Roger S. Slack, PhD

Research Centre for Social Sciences (Technology Studies Unit)

University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh EH1 1LZ, Scotland

Email: roger.slack@ed.ac.uk

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research, this position paper examines the relationships between articulations of technology and community in the development of a community information system. It argues that we can see various currents of participation and bids for inclusion within the development of the service and that these are used by participants as rhetorical resources with which to critique and shape the trajectory of the system. Furthe r the relationships of technological development to notions of community service are examined in terms of appropriate technologies. I examine the relationship of funding criteria to service development, arguing that th e service has had to constantly re-brand itself in line with the vicissitudes of funding criteria, leading to problems with original client groups and their notions of what the service should be and do. The paper unpacks the relevance of the local politics of community information systems in terms of citizen participation and the often critical relationship of low income communities to high technologies, arguing that it is important for designers, funders and users to see community information services as contested terrains.

The Craigmillar Community Information Service (CCIS) was developed in the early 1990s to connect community groups in a deprived area of Edinburgh. The Craigmillar area of Edinburgh has a long history as a bearer of so cial problems and is regarded by those community workers with whom I spoke as being suspicious of welfare initiatives and a difficult place in which to foster any sense of community. Against this background, CCIS was est ablished on a model derived from the Manchester Host community networking project. The connection of community groups to the network in Craigmillar was designed to enable them to share information about funding opportuni ties and the like, and in a sense to co-ordinate the provision of informal welfare services through the use of ICT. Local groups were connected to the hub via modems, and information was shared using the First Class system.

Over time the system was used by members, but there was a perception that access should be broadened and that local people should be able to use the system as a means of obtaining information and training that would en able them to compete for jobs. In a sense, the notion was to enfranchise people who were discriminated against because of their zip codes by providing them with skills in information and communications technologies. Aro und this time, the web began to take off both in terms of available (and affordable) interface technology as well as in the public mind. As the web became a potential standard for communication, CCIS took the view that i t was important to make use of it and thereby to enfranchise local citizens.

Analytically this is interesting from the viewpoint of the seminar in that there are at least three dimensions in play: the enfranchisement of citizens; the service to community groups; and the potential for the use of the web as a means to communicate. The first two aims were obviously met using existing technology, but the third was regarded as problematic by some sections of the existing user base. Some people with whom I spoke re garded the web as signalling the end of CCIS as a community service and the move to its being another Internet service provider. The discourses turn on what we might call the appropriateness of the technologies for the purposes of the service. The First Class-based BBS system was regarded as serving the community and looking inward, while the web loosened the notion of community service through its orientation to the outside world. The point is not that technologies were appropriated but that technologies were regarded as appropriate for the fulfilment of CCISs remit. This issue is something that it would be most interesting to explore wi thin the framework of the workshop.

The changes in CCISs articulations have led to critical comments from those involved in the project and also those in the wider community. These critiques turn on the question of how far CCIS fulfils its original rem it, and how far it has become entranced by the potential of technology over and above the basic aims. The project shows how different user constituencies may have very different conceptions of the success and failure of the system depending on where they are sited within the discursive construction of what it means to have CCIS as a service. Those involved in the project ab origine suggest that CCIS has become too outward looking and that this can be seen in the development of web-based interfaces over the first class system introduced to connect community-based groups at the outset.

At this point, a further dimension might be added. The history of the project is a dialectic between evolving technologies and the potential for further funding. In other words, what CCIS has become is a result of it s use of technologies and its representation of these uses (and potential uses) to funders. CCIS has learned to be fundable in an uncertain environment where the priorities for funding change regularly. It has al so learned to exploit technologies in an effort to enrol new user constituencies with obvious effects on its potential funding base. This is not to suggest that the project is in any was dissembling, but that it tailor s itself to the current environment in order to ensure its survival. The manger of the project counters these criticisms through articulations of access to the Internet as a civil rights issue what he calls cyber rights. He suggests that it is important that as many people as possible become enfranchised through connection to the web and actively prosecutes this through the establishment of groups such as Keyboard Kids and Cyber Grannies. The uptake of the service among the original community groups was initially satisfying, but the use did not reach expected levels and there was a need to develop further user constituencies in order that the pr oject remained viable. However, it is this expansion of the service that is cited by some of these groups as the reason for their low use the project personnel were seen as moving on and away from their traditional com munity base, alienating the original users.

The following diagram represents some of the dimensions of the service and its development as well as points of potential critique.

From a policy viewpoint we may point to the influence of local political issues on the development of community information services, and the articulation of critical responses to the uptake of new technologies. It is interesting to contemplate the manner in which these diverse currents shaped the service and how far one could ensure that developments of new technologies and interfaces were introduced to the community in a manner that renders them both appropriate and appropriable.