Community Computer Networks:
An Opportunity for Collaboration Among:
Democratic Technology Practitioners and Researchers

Doug Schuler
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

Technology and Democracy - Comparative Perspectives
Oslo, Norway

Published in
Technology and Democracy:
User Involvement in Information Technology
Centre for Technology and Culture, Oslo

January, 1997

"The most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community ... do not split their work from their lives. They seem to take both too seriously to allow such dissaocation, and they want to use each for the enrichment of the other."

        -- C. Wright Mills
           ("The Sociological Imagination", 1959)

Note: For purposes of this essay, a practitioner is one who is actively and primarily involved with the development of community computer networks that are in daily use by citizens. Thus, according to this definition, theoreticians and those developing prototype systems would not be called practitioners. Researchers are social scientists and others who are actively engaged in formalized, rigorous hypothesizing, data collection, and analysis and are generally associated with a college or university. This paper explores how these two largely disjoint groups could work together for mutual benefit without sacrificing the integrity or basic mission of either. Although I consider myself to be both practitioner and researcher it is largely through my practitioner's lenses that this paper is written.

1. Historical Context

Currently the world is experiencing major historical trends that have broad significance for understanding our epoch. At least for Americans, the cold war lay at the core of much of our identity as a nation and its abrupt end was popularly hailed as a "victory" of capitalism over communism. Yet without explicit alternative perspectives (however flawed they might be) it may be difficult to postulate economic, political, and technological models that can more equitably address basic and other needs (including democratic participation) of the world's citizens. The rapid diffusion of technology, too, is an important trend of our age. We see a world considerably shrunken (and shrinking) by communication technology. And there are other trends as well -- clash of cultures; environmental concerns, and economic disparity -- that will likely accelerate in coming years. Understanding these trends and the opportunities and challenges they portend will be key to active engagement on democratic technology issues.

The world is apparently approaching a point where any two people on the planet would be able to communicate at a fairly low cost. Perhaps more significantly, the technology also raises the specter of inexpensive many-to-many communication where groups of people can communicate more directly with each other. A quick look at existing broadcast and person-to-person communication reveals that this development is wholly unprecedented (at least at this scale) and, therefore, represents an unfamiliar communications medium, one in which there are few norms and guidelines. These characteristics suggest that an era of increased democratic participation and public dialogue may be possible utilizing new communication technologies. This paper discusses some of the ongoing work in this area (particularly community networking), the opportunities that exist for collaboration between practitioners and researchers, and some of the challenges that exist, both for effective collaboration to occur and for the future of democratic technology.

2. A Historic Opportunity?

History develops day-by-day, incrementally through an ongoing interplay of thoughts, statements, decisions, actions, and events, many of which are irreversible. Communications technology presents a new spectrum of possibilities in terms of technology applications, policies, and use patterns. The Internet particularly can be thought of as a meta-medium, a medium that can serve as a host for other media. In recent years the Internet has been used as a substrate for analogs of a large number of familiar forms of communication including postal mail, bulletin boards, newspapers, radio, television, telephones, and video and audio conferencing. In addition, a host of hybrids and new forms such as MUDs and MOOs, avatars and virtual worlds, etc. are being postulated and developed all the time.

Clearly researchers will want to understand how these new forms affect people individually (who uses them, to do what, and why?), how they change the nature of small groups and organizations, and what effects the forms are having and could have at broader levels, across traditional boundaries, and at world- wide and transnational levels. But this paper suggests that a stronger, more engaged process is desired. Researchers must actively participate in the development of democratic communication technology. In order to understand why this needs to occur, let us first consider what community networking is (and, briefly, some other forms of community communication technology development) and how prevalent and potentially important it may be.

2.1 Community Networking (and Other Community-Oriented Democratic Technology Projects)

In the US and in other countries there is a popular movement towards developing community networks (also called "Free-Nets" or civic nets) and other varieties of community-oriented networked computer systems. Access to these systems is intentionally provided for free or very inexpensively to encourage use by low-income people who traditionally have little or no access to the media or political processes. Community networks are designed to support community information and communication and, consequently, have less focus on commercial uses. Free (or very inexpensive) access to e-mail, Internet newsgroups, and other Internet resources have traditionally been the hallmark of community networks but many projects are now concentrating on the World Wide Web; working with community organizations to make their information available electronically and promoting access to the web from public access locations like public libraries. Community networks are not as "high-tech" as many other new applications and models but they may be among the most important from the standpoint of democracy.

