Tele-Communities Communities of Learning in the Information Society Richard Lowenberg rl@radlab.com Tele-Community Research And Demonstration LABoratory 1623 5th Street, Davis, CA 95616 530-758-5859 ph. 530-757-2938 fax What is really going on? Information Highways, Digital Cities, Tele-Work, Tele-Villages, Tele-Commuting, Smart Communities, Lone Eagles..... These are catch-phrases; narrowly defined categorizations that often lack appropriate understanding and contextualization of a much more broadly encompassing and effecting social transformation. We are simply, becoming an increasingly communicative and technologically mediated society. The fabric of our cities and towns is being rewoven by the digital networking and tele-mediation of global society. This 'information revolution' is real. It is a force of powerful social transformation, the effects of which are barely comprehended yet. The transformative power of electrification and of the automobile on our lives over the past century only hint at the impacts and implications that the new communications technologies and services will have on the political, cultural, social, economic and physical makeup of our communities. Telecommunications infrastructure and services, purely by their nature and implementation, and at this early stage of their development and integration into society, do not assure rural or urban communities of an improved future. The issues and considerations that surround our increasingly technological and digitally communicative local-global society are complex. Some people are actively venturing into this new environment, developing 'virtual realty'; treating information purely as data; a commodity to be bought and sold. Large sectors of society harbor growing fears and confusion, overwhelmed by an increasing lack of meaning and feelings of unconnectedness. The future of our communities and societies depends upon our understanding the ecology of this transformation. Such an understanding and intent may be the basis for a real Information Revolution; a revolution rooted in social betterment. Information Ecology Ecology is the study of the complex interactions between living and non-living interdependent dynamic systems. It describes the fragile balance in which such systems interrelate and through which they evolve. Information ecology extends this understanding to the physical, social and economic transformations being wrought by the rapid developments in information technology, networking, and by our becoming an increasingly tele-networked 'society of mind'. Today, urban and rural communities are being swept up in a socio-economic transformation that is affecting the whole world. The often espoused linear progression of economic waves, from agricultural, to industrial, to information-based, is too simplistic to be an accurate assessment of human evolution. One system does not in fact, replace another. If our fundamental motivations and desires are for a healthier, more intelligent and sustainable society, then we must invest with an appropriately reconsidered understanding of economic valuation. The emergence of information and communications as major economic forces, brings about increased complexity, choice and opportunity. Will rural towns and urban neighborhoods continue to follow and conduct business as usual, or will they emerge as example-setting shapers and beneficiaries of a new information economy? Last Mile / First Mile Most telecommunications service providers currently refer to the home, office, neighborhoods and communities as the 'last mile'. They indicate that providing 'last mile' enhanced connectivity, especially in rural areas, is not economically viable. They've got their economic models backwards. The greatest source of value in most peoples lives is local, derived from self, family and community. In a globally networked and communicative society, local environments have the opportunity to generate new resources, value and benefits. The local realm must be considered the 'first mile'. The goals of integrating and involving our communities with tele-technologies should not be to provide a technical fix for the complex issues facing our future. They ought to help us get a little smarter; smarter about our social, cultural, and economic futures. Smarter communities will be the foundation of a healthier, sustainable society. Communities that are contemplating, planning or implementing various approaches to their participation in this new society, should not just attempt basic cost-benefit analyses to determine projected economic sustainability and potential return on investment. They should also position themselves to become globally networked 'communities of learning'. For more than any financial or commercial incentive, the real value in becoming tele-communities will be in the currently undervalued economic return from knowledge acquisition, application, creation and distribution. Will we participate in steering the information society toward increasing and accelerating technological consumerism and apathetic dependency, or toward becoming a knowledge based society? The latter will require a profound investment in learning. This will be a difficult position for communities to take and promote, but early experience indicates that not to do so will significantly increase the potential for future economic failure. Communities of Learning Internetworked telecommunications systems and services were originally developed by the military. They developed over the past 25 years among university and research communities, and are now completely infiltrating the public domain. These new tools and applications, and their impact on human interactions and social relationships, are beginning to be experienced in those rural villages, suburban and edge cities, urban neighborhoods and commercial centers, where high quality of life based development is possible and desirable because of the valued addition of telecommunications connectivity and processes The physical and social impacts of our actions upon these complexly fragile people and places will need to be carefully attended to. The advent of globally pervasive tele-presence will foster a real estate boom in new 'communities of desire'. We will need to become ever more sensitive to the fragile ecology of these pioneering physical and virtual environments as we begin to build tele-communities. Social decentralization and technologically mediated interconnectivity will begin to force a reconsideration of rural and urban relationships, work and leisure, and economic/social have and have-not implications. A great design/planning challenge and opportunity is at hand. Today's underserved rural towns and urban neighborhoods may have more in common than they differ, in the emerging landscape of social reorganization. What they lack as the result of post-industrial evolution, may be the seeds of