Urbana Free Library FTF,
Sascha Meinrath LEEP,
& Information age: key concepts
October 8, 2009
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1. What is Community Informatics
• CI: the study or practice regarding the continuity of
local, historical communities meeting the transformation
of information technologies
• Libraries by reinventing themselves (I&R, job centers,
OPACs) invented community networks (made of siliconplus-carbon)
• From social informatics comes three key ideas: network
society, hacker ethic, and digital inequality
…the LOCAL community is the central focus here
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2. Community: ‘Race’, place and history
1. Science says, One race, the human race. Our species has
always migrated, our differences are within group not
between group. No one trait is found across a group.
2. Racism is real … What to do? Stay educated (on past,
present, future) … Practice diversity in curriculum,
profession, library
3. Class: an emergent phenomenon, as well as a categorical
or positional reality, thanks to techno-economic changes
4. Root Shock: Severing people’s connections to places.
“The traumatic stress reaction to destruction of one’s
emotional ecosystem.” Mass upheavals have ripple
effect. Solution: Acknowledge. Create healing places.
Displacement the 21st C problem.
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5. ‘Damned by ourselves, saved by community.’
3. Dig Div, Community as network
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Dig Div: a fxn of the information revolution. Persistent,
multidimensional & changing. CI solutions mean a)
communities not individuals b) seeking sustainability
2. Society ≠ Individuals … Society = Ties !
3. Wellman/Leighton: Urbanization brings…
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Community found/strong nhood networks?
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Community lost/no networks?
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Community liberated/metropolitan networks?
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[Q: where do space and time go in SN theory?]
4. Coleman: Closed networks build social capital
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So do open networks! e.g. Murchison Center
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3a. Network models
groups as nodes
strong & weak ties…
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dense and sparse networks
4. UC2B: more on Above Ground
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UC2B: 36 million in stimulus/other funds. 2 cities + univ. Fiber laid across cities,
100 Mbps to 137 critical anchor institutions, 5 Mbps to 2500+ homes in 12 lowbroadband census tracts. Above ground, support for broadband adoption.
UC2B Above Ground, 3+ years, guided by GSLIS:
1. 45 + 1 public computing centers boosted or established
2. Mad Lab in N Champaign (Music Access Digitization), HQ for community helpdesk,
14 outreach/support staff
3. 17 cybernavigators serving 46 ctrs + 12 sectors serving low income people (health, ed,
libs, homeless, seniors, women, disabled, safety, churches, comm ctrs, media/culture)
4. Three course sequence for 50 UI/Parkland/high school students, public video
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Broadband 101 spring: what’s it all about
Broadband 102 summer: paid broadband internships
Broadband 103 fall: community-serving bband entrepreneurship, $50K in awards
UC2B’s community helpdesk
Community advisory committee, research advisory committee, PCCNet
Community first, technology second (CI approach)
Electrician training and business planning for people from underserved areas
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Similarly nationwide 2010-2012; nat’l bband plan by Feb 2010; broadband.gov
Link to entire UC2B application
on City of Champaign site:
http://tinyurl.com/completeUC2B
4a. Community and disaster:
recap to come
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5. Search for bband data, and
virtual community
• A campaign: campus mobilized, reached out to gov, comm  40 volunteers
Navigating the complexities of the grant competition
Found higher rate of broadband take-up  12 block groups eligible
community ? government  campus / corporations (telecoms)
• From the bbs: The curse of grants and the challenge of inequality and difference
• WELL: report from the info rev: virtual comm is possible, personal, gotta feel it
– Virtual community as family & friend support network stands on and builds FTF
• Wikipedia: social norms and technical design enable virtual community growth
from 200 to 200,000 people … to … build an encyclopedia!?!
– A culture e.g. simple rules for people like “Be Bold,” “NPOV” “Nice to newbies” “sofixit”
– A technology e.g. software features like talk page … history … translation
– What should people know about Wikipedia?
– What can we learn for real-world communities?
[commons based peer production,
crowdsourcing]
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• PS: comm vs .com (Spaniards walk & WELLites share vs SN sites as corporations)
6. CUWin (not his actual topic) &
Informatics: Early ideas
• Public interest telecom fighting it out in D.C. with telecoms
– BTOP highly contested. 1956 hushaphone, 1968 carterfone … 90%+ spectrum
unused = artificial scarcity of broadband. $10/unit in LA, $1300/unit in
greenup IL bec market/prices are secret. Ultimately CUWin could not afford
internet connection.
• Vannevar Bush: The Memex. Data trails.
– “A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, must
be stored, and above all much be consulted.”
• Rob Kling: Introducing computer in orgs is a SOCIAL process
– Transformative and conflict-ridden, not formal process run by managers
– A package (hardware/software/skills/users/beliefs), not a tool (hard+software)
– Power a key variable, e.g. formal processes for challenging databases not fair
• Bill Mitchell: City of Bits
– We’ve had CIVITAS (communities of family/culture) and URBS (settled cities).
Now bits erase the tyranny of distance. Will we overcome bondage of
broadband? Who will own our urbs and civitas: .com? .org? Will .gov help?
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Can we design a global village—civitas and urbs on a global scale?
• Dissect the discouragement
• Key concepts of the information age
– Lévy 1997: cyberculture
– Himanen 2001: hacker ethic
– Ludlow 2007: metaverse
Agenda
• About next week – LEEP students on campus
– 9-9:50 in 126 DD lecture: Don Owen, Urbana Schools
– 10-12 move to 131, both CI classes together
– 1-2:20 Phoebe Ayers “Wikipedia, Communities,
Librarians”
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– 2:30-4 LEEP students continue class
What is your public life?
Or does private and personal life swallow you?
• Private sphere (work and education)
1. Hours on the job?
2. Coursework?
• Personal sphere (self, family, friends)
3. What are your home responsibilities and pleasures?
4. What is your window on the world (reading, other)?
• Public sphere (organizations, community, society)
5. What gatherings do you go to and how often? (church plus)
6. What do you write or speak about, what do you contribute?
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