Community networks promote democracy in a number of different ways including (1) raising issues about control of technology and access; (2) supporting alternative media; (3) supporting civic associations; (4) supporting civic assets (e.g. non-profit organizations); (5) educating people about issues and about technology use; (6) sponsoring public forums on civic and other issues; (6) providing access to government, candidate, and referendum information and issues; (7) providing communication channels to government workers (8) engaging in political work (organizing a rally in opposition to the US "Communications Decency Act" for example); (9) providing access to relevant data and other pertinent information and knowledge; and (10) providing access to civic "stories" (See Sirianni, Friedman, and Schuler, 1995, e.g.) analogous to "citizen schools" of the civil rights movement.

Community networks may also give rise to important side-effects. Hannah Levin (1980) has written that the "struggle to save community may create community." In other words, a community network in and of itself can provide an occasion for shared work and, hence, help build community. Also, if a community network helps with economic development then it will probably alter the amount and effectiveness of democratic participation in that community. Finally, whether or not a community network is even used by many people in a community it can help (in conjunction with other efforts) to re-focus attention on the importance and legitimacy of community affairs.

2.1.1 Other Community Networks

At the first "Ties that Bind" community networking conference in Cupertino, California, in 1993, participants were asked why they were developing community networks. With few exceptions the responses reflected the desire for amelioration of social problems. The problems fell into one of more of the six "core values" ([1] conviviality and culture; [2] education; [3] strong democracy; [4] heath and well- being; [5] economic equity, opportunity, and sustainability; and [6] information and communication) (Schuler, 1996) and each response was built upon increased or improved communication, access to information, and skills.

Although community networks are manifestations of democratic technology they are definitely works in progress. With little in the way of centralized administration or planning there are now hundreds of community network operational or planned projects in the U.S., Canada, and around the world. Many of these systems owe a debt to the now-defunct National Public Telecommunications Network (NPTN) that popularized "Free-Nets" and acted as an important broker for names of people that were interested in establishing community networks in specific locations. Currently no single "community network" paradigm or sustainable model prevails and much of the corporate "libertarian" rhetoric in the states has discouraged any talk of public ownership or sponsorship of the networks. The idea of public ownership (in the U.S.) has few visible advocates and public institutions like libraries and public broadcasting affiliates have been relatively cautious in working with community networking projects.

Because there is little agreement on purpose, shared goals and little organized communication between efforts in different cities or regions, there is a diminished likelihood of widespread acceptance. Few organizers -- in spite of utopian rhetoric -- have, for lack of time or inclination, even defined what they want to achieve or what their principles are. One community networker when pressed for a definition of community networking suggested that community networking was what community networkers did. The Seattle Community Network organizers formalized their objectives in a set of principles (next section) but this is an exception. Moreover the National Public Telecommunications Network (NPTN) founded by Free-Net pioneer Tom Grundner, the nominal umbrella group for Free-Nets has just folded leaving the some two hundred community networks and Free-Nets with no single organization acting in their behalf. (Although an umbrella organization is not sufficient for success. The community radio effort in the U.S. earlier this century that failed in spite of a highly organized American Amateur Radio League presents an ominous and depressing precedent for community media at least in the states.) Although an "Association for Community Networking" is being formed in the U.S. (and may seek international links) it is uncertain what ultimate impact this organization will have and what success it will have linking and strengthening existing efforts. At any rate, this is one area in which researchers could certainly help.