their renewal if they have the desire to responsibly and intelligently move forward. The qualities of local scale, family and neighbor, backyard conversation, and rolled-up shirt sleeve self reliance, may help to mitigate the fragmentation, passivity and apathy brought about by centrally managed broadcast consumerism and forces of Tsociety as systemU homogenization. Respect and proper valuation of difference are key to the vital complexity of ecological sustainability. Around the world, plans are being manifested and early steps are being taken to intelligently network urban and rural communities and individuals within this emerging, tele-mediated, information society. There are already many notable tele-community examples, working with varying degrees of success or failure. At their best, these real-world models are not just cookie-cutter replications of each other, though. They are site-specific and creatively pragmatic responses to existing local context. In many ways, these pioneering tele-communities should be invested in as living laboratories and incubation sites where people will learn how to become responsible citizens of a potentially smarter and healthier local-global society, at this dawning of the twenty-first century. Richard Lowenberg rl@radlab.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Networked Communities of Learning Global-Villages + Universe-Cities = The Information Society (Notes:) Technological Evolution The technological evolution of electronic, photonic, and biogenetic processing systems will continue to significantly alter our foreseeable political, economic and cultural futures. Being is not digital. We are becoming complex and dynamic societies of more; not either-or, if-than, or on-off. Societies will be more specialized and more generalized; more centralized and more distributed; more competitive and more cooperative; more efficient and more wasteful; more open and more closed; and ..... everything in between. The Gutenberg Revolution, to which our present day information revolution is often compared, was followed by a very long period of warfare and social turbulence in Europe. Might there be a comparable possibility today? There is a real potential for increasing regional conflicts, warfare and resulting ecological destruction around the world, as the free flow of ideas and information are confronted by powerful, vested-interest belief systems and regimes of control. The only counteraction to such an inevitability of circumstance is the promotion and exemplification of ecological sustainability, and of a culturally and environmentally based economic value system. Those developing the net have an obligation to serve and foster a new ecology of mind and action. It may be an overstatement, but, not to do so, is to potentially be guilty of 'war crimes against society and nature'. Tele-Community Planning The tele-mediation of society will dramatically change architectural, spatial, and urban-rural relationships; and may well increase and accelerate the disparities, complexities and noise that is already having significant negative impact on urban life. If today's information revolution is as great a force for social transformation as were the developments of flight, the automobile and electrification over the last one hundred years, than communities must embrace telecommunications education, planning and implementation with no less commitment than is being given to the issues of land use, natural resources distribution and allocation, transportation, building and other basic community foundations. The real value in becoming tele-communities will be in the currently undervalued economic return from knowledge acquisition, application, creation and distribution. This will require a profound investment in learning. Early experience indicates that not to do so will significantly increase the potential for future economic and ecological failure. Sustainability Conservation, regeneration, stewardship, and learning are the foundation upon which to build strategies for sustainability. To not consume more resources than can be replaced in a relatively equal period of time is a fundamental precept. Sustainability is at best, a simplistically understood subject. It may be a moot issue if we are to believe in the social and terrestrial effects of entropy, turbulence and complexity. Sustainability is a goal being set as we recognize our evolutionary fragility. It may in fact, not be achievable. What then? Community Networks Community networks pragmatically integrate virtual communities of interests with geographic communities of place. Community networks, preceded by community radio and community television initiatives, continue working in and learning about the local public realm of our increasingly tele-mediated society. Community networks are involved in extending local wired and wireless infrastructure; providing access, training and content brokering and development; provoking and facilitating new public-private networked partnerships; and growing online applications for civic conversation, economic transaction, informed decision-making, networked teaching and learning, government access, global opportunities and outreach. Community networks are living laboratories and testbeds for the techno-social applications and implications of becoming an information based society. Community networks are fighting for their very existence as the information environment is increasingly subsumed by the commercial marketplace. Questions Is the net and its dependence on technological innovation and development, sustainable? (According to a 1995 report by Preissler and Jaerisch, at the Society and Technology Research Group at Daimler-Benz AG, the production of one PC requires: 33,000 liters of water (= annual individual consumption of water in Western Europe); 5,000 kilowatts of electrical energy (+ 40-85 kilowatt hours, yearly use); and results in 640 lbs. of waste (some highly toxic). At a time and in a world of increasing populations, accelerating change, and globally interconnected impacts, what are the affects of greater human activity in the material world, and increasing communications in the sensory environment? What are the implications and consequences of everyone having the opportunity to do something and to say something? Are we going to experience a greater noise to signal ratio? Will the information revolution unleash a possible 'tsunami' wave of evermore greedy, selfishly motivated, competitive commercialism and consumerism, that may dramatically undermine the most well-intended works for social and environmental sustainability? How can the net be used to mitigate the impacts of: population explosion; increasing consumption and waste; technological development and dependence; current imbalances of water, air and energy resources distribution; pollution; environmental destruction; and warfare?