine/23/blueprint.

14. See this definition of the IMC newswire open-publishing policy, “What is the
www.indymedia.org newswire?” (the policy of which may vary in some locals):
http://www.indymedia.org/fish.php3?file  www.indymedia.newswire. Also see
Arnison 2001 for a discussion of open publishing.

15. See the IMC listserve, process, global, and documentation sites: http://lists.
indymedia.org, http://process.indymedia.org, http://global.indymedia.org, and
http://docs.indymedia.org.

16. For information on new IMCs, see “New IMC Information Space”: http://
newimc.indymedia.org/.
352 Douglas Morris

17. See “IMC FAQ,” http://process.indymedia.org/faq.php3, and “IMC global

overview,” http://global.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id-673.

18. For online Internet-use demographics, see Nua Internet Surveys: http://www.
nua.net/surveys/how_many_online/index.html.

19. Progressive news services (in English) that could replace corporate news for
many readers include commondreams.org, buzzflash.com, and alternet.org. There
are also various precursor projects that have an online presence (such as the Media
Alliance, media-alliance.org, and groups mentioned in the Indymedia history in the
first section of this chapter). For examples of other activist-oriented radical media
projects, see www.infoshop.org, Direct Action Media Network (damn.tao.ca), and
webactive.com websites.

20. See Best and Kellner 1991 for discussion of various approaches to radical
democracy and the relation of critical theories of modernity to postmodern theo-
ries of difference. On public spheres, also see Kellner 1997 and see Kellner’s home
page, with many essays on critical theory of media, technology, and democracy,
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/. Especially see “Techno-Politics, New
Technologies, and the New Public Spheres.” Online: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/
faculty/kellner/kellner.html
16 Prospects for a New Public Sphere

Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

In this book we have explored an expanding diversity of initiatives, activ-

ities, and approaches that form part of civil society’s contribution and
response to the network society. They represent images of society in stark
contrast to the uncritical visions of competitiveness and profit offered up
in the principles, norms, and practices found in the dominant visions of
the network society. Embedded in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people
from around the world, these extraordinary forms of social networking
contribute to an emerging global civil society.
The community and civic infrastructures, applications, services, and arti-
facts outlined here are far removed from the technoeconomic credo that cur-
rently shapes the sanitized and homogeneous world of dot-coms and
transnational corporate media. Social enterprises such as these illustrate the
inventiveness, ingenuity, and resourcefulness of ordinary people, not-for-
profits, voluntary-sector organizations, and community groups attempting to
improve their social environments, often in the face of enormous odds.
Our intention is to illustrate the diverse nature of civil-society responses to
global network-society developments conditioned by transnational corpo-
rate influences. Whether the diversity of such initiatives (and the advocacy
networks that often accompany them) constitutes the emergence of a social-
movement network in civil society is, as yet, unclear. The social enterprises
presented here can but scratch the surface of such activities globally, but
they do contribute to our understanding of social-networking activities in
the network society. The rich picture of civil society to which each chapter
contributes provides us with a better understanding of how information and
communication technology (ICT) can and are being utilized as a social tool
to build capacity and empower communities, groups, and individuals in the
network society.
354 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

However, this book provides more than a simple collection of global

civil-society narratives or case studies. Its prime contribution is to raise
insights into the construction of an alternative vision of the network-
society. Our intention is to frame a network-society discourse in which
ordinary citizens participate in shaping their sociotechnical environments.
While illustrating the diversity of ICT initiatives, projects, and experiments
operated by community organizers, social activists, researchers, teachers,
and not-for-profit organizations and groups globally, we have made every
effort to retain a critical and analytic perspective on these emergent social
developments.
Whether we achieve this goal is for others to judge. However, in attempt-
ing to meet that challenge, we endeavor to steer clear of the potential
pitfalls of social forecasting that litter much of the information-society
literature—that is, making extravagant claims based on much hype and
little evidence.
Finally, while rejecting the revolutionary metaphor often attached to
information- and network-society developments, we do portray the diver-
sity of emergent initiatives and social engagement as evidence of civil-
society action and advocacy. We present this as an indicator of an emerging
grassroots potential and willingness to work for social change in the net-
work society. They are, we believe, portents of embryonic social change:
social networks in which information and knowledge are harnessed as key
resources of communicative action, through which social goals can be
achieved.

Networking the Information Society

It has been argued that global information-society developments require

effective tripartite partnership between government, the private sector, and
civil society to succeed (D’Orville 1999) yet most information-society policy
development of the past decade has occurred to the exclusion of civil society
in the policy processes. Even the U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS), which is ostensibly open to global civil society,
places barriers in the way of grassroots participation. The processes by which
civil-society organizations can participate in the summit are cumbersome, dif-
ficult to understand, and poorly publicized with very few clear mechanisms
for civic engagement and inclusion. To date, only groups and organizations
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 355

with the resources or contacts to navigate through the bureaucratic maze

surrounding WSIS have been able to register and participate.
Although policymakers view information as the key source of competitive-
ness, productivity, wealth, employment, and power, the emergence of net-
works as a means of communication and away of organizing society has led
to the increased adoption of the term network society as a descriptor of current
socioeconomic developments. Theoretically, the label is used to describe both
the social and media networks shaping the prime mode of organization and
most important structures of society (van Dijk 1999). In reality, however, the
social networks with the most influence in shaping the structure and organi-
zation of modern society are those driven by transnational corporations
(TNCs) and powerful nation-states. It is this manifestation of the network
society, in which information is a key source of wealth and power, that
increasingly represents the globalized world in which we live.
The unaccountable power and influence wielded by TNCs and interna-
tional financial institutions such as the IMF, WTO, and the World Bank are
often viewed as threats to cultural diversity and the nation-state (APEC,
2002). However, it is not simply the external dangers of the global
marketplace that challenge national sovereignty and self-determination.
Governments have been promoting a shift in power from public to private
sector, through an ongoing process of public rationalization, since the
Thatcher (U.K.) and Reagan (U.S.) governments of the 1980s.
This shift was facilitated in part by a popularist perception that the prob-
lems of unresponsive, hierarchical, public bureaucracies and monopolies
could in some way be addressed by a more flexible approach in the private
sector. Recent history has exposed this politically inspired myth for what
it was: credo as profit-driven fabrication. Much of our governance, which
although often unresponsive was at least partially transparent and
accountable, is systematically being replaced by an opaque, undemocratic
unresponsiveness of the private sector (Barber 2002). The chaotic state of
the U.K. railway system bears testament to the potential for the dangerous
inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the profit-driven approach found in this
sector. The current process of rationalization and the growing bureaucratic
apparatus and impenetrable policymaking authority of the G8 nations
present a threat to the cornerstone of our democratic values.
Interestingly, while Thatcher and Reagan were waging their politi-
coeconomic battles of the 1980s, the technologies that would eventually
356 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

underpin global communications and data exploitation of world markets

by financial institutions and TNCs were being developed along a parallel
track. As Barber points out, ICT has become inextricably associated with
processes of globalization. Indeed, an argument can be made that ICT is
a prerequisite of globalization:
In the unfettered high-tech global market, crucial democratic values become relics.
Indeed, because globalization is correctly associated with new telecommunications
technologies, the globalised and privatised information economy is constructed as
an inevitable concomitant of postsovereign, postmodern society. (Barber 2002, 6)

Globalization and the Network Society

Expanding on these points, the authors in Part I highlight a range of issues

and conditions resulting from the technoeconomic developments of the
global network society. Oliver Boyd-Barrett, for example, focuses on links
between trends in the communications industries and the governing global
framework of neoliberal values. He casts doubt on the veracity of the digital-
age metaphor by raising a fundamental question: If society has entered a new
age, how does it differ qualitatively from its predecessor? Reinforcing the
social significance of this question, he points to global rates of malnutrition,
illiteracy, poor sanitation, and deaths from preventable diseases and high-
lights the absence of voice and influence that poor countries and people have
in the face of global policymaking institutions.
Interestingly, the high rates of social exclusion reflected in Boyd-Barrett’s
presentation of U.N. Human Development Report (1998) statistics are mir-
rored in digital-divide statistics, where the richest 20 percent of the world’s
population has access to the majority of the world’s ICT-related infrastruc-
ture, applications, and artifacts. The wealth of statistical data provided by
Boyd-Barrett lends support to the idea that the digital divide reflects
another form of social exclusion, and modern technological developments
are simply symptomatic of evolving capitalism.
Evaluating the impact of globalization and communications media on
contemporary society, Boyd-Barrett identifies three characteristics shaping
the current epoch. First, these developments are inclusive; they involve
almost all nation-states. Second, globalization is driven by Western-based
TNCs. Third, this process is dependent to a large degree on the ICT sector.
Illustrating how globalization has in the past tended to consolidate U.S.
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 357

global power, Boyd-Barrett concludes with a timely warning that any

assessment of the conditions that might afford the formation of a global
public sphere independent of state and corporate influence must be made
against the backdrop of world power controlled by the United States and
its allies.
While Boyd-Barrett provides insights into the structure and organization of
the globalized techno economic network society, Gary Chapman offers con-
trasting visions. Echoing Boyd-Barrett’s analysis of modern capitalist society,
Chapman points to the dangers of unquestioning faith in the technological
imperative. He argues that technology, and economic globalization have
become the two chief determinants of life in the postindustrial world, where
technoglobalism is rapidly engulfing world culture. By way of contrast, he
then muses whether there might not be another way, in which technology
could be adapted to meet human needs and interests. Pointing to the
antiglobalization movement as an indicator, he presents a social perspective
held by a disparate and yet growing number of people: that society could
continue to emphasize social and cultural diversity and that this diversity
could be reflected in the way people adopt and use technology.
Chapman suggests that identifying the role of civic society in cyberspace
will mean balancing the technological imperative with our social impera-
tive. It means explaining how the consumerized vision of the network
society currently promoted and marketed by global media corporations
and governments is not the only possible pathway to a network society.
The technologies currently being designed to meet the profit-driven
motives of TNCs in a homogenized world can also be utilized to meet the
social agenda of a culturally diverse and inclusive network society.
Highlighting a bipolarity that has emerged in modern society, Chapman
considers a number of key battlegrounds that will require people to behave
as active citizens, rather than passive consumers, of the network society.
The growing dissatisfaction with traditional politics globally is plain for all
to see in the falling numbers of citizens participating in public elections.
Chapman suggests that rather than adhering to the old formal frameworks
of political engagement, a more dynamic basis of social organization is
emerging.
By using ICT to communicate and share knowledge and experiences, it
is becoming easier to identify allies and organize around ideas and issues.
However, although the pieces for alternative global cultures have begun to
358 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

emerge, they currently lack coherence. Chapman concludes that by using

ICT as a tool to meet democratically determined human needs and inter-
ests, attempts to shape the network society will begin to find resonance in
civic society.
Contemplating the human rights implications of global network-society
governance, Cees J. Hamelink argues for international standards to protect
against the harmful effects of technological developments and applications.
In challenging the notion that an integrated global consumer market will
enable all world citizens to share in the “good life,” Hamelink reveals how
the increasing global visibility of consumer goods has taken place against
a backdrop of globalizing poverty, reinforcing the potential for conflict
between rich and poor.
Mirroring Chapman’s bipolarity thesis, Hamelink contends that a battle
between the conflicting agendas of neoliberal globalization and humanitar-
ianism is currently being waged, with the odds stacked heavily in favor of
globalization. This is especially true in the communications arena, where an
active humanitarian constituency has yet to emerge. Providing a timely
warning for social activists globally, Hamelink cautions that despite the
ability of the ad hoc coalitions involved in the antiglobalization networks
to make decision makers sit up and take note, shaping an egalitarian and
democratic network society will be an enormous, if not impossible, chal-
lenge. Underlining this sense of realism, he points to the unevenness of the
world’s communication resources. This unevenness is reflected in the gap
between knowledge-rich and knowledge-poor nations and individuals and
in the formidable power of the forces driving neoliberalism.
Such systems can only survive as long as people believe that they are in
their best interests. Pointing to the growing vibrancy of local communities
around the world, Hamelink suggests that the key prerequisite to achieving
a humanitarian network society is a dynamic world civil society. To this
end, a democratic world communication order should be placed squarely
on the agenda of active communities and local initiatives everywhere.

Community Initiatives

Part II takes stock of issues raised by community activists/practitioners and

participatory-action researchers from around the world. Although only a
small cross-section of global-community initiatives are represented here,
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 359

they provide a window through which we can observe the conditions in

which a civil network society is emerging.
One of the most significant contribution’s of public computing initiatives
worldwide has been the attempts to address inequality in access to ICT
(Clement and Shade 2000). However, as Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat
make clear, the activities of many public computing sites lack are unknown
in the public arena, and consequently tend to be overlooked at many levels
of research, practice, and policy evolution.
In outlining the development of a methodological approach (which
Williams and Alkalimat call “D6”) that is intended to counter such social
exclusion, the authors explain how the public computing movement has
historically been associated with considerable democratic activity. In many
local communities, for example, the provision of public access to ICT has
been linked to the development of public communications platforms that
enable information to be utilized as a resource for community organization
and activities. Public computing spaces are social environments formed as
the result of a confluence of social forces, institutions, and histories.
Utilizing the D6 method to identify and map four categories of public com-
puting in Toledo, Ohio, the authors hypothesize three patterns of social envi-
ronment. The first is that government sites are generally located randomly
in terms of their proximity to rich and poor. The second is that commercial
and university sites have a tendency to be situated according to market
demand—that is, closer to people with higher incomes and to students. The
third, and perhaps most interesting pattern for our purposes, is that commu-
nity sites are likely to be located at opposing ends of the social spectrum: both
rich and poor have community sites but not the middle strata.
Anticipating two further stages of their public computing research,
Williams and Alkalimat argue that each category of public computing con-
stitutes its own power dynamic, expressing a structural force through an
aggregation of institutions, people, and spaces. The D6 method provides a
useful tool for both civil-society policy and practice. Understanding the
“cyberpower”—goal achievement through ICT utilization—of civil society
will be more and more crucial to the nature of democracy in the network
society.
Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens argue that the commercialization of
the Internet and the e-commerce and dot-com frenzy of the late 1990s,
together with the privatizing deregulation approach of public policy, have
360 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

endangered a once-vibrant “Digital City” in Amsterdam. Formed in 1994

against a background of public-media development in Amsterdam and
amidst massive publicity, DDS rapidly attracted tens of thousands of users
and became Europe’s largest “free net.”
However, although DDS became a huge networked community facility,
it never was a community in its own right and only paid lip service to the
aims of community building and development. Much of the massive mem-
bership growth at DDS is attributed to the attraction of free access to the
global Internet, rather than to an interest in local information, communi-
cations, and networking. Still, the prime cause of DDS’s success is ascribed
to the freedoms that its users experienced, enabling a diverse range of
subcultures to emerge.
Local researcher Peter van den Besselaar (2001), through longitudinal
user-analysis profiles, demonstrated that by 1998 only around a quarter of
active DDS inhabitants actually resided in Amsterdam. The fact that DDS
lacked any clear sense of community ownership and was inhabited mostly
by outsiders explains why users were content to let management direct the
initiative’s development unfettered.
The morphing of DDS from its humble grassroots, low-tech, and non-
budget origins into a professional technobusiness was concluded at the
peak of the e-commerce, dot-com feeding frenzy that took place in the
1990s. Plans to sell off the newly privatized enterprise were hit by the
bursting of the new-economy bubble and the sudden emergence of com-
petitive access and service providers, which severely undermined the DDS
user base and consequently its value on the open market.
The shock waves generated by the social explosions that followed the eco-
nomic crisis of December 2001, in Argentina changed the way civil society
utilized ICT. Susana Finquelievich tracks the emergence of grassroots civic
networks in Buenos Aires. As tens of thousands of people began to take to
the streets, organizing themselves in grassroots networks known as neigh-
borhood assemblies, a plethora of electronic forums and websites emerged to
support these civil activities. The important point to note here is not that
cyberspace was used to provide some alternative form of public communi-
cations space, but that it was used to provide additional communications
space for civil communicative action. ICT was used, as both tool and process,
to support in-person and face-to-face social engagement of real-world life,
not to replace it.
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 361

The subsequent decline in real-world and online levels of civil-society activ-

ities in no way undermines or belittles the significance of the work still being
conducted. The fact that neighborhood assemblies have been successful in
assisting care centers for the elderly, providing food and shelter for street chil-
dren, collecting medicines for public hospitals, as well as in many other areas
of social need is significant. That ICT continues to be utilized to support these
activities is important to us in providing context for and understanding the
potential of these communication tools in civil society.
The symbiotic relationship between in-person and online commu-
nications, as illustrated in the neighborhood exchange clubs, is, as Fin-
quelievich expounds, basic to the establishment of a new public sphere.
The emergence of this public space exceeds the socially limited agenda of
governments and TNCs. This form of social innovation contributes to the
creation of a new associative concept of democratization, where, through
operational solidarity, citizens contribute as direct participants in shaping
the network society.
The chapter contributed by Veran Matic, which outlines the inspirational
struggles of Radio B92 in the face of enormous state repression, concretizes
the “human rights in the network society” issues raised by Hamelink. In this
instance, however, the dangers facing civil society and democracy came not
in the form of TNCs and globalization but from an abuse of power exercised
by autocratic state officials.
The B92 story is an illustration of how independent media can become
a catalyst for social reform and change. It is a chronicle of how human cre-
ativity, innovation, and determination found ways to maintain a free flow of
credible information against enormous odds. It is testament to the power of
the open communication of ideas and to the way such communication can
result in social mobilization that can topple even the most repressive and
tyrannical of state regimes. Of course, not all struggles facing civil society will
be this stark. The nature of each struggle will be determined by the social
environment in which it occurs.
Scott S. Robinson adopts a normative approach to citizen participation,
which he applies to the telecenter movement that has emerged in Latin
America in recent years. Providing insights into the experiences of migrant
workers and their families in the remittance economies of Central America
as well as into the operations of the transnational corporations and financial
institutions that prey on migrants, Robinson presents a sustainable vision of
362 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

telecenters working in partnership with microbanks for the good of local and
diasporic communities.
In Central America many people have no telephone or personal computers
at home, or for that matter, the credit to purchase such basic components of
the network society. Community telecenters have the potential to provide
affordable and community-relevant digital services. However, as Robinson
explains, telecenters face barriers to their sustainability from a number of quar-
ters—commercial ISP and telecommunications service providers, computer
hardware and software producers, public and government agencies.
Robinson suggests that linking telecenters with microbanks can provide
a form of cheap communication between the eighteen million Mexicans
living in the United States and their families in Mexico, as well as inexpen-
sive ways for migrant workers in the United States to send remittance
monies to their families south of the border. Fees for processing money
transfers will contribute to the financing of the telecenters and microbanks,
ensuring their sustainability.
Although this system is still currently a vision, Robinson points the reader
to many initiatives that appear to indicate that such mutuality between tele-
centers and microbanks is not far removed from becoming a reality. As with
the Argentine neighborhood assemblies and exchange networks, Robinson’s
vision is indicative of the abundance of creativity, imagination, and social
innovation that exists in civil society.
Finally in part II, Fiorella de Cindio provides a candidly critical evaluation
of the development and progress of Rete Civica di Milano (RCM) and its
cross-sectoral approach (public-, private-, and voluntary-sector partnerships)
to community networking. Outlining a number of community projects
hosted by RCM, de Cindio establishes community links at a variety of levels.
Voluntary-sector projects such an association for drug addicts and immi-
grants, a social-solidarity umbrella organization, and a local social research
forum stand alongside innovative educational and learning initiatives and
cultural forums.
To maintain its independence in the public sector, RCM intentionally
avoided cultivating formal relations with local government. However, it has
been successful in developing electronic “direct line” links between politi-
cians, government officials, and local citizens. Although their function is not
clearly understood by the general public yet, the direct lines represent an
innovative attempt to promote democratic communications in the city.
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 363

There can be little doubt that RCM has done much to achieve its three
basic goals since its birth in 1994: the goals of providing citizens with
access to the Net, offering a shared field for mutual cooperation in the
community, and affirming the right to citizenship in the network society.
It has been incredibly successful in raising the profile of ICT within a range
of community contexts. Where many similar networked initiatives failed,
RCM continues to innovate socially, which helps explain its continued
sustainability.
However, as de Cindio recognizes, levels of civic awareness are not as
high as they might be or need to be. If RCM is to move beyond the stage
of interesting social experiment and achieve the model of sustainability to
which De Cindio refers, then the RCM Participatory Foundation might
need to reconsider what she calls the civic-engagement gene.
Taking RCM out of the social laboratory and developing an understand-
ing of the practices of the social networks of Milan’s local communities
might be considered as the next stage. If participatory capacity-building
and community-development activities are adopted, the stated belief that
citizens are “owners of a sovereignty” and therefore entitled to play an
active role in shaping the network society might be realized at RCM.

Building a New Public Sphere In Cyberspace

Part III considers the development of a new public sphere for social and envi-
ronmental progress in cyberspace. The dynamic and changing nature of the
medium and its promise of inexpensive and universal access to information
and communication suggest rich potential for civic uses. However, obstacles
to the construction of such a public sphere can be great. The first two chap-
ters of part III raise issues of a general nature, while the final three chapters
examine the contribution of public libraries, community networks, and
independent media centers to public spheres in the network society.
Although the Internet can be utilized to provide important support for
a wide variety of social movements and civil-society organizations and com-
munity groups, Craig Calhoun cautions that ICTs will not automatically lead
to the triumph of popular social forces over neoliberal power bases. He
argues that although the Internet has enabled international activists, indige-
nous peoples, environmentalists, and opponents of the WTO to organize
in new and effective ways, such efforts are exceeded by the uses to which
364 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

transnational corporations put the same technology and applications.

Recognizing the importance of the Internet to social movement activists,
Calhoun calls for a sense of realism, pointing out that IT use often varies
depending on the resources different users are able to invest.
Developing this point further, Calhoun reasons that international civil
society has grown as part of globalization and that its enthusiasts should
avoid overstating its strength, especially in terms of ICT. One of the main
strengths of ICT for neoliberal globalization, he argues, is that it facilitates
both decentralization and dispersal of activity and concentration of power.
Consequently, countering this will require a new vision of social relations.
It is not simply enough to respond to Western-initiated trends in survival
mode. For Calhoun, global civil society must be creative in its development
of alternative modernities.
Research showing how and in what context ICT affects the relationships
between civil society and the broader social environment is crucial to the
development of these alternative modernities. Public spheres in the global
network society present opportunities for social activism across a range of
spatial levels. But sound research will be crucial in informing the develop-
ment of alternative modernities. Consequently, the development of mean-
ingful links between academic researchers and civil-society practitioners
and policymakers should be recognized as a crucial step in this process.
Another author promoting the need to develop a critical understanding
of how ICTs affect our lives is Howard Rheingold, who emphasizes the
importance of examining the nature of collective action in cyberspace. In a
reflective reassessment, the self-confessed technophile critically reappraises
his “love affair” with new technologies.
Challenging a fundamental public assumption that “science” equals
“truth,” Rheingold criticizes technological determinism for suppressing
free will and promoting a lack of public understanding of the social mean-
ings of technology and its applications. He proposes that this has led to a
crisis of knowledge and an inability to think publicly and make collective,
substantive decisions about technology and its role in the network society.
Suggesting that solutions to this situation will be found collectively
through widespread public discourse, Rheingold argues that it is time to
prove the democratic potential of ICT.
Questioning whether Internet applications contribute to civic life or
remove people from it, he reasons that it is not enough to get involved
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 365

through online activism. Communications media are necessary but not

sufficient for vibrant, self-governing societies. In the network society, the
“important stuff” still occurs in the civic life of our communities and in the
lives of our neighbors. It is here—where participation is important—that
ICT could provide another platform for social engagement. But as Rhein-
gold observes, this will only be a subset of real-world social networks.
Nancy Kranich contemplates the modern-day public sphere in terms of
real and virtual spaces where community members can exchange ideas.
These information commons are, she argues, fundamental to democratic
participation in the network society. Grounding her thesis in concepts of
social capital and civil society, Kranich contends that information under-
pins civic participation and facilitates the development of civil society: a
better-informed citizenry is more likely to engage in policy discussion and
communicate their ideas and concerns freely.
Outlining her views on the information commons, she discusses plans
for building new spaces by partnerships of citizens and community orga-
nizations. Public libraries, she argues, are ideally placed to contribute to
such activities. They have historically provided community spaces for the
free and open exchange of ideas, making information and knowledge
available to everyone. Kranich makes a convincing case, which illustrates
the enormous contributions public libraries have made to community life
over the years. She cites many examples of how libraries, often acting as
community forums, have contributed to and stimulated the processes of
independent thought development so crucial to the public sphere. The
community and capacity-building initiatives fostered by libraries include:
civic-skills teaching, community information-literacy partnerships,
communitywide reading programs, digital neighborhood directories, and
public-access ICT schemes.
However, these significant social activities and services are under threat.
Deregulation and privatization have shifted information policymaking into
the private arena and clouded issues of public interest. As transnational
communications and media corporations compete for domination of cyber-
space, the public interest is in danger of being neglected. To counter this
neglect, educational and research institutions, libraries, nonprofits, and
community networks must be guaranteed free space in the new informa-
tion infrastructures. The information commons, she argues, must constitute
a public sphere of free speech and open discourse to enhance democracy.
366 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

Our rights of free speech, inquiry, and self-governance are dependent on

a culturally rich and socially vibrant information commons.
Employing a social-constructivist perspective on the information infra-
structure in the network society, David Silver compares and contrasts two
differing approaches to community networking in the United States.
Although both initiatives are grounded in a common goal—that is, “to net-
work a community”—the methods adopted to achieve this aim are markedly
different and produce quite distinct outcomes. Silver confirms the notion
put forward by Williams and Alkalimat that community networks are social
environments whose form depends on the specific pattern of social forces,
organizations, and histories that shape them. In a critical evaluation of the
top-down and bottom-up approaches adopted by the community networks,
Silver challenges what he calls a “prevailing and dangerous hypothesis”—the
neutrality of the Internet.
Successful in obtaining support from a wide range of public- and private-
sector funding agencies, Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) adopted a top-
down approach. Network-design strategies took place behind closed doors at
Bell Atlantic, while computer-literate electrical engineering students from
Virginia Tech tested the network. Despite an emphasis on the potential
advantages of civic-based community building, from very early on the inten-
tion appears to have been one of promoting the construction of a commer-
cially driven online community. Although the project has been promoted as
a socially collaborative initiative, the people of Blacksburg have actually had
little input into its design, implementation, and development processes.
By way of contrast, the Seattle Community Network (SCN) receives no
corporate sponsorship to achieve sustainability. Attempting to ground the
initiative in the local community, the SCN project team adopted participa-
tory-design techniques and encouraged local people to collaborate in the
design and building processes of the network. Local community organiza-
tions were introduced to SCN through a range of workshops and outreach
programs.
Intended initially as a community-development tool, the network
evolved through the efforts of a group of progressive local volunteers. They
have benefited from the support of and association with the Seattle Public
Library and a range of local nonprofit organizations and activist groups.
SCN is free of charge to local residents and is available to people without
Internet access at home through Seattle public libraries.
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 367

It was in the same part of the United States during the 1999 WTO demon-
strations, that the Seattle Independent Media Center (IMC) or Indymedia
sprang to public prominence. Critically assessing the main characteristics,
processes, and challenges to this global network of media collectives,
Douglas Morris asserts that alternative-media networks stimulate public
awareness of global-justice issues and actions. Indymedia, he argues, forms
part of a broader set of social movements contributing to the development
of participatory politics, nonproprietary and collective information prod-
ucts, and a multifaceted network of cultures. A consequence of these diverse
activities has been the creation of decentralized virtual public spheres,
locally and globally, in which democratic discourse is advanced.
Although clearly still in its infancy and facing significant challenges as it
evolves, the democratic media associated with Indymedia are tools that
can be utilized to raise awareness and inform an increasingly receptive
public on social justice issues. Indymedia provides an alternative to the
expansion and centralization of transnational media corporations. The
vitality and vibrancy of its practices and principles, together with the
participatory networking of grassroots activism have much to contribute to
the development of public spheres through which civil society can begin
to collectively shape the network society.

Networks of Awareness, Advocacy, and Action

Although this book has highlighted a range of civil-society ICT initia-

tives, we have deliberately steered clear of attempting to construct a
typology of them. We have taken this approach for two reasons: first,
because we are not convinced that trying to force these initiatives into
convenient-sized packages with neat labels on them contributes to the
discourse in any positive manner, and second, because the cross-section
of ICT initiatives illustrated here only reflects a small proportion of the
diversity of such social enterprises. Just as community and culture differs
according to social environments, so too do civil society initiatives. Of
course there are strong commonalities, but as was seen in the earlier
chapters, there are also significant differences. Rather than providing
hard-and-fast definitions, we have sought, through an illustration of
diversity, to explain what these initiatives are, why and how they
emerged, and what they seek to achieve.
368 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

Although such insights aid our understanding of civil society in the age
of networks, they also raise other questions, to which we now turn: Why
are civil society ICT initiatives significant? How might their influence be felt
in the current neoliberal network society? Does the growth in numbers and
diversity of civil-society ICT initiatives globally represent the emergence of
a global civil-society social movement?
To address these questions we frame our deliberations in the context of
social-network theory (Wellman 1999). We find this framework useful not
only because we seek to understand these social phenomena within the
broader context of the network society, but also because we are investigating
the conditions and communicative relationships that surround these social
environments. In pursuing this investigation, we were mindful that issues of
agency and political opportunities are central to understanding the evolution
of social relationships. The simplistic assumption that global civil-society
activities and social movements will automatically emerge out of economic
globalization or revolutions in communications technologies ignores both.
It is too early to state with certainty that the initiatives we introduce here
are representative of a transnational civil-society social movement. We do,
however, present them as indicators of an emerging grassroots potential and
openness to social change in the network society. Insight into the way
initiatives, groups, and networks emerge and are legitimized is central to
understanding the politics of civil society and consequently crucial to under-
standing successful networking. This is of relevance to us in developing
knowledge of such practices in the global network society because transna-
tional civil society is “an area of struggle, a fragmented and contested area”
(Keck and Sikkink 1998, 33).
Network theory provides a framework for change through which the pref-
erences and identities of actors engaged in social activities can be mutually
transformed by interaction with others. Keck and Sikkink suggest that the
voluntary and horizontal nature of networks means that the motivational
force for actor participation is an anticipated mutuality of learning, respect,
and benefits. Networking therefore has the potential to provide civil society
with both a vehicle for communicative and political exchange and the
potential for mutual transformation of participants.
However, not all social networking is conducted in a spirit of mutuality and
reciprocity. Civil society is often forced to network under conditions of power
imbalance, where the public and commercial sectors exercise influence that
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 369

affects their ability to shape social developments. This is especially true in the
network society, as was seen the chapters by Boyd-Barrett, Chapman,
Hamelink, Calhoun, and Rheingold, where the power exercised in networks
followed from the resources that the public and commercial sectors owned.
In the network society, the contested and fragmented area of struggle to
which Keck and Sikkink refer occurs in the interaction within and between
civil-society groups, institutions, and governments at many levels. The
extent to which civil society can identify and influence targets vulnerable
to material and moral leverage, so that the future direction of the policy dis-
course might be shaped by civil society, remains to be seen. However, the
effectiveness of networks is dependent on their density and strength, and
much will depend on the number and size of organizations in civil-society
networks and on the regularity and quality of their exchanges (Keck and
Sikkink 1998). Communicative interaction is crucial to successful network-
ing, and the development of social-network analysis (Degenne and Forse
1999; Wasserman and Faust 1994) as both participatory-action research
method and civil-society development tool will be of interest to the future
of effective civil-society networking—locally, nationally, and globally.

Challenges

The work presented in this book is simultaneously a product of today’s ICT

environment and a shaper of tomorrow’s. Insofar as this work attempts to
shift focus and power downward and laterally through its insistence on uni-
versal access and community control, it implicitly threatens the status quo
with its established (though dynamic) modalities of control. However, as
Calhoun points out, though the strength of these established modalities of
control should not be underestimated, neither should the case for the use of
ICT by community and advocacy/action networks be overstated. Nonethe-
less, on a profound level some threats to established systems of institutional
control might now exist. If this is indeed the case, the consequences of
unraveled state systems might be severe. But the effects of community net-
works and other grassroots forms of democratized communication are likely
to be anticipated and mitigated by organizations with vast resources.
What is the nature of these challenges? And how can they be met effec-
tively? The first threat comes from the side effects of vast media empires going
about their daily business of gaining market share and of governments setting
370 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

ICT policies that ignore or devalue civil society. For example, as a response
to the September 11, 2001, atrocity, the U.S. federal government removed
an immense amount of public information from its websites, regardless of
whether such information was of import to civil society and citizens in gen-
eral. It is worth remembering that when one is sleeping in the same bed as
titans, the simplest shift of position can be fatal. Consequently, while trying
to adopt a sufficiently cautious and critically reflective attitude, without
becoming unduly paranoid, we need to entertain the unpleasant possibility
that efforts like those in this book will be actively targeted in the future if they
are perceived as a threat. The FBI’s domestic COINTELPRO (“counterintelli-
gence programs”) program, for example, spent millions of dollars covertly
interfering with civil rights, the peace movement, and other political activism
from 1956 to 1971. More recently FBI agents, looking for extensive logs on
everybody who had visited the IMC website, visited IMC activists in Seattle.
Unfortunately, there was no outcry among other media outlets in Seattle
whose rights under the First Amendment might also be at risk.
Many of the challenges to our enterprises are not so nefarious. Some arise
from within our own ranks, and it is not so easy to point fingers at others if
we do not rise to the occasion ourselves. These inherent challenges include
our difficulty to describe our own work and vision in a compelling way. As
social innovators we have a responsibility to make our work compelling. The
onus is on us to ensure that we get our vision across to as many people, in as
many social spheres, as possible. In other words, it is not enough to do “the
right thing”—we have to convince others that we are doing “the right thing”
and that they have an important contribution to make also.

Prospects for Success

Success is, in itself, an elusive term to define or come to understand. Success

presumably entails reaching all of our goals. But our goals are diffuse,
impossible to specify precisely, and possibly contradictory. Are we looking
for success tomorrow, next week, or at some nebulous time in the distant
future when success becomes finally established as a permanent condition?
Is success a description of a utopia where no wrong occurs, no violence is
visited on people or other forms of life, or does success mean that some pain
is avoided, some scars are healed, some progress is made toward reducing
misery? Whether the impossibility of utopia is regrettable or simply a basic
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 371

fact of human existence makes little difference here. We are concerned

about trajectories, the directions that we are heading in as a powerful
constituent of an ecosystem, and about possible ways to intervene.
ICT (as well as the social systems it is embedded in) enables voices to travel
great distances. Generally this means that some voices travel farther than
others and are heard by greater numbers of people. When the information
and communication environment is entirely one directional, it becomes as
unalterable as the weather. Paraphrasing Mark Twain’s remark on the
weather, one can talk about it but one cannot do anything about it. Control
over the content and distribution of information is an awesome power. For
one thing, it makes propaganda eminently more possible. The unremitting
pounding of a single point of view can help build the necessary hatred and
fear to approve the preemptive invasion of a country. Technology, of course,
can aid immeasurably with this process—for example, through the then-new
miracle of radio, Hitler was able to send his message continuously and
simultaneously all over Germany.
Regardless of the ultimate destination, it seems clear that success of the
work and the ideas presented in this book will mean increasing influence in
the world (both locally and globally?). We believe that a public airing and
cross-fertilization of new ideas will be indispensable to any democratization
of the Internet and other ICT systems. A large part of our motivation for this
book has been our desire to publicize such ideas and make them available
for thoughtful consideration, in practice and policy as well as in academia.
Another motive has been to show that there is no geographic monopoly on
these ideas; indeed they are emerging and developing much faster than we
as observers and as editors of this book can absorb. The efforts of our col-
laborators in this book will need to be integrated with the vast array of
other activities and initiatives around the world if additional influence is to
be attained globally.
Some of this integration will occur at the organizational level; groups
will undoubtedly coalesce—often across traditional borders—over shared
ideas, and these groups may be able to institutionalize and facilitate addi-
tional work and thinking. Moreover, as Keck and Sikkink (1998) make
clear, forming new organizations may not be the key idea or catalyst for
social action and progress. Discussion, as is increasingly taking place in
electronic mailing lists, chat rooms, and so on, is helping to promote the
development of shared vocabularies and shared agendas that are necessary
372 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

for group mobilization around issues. Shared understanding—particularly

around basic principles—may, in fact, be more immune to the challenges
discussed in the previous section.
These new groups and issue-oriented communities also need to consciously
regard themselves as players in a dynamic and complex issue space in which
they will likely need to coexist to see their long-term visions become real. Such
social movements, Keck and Sikkink report, are no longer limited to relatively
simple messages but are increasingly capable of constructing more complex
and insightful programs that present in detail the type of world they would
like to see. In addition, the large numbers of people involved and interested
in preventing war, protesting human rights abuses, or celebrating Earth Day
may be capable of massive coordinated actions, on scales unimaginable before
networked communication. These communities might be able to work with
the open-source community to develop sociotechnical platforms that they
can distribute worldwide, much along the lines of the IMC model.
The constitution of the “network society” is such that nearly all of us are
connected to nearly all of us in some way or another. We all coexist in the
ecosystem of the natural world and in the social “ecosystem” of our infor-
mation and communication spheres and through our actions on the social
and natural environments. Although we are all connected, we are not nec-
essarily connected directly; we are configured into a network or web of
relationships. “Communities” in such a world web can coalesce around
shared interests, values, principles, aims, or other viewpoints. Religions
demonstrate this reality, as do national identities (or “imagined commu-
nities,” as Anderson (1983) calls them). By using the work in this book as
background, we can see that new, overarching paradigms that can inte-
grate many views of thinking in a nonhierarchical network fashion may be
the next step in the evolution of the conscious development of ICT for the
amelioration of social and other problems.
Schuler (2002), for example, has started a “Pattern Language for Living
Communication” project. This project is designed to collect the knowledge
and wisdom of people involved with these issues and make them available
in an online (and print) format that will help people more easily find and
adopt suggestions relevant to their work. Similarly, Schuler (2001) has also
written on the idea of “civic intelligence,” which attempts to provide an
overarching concept that both describes current efforts and, hopefully,
motivates future ones.
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 373

Unlike many previous “utopian” projects that ignored social realities,

efforts to cultivate civic intelligence must be more pragmatic. This will
require recognizing the factors that promote innovation and acting on
them by developing programs that incorporate them. It is also possible for
community practitioners and researchers to help develop and promote the
factors themselves. Basalla (1988) suggests that three preconditions for the
success of technological innovation exist:

1. Existing models to extend and build on

2. Social environments that value the innovation
3. Intents, skills, etc. of innovator

To these three preconditions we would add a fourth:

4. Adequate resources for innovator

This fourth factor acknowledges the important role of resources for pro-
moting innovation. Although the innovations we are considering are
primarily social and secondarily technological, Basalla’s observations are
pertinent. A civic intelligence would help promote social innovation by
helping to ensure that each of the preconditions were met. In fact, civic
intelligence can be viewed as a way of guaranteeing that these precondi-
tions are continuously improved and strengthened and made to reflect
abiding human values. In terms of Basalla’s preconditions, a civic-intelli-
gence orientation would help foster a social environment that values civic-
intelligence innovations, motivate the creation and marketing of suitable
models, inspire and educate potential innovators, and identify and distrib-
ute resources.
Presenting the preconditions for sociotechnical innovation in a frame-
work of design criteria for community ICT initiatives, Day echoes Schuler’s
civic-intelligence approach (2001, 2002). Attempting to link theory with
practice for socially constructive purposes, Day is actively engaged in estab-
lishing a global network of community ICT academics/practitioners. The
purpose of the network is to stimulate the development of an open-source
knowledge base related to community ICT initiatives. The intention is
to help communities from all over the world draw from and contribute to
a dynamic and participatory knowledge base, similar to the notion of
“civic intelligence” referred to above. To this end, Go.ItiRA was launched
in Rockhampton, Central Queensland, in the summer of 2002, with a view
374 Peter Day and Douglas Schuler

to stimulating collaboration and cooperation between academia and com-

munity practice globally (Marshall, Taylor, and MacPherson 2002).

Thoughts for the Future

Part of our current task includes more fully understanding the nature and
power of civic and social communications. Historically this has mostly
occurred at a local level; most of the communication encountered during
one’s life was among people who lived in close proximity. Now globalization,
bolstered by commerce, cheap travel, and communication, increases the
distance that messages we encounter are likely to have traveled. It is therefore
imperative to support the kind of experimentation and collaborations
between academia, activists, and community members outlined in the pages
of this book and to acknowledge the common themes that emerge. With
these common themes in mind, we offer a number of recommendations to
promote the support of socially innovative civic ICT initiatives.
First, there is an urgent need to make policy more responsive to the
needs of local citizens. It is therefore imperative that we create a meaning-
ful, equitable, and inclusive dialogue between (civic/community) policy-
makers, practitioners, and researchers. Based on principles of mutuality,
reciprocity, and trust, this dialogue should facilitate the exploration of
ways to identify and respond to the needs of citizens in the network soci-
ety. One means by which such civic dialogues can be informed is through
new research approaches that engage communities and civic networks in
socially meaningful ways. Consequently, a second recommendation would
involve the public funding of new and innovative research that improves
our understanding and knowledge of the diversity of cultures, values,
belief systems, and needs found throughout global civic society. Finally,
we draw attention to the notion of civic intelligence not as an abstract con-
cept but as an organic and living project to which and from which civic
societies from around the world can contribute and draw, as their experi-
ences and needs permit. Through the utilization of civic intelligence as a
sociocultural knowledge base that informs policy, practice, and research,
people in their localities, by means of communicative action, can shape
network societies.
The linkages that our work favors are not typically those that businesses
in the developed world can exploit to get their job done faster and more
Prospects for a New Public Sphere 375

efficiently. In our opinion, enough attention has been given to that sector
already. We are concerned with two other areas: the connections that need
to be made within communities that are increasingly marginalized and left
behind, and the connections that are to be made across traditional bound-
aries—economic, cultural, geographic, ethnic. These connections should be
established not for the purpose of assimilating or selling but for the purpose
of understanding and of providing mutual aid and support.
It is unclear how soon we will be able to ascertain whether these new
developments signal something profound historically or if they ultimately
become known merely as historical footnotes. We now know that ordinary
people are capable of conceiving—and achieving—extraordinary things with
very few resources. While current institutions, notably governments and
businesses, often fail to address or even recognize what needs to be done, the
civic sector may step in and fill this void. It certainly will not be a trivial
undertaking. We await the future with anticipation—and hope.
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Contributors

Abdul Alkalimat is professor of sociology and director of Africana Studies

at the University of Toledo, Ohio, where he engineered the only known
Internet-based course taught from Africa to students in the United States. He
moderates the largest African-American Studies discussion list, H-Afro-Am,
and created and maintains two research websites, one on Malcolm X and one
on eBlack Studies. He recently moved his “Introduction to Afro-American
Studies: A Peoples College Primer,” for thirty years the most widely used black
studies curriculum, onto this website.

Oliver Boyd-Barrett is professor, Department of Communication, California

State Polytechnic University, Pomona. His classes include propaganda and
public opinion, political economy of mass communication, communications
theory, and communications research. Boyd-Barrett has published exten-
sively on issues to do with international communications, notably about
international and national news agencies. He has pioneered the application
of distance-learning techniques to the study of mass communications, at the
Open University, U.K., and the Center for Mass Communications Research at
the University of Leicester, U.K. He is currently researching media coverage of
the “war on terrorism.”

Craig Calhoun is president of the Social Science Research Council and

professor of sociology and history at New York University. Calhoun received
his doctorate from Oxford University and taught at the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, from 1977 to 1996. His books include Nationalism (Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1997), Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the
Struggle for Democracy in China (University of California Press, 1994), Critical
Social Theory: Culture, History and the Challenge of Difference (Blackwell, 1995),
and The Public Sphere (Norton, forthcoming). He is also the editor-in-chief of
408 Contributors

the Oxford Dictionary of the Social Sciences, coeditor for international and area
studies of the International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and
editor of Understanding September 11th (New Press, 2002). Calhoun works espe-
cially on issues of democracy, social movements, and social solidarity in the
contexts of technological and social change.

Gary Chapman is director of The 21st Century Project at the Lyndon Baines
Johnson School of Public Affairs in the Graduate School of Public Policy at the
University of Texas at Austin. He is a visiting professor at the LBJ School, and
also associate director of the University of Texas’s Telecommunications and
Information Policy Institute. For six years Chapman wrote the internationally
syndicated, biweekly newspaper column on technology and society called
“Digital Nation,” published in and syndicated by the Los Angeles Times. He is
now a regular columnist for the Austin American-Statesman. He serves on the
selection committee for the Turing Award, the world’s highest award in com-
puter science. He is the former longtime executive director of the national
public-interest organization Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
He was educated at Occidental College in Los Angeles and at Stanford
University, and he is also a former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces,
or “Green Berets.”

Peter Day is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Management and Infor-

mation Sciences at the University of Brighton, U.K., and teaches across a
wide range of network-society-related subjects, including community
informatics, communications and development, and information and
communications policy. He is also a senior research fellow in the Faculty
of Informatics and Communication at Central Queensland University,
Australia. Coauthor of the IBM/CDF-sponsored COMMIT Report which crit-
ically evaluated cross-sectoral community ICT initiatives in the U.K., Day
has researched the area of community ICT practice extensively. He is a
director of the Sussex Community Internet Project (SCIP) in Brighton and
Hove, U.K., and a vice president of Go.ITiRA. Day has also just completed
coediting (with Douglas Schuler) Community Practice in the Network Society:
Local Action / Global Interaction.

Fiorella de Cindio is associate professor of programming languages at the

State University of Milan. Her research interests includes Petri nets as
concurrency theory, programming languages (namely, object-oriented and
distributed programming languages), and the applications of ICT to support
Contributors 409

life and work within social and office systems. In this last effort, in the 1980s
De Cindio did action research and education on workers’ participation in
systems design, then was a member of the team that conceived and devel-
oped one of the first CSCW prototypes (Commitment Handling Active
Office System or CHAOS). In 1994, she initiated the Civic Networking
Laboratory, for which she is now responsible, and, in that framework, the
founding of the Milan Community Network (Rete Civica di Milano or RCM),
which is now a Participatory Foundation.

Susana Finquelievich born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is an architect and

urbanist and has a Ph.D. in urban sociology. She is the head of the Depart-
ment of Urban Studies at the Research Institute Gino Germani, University
of Buenos Aires, and coordinates a research team that works on Internet and
society. Finquelievich has published seven books on this subject, plus over
a hundred papers in national and international journals. She is formerly
president of the Global Community Networking Partnership.

Cees J. Hamelink is professor of international communication at the

University of Amsterdam and professor of media, religion and culture at
the Vrije University in Amsterdam. He studied moral philosophy and psy-
chology at the University of Amsterdam, where he graduated in 1968 and
obtained his Ph.D. in 1975. Hamelink is the editor-in-chief of the Interna-
tional Journal for Communication Studies: Gazette and an adviser on various
communication projects for UNESCO, UNRISD, and the International
Baccalaureate. He is also honorary president of the International Associa-
tion for Media and Communication Research and board member of the
International Communication Association. Hamelink has authored fifteen
books on international communication, culture, human rights, and infor-
mation technology. Major publications include Cultural Autonomy in
Global Communications (1983), Finance and Information (1983), The Tech-
nology Gamble (1988), Trends in World Communication (1994), The Politics of
World Communication (1994), and The Ethics of Cyberspace (2000).

Nancy Kranich recently completed a term as president of the American

Library Association, where she focused on the role of libraries in democracies,
undertaking advocacy, civic-engagement, information-commons, digital-
divide, and information-literacy projects in both the United States and
abroad. Formerly, she served as associate dean of libraries at New York Uni-
versity. Kranich has appeared on the “Today Show,” the C-Span “Washington
410 Contributors

Journal,” and National Public Radio, and was featured in the New York Times
and the Washington Post. She has made more than 200 presentations and has
written extensively on topics related to libraries and information policy,
including a book titled Libraries and Democracy: The Cornerstones of Liberty
(Chicago: American Library Association, 2001). Kranich has a master’s degree
in public administration from New York University’s Wagner School of
Public Service, an M.A. in library science from the University of Wisconsin,
and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin.

Geert Lovink is a media theorist, Net critic, and activist based in Sydney,
Australia. He studied political science at the University of Amsterdam, where
he obtained an M.A., and he received a Ph.D. from the University of
Melbourne. He is a cofounder of the Amsterdam-based free community
network “Digital City” (http://www.dds.nl) and of the support campaign for
independent media in Southeastern Europe, “Press Now.” In 1995, together
with Pit Schultz, he founded the international “nettime” circle (http://www.
nettime.org), which encompasses a mailing list (in English, Dutch, French,
Spanish/Portuguese, Romanian, and Chinese), a series of meetings and publi-
cations such as zkp 1–4, “Netzkritik” (ID-Archiv, 1997, in German), and
“Readme!” (Autonomedia, 1998). He also organized the Tulipomania Dotcom
conference, which took place in Amsterdam in June 2000, focusing on a cri-
tique of the new economy (www.balie.nl/tulipomania). In early 2001 he
cofounded www.fibreculture.org, a forum for Australian Internet research
and culture, which has its first publication out, launched at the first fibrecul-
ture meeting in Melbourne (December 2001). The latest conference he coor-
ganized is Dark Markets, on new media and democracy in times of crisis
(Vienna, October 2002, http://darkmarkets.t0.or.at/). He has coedited two
books that document his collaboration with the Dutch designer Mieke
Gerritzen: Everyone Is a Designer (BIS, 2000) and Catalogue of Strategies (Gingko
Press, 2001). The MIT Press has published two of his books: Dark Fiber, a
collection of essays on Internet culture, and Uncanny Networks, consisting of
collected interviews with media theorists and artists. Online text archives:
www.desk.org/bilwet and www.laudanum.net/geert.

Veran Matic is the editor of Radio B2-92 from Belgrade, which Milose-
vic’s regime had banned four times, yet it always succeeded in continuing
to broadcast, using, among other media, the Internet. Besides this radio
station, Matic established the Association of Independent Electronic Media
Contributors 411

(ANEM), consisting of fifty radio and TV stations, and he is the chair of this
association. He also leads the Alternative TV Network, which broadcasts its
programs via satellite and through the local stations. In addition, he
publishes two progressive magazines and runs a publishing house. He has
managed to transfer all of these functions into an Internet department,
creating a powerful network of diverse media mutually connected by the
Internet, satellite, and conventional distributive systems, which is
extremely influential not only in the former Yugoslavia, but in all of
Southeastern Europe. He has received numerous awards, including the
American Committee to Protect Journalists Award, the Olof Palme Award,
and the MTV Award for courage in reporting. In May 2000, the Interna-
tional Press Institute selected him as one of fifty post war press-freedom
heroes.

Douglas Morris is completing a Ph.D. in sociology at Loyola University

of Chicago. He has participated in social movements and grassroots pub-
lishing projects since the mid-1980s. Morris has cowritten a number of
academic papers on activism via the Internet. Writings on the history and
processes of Indymedia can be found online at the Indymedia Documen-
tation Site (docs.indymedia.org).

Howard Rheingold has been an engaged observer and critic of

computer technology—particularly computer networking—for over a
decade. He has written numerous books, including The Virtual
Community (1993), Virtual Reality (1992), and Tools for Thought (1985).
Rheingold was also founder of Electric Minds, named by Time magazine
one of the ten best websites of 1996. He was one of the creators and
former founding executive editor of HotWired, the online World Wide
Web multimedia publication of Wired Venture, and former “Tomorrow”
columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, syndicated internationally by
King Features. Rheingold’s books have been translated into French,
German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish. His latest book is
Smart Mobs (2002).
Patrice Riemens is a footloose cultural activist usually based in
Amsterdam.

Scott Robinson has been involved with networking and the introduction of
IT into Mexican rural-producer organizations since 1994, when the Red
de Informacion Rural went online (www.laneta.apc.org/rir). He has been
412 Contributors

involved with the creation of Mexican telecenters since 1997, and has pub-
lished online about these projects and IT public policies in Latin America. He
is currently coordinating the final phase of an IDRC Canada–funded com-
munity telecenter project in Morelos state, Mexico (www.telecentros.org.mx).
While he prefers producing documentaries, years ago on film, today on
video, Robinson’s “normal” job is teaching social anthropology at the
undergraduate and graduate levels in the Universidad Metropolitana
(www.uam.mx), Mexico, D.F.

Douglas Schuler is a former chair of Computer Professionals for Social

Responsibility (CPSR) and a member of the faculty of The Evergreen State
College. He has been involved with the social implications of technology
for twenty years. He has published numerous articles and book chapters
and has coedited six books. His New Community Networks: Wired for Change
(1996), hailed as innovative and indispensable, combined social critique
with practical proposals based on his experiences as one of the cofounders
of the Seattle Community Network, a free public-access computer network.
Schuler has given presentations on civic and community communications
in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America and has been a principal orga-
nizer at all nine of CPSR’s “Directions and Implications of Advanced Com-
puting” symposia. He is now the program director for CPSR’s “Public Sphere
Project,” which includes the multiyear participatory “Pattern Language for
Living Communication” http://www.cpsr.org/program/sphere/patterns/
project. Schuler just completed coediting (with Peter Day) Community Prac-
tice in the Network Society: Local Action / Global Interaction.

David Silver is an assistant professor in the Department of Communica-

tion at the University of Washington. He has written widely on the inter-
sections between computers, the Internet, and contemporary American
cultures, and more specifically on the social and cultural construction of
cyberspace. He is also the director of the Resource Center for Cyberculture
Studies (http://www.com.washington.edu/rccs/), an online, not-for-profit
organization he founded in 1996.

Kate Williams is a doctoral student at the University of Michigan and

research assistant at U-M’s Alliance for Community Technology. She coedited
Job?tech: The Technology Revolution and Its Social Impact (1995) and has also
written on the digital divide, computer literacy, and public computing. In
2001 she convened the digital divide doctoral students workshop.
Index

ABC News, 70 Advertising, 25–26, 29–30

Access. See Digital divide Adbusters and, 335
Activism, 353 children and, 69–70
Ad Busters and, 335 digital billboards and, 70–71
Amsterdam Public Digital Culture governance and, 75–81
and, 111–135 Internet messaging, 35
computer-crime laws and, 115–116 as philanthropy, 71
copyleft and, 340 product placement and, 70–71
FBI and, 370 as religion, 71
global-justice movement and, social issues and, 68–71
326–327, 330, 332, 337–338 Advertising Age, 71
Hacktic group and, 115–116 Africa, 20, 72
Indymedia and, 325–352 AIDS, 231
Internet and, 233 Alkalimat, Abdul, 8–9, 85–110, 359, 407
open publishing and, 340 Al Qaeda, 346
People’s Global Action and, Alto, 260, 262
325–326, 329 AMD, 33
policy directions for, 358–363, American Civil Liberties Union
367–369 (ACLU), 295–296
Press Freedom Conference and, American Convention of Human
334, 342 Rights, 72
Reclaim the Media Conference Americanization. See United States
and, 342 American Library Association,
Seattle Community Network (SCN) 284, 295–296
and, 313–324 American Replacement of Nature,
South America and, 142 The (Thompson), 268
Underground Publishing Conference Ammirati-Puris-Lintas, 69
and, 342 Amsterdam New Media Association
Washington Ceasefire, 318 (ANMA), 131
WTO meeting and, 2–3, 237 Amsterdam Public Digital Culture
Ad Busters, 335 cultural background for, 112–117
414 Index

Amsterdam Public Digital Culture (cont.) Blacksburg-Electronic Village (BEV),

Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135 13–14, 366
hackers and, 113–114 Bell Atlantic, 304–313, 323
Amusing Ourselves to Death beta testing and, 308–309
(Postman), 274 Cohill and, 307–309
ANEM. See Radio B92 feasibility study and, 305–306
AOL Time Warner, 33–36, 54 parties to, 304–308
Apple Computers, 58 popular acceptance of, 304–306
Argentina telephone revenues and, 304
democracy and, 152–157 Virginia Tech and, 303–306, 308,
ICT and, 138–144 312–313
NGOs and, 138–144, 150–152 Bloomberg, 26, 35
Arnison, Matthew, 329 Boucher, Rick, 305, 307
ARPAnet, 262 Bove, Jose, 53
Artificial intelligence (AI), 45–46, 86 Bowling Alone (Putnam), 279, 281
Associated Press, 26, 35 Boyd-Barrett, Oliver, 6–7, 19–42,
AT&T, 27, 32, 35–37 356, 407–408
Autonomous Technology (Winner), Boyte, Harry, 280–282
253, 269 Brand, Stewart, 43, 267, 268
Brands
B92 Publishing, 177–178 education and, 239
Bacon, Francis, 257–258 as gods, 71
Baldwin, J., 268 slow food movement and, 51–52
Baltic Media Center, 168 Brave New World (Huxley), 271
Barber, Benjamin, 280, 356 Britain, 20, 24, 28
BaseCamp Seattle, 320–321 British Bill of Rights, 72
Battle of Kosovo, 159 British Telecom, 29, 36
Bayern Online, 130 Brown, Jerry, 268
BBC, 20, 28 Buenos Aires, 138–144
Bell, D., 301 Bulletin-board systems, 113, 145,
Bell Atlantic, 366 262–263, 271
Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) Bullitt, Kay, 315
and, 304–313, 323 Burnett, Chris, 328–329, 334
Bellezza, Enrico, 208 Bush, George W., 59, 343
Bellissima, 115 Business Week, 24–25
Benedikt, M., 301
Benton Foundation, 85, 288 Cable access, 36
Berlin Wall, 113 Calhoun, Craig, 12, 229–251, 363–364,
Bertelsmann, 30 407–408
Better Together (Putnam), 281 Calvin Klein, 71
Billboards, 70–71 Canada, 192, 234
Biotechnology, 253 Capitalism, 234–235. See also Activism
Birkerts, Sven, 261 Andersen and, 343
Index 415

Enron and, 343 Comcast, 27

“good life” and, 43–65 Common-carrier model, 27
People’s Global Action and, 325–326 Commonwealth (Boyte), 281
U.S. influence and, 31–42 Communication. See also Information
Castells, Manuel, 89–90, 133 and communication technology
CATNet, 94 (ICT); Internet; Media
Center for Democracy and community networks and, 199–225
Citizenship, 282 (see also Community networks)
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), direct lines and, 216–219
39–40 Federal Communications Commission
Centro Nacional de Organizaciones and, 334–335
Communitarias (CENOC), 138 Habermas on, 273–274
Certificate authority, 192 Indymedia and, 325–352
Changing America, 329 organization of, 246–248 (see also
Chao, Manu, 172 Globalization)
Chaos Computer Club (CCC), 114 “Pattern Language” project and,
Chapman, Gary, 7, 43–65, 357, 408 372–373
Chardin, Teilhard de, 67 public projects and, 214–219, 225n11
Chartered Semiconductor reassessment of technology and,
Manufacturing, 37 253–277
Chasque, 145–147 Communications Decency Act, 296
Chen, Yvonne, 315–316 Communism, 43
Chesapeake and Potomac Community currency, 193
Telephone, 304 Community Memory, 89
Children’s Internet Protection Act Community networks, 224–225
(CIPA), 295–296 abuse of, 265–266
China, 234, 320–321 Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV)
advertising and, 69 and, 13–14, 302–313, 322–324
control and, 241–242 democracy and, 271–277
globalization and, 20, 22, 37–38 design of, 268–269
ICT and, 41 direction of progress and, 260–277
Churches, 104–105 educational projects and, 211–214
Cindio, Fiorella de, 11, 199–225, effects of, 219–223, 242–244,
362–363, 408–409 262–277
Cisco, 34 as enabling environment, 199–200
Civic nets. See Community networks Indymedia and, 325–352
Cleveland FreeNet, 89 libraries and, 282–287, 291–292
Clinton administration, 59, 287 original concepts of, 199
CNN, 26, 35 policy directions for, 358–363
Cohill, A., 307–309 political issues and, 265
COINTELPRO (counterintelligence public communication and, 214–219,
programs), 370 225n11
Colli, Ombretta, 217–218 public sphere concept and, 244–249
416 Index

Community networks (cont.) Conflict, 21. See also Activism

RCM and, 200–225 (see also RCM Battle of Kosovo, 159
(Rete Civica di Milano)) Dayton Peace Accord and, 160
reality and, 264–266 deliberative time for, 5
Seattle Community Network (SCN) neofascism and, 52–53
and, 13–14, 302–303, 313–324 Pact for Stability and, 165
Community technology centers (CTCs), process and, 5
93, 153–154 public sphere and, 3–6
CTCNet, 94 resources and, 3
costs of, 185–186 slow food movement and, 48–53
cybercafés and, 185 U.S. and, 38
Mexico and, 185–197 WTO Seattle meeting and, 2–3, 237
microbanks and, 190–197 Yugoslavia and, 159–160
Compaq, 33–34 Convergence, 27
Competition, 29 Copyleft, 340
CompuServe, 34, 263 Copyright
“Computer-Mediated Communication books and, 289–290
and the American Collectivity: copyleft and, 340
The Dimensions of Community Digital Millennium Copyright Act
within Cyberspace” (Fernback and (1998), 294
Thompson), 275–276 fair use and, 293–295
Computer Professionals for Social intellectual property rights and, 25,
Responsibility (CPSR), vii, 313–317 56–57, 293–295, 340
Computers, 203–204 WIPO and, 295
abstraction and, 260–262 Costa Rica, 196
computer-crime laws and, 115–116 CounterMedia, 328
CTCs and, 93–94, 153–154, 185–197 CTCNet, 94
domination by, 266–267 Cuba, 38
human intellect and, 45–46 Cultural issues, 238
Internet and, 19–42 (see also Internet) advertising and, 68–71
libraries and, 285–286 Amsterdam Public Digital Culture and,
literacy of, 56 111–135
mind amplification and, 260–277 Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV)
Moore’s Law and, 44–47, 88–89 and, 302–313, 322–324
public computing and, 86–110 (see De Balie and, 112, 116
also Public computing) Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135
third-world countries and, 22 “good life” and, 43–65
Toledo study and, 95–110 identity rights and, 74–75
U.S. dominance of, 32–37 infotainment and, 54–56
word processing and, 260 media and, 25–26 (see also Media)
Computer-supported cooperative work microbanks and, 190–197
(CSCW), 202–204 monotonic U.S. and, 51–52
Concentration, 28–29 Paradiso and, 112, 114
Index 417

reassessment of technology and, South America and, 142–144, 152–157

253–277 Democracy in America (de Tocqueville),
Seattle Community Network (SCN) 275, 280
and, 302–303, 313–324 Democrats, 63
slow food movement and, 48–53, 55, Deregulation, 28
58, 60, 62 Descartes, René, 257–259
South America and, 137–158 Deutsche TeleKom, 29
time and, 52 Digital Citizen, 120, 123
WTO and, 2–3 Digital City (DDS), 111–112, 135,
Yugoslavia and, 159–183 208, 360
Customer service, 55 corporatization and, 125–129, 132
Cybercultures Reader (Bell and Kennedy), democracy and, 128–134
301 ICT technology and, 122
Cyberspace. See also Internet identity and, 120–125
Amsterdam Public Digital Culture and, response to,1 16–118
111–135 social contract for, 119–120
Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) success of, 117–120
and, 302–313, 322–324 Virtual Platform and, 130–131
mind amplification and, 260–277 Digital divide
Seattle Community Network (SCN) balancing of, 59–60
and, 313–324 Clinton administration and, 287–288
spatialization of, 111–112 concept of, 85–88
Cyberspace: First Steps (Benedikt), 301 content and, 288–289
CTCs and, 93–94, 153–154, 185–197
D6 method, 359 Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135
Dain, Phyllis, 284 ethnicity and, 92–93
Database market, 33 human rights and, 79–80
Day, Peter, vii-x, 1–16, 353–375, 408 Indymedia and, 339
Dayton Peace Accord, 160 information poverty and, 287–288
De Balie, 112, 116, 131 libraries and, 285–287
Deep Dish, 329 Mexico and, 185–197
Dell Computer, 33–34, 37 Open Source software and, 57–58
Democracy, 30–31, 74. See also Political policy directions for, 356–358
issues public computing and, 86–110
Amsterdam Public Digital Culture and, social processes and, 88–89
111–135 Toledo study and, 95–110
community networks and, 271–277 universal service and, 295–297
Digital City and, 128–134 U.S. and, 19–25
globalization and, 249 Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Indymedia and, 325–352 (1998), 294
libraries and, 282–283 Digital Opportunity Investment
media and, 342–344 (see also Media) Trust Act, 57
public computing and, 88–89 Digital Promise Project, 56–57, 286
418 Index

Digitization, 27 Mexico and, 185–197

microbanks and, 190–197 microbanks and, 190–197
public computing and, 97 (see also monopolies, 54–57, 355
Public computing) NAFTA/FTAA, 41
“Directions and Implications of new world order and, 20, 38–39
Advanced Computing” (DIAC), vii-viii Open Source software and, 57–58
Direct lines, 216–219 poverty and, 20–23
Disease, 231 privatization and, 28, 54, 113,
Disney studios, 70 240–241, 250n7
Dodd, Chris, 57 reverse-flow capital and, 30
Dow Jones, 26, 35 Russia and, 31
Drugs, 231 Seattle Community Network (SCN)
DSL access, 34 and, 319, 321–322
Dyer-Witheford, N., 344, 347 slow food movement and, 48–53, 55,
60, 62
EarthLink, 35 transnational corporations and,
Economic issues, 354 23–24, 355
advertising and, 25–26, 29–30 U.S. influence and, 19–42
Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) WTO and, 2–3
and, 304, 312 E-democracy project, 265
brands and, 25 Education. See Schools
CIA scenarios and, 39–40 Electoral process, 290–292
competition and, 29 Electronic citizens’ networks. See
computer costs and, 22 Networks
concentration and, 28–29 Electronic Freedom of Information
CTCs and, 185–186 Act, 293
deregulation and, 28 Electronic music, 114
Digital City and, 111–112, 116–117, Ellul, Jacques, 257, 265
125–129 El Salvador, 188, 196
digital divide and, 19–25 E-mail, 217, 265
East Asian crisis (1997), 235 Empire (Hardt & Negri), 281
education and, 239–241 Enlightenment Project, 257–259
electronics costs and, 113 Enron, 343
entertainment industry and, 25 Enterprise resource planning (ERP),
foundations, 207–209, 223, 288 33
GDP, 21, 24–25, 37, 69 Entertainment
globalization and, 230, 325 (see also Hollywood, 25–26, 30
Globalization) “infotainment”, 29–30, 54–56, 68–71,
“good life” and, 43–65 265, 271–272
Hacktic group and, 115 product placement and, 70–71
illegal access and, 234–235 U.S. influence and, 35–36
IMF, 21, 25, 39, 236, 325, 355 E-Rate, 91, 295
media and, 25–26, 342–344 Ethernet, 262
Index 419

Ethics France Telecom, 29

advertising and, 68–71 Franciscan Research and Ecological
digital divide and, 19–25, 59–60 (see Promotion Center (CIPFE), 148
also Digital divide) Franklin, Benjamin, 283
Internet filters and, 295–297 Fraser, Nancy, 4, 347
libraries and, 282–287 Freedom of Access to Information and
poverty and, 20–23 Free Expression (FAIFE), 288
public sphere and, 3–6 Freedom of Information Act, 76, 293
reassessment of technology and, Free nets, 199
253–277 Free software, 57–58, 60, 62, 193
Ethnicity, 92–93, 96, 99, 101 Free speech, 74
Europe, vii, 30, 37 Free Speech TV, 329
advertising and, 69 FT Global 500, 24, 32–37
economic level of, 24 Fujitsu, 34
Pact for Stability and, 165 Fuller, R. Buckminster, 268
slow food movement and, 48–53, 55, FUST program, 188
60, 62
unification and, 236 G7 Countries, 21, 39, 41
European Community Internet, 117 Gage, John, 57
European Convention for the Galactic Hackers Party, 114
Protection of Human Rights and Galileo, 257–258
Fundamental Freedoms, 72 Gandhi, 73
European Union, 37–38, 295, 331 Garcia, David, 328
Exclusion, 4 Gatekeeper model, 27
Gates Foundation, 91, 93
Faculty, The, 71 Gathering and International
Fair use, 293–295 Transmission of News treaty, 76
Fat Bits, 260 Geocities.com, 127
FCB, 69 Germany, 34
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), GILAT program, 188
370 Gillgren, Ken, 315
Federal Communications Commission Global Business Dialogue, 76
(FCC), 28, 31, 334–335 Globalization, 65, 250–251
Fernback, Jan, 275–276 advertising and, 68–71
Filtering, 295–297 beginnings of, 229–230
Finquelievich, Susana, 10, 137–158, from below, 78
360, 409 bipolarity and, 61–64
Fishkin, James, 280 CIA scenarios and, 39–40
Flint, Joost, 132 communication and, 25–31
Florian, Francesco, 208 convergence and, 27
Food, 21. See also Slow food movement core features of, 23–25
Forster, E. M., 271 digital divide and, 19–25 (see also
Foundations, 207–209, 223, 288 Digital divide)
420 Index

Globalization (cont.) Government. See also Political issues

disease and, 231 computer-crime laws and, 115–116
future and, 374–375 CTCs and, 93–94
Global Development Portal and, electoral process and, 290–292
185–186 information and, 292–293
“good life” and, 43–65 public computing and, 91, 93,
heterogeneity of, 237 98–104, 109
Indymedia and, 325–352 GPO Access Act, 293
knowledge and, 237–244 Greenpeace, 344
libraries and, 285–287 Groot, Hapee de, 118, 128
Mexico and, 185–197 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 21
Open Source software and, 57–58 advertising and, 69
patents and, 22 Ireland, 37
People’s Global Action and, 325–326 U.S. and, 24–25
policy directions for, 356–358 Grossman, Lawrence K., 56–57
political issues and, 30–31, 74–81 Groves, Randy, 315
(see also Political issues) GTE Internetworking, 37
poverty and, 20–23 Guatemala, 196
privatization and, 28 Gutenberg Elegies (Birkerts), 261
public opinion and, 235–236
public sphere concept and, 244–249 Habermas, Jürgen, 3–5
resistance to, 2–3, 44, 48–53, 60–61, communication and, 273–274
156, 325–326 (see also Activism) community networks and, 152–153
reverse-flow capital and, 30 libraries and, 284–285
slow food movement and, 48–53, 55, public sphere and, 243, 245–246,
58, 60, 62 345–346
South America and, 137–158 Hackers, 113–114, 328
surveillance and, 230 computer-crime laws and, 115–116
transnational corporations and, Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135
23–24 Hacktic group, 115–116, 134n4
unification and, 236–237 Hague, The, 176–177
U.S. dominance and, 31–42, Hall, P., 90
232–233, 237 Hamelink, Cees J., 8, 67–81, 358, 409
utopian hopes for, 67–68 Hardt, M., 281
Yugoslavia and, 159–183 Harrison, Phil, 315
Global-justice movement (GJM), 326, Havel, Vaclav, 279
330, 332, 337–338 Headwaters Video Collective, 329
Global Trends 2015, 40 Health issues, 231, 253, 256
God, 259 Hedgepath, Roger, 305
Gödel, Chris, 132 Herndon, Sheri, 334
Go.ItiRA, 373–374 Heterick, Robert, 304
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 31 Hewlett-Packard, 32–34
Gore, Al, 68 Hilfiger, Tommy, 71
Index 421

Hoeksteen, 115 innovations for, 336–342

Hollywood, 25–26, 30 locals of, 331–333, 350n2
Holmback, Heather, 315 methods of, 326–336
@Home, 36 mission statement of, 333
Honduras, 196 open publishing and, 340
Hoovers Online, 32 organizer role and, 338
HotWired webzine, 268 principles of, 333–336
Hughes, Phil, 315 social movement practices of, 327–331
Human Development Report (UNDP), unity challenges and, 338–339
22–23, 356 virtual public spheres and, 345–348
Human rights world branches of, 332–333
billboard society and, 72–75 Infineon, 37
computer-crime laws and, 115–116 INFOCENTROS, 188
control and, 241–242 Information and communication
Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135 technology (ICT), vii-viii
education and, 239–240 action agenda for, 297–299
Gandhi and, 73 advertising and, 29–30
governance issues and, 75–81 brands and, 25
International Bill of Rights and, 73–75 China and, 41
poverty and, 20–23 CIA scenarios and, 39–40
Radio B92 and, 161–183 civic-mindedness and, 279–282
right to dignity and, 79 community technology centers (CTCs)
standards for, 72–75, 79–80 and, 93–94, 153–154, 185–197
Universal Declaration of Human competition and, 29
Rights, 67, 79, 81, 335 Conference on the Freedom of
universal service and, 295–297 Information, 76
utopia and, 67–68 control and, 241
Huxley, Aldous, 271 copyleft and, 340
Hynix Semiconductor, 37 copyright and, 289–290, 293–295
creativity and, 237–238
IBM, 32–34, 37, 70 cyberspace and, 19–42 (see also
IDRC, 192 Internet)
Ikea, 71 deregulation and, 28
ILO, 344 Digital City and, 116–135
Independent Sector, 297 digital divide and, 85–110 (see also
India, 22, 233–235 Digital divide)
Indymedia, 14, 349–352, 367 Digital Promise Project and, 56–57
copyleft and, 340 electoral process and, 290–292
decision making and, 337 Electronic Freedom of Information
digital divide and, 339 Act, 293
global-justice movement and, 326, explosion of, 1–2
330, 332, 337–338 filtering and, 295–297
growth of, 327, 332–333 future and, 374–375
422 Index

Information and communication U.S. influence and, 29–30

technology (ICT) (cont.) Institute of Noetic Sciences, 269
globalization and, 25–26, 229–251 Institute of the Third World (ITeM),
(see also Globalization) 145, 147
government and, 91, 93, 292–293 Intel Corporation, 32–33, 44–46
GPO Access Act, 293 Intellectual property rights (IPR), 25
hype and, 229–230 copyleft and, 340
illegal access and, 234–235 copyright wars and, 56–57
Indymedia and, 325–352 fair use and, 293–295
Information Society World Summit patents, 22
and, 354–355 WIPO and, 295
media and, 2, 342–344 (see also Media) Inter American Development Bank, 191
mediation and, 289–920 International Bill of Rights, 73–75
Mexico and, 185–197 International Chamber of Commerce,
microbanks and, 190–197 70
mind amplification and, 260–277 International Code of Advertising
navigation and, 229–230 Practices, 70
networks, 237–244 (see also Networks) International Covenant on Civil and
new world order and, 20, 38–39 Political Rights, 72
open publishing and, 335–336, 340 International Covenant on Economic,
Open Source software and, 57–58 Social, and Cultural Rights, 72
policy directions for, 91, 93, 353–375 International Declaration of Human
privatization and, 28 Rights, 287
public computing and, 86–110 International Federation of Library
reverse-flow capital and, 30 Associations (IFLA), 288
semiotic world construction and, 26 International Human Rights Regime
skills and, 55–56 (IHRR), 8
social capital and, 154–156 International Monetary Fund (IMF),
South America and, 137–158 21, 25, 39, 236, 325, 355
success of, 370–374 International Programme for the
Toledo study and, 95–110 Development of Communication
transnational companies and, 24 (IPDC), 76
trends in, 27–31 Internet
truth and, 255 activism and, 233
universal service and, 295–297 advertising and, 68–71
user demographics, 90–92 as alternate media, 325–352 (see also
U.S. influence in, 19–42 Media)
utopia and, 68 backbone suppliers and, 36–37
wireless technology and, 36 Cisco and, 34
Yugoslavia and, 159–183 content and, 288–289
Infotainment, 265, 271–272 control and, 238, 241–242
advertising and, 68–71 copyright wars and, 56–57
technology and, 54–56 CTCs and, 93–94, 153–154, 185–197
Index 423

Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135 Juniper Networks, 34

digital divide and, 19–25 (see also Jupiter Research, 35
Digital divide)
dot-com deaths and, 55 Kaczynski, Theodore, 48
electoral process and, 291–292 Keck, M., 368–369, 371–372
filters, 295–297 Kelly, Kevin, 267–268
Hacktic group and, 115 Kennedy, B., 301
hype of, 229–230 Kesey, Ken, 267
illegal access to, 234–235 Kidd, Dorothy, 329–330
infotainment and, 54–56 King, Mel, 314
messaging, 35 Kinne, David, 313, 318
potential of, 55 Knapp, John W. Jr., 303, 305
Radio B92 and, 162, 166 Kohavision, 176
skills and, 55–56 Kranich, Nancy, 13, 279–299, 365–366,
social capital and, 59 409–410
South America and, 137–158 KTA Corporation, 114
space privatization and, 54 Kurzweil, Ray, 47–48
Sun Microsystems and, 33
surfing, 59 Labor, 21
television and, 268–269 LaClau, E., 346
universal service and, 295–297 Laden, Osama bin, 233
U.S. influence and, 32 LambdaMOO, 302
virtual communities and, 58–59 La P.C.Ra project, 148
WTO and, 233 Lasers, 253
InternetMCI, 37 League of Slow Cities, 49–50
Iperbole, 130 Legal issues, 285–286
Ireland, 37 ACLU v. Reno, 296
Islamic Council of Europe, 72 Children’s Internet Protection Act,
Italy. See also RCM (Rete Civica di 295–296
Milano) Communications Decency Act, 296
slow food movement and, 48–53, 55, computer-crime laws and, 115–116
60, 62 copyleft and, 340
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 294
Jacky, Jon, 314 FAIFE and, 288
Janjic, Vlada, 172 Freedom of Information Act, 76, 293
Japan, 24, 30, 34, 37 Gathering and International
Japan Telecom, 36 Transmission of News treaty, 76
JAVA, 33 global-justice movement and,
Al Jazeera, 232–233 326–327, 330, 332, 337–338
Jefferson, Thomas, 283 GPO Access Act and, 293
Journalism, 272, 280 intellectual property and, 25, 56–57,
Indymedia and, 325–352 293–295, 340
Joy, Bill, 46–48 International Bill of Rights and, 73–75
424 Index

Legal issues (cont.) Matic, Veran, 10, 159–183, 361,

Internet filters and, 295–297 410–411
Magna Carta, 72 McCann-Erickson, 69
participatory foundations, 207–209 McComas, James, 305
pipe ownership and, 129 McConnell, Brian, 297–298
piracy, 113–114, 328 McCook, Kathleen de la Peña, 284
Radio B92 and, 162–170 McDonalds, 48, 53, 70
technological protection measures, 294 McLuhan, Marshall, 67–68, 261–262
Telecommunications Act (1996), 28, Media, 230
91, 287, 295 advertising and, 68–71
Lessig, Lawrence, 56 billboard society and, 68–71
Libraries, 91, 93, 366 computers and, 32–37
civil liberties and, 297–298 customer service and, 55
community networks and, 202–203, Digital City and, 125–129
292 education and, 239–241
digital age and, 285–286 entertainment, 25–26, 30, 35–36
electoral process and, 291–292 globalization and, 31–32, 231 (see also
IFLA and, 288 Globalization)
increased book publication and, Internet and, 35–37
289–290 monopolies, 54–55
as information commons, 282–285 privatization, 28, 54, 113, 240–241,
Internet filters and, 295–296 250n7
Mexico and, 185, 188 slow food movement and, 48–53, 55
public access and, 286–287 U.S. dominance and, 31–42
public computing and, 101, 104 wireless, 36
Seattle Community Network (SCN) Ad Busters and, 335
and, 315–316, 319 advertising and, 25–26, 29–30, 68–71
Linux, 57, 58 Amsterdam Public Digital Culture and,
Lovink, Geert, 9–10, 410 111–135
Amsterdam Public Digital Culture and, BBC and, 20, 28
111–135 Bush and, 343
globalization and, 328 commercialization and, 29–30
public sphere and, 359–360 community networks and, 210–211
Lucent, 34 conglomerates, 342–344
Luddism, 48, 50, 52 copyright wars and, 56–57
cultural effects and, 25–26
Machine Stops, The (Forster), 271 damage to, 271–277
Macintosh, 260–262 decentralization and, 342–344
Madison, James, 283 Digital City and, 111–112
Magna Carta, 72 economic issues and, 342–344
Markets. See also Economic issues empires, 2
Martin, Cortney V., 310 FCC liberalization of, 31
Mathews, David, 280 globalization and, 25–26
Index 425

increased book publication and, schools and, 185, 188

289–290 United Nations and, 188–189
Indymedia and, 325–352 (see also wireless networks and, 187, 193–194
Indymedia) World Bank and, 185–186
influence of, 25–26, 232–233 Michels, Roberto, 338
infotainment and, 29–30, 54–56, Microbanks, 190–197
68–71, 265, 271–272 Microsoft, 32–33, 36–37, 58, 71
internationalization of, 29–30 Milan Community Network. See RCM
journalism and, 272, 280 (Rete Civica di Milano)
KTA Corporation and, 114 Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, The, 268
military and, 39 Milosevic, Slobodan, 159–160, 173, 177
online financial news and, 35 MindSpring, 35
open publishing and, 335–336, 340 Minow, Newton N., 56–57
Press Freedom Conference and, 334, MIT Media Lab, 86
342 MNBC, 35
Radio B92 and, 161–183 Molz, Redmond Kathleen, 284
Reclaim the Media Conference and, Money Gram, 186
342 Monopolies, 54–57, 355
reverse-flow capital and, 30 Montevideo, 114, 131
South America and, 137–158 Moore’s Law, 44–47, 88–89
trends in, 27–31 Moravec, Hans, 47
Underground Publishing Conference Morris, Douglas, 14, 325–352, 367, 411
and, 342 Morris, Robert, 305
U.S. influence and, 31–42 Mouffe, C., 346
utopian ideology and, 68 MTV, 71
virtual public spheres and, 345–348 MUDs (Multi-User Domains), 244, 302
Yugoslavia and, 159–183 Multimania, 127
Media and Modernity, The: A Social Mumford, Enid, 219
Theory of the Media (Thompson), 2 Mumford, Lewis, 257, 265
Mediamatic, 114 Music, 114
MediaOne, 27, 36 Muslims, 62, 72, 175
Meilof, Nina, 118–122 “Mythinformation” (Winner), 265
MERCOSUR, 137, 157n1
Metaphysics, 256–257 NAFTA/FTAA, 41
Mexico, 62 Namioka, Aki, 315
community currency and, 193 Napster, 56
CTCs and, 185–197 National Coalition Against Censorship,
debit cards and, 193 296–297
Global Development Portal and, Nationalism, 247
185–186 National Science Foundation, 57
libraries and, 185, 188 National Telecommunications and
microbanks and, 190–197 Information Administration (NTIA),
political issues and, 186–189 85–87, 90, 92, 96
426 Index

NATO, 181 Nike, 71

NBC TV, 70 Nilsen, Richard, 268
NEC, 34 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell), 271
Negri, A., 281 Nongovernment organizations
Negroponte, Nicholas, 68 (NGOs), 231
Neofascism, 52–53 Indymedia and, 340
Neohumanism, 53 microbanks and, 190–197
Nestlé, 235 Radio B92 and, 161–183
Networks, ix South America and, 139–152
advertising and, 68–71 Noosphere, 67
Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV), Nortel, 34
13–14, 302–313, 322–324 NTT, 36
community, 199–225 (see also Nuclear power, 253–254
Community networks)
democracy and, 129–134 OECD countries, 21, 24
Digital City, 111–112, 116–135 Öffentlichkeit. See Public sphere
globalization and, 229–251 (see also Ogilvy & Mather, 69
Globalization) Oliver, Sharma, 315
Hacktic group, 115 One World, 168
Indymedia, 325–352 Open money, 193
Internet backbone and, 36–37 Open publishing, 335–336, 340
knowledge and, 237–244 Open Source software, 57–58, 60,
network effect and, 124 62, 235
NGONET, 145 Oracle, 32–33
policy directions for, 353–375 Orwell, George, 271
Seattle Community Network (SCN), “Our Global Neighborhood” (The
13–14, 302–303, 313–324 Commission on Global Governance), 1
slow food movement and, 48–53,
55, 58 Pact for Stability, 165
South America and, 137–158 Palo Alto Online, 269
success of, 370–374 Paper Tiger, 329
virtual reality and, 58–59, 262–277 Paradiso, 112, 114, 131
wireless, 36, 86, 187, 193–194 Park TV, 115
Yugoslavia and, 159–183 Patents, 22
New Information Commons “Pattern Language for Living
Conference, 282 Communication” (Schuler), 372–373
News Corporation, 30 Paunovic, Gordan, 172
Newsgroups, 217 Pearson, 30
Newton, Isaac, 256–259 Pebbles project, 182
New world economic order (NWEO), Penley, P., 301–302
20, 38–39 People’s Global Action (PGA),
NGONET, 145 325–326, 329
Nicaragua, 196 Peru, 195
Index 427

Peterson, Giles, 172 Pact for Stability and, 165

Petrini, Carlo, 48–49, 54 policy directions for, 354–356
Pew Internet and American Life poverty and, 20–23
reports, 85 public computing and, 88–89, 91, 93
Pew Public Internet Project, 93 Radio B92 and, 161–183
Pipe ownership, 129 Russia and, 31
Piracy, 113–114, 328 Seattle Community Network (SCN)
Playing to Win, 89 and, 302–303, 313–324
Playstations, 57 social capital and, 154–156
Podunavac, Boza, 172 South America and, 142–144,
Polder model. See Amsterdam Public 152–157
Digital Culture Toffler on, 68
Political issues universal service and, 295–297
advertising and, 71 U.S. dominance and, 37–42
Americanization and, 30 WTO and, 2–3
Amsterdam Public Digital Culture and, Yugoslavia and, 159–183
111–135 Pornography, 295–297
Berlin Wall and, 113 Postman, Neil, 274
bipolar views and, 61–64 Poverty, 20–23
Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) advertising and, 69
and, 302–313, 322–324 digital divide and, 287–288 (see also
CIA scenarios and, 39–40 Digital divide)
community networks and, 265, increase of, 69
271–277 public computing and, 91
democratization and, 30–31 (see also Pozzi, Lorraine, 315
Democracy) Press Freedom Conference, 334, 342
Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135 Privatization, 28, 54, 113, 240–241,
digital divide and, 59–60 250n7
Digital Promise Project and, 56–57 Public Agenda, 280
electoral process and, 290–292 Public computing
European unification and, 236 commercial, 106–107
globalization and, 229–234 (see also community networks and, 104–106,
Globalization) 199–225 (see also Community
governance and, 75–81 networks)
hackers and, 113–116 community technology centers (CTCs)
human rights and, 72–75 and, 93–94, 153–154, 185–197
Indymedia and, 325–352 comparison data on, 86–88
media and, 342–344 (see also Media) democracy and, 88–89
Mexico and, 185–197 Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135
monopolies and, 355 digitization and, 97
nationalism and, 247 ethnicity and, 92–93, 96, 99, 101
NWICO and, 38–39 Global Development Portal and,
Open Source software and, 57–58 185–186
428 Index

Public computing (cont.) program concept of, 174–178

government and, 91, 93, 100–104, 109 publishing and, 177–178
libraries and, 91, 93, 101, 104 resistance methods of, 163–170
Mexico and, 185–197 short message services (SMS) and, 168
model cities for, 94–95 RCM (Rete Civica di Milano), 362–363
poverty levels and, 91 civic engagement and, 205–206
schools and, 91, 93, 102–103, 107 computer-supported cooperative work
Seattle and, 94–95 (CSCW) and, 202–203
social capital and, 154–156 educational projects and, 211–214
social environment of, 89–90 evaluation of, 206–207
South America and, 137–158 goals of, 200–201
Toledo study and, 95–110 individual contributions and, 209
user demographics, 90–94 participatory design and, 203–205,
Yugoslavia and, 159–183 207–209
Public key infrastructure (PKI), 192 public communication and, 214–219
Public sphere, 3–6, 186 social effects of, 221–223
concept of, 244–249 universities and, 201–203
creativity and, 237–238 volunteer projects and, 210–211
damage to, 271–277 Reagan administration, 20, 28, 38–39,
future and, 374–375 355–356
globalization and, 229–251 (see also Reclaim the Media Conference, 342
Globalization) Red Cientifica Peruana, 191
libraries and, 282–287 Register, Judy, 292
policy directions for, 353–375 Reinder Rustema, 132–133
popular opinion and, 245 Republicans, 63
reassessment of technology and, Resnick, Paul, 314
253–277 Resources, 3
virtual media and, 345–348 Reuters, 26, 35
Putin, Vladimir, 31 Reverse-flow capital, 30
Putnam, Robert, 59, 275, 279, 281, Rheingold, Howard, 12–13, 411
284 public sphere and, 152–153
reassessment of progress and,
Quasimodo, Salvatore, 53 253–277
technical determinism and, 364–365
Rabotnik, 115 virtual community and, 119
Radio, 114, 230 Riemens, Patrice, 9–10, 111–135,
Radio B92, 160–161, 265 359–360, 411
contributions of, 180–183 Road Runner, 36
Documentation Center, 176 Robinson, Scott S., 10–11, 185–197,
future of, 179–180 361, 411–412
Internet and, 162, 166 Rosenberg, Madelyn, 309
Pebbles project, 182 Ross, A., 301–302
present state of, 171–174, 178–179 Russia, 20, 22, 31, 43
Index 429

SALTO, 115 upgrades to, 319–320

Sanitation, 21 Seattle Independent Media Center. See
Saturnini, Paolo, 49 Indymedia
Scandanavia, 20 Seattle Statement, 220
Schools, 208 SECIU (University Central Service of
advertising and, 70 Computer Science), 145
Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) Secrist, Ronald, 304–305
and, 303–306, 308, 312–313 Semiconductor Manufacturing
community networks and, 201–203, Company, 37
211–214 September 11 attacks, 3, 19, 40, 62,
CTCs and, 185 231–232, 331, 343
economic issues and, 239–241 Seselj, Vojislav, 163
Internet filters and, 295–296 Shannon, Claude, 261
La P.C.Ra project and, 148 Short message services (SMS), 168, 218
Mexico and, 185, 188 Siemens, 34
Open Source software and, 58 Sikkink, K., 368–369, 371–372
privatization and, 240–241 Silver, David, 13–14, 301–324, 366, 412
public computing and, 86–88, 91, 93, Singapore, 37
102–103, 107 Sleeping Giant, 329
Schuler, Douglas, vii-x, 412 Slow food movement, 48–53, 55, 58,
community networks and, 314–315, 60, 62
320 Social capital, 59, 279–281
“Pattern Language” project and, Social Dimensions of Engineering,
372–373 Science and Technology (SDEST), x
policy assessment and, 1–16 Social issues
public sphere and, 353–375 academics and, vii-viii
Scopri il Tesoro (Discover the Treasure), Amsterdam Public Digital Culture and,
212–213 111–135
Seattle, city of Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV)
libraries and, 284, 315–316 and, 302–313, 322–324
Matic statement and, 161–163 civic engagement and, 205–206
public computing and, 94–95 community networks and, 199–225
WTO meeting and, 2–3, 237 (see also Community networks)
Seattle Community Network (SCN), Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135
13–14, 366 digital divide and, 19–25 (see also
BaseCamp Seattle and, 320–321 Digital divide)
CPSR and, 313–317 electoral process and, 290–292
economic issues and, 319, 321–322 globalization and, 229–251 (see also
forum of, 318–319 Globalization)
growth of, 319–322 “good life” and, 43–65
libraries and, 319 governance for, 75–81, 260–277
Schuler and, 320 human redundancy and, 46–47
Seattle Public Library and, 315–316 ICT explosion and, 1–2
430 Index

Social issues (cont.) Taylor, Jim, 315–316

increasing complexity of, 2–3 TBWA International, 69
libraries and, 282–287 TCI, 36
nationalism and, 247 Technoculture (Penley & Ross), 301–302
policy directions for, 353–375 Technoglobalism, 43
public computing and, 86–110 Technological protection measures
reassessment of technology and, (TPMs), 294
253–277 Technology
right to equal participation and, 74 automobile, 253
Seattle Community Network (SCN) autonomous, 44
and, 302–303, 313–324 bipolar views on, 61–64
social capital and, 59, 279–281 Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV)
slow food movement and, 48–53, 55, and, 302–313, 322–324
58, 60, 62 community technology centers (CTCs)
terrorism, 3, 19, 40, 62, 231–232, 331, and, 93–94, 153–154, 185–197
343, 346 competition and, 29
Toledo study and, 85–110 concentration and, 28–29
utopian ideologies and, 67–68 convergence and, 27
Society for Old and New Media, 131 dangers of, 254–262
Software Business Alliance, 76 digital, 27, 70–71
Solidarity Uruguay, 147 Digital City and, 122
Somnambulism, 260–261, 268 “good life” and, 43–65
Sony, 30, 57 governance and, 75–81
SOS Drugs Milan, 210 human redundancy and, 46–47
Source, The, 262–263 human rights and, 79–80
Speak Easy, 329 IBM’s influence and, 33–34
Sprint IP Services, 37 innovation cycle and, 43
Stallard, Hugh, 305, 307 losers and, 257
Star Media Foundation, 148 Luddism and, 48, 50, 52
Star Wars, 313 materialism and, 256–257
Steim, 114, 131 mind amplification and, 260–277
Sterling, Bruce, 124 Moore’s Law and, 44–47, 88–89
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 313 neohumanism and, 53
Street, Jim, 319 power from, 253
Stroup, Liz, 319 Radio B92 and, 162–170
Structural Transformation of the Public reassessment of, 253–277
Sphere, The: An Inquiry into a Category Seattle Community Network (SCN)
of Bourgeois Society (Habermas), 4, 245 and, 302–303, 313–324
Sun Microsystems, 32–33, 46–47 short message services (SMS), 168, 218
Surveillance, 230 slow food movement and, 48–53, 55,
58, 62
Taiwan, 37 South America and, 137–158
Tarrow, S., 347 Toledo study and, 95–110
Index 431

trends in, 27–31 United Nations, 8

truth and, 255 charter of, 72–73
understanding of, 255–259 Conference on the Freedom of
virtual communities and, 262–277 Information, 76
wireless, 36, 86, 187, 193–194 Development Program (UNDP), 20,
Yugoslavia and, 159–183 22–23, 68
Technophobes, 254 Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Telecommunications Act (1996), 28, Organization (UNESCO), 38–39,
91, 287, 295 72–73, 76
Telefónica, 29 Human Development Report, 22–23,
Telegraph, 230 356
Television, 55, 230 human rights and, 67, 72–73, 79, 81,
advertising and, 70 355
cultural issues and, 253–254 Information Society World Summit,
influence of, 232 354–355
Internet and, 268–269 Mexico and, 188–189
Latin America and, 187 WSIS, 76–77
piracy and, 114 United States, vii
public-access, 113 Americanization and, 30
Television B92, 171–176 automobile and, 253
Terrorism, 3, 19, 40, 62, 231–232, 331, billionaires in, 22
343, 346 CIA scenarios and, 39–40
Thatcher administration, 355–356 communism and, 38
Thompson, Brad, 275–276 Congress, 293–294
Thompson, John, 2 Constitution, 287
Thompson, William Irwin, 268 Declaration of Independence, 72
Time Based Arts, 114 democratization and, 30–31
Tito, Josip Broz, 159 Department of Commerce, 91–92
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 275, 280 digital divide and, 59–60
Toffler, Alvin, 68 economic lead of, 23–24, 31–42
Tools for Thought (Rheingold), 269 energy imports and, 41
Toshiba, 37 entertainment industry and, 25–26,
Transistors, 44–46 30, 35–36
Transnational corporations (TNCs), FBI and, 370
23–24, 355 FCC and, 28, 31, 334–335
media and, 25–26 GDP of, 24–25
NWICO and, 38–39 global dominance of, 19–42
U.S. influence and, 31–42 human rights and, 72
TV 3000, 115 Library of Congress, 285, 289
monotonic culture of, 51–52
Unabomber, 48 National Telecommunications and
Underground Publishing Conference, Information Administration, 288
342 NWICO and, 38–39
432 Index

United States (cont.) Wall Street Journal, 26

reverse-flow capital and, 30 Wal-Mart, 54
slow food movement and, Washington Ceasefire, 318
48–53, 55 Wells, Gladys Ann, 292
space privatization and, 54 Western Union, 186
Supreme Court, 294 Whale and the Reactor, The (Winner), 265
time and, 52 Whole Earth Catalog (Brand), 43
UNESCO and, 38–39 Whole Earth Lectronic Link (WELL),
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 262–264, 302
67, 79, 81, 335 Whole Earth Review, 267–268
Universal service, 295–297 Wiencko, Joesph, 304–305
Uruguay Williams, Kate, 8–9, 85–110, 359, 412
democracy and, 152–157 Winner, Langdon, 253, 255, 265, 269
ICT and, 144–150 Wired magazine, 46–47, 267–269
NGOs and, 144–152 Wireless networks, 36, 86, 187, 193–194
Utopian ideology, 67–68 Word processing, 260
UUNet, 37 WordStar, 260
World Bank, 236, 325
V2, 131 Global Development Portal and,
van den Bessalaar, Peter, 360 185–186
van den Bosch, Kees, 121 policy directions for, 355, 363–364
VECINET, 147 U.S. influence and, 21, 25, 39, 41
Vieira, Litz, 156 WorldCom, 37
Virgin, 71 World Economic Forum, 57
Virginia Tech, 303–306, 308, 312–313 World International Property
Virtual communities. See also Organization (WIPO), 295
Community networks WorldNet, 35
Amsterdam Public Digital Culture and, World Summit on Sustainable
111–135 Development, 331
Chaos Computer Club, 114 World Trade Organization (WTO), 2–3,
democracy and, 129–134 236–237, 325
Digital City and, 111–112, 116–135 advertising and, 75–76
Hacktic group and, 115 Internet and, 233
Rheingold on, 119 policy directions for, 355
social contract for, 119–120 U.S. influence and, 25, 39, 41
South America and, 137–158
Virtual Community, The (Rheingold), Xerox PARC, 262, 267, 269, 313
264, 266, 269, 302
Virtual Platform, 130–131 Yahoo!, 32–33, 35, 71
Virtual Reality (Rheingold), 267, Yankelovich, Daniel, 280
269 Yeltsin, Boris, 31
Vision 2020, 234 Young & Rubicam, 69, 71
Vivendi, 30 Young, I., 346–347
Index 433

Yugoslavia (former)
conflicts in, 159–160
Dayton Peace Accord and, 160
Matic statement and, 161–163
Pact for Stability and, 165
Radio B92 and, 161–183
short message services (SMS) and, 168
Tito and, 159

Zapatistas, 62, 328