2.1.2 The Seattle Community Network

The Seattle Community Network (SCN) is a major effort in Seattle to develop and maintain a community computer network. Offering free e-mail and some limited access to the Internet, SCN now, after fewer than 3 years, has over 12,000 registered users. Additionally there are several thousand accesses every day to SCN Web resources. As mentioned above, SCN is built upon a set of principles (listed below) and works closely with a number of civic organizations such as the Seattle Public Library. Users can reach the Seattle Community Network from free public access terminals at any branch of the Seattle Public or King County Library, by dialing up from home computers, or via the Internet through either Telnet or a Web browser (http://www.scn.org). As of this writing there are no paid staff members to do any part of the SCN job: over 150 people have participated as volunteers over the years. With little orchestration from the "top" (the board of directors or steering committee) the community has made information available via SCN's web server on all six core values.

SCN Principles

The Seattle Community Network (SCN) is a free public-access computer network for exchanging and accessing information. Beyond that, however, it is a service conceived for community empowerment. Our principles are a series of commitments to help guide the ongoing development and management of the system for both the organizers and participating individuals and organizations.

Commitment to Access

Commitment to Service Commitment to Democracy Commitment to the World Community Commitment to the Future

Although SCN developers are keenly interested in supporting the SCN principles it is difficult to step back and take a hard look at what is working and what is not, or what do we know now that we didn't know before. For that reason SCN developers have an urgent need (whether or not they know it!) to build congenial and collaborative relationships with researchers (and with other stakeholders who share their views on democratizing technology) to help conduct mutually beneficial research.

2.2 The Web of Democratic Technology

Although we are focusing on community networks in this paper it is important to realize that a multitude of grass-roots communications projects are currently underway. In Seattle, for example, there are public library projects, city government projects (PAN, the "Public Access Network", e.g.), many University of Washington projects, Internet cafes, neighborhood technology projects, voice-mail for homeless people, and alternative electronic publications projects to name just a few. While Seattle may have more than its share of these types of projects it is probably accurate to say that these types of projects are being worked in thousands of locations worldwide. Knitting these projects together into a more coherent force is an important aspect of democratizing technology and one of utmost concern for the research community. (This is probably a good time to mention the influential Scandinavian work of Nygaard, Thoresen, Ehn, and many others. It is this work that is responsible for many of the core ideas behind what I am calling the web of democratic technology.)

The computer age is also opening up a number of intriguing technological possibilities that could help strength the web of democratic technology. For the last 10 years or so researchers have been developing a new type of software called "computer-supported cooperative work" (CSCW) or "groupware" that is generally intended to support white collar work in organizations. Since new users, unaffiliated with government or corporate organizations are beginning to spend much of their time in cyberspace, there is a building though largely unrecognized pressure for computer-supported community work. In my book (1996) I discussed three possible CSCW projects including Robert's Rules (and software) for the Electronic Age; Public Issue Hypertexts in which public issues are discussed and represented in an interactive, non-linear manner; and civic "MUDs", "virtual" environments for multiple participants in which agendas, podiums, audio-visual devices, and other artifacts of civic encounters are deployed electronically.

3. The Need for Practitioner / Researcher Collaboration

American social scientists often eschew activist, advocacy, or participatory approaches to research. Many work as though totally non-partisan research is the highest form of research. In the social sciences, however, this view is less likely to result in usable knowledge, according to Lindblom and Cohen (1979). Nor do they believe that it is even possible: "With perhaps some rare and only imaginable exceptions, all participants in social interaction are partisans." Researchers should not "bias results to suit an audience", but that they should take the orientation "from one of various explicitly recognized partisan interests each playing its role in the resolution of policy conflict." In the case of community networking partisans, there are several explicit assumptions including access to communication systems is important in democratic societies, cost should not be a barrier to access, programs and policies can be developed using community networks that further democracy.

While researchers sometimes proclaim their independence and a devotion to objectivity the situation is more complex for the enterprise of educational and scientific research is (of course) embedded in a constellation of social, economic, and political relationships. Agencies that bear the costs of higher educational institutions have obvious influences on the research agenda and the increasing reliance on the corporate sector for this funding puts increased emphasis on projects with financial payoffs.

