Peter Mambrey
GMD -- German National Research Center for Information Technology
Schloss Birlinghoven
D-53754 St. Augustin
Germany
+49-2241-142710 phone
+49-2241-142084 fax
August 1998
1. Introductory remarks
When we talk about community networks we focus on ideas, visions, and experiences made in the US (Rheingold 1992, Schuler 1994). For Europe the digital city of Amsterdam is the symbol of the existence of a "living" digital community. In Germany the situation is different to what we can read about the developments in the US and in the Netherlands. In Germany talking about community networks and the political and societal use of the Internet is a famous topic on conferences (IMD 1998) and a challenging and motivating topic for master theses (Irrgang 1998, Emmrich 1998). Years ago a German proverb about telecommuting stated that there are more papers on telecommuting than telecommuters. This has changed a bit, but not dramatically. Is this the same with community networks? Do they really exist in practice or are they rhetoric constructions? Is it a mainstream development or do only some flowers grow in niches? What is rhetoric what is reality?
I want to mention some personal experiences made in Germany, which from my point of view are different to that what is reported from the US. These findings coincide with research results recently published over Belgian community networks (d'Udekem-Gevers 1998). I believe that by contrasting and showing the differences, interesting findings can be made about commonalties and divergences which will show the direction of the evolution of the socio-economic embedding of technical systems into socio-political cultures. There are lots of definitions of community networks. I suggest a description from Erickson, who uses the term for 1) computer mediated interaction which establishes 2) membership and exclusion, 3) relationships, 4) commitment and reciprocity, 5) shared values and practices, 6) collective goods, and 7) duration (Erickson 1997: 26) and 8) responsibility for the community.
In Germany the adoption and use of new information and telecommunications technologies (ICT's) is sometimes described by the "copy" hypothesis: with a time lag of 5-10 years after the invention and first use in the US, these technologies were transferred to and applied in Germany. Examples are the type writer, telegraphy, telephone, radio, TV, and computer. The Zeitgeist takes a little longer in Germany to succeed. Will this be the same with community networks or do different development paths emerge? In this short discussion paper I want to focus on 4 aspects:
2. Driving forces and main actors in Germany
Driving forces in applying community networks in Germany are:
The users themselves
Before using the Internet, a small mailbox scene like the Fido-Net or the Mouse-Net existed and still exists. Free-nets survived but they are extremely small inhabited islands in the ocean of the Internet. The users were technically interested persons who communicated via new technologies about technologies as you can often find at the beginning of technological developments, e.g. the wireless transmission or handy-talk. (late 80es, 90s);
Academia
A prominent example of an initiative taken by academia is the "Bremer Infothek". Researchers from the University of Bremen and the Senate of Bremen State launched a research and development project to foster the communication between the citizens of Bremen and the municipal administration and among the citizens themselves (Kubicek 1993). This approach can be seen as an descendant of the Public Electronic Network (PEN) of St. Monica, California, described by Dutton (1996: 273);
Municipal and state governments
Two, three years ago ambitious mayors and municipal administrations started with municipal information systems to provide their citizens with local information about the decisions made in the community councils and many kind of information of the administration. They gave place to moderated discussions amongst citizens. Probably the biggest parts of the applications were advertisements for cinemas, pizza services, public transportation, and social and sports events. The newest trend is offering administrative tasks via Internet, e.g. the expedition of a fishing license (city of Mannheim). State governments are active as well. They aim at fostering the access of citizens to digital information as a basic resource for economic development (Bavaria online). The Federal government is more or less ambiguous. On the one hand they want to augment the use of ICT's and networks by the citizens, on the other hand they are afraid of the erosion of the representative system if the Internet is used for political purposes like interventions in decision making processes by the citizens.
The ICT industry
The ICT industry is eager to sell hardware and software (DEC) or act as a provider of services. Therefore it is engaged in activities to enhance the use of technologies by establishing community networks (otelo).
If we apply the seven criteria (see above) which describe a community network on German community networks, one can say that community networks exist but on a very low level (because of the lack of duration, the volatility in membership, the poor levels of shared values and practices). Although they are citizen centered, they are owned and dominated by states or cities.
Actually discussion groups organized by the political parties, the factions of the German Bundestag, and the Administration of the Bundestag itself draw a lot of interests of the Internet users. But the discussion fora are different to community networks (no reciprocity, no relationship). Community networks are nearly not existing, what exists is the offer of private or public providers to use their network as new information media. Community networks does not exist as a term in Germany to describe local networks. The term which is used frequently is citizen network (Bürgernetze). Actually the level of computer mediated synchronous interaction is low, the asynchronous download and the anonymous non-local chat is dominant.
3. The use of the Internet in Germany (some statistics)
Every second household in Germany owns a PC, 12% of the users have access to the Internet, 8% via ISDN. The users are mostly male (87,8 %), have an average age of 33 -- two years ago it was 29 --, and own a high school diploma (69,8 %) (W3B). They use the Internet for both professional and private reasons. Most of them use the Internet 4-9 hours a week, 50 % use it almost daily. The most favorite use is information retrieval (64 %) or downloading of software (42 %) followed by surfing (40 %), reading newsgroups(11%) and chats (12 %). Home shopping and home banking (11%) and interactive plays (1 %) are rare activities. The main interests is focussed on computer and technique (67 %), economics (25 %), commerce (20 %), entertainment and sports (17 %), politics and societal affairs (12 %), and culture (9 %). These data are from 1998 (Irrgang 1998).
These preferences show that the societal or political use of the Internet doesn't play a significant role. Based on this, one can state that the theoretical options of and visions for community networks do not match with the practical use of the Internet in Germany nowadays.
4. Local Community Networks: the understanding of these metaphors and underlying concepts in Germany
The use of ICT's evoke new constructions of reality, identification, and everyday life. We are socialized by actual concepts and concepts of the past which often persist, dominate, and by that hinder the understanding of existing socio-technological developments and the emergence of new constructions. The concept of "Local Community Networks" is a good example which shows that the 1:1 transmission from one culture (US) to another (Germany) is non-productive.
The concept of distance: global space and local room
In the German language for the notions "room" and "space" only one notion exist: "Raum". To express the notion "space", which is an abstraction of a physical room, you have to add a context or build a compositum: "Welt-raum" or "Zeit-raum" the latter means time. The concept of local strongly interacts with "room": transparent, near, physically explorable, well-known, face-to-face, private. Local politics e.g. has the underlying concept of a "thing", persons sitting under a lime-tree talking face-to-face to self-organize their affairs. Using ICT's implies the concept of global: abstract, undeterminable, distant, nontransparent, public. Therefor local community network is a contradiction per se. Local is connoted with physical interaction but not with the use of ICT's. The concept of distance hereby is important. I live in St. Augustin, a town 13 miles far from Cologne. For Germans this is far. US citizens would call this living in the Cologne metropolitan area. This leads to another metaphor: the network.
The network metaphor
Communities in Germany do always have centers. These are not centers in mind but visible, physical representations of community. They are symbols of inclusion and exclusion. They are common meeting places: the church; the city center, the marketplace, the city hall. People are socialized to this concept of having a "center" and they are not socialized to the network concept with loosely coupled volatile and dynamic units.
Network implies a flat or non-hierarchical structure with a high degree of self-organization. This as well contradicts with the overall existence of organizations which are organized in the Weberian ideal type of organization: strict hierarchies with top-down information flow and decision-making. In the political culture representative types of actions are the dominant views and not self-organizing types of basic actions by the citizens. They are usually organized and act as an association or club.
The community metaphor
I do not want to refer to the debate between communitarians and liberