This is the second version of our public announcement of an interdisciplinary action+research network on the development, study, and advocacy of communication technology that will benefit individuals, communities, and society. Its focus is on non-commercial, public networked technology.
The Purpose: The idea is to develop and sustain a to-be-defined research / action network on the idea of community and technology with an emphasis on engaging with the world in addition to studying the world. We are concerned with the development of community problem-solving capacity and with equity issues surrounding access to that capacity. We envision that the network will help us share ideas, resources, and information; help legitimatize and promote interest and discussion on the topics ; and develop multiple perspectives. To these ends we plan to write and publish papers, books, and digital information. We also plan to organize a variety of regional, national, and international events on these themes.
Themes: Our key themes are (1) technology (particularly digital communications technology); (2) research + activism. These areas could include policy work, education and training, participatory design, Internet campaigns, and, even, development of applications, services, systems, or applications; (3) global reach (we potentially have people from several countries in Western Europe and the states; ultimately we would have people from Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Oceania, Latin and South America, Canada, etc.); and (4) defining and exploring what it means to work together as a network. One question that we'd want to address is what makes our effort a network rather than something else and why do we think that the results will be different because of its particular organization? In other words, the network will also serve as a testbed.
The work of the_network is related to Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), netgames, virtual communities, and other "cyber" areas but has distinct differences. The focus of the_network will be public use, design, policy, cultural perspectives, international, and multicultural use of networks. We hope to build synergy between our efforts, combine research and advocacy, concentrate more on the social than on the technological.
Why a Network? We believe that we need to start a network because (1) the institutions that we are associated as they exist do not adequately meet some of our needs for integrating theory and practice; (2) we recognize that individually we can't accomplish everything we want to and that we may be able to accomplish quite a bit more if we form this network. We feel that establishing a worldwide virtual community may be a significant step.
Participants (many of these are pending): Paolo Barbesino (University of Sussex, England), Fiorella de Cindio (University of Milano, Italy), Peter Dayton (England), Peter van den Besselaar (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Susana Finquelievich (National University of Argentina), David Levinger (Renssalaear Polytechnic Institute, USA), Peter Mambrey (GMD - German National Research Center for Information Technology), Lars Qvortrup (Aalborg University, Denmark), Ester Schiavo (National University of Argentina), Douglas Schuler (The Evergreen State College, USA), Artur Serra (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain), and Erik Stolterman (University of Umea, Sweden). We definitely plan to add more participants to the network. Part of the role of participants in the network will be to assist others in the network, including reviewing and co-authoring papers and proposals, and planning events.
A Name: We have not settled on the one word or phrase that adequately describes what we are and what we'd like to accomplish. Some of the concepts we're currently looking at include "society as the client", "community networking in the broad sense", or "computer supported community work." Susana Finquelievich has suggested "Intelligent Participation" or "Intelligent Communities." I like "Conscious Communities", "New Communities", "Next Communities", or, even "New Community Networks." In the meantime we're just calling it "The Network."
Current Plans: Discuss ideas over e-mail, discuss in person in Barcelona in July, meet again in Seattle at PDC '98 and CSCW '98 in November. Several of the principals in this effort will be facilitating a PDC/CSCW workshop on November 14 entitled Designing Across Borders: Community Design of Community Networks (http://www.scn.org/ip/commnet/cscw-pdc-workshop.html). Doug Schuler will be convening a tutorial at CSCW on November 15 entitled Computer Support for Community Work: Designing and Building Systems for the "Real World" which also explores these themes (http://www.scn.org/ip/commnet/cscw-tutorial-1998.html). See the ACM and/or CPSR web sites (http://www.acm.org, http://www.cpsr.org) for registration and other information.
Next Steps: Explore resources that the US National Science Foundation and other organizations have to offer for international work. We also want to begin thinking about a wide range of activities that we may want to promote such as identifying research themes, hosting workshops or conferences, putting up material on the web, putting out a book, etc. We may want to produce to help produce an inventory of community systems and other relevant resources and efforts. We could also explore the idea of preparing "proceedings" or other presentation for the papers from the PDC / CSCW meeting. We could also complete a "network manifesto" for this "virtual institute" at the conference in Seattle. Erik suggested that we send URLs or actual articles that we've written to others on the list so that we can get a sense for what the others are doing. Currently we are sending our bios and other personal statements to the list as well as posting them on our web site.
Organizational Issues: Here are just a few of the many questions that we'd need to address. How do people get involved? How formal or informal should "membership" be? How will we work together as a group? How do we get students involved? How do we fund our work? When and how do we meet? What resources (electronic and otherwise) should we develop? How do we create the network so that people find it useful and not just another chore? (Peter Van den Besselaar suggested that people can sign on to the_network mailing list as "friends" of the network and that they'd become "official" members after they had worked as a volunteer on some number [probably two] of projects. This sounds like a very reasonable way to proceed.)
Notes on this draft: This draft was developed by Doug Schuler (douglas@scn.org) based to some degree on discussions with Peter Van den Besselaar, Susana Finquelievich, Erik Stolterman (errors, omissions, and ambiguities are my fault -- not theirs!). Please write to me or to the list at the_network@scn.org if you have comments on this request for comments. Thank you!