Researchers are part of the world. Watching critical and, possibly, irreversible changes in communication technology as passive spectators is not defensible from an academic or ethical perspective. Researchers, particularly those concerned with technology and its effects on society, have several critical roles to play in the understanding as well as the development of the technology. If the social science community shies away from community members and community problems it is likely to become ever more insular and out- of-touch leading to increasingly irrelevant work. At the same time, if the public perceives that higher education, particularly in the social sciences, is not relevant to their lives currently or in the future they will be less inclined to to support higher education with their tax dollars.

This political realization may be at the heart of the University of Washington's new president's announcement that community related work would become more prominent than it had under previous administrations. Although it's unclear what impact his pronouncements will ultimately have the School of Public Affairs at the University started putting together an inventory of all community related projects. Although this is a rudimentary beginning, the availability of this information can be very useful for increasing community-academic collaborations. The basic role of the university is to participate in a broad society-wide educational process; while part of this involves educating by creating and disseminating knowledge to others, another, and, to my mind, more important part, involves engaging the community in a broad educational process.

3.1 Grounds for Collaboration

Community communication technologists offer researchers an opportunity to study first-hand communication systems that are largely grass-roots, spontaneous, community-oriented, and non-corporate. Researchers will want to learn how new communication technologies affect democratic practices in discrete geographic communities ("democracy-in-the-small") and, also, how the spread of new technology affects democracy across contiguous geographic and political boundaries ("democracy-in-the-large"). Researchers will also be interested in what peoples' expectations are for community networking in their jobs, homes, and communities.

Researchers for their part can help make the community networking effort more effective while addressing important social science issues at the same time by concentrating on four areas: (1) informing the community networking community of relevant theory, history, policy and other issues in democracy and technology and; (2) working with the community to establish and monitor conditions that facilitate learning, especially determining objectives, developing strategies, collecting data, measuring success, and evaluating and communicating results, and identifying future research; (3) offering other types of consulting and services related to educational programs, institutions, funding sources, and contacts in the community (including facilitating communication among and between the university community and the community networking community); and (4) integrating the community and the university. Each of these four areas is discussed briefly below.

3.1.1. Informing the Community

The research community has a wealth of relevant knowledge that is needed by the practitioner community. Many community networkers are volunteers and some are enormously competent with technology but less knowledgeable in other realms. While not an exhaustive list, the following topics related to democracy, technology, media, and research, would be extremely useful topics of discussion to community networking practitioners: what constitutes a democracy? problems of direct democracy; the Communication Acts of 1934 and of 1996; "tyranny of the majority"; history of radio, television and other media systems; public broadcasting in Europe; what organizations in the community are natural partners and how can alliances be struck? what is research and how is it conducted? how are social services and social ameliorative programs evaluated? what is participatory action research? how can citizens influence government? what is "common carrier?" what is the "fairness doctrine?" how are public media funded in the U.S. and around the world? etc. A guest lecture series, series of seminars, or, even, a set of web pages, on these topics co- sponsored by a university or college and the community network could be very useful. Finally, it is important to note that collaboration does not mean a lack of criticism. In fact, a healthy two-directional critical dialogue would be an important aspect of meaningful collaboration.

3.1.2 Facilitating Learning

Community networkers and democratic technologists need to learn more effectively, and to adjust their future activities based on this learning. Learning can be viewed as a conscious, cyclical process consisting of hypothesizing, experimentation, data collection, evaluation, and reporting. Ideally, the steps are then repeated based on what was learned through previous traversals of the cycle. Researchers are familiar with this process and can help guide it. Researchers and practitioners need to listen very hard to one another and integrate their concerns into an action research program that both groups can understand, participate in, and learn from. One simple approach is to knit together needs, objectives, procedures, evaluation criteria, and budget. This results in a rough plan and, incidentally, a good start for a proposal.

Hypothesizing
Developing hypotheses is a critical (and commonplace) aspect of research but is seldom undertaken by community network practitioners. Yet effective learning is unlikely to take place without hypothesizing, and researchers can help ensure that it happens. Hypotheses are somewhat related to goals or objectives, but there is a crucial difference Goals are what practitioners (and, presumably, researchers) want to happen. In fact, they are what practitioners want to ensure will happen. Hypotheses, on the other hand, are what researchers want to prove or disprove. If researchers are participants in the process, then they will need to take care that their involvement does not invalidate the hypotheses.

Experimentation
The "experimentation" in the case of community networks may not be much different than running a program that the community network organization would run without researcher collaboration. In the case of researcher collaboration it may mean certain changes. For example, a specific plan may be drawn up for specific actions and that some community network resources will be focused on some specific aspects of a social issue (most likely one or more community core value). Furthermore, the participants may be treated in some special way -- unlike the "ordinary" community network user who is not often "targeted" in any way.

Data Collection
A researcher might be tempted to only collect data that is narrowly focused on some research hypothesis (although this was not the case in the SCN / researcher collaborations). A research instrument that serves both communities will have a mixture of open-ended and closed questions. Any survey that goes out to community network users should ask them about aspects that they like, don't like, or would change. In both SCN cases, the survey was also used as a way to identify SCN users who were willing to discuss how SCN how changed or not changed aspects of their lives. Finally, it is obvious that identifying effects on SCN users is a far cry from identifying effects of SCN on, say, the citizenry of Seattle.

Evaluating
Community networkers are interested in evaluating their systems yet few do so. Planning in advance how the systems will be evaluated is probably the best way to ensure useful evaluations and assisting with this process may be the most important role for researchers to play.

Evaluating these systems with or without the assistance of researchers is problematic, however. Community network users, for example, use community networks at home or at work usually by themselves but sometimes with one or two others. Therefore it is fairly difficult for developers to know what the users are using the system for and what good (if any) has resulted from its use. Newspaper reporters often want to know the "stories" about community networks, but, like any other communications medium, most of the interactions on the system will be prosaic and undistinguished by themselves. Even if there were a few dramatic stories this would not necessarily mean that the system were a success. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, "The trouble with newspapers is that they don't know the difference between a bicycle accident and the death of a civilization." While we are not looking for anything as dramatic as the death of civilization we are looking for changes that are not likely to be picked up by newspaper reports. According to Campbell (1960), "A gradually introduced reform has little chance of being distinguished from shifts in secular trends or from the cumulative effect of the many other influences impinging during a prolonged period of introduction."

Evaluation results can be used for a variety of purposes including fine-tuning researchers' hypotheses and suggesting further research. They can be used to re-focus practitioner's efforts, suggest funding ideas, and, even, be used to give to reporters who are looking for stories!

Although evaluation results can be very useful it would be naive to believe that further action would be initiated entirely by evaluation results. We don't live in a "rational" world that is ruled by findings from the social sciences and any findings should be pressed into service, as just one more step in an continuing process.

Reporting
Reporting the results -- to the academic community, the community-at-large, or the press -- is an integral part of the process. It is important to remember that the language of academic journals is not the same as the language of the public at large. Therefore in some cases it may be necessary to report the findings in several different "languages."

3.1.3 Consulting

Researchers can help community network practitioners in a wide variety of consulting tasks. Since researchers are generally cognizant of research funding programs (and since the idea of "community" is creeping into some of them) they are in a good position to inform practitioners about the opportunities. Beyond this, they are generally well-versed in putting together cogent and organized proposals and in organizing the effort as well; filling out the necessary forms, etc. University researchers are also frequently part of a network of civic "leaders." While community networking projects shouldn't surrender to these "leaders" or to the institutions to which they owe allegiance, their involvement as advisors can be welcome.

3.1.4 Integrating the Community and the University

Several years ago I asked a dean at a state-run university what the University's responsibility was to "the community." His answer that there was "no" responsibility was as simple as it was disturbing. He elaborated that the only responsibility was to "research" which at that time apparently, was at least partially concerned with problems posed by the U.S. military's need for a space-based defense system, that fortuitously dovetailed with the existence of a big pot of research money at the time.

An important part of the job, therefore, is to help legitimatize community work and research within the university and community networkers can help with this. This would mean, among other things, helping to institutionalize community-based stakeholders. It also means helping to develop scientific paradigms (at least for some social science investigations) that aren't unrealistically modeled on the "hard" sciences like physics and chemistry. This includes participatory action research (see Whyte, 1991, e.g.) , participant - observer studies, etc.

It is important to design and implement as many ways as possible to integrate the community into university affairs (as active members, learners, researchers, etc.) creating a more permeable university in which, for example, citizens could more easily use computer and other facilities, attend classes, etc. Also as Richard Sclove (1995) and others have written, the government, the military, and the corporate sector have long dictated the role of the university. Science shops and public dialogue on the role of the university would be healthy antidotes to this exclusive tradition.

3.2 Challenges to Collaborative Research

Increased collaboration has several potential disadvantage. Many of the problems have to deal with poor communication, identity, resource contention, and lack of respect. Community members feel that they have been burnt by university researchers who have been patronizing, manipulative, and non-cooperative. In many cases, community projects that were supposed to be "participative" were run by the university team that also swallowed up much of the funds. In countering this type of problem it is necessary to build trust on both sides. Reminding researchers of their responsibility to the community and their adherence to sound and ethical community research principles can be done with the use of explicit principles. One such set (provided to me by University of Washington researcher Allen Cheadle) is listed below.

PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH

Approved by (University of Washington) Health Sciences Deans -- July 10, 1996

Community-based research takes place in community settings and involves community members in the design and implementation of research projects. Such activities should demonstrate respect for the contributions to success which are made by community partners as well as respect for the principle of "doing no harm" to the communities involved.

In order to achieve these goals, the following principles should guide the development of research projects involving collaboration between researchers and community partners, whether the community partners are formally structured community-based organizations or informal groups of individual community members. In order to avoid confusion and potential misunderstandings, faculty and community partners alike are encouraged to explicitly review and discuss these principles as they apply to specific projects

Principles

Community partners should be involved at the earliest stages of the project, helping to define research objectives and having input into how the project will be organized.

Community partners should have real influence on project direction--that is, enough leverage to ensure that the original goals, mission and methods of the project are adhered to.

Research processes and outcomes should benefit the community. Community members should be hired and trained whenever possible and appropriate, and the research should help build and enhance community assets.

Community members should be part of the analysis and interpretation of data, and should have input into how the results are distributed. This does not imply censorship of data or publication, but rather the opportunity to make clear the community's views about the interpretation prior to final publication.

Productive partnerships between researchers and community members should be encouraged to last beyond the life of the project. This will make it more likely that research findings will be incorporated into ongoing community programs and therefore provide the greatest possible benefit to the community from research.

Community members should be empowered to initiate their own research projects which address needs they identify themselves.

Much social science research is perceived as being too abstract and not useful to practitioners. They don't want to spend their time working on tasks that appear to have no relationship with what they're trying to accomplish.

3.3 Urgency

As Langdon Winner (1991) reminds us, "Because choices tend to become strongly fixed in material equipment, economic investment, and social habit, the original flexibility vanishes for all practical purposes once the initial commitments are made." He goes on to say that, "The same careful attention one would give to the rules, roles, and relationships of politics must also be given to such things as the building of highways, the creation of television networks, and the tailoring of seemingly insignificant features on new machines." Currently large and small corporations as well as governments are engaged in shaping telecommunications policies (such as pricing and access) that have direct and potentially long-lived implications for democratic society. Therefore it will be necessary for community networkers to move quickly if they are to have any influence. This has many implications. One is that information on useful projects and perspectives needs to be communicated effectively to others who may need it. It also means that mistakes should be minimized; minimizing mistakes, however, does not mean avoiding experimentation and creative approaches altogether, for that would be self-defeating. But if mistakes and missteps can be avoided, time and money and human capital can be used more efficiently.

I believe that the situation is urgent and I have urged the research community to make contacts in the community networking community (including other grassroots communications efforts) as soon as possible to begin this collaboration. I'd like to issue a similar plea to practitioners to make common cause with researchers as the synergy between the two enterprises is compelling.

4. Recommendations

Fruitful collaboration between democratic technology practitioners and researchers is not only possible but important and urgent. History has shown that corporations are often unwilling to help create public space either tangible or virtual. It is this reluctance that heightens the sense of urgency. Several changes need to occur to begin to develop the necessary counter measures.

6. Conclusions

There is ample evidence that citizens are increasingly powerless in relationship to government and corporate institutions that are massively superior in terms of organization, resources, and general readiness to respond to and exploit situations as they arise.

Trying to engage the technological process and develop democratic technology points to the need for a continuous learning process; a learning process that is quick, useful, flexible, and grounded in the real world. To my mind, improving this learning process and extending it to outwards is critical to the development of democratic communication technology. This type of knowledge and learning would also be immensely useful in the formation of organizations or policy initiative. And, in light of the rapid globalization of communication technology (and possible concentration of control), these matters are increasingly more urgent.

7. References

Campbell, H. (April, 1969). Reform as Experiments. The American Psychologist. volume 24, number 4. Levin, H. (1980). The struggle for community can create community. In Gallagher, A. Jr., and Padfield, H. (Eds.) (1980). The Dying Community. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Lindblom, C. and Cohen, D. (1979). Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Schuler, D. (1996). New Community Networks: Wired for Change. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Sclove, R. (1995). Democracy and Technology. Place. Guilford Press.

Sirianni, C., Friedland, L., and Schuler, D. (1995). The new citizenship and the Civic Practices Network (CPN). In Cisler, S. (1995) (Ed.) Ties that Bind: Converging Communities. Cupertino, CA: Apple Computer Corp. Library.

Whyte, W. (Ed.) (1991). Participatory Action Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Winner, L. (1991, Winter). Artifact/ideas and political culture. Whole Earth Review.

Acknowledgments: I'd like to thank David Levinger and Erik Stolterman for their helpful comments.

8. Appendix A.
New Research Opportunities (From Schuler, 1996)

Business Schools: Developing flexible models of business that transcend the purely profit-taking model to include community and environmental responsibility.

Communications and Media Studies: Comparing community networks with "traditional" media. What functions do they supplant? Complement? Exploring how community networks alter traditional control over creation and distribution of news and other information.

Computer Science: Developing user interfaces and information-retrieval methods that promote effective access to a wide variety of information types (including text, graphics, voice, video, and datasets) from remote sites.

Economics: Analyzing new patterns of funding systems, analyzing costs and benefits of community-based information systems, systems for recompensing authors of electronic material. Developing equitable funding models for community enterprises.

Education: Developing collections of courseware, information, and services that can be made available electronically and effectively accessed and used by large numbers of community members especially those who have little access to existing educational programs. Developing and evaluating models for effective learning and collaboration over distances. Ensuring that appropriate in-person educational models are developed and not supplanted by electronic-only models.

Engineering: Developing a new ethic of engineering that acknowledges, understands, and embodies responsibility and purpose in technological design.

Environmental Studies: To study the effects and potential of telecommunications systems on the environment. To devise new ways in which environmental information can be presented electronically.

Geography: Studying the effects of information and communications technology on demographics, land use and population.

Information and Library Sciences: Exploiting existing wide area information servers for sharing of information over a wide area as well as working with prototypes and next-generation information sharing applications; Developing new approaches to information retrieval, distribution, and synthesis.

Medicine and Public Health: Exploring new community-based approaches to delivery of health care information and health care. Exploring the effects of participant-initiated conversation with health-care providers as well as other health-care system consumers. Effects of networking on community mental health.

Psychology: Exploring new phenomena arising from network use including addiction, lurking, posing. What needs are met through community network use? What psychological problems are initiated or exacerbated by network use?

Political Science: Studying and proposing new models of political participation. How do community networks change traditional political relationships and institutions such as the political party? What effects do community networks have on political discourse?

Public Affairs: Developing policy frameworks and analysis methodologies. Making policy recommendations and designing public projects.

Sociology: Conducting research on usage patterns and individual and collective on-line behavior. Studying effects of community networks on actual and virtual communities. How do virtual communities coalesce, behave, and manage themselves? How do community networks effect social roles, responsibilities, and overall social structures?

Urban Studies: Working with citizen groups to devise critical indicators and other tools for understanding and improving the urban condition. Analyze the effects of telecommunications policies on communities, particularly in regard to low income and minority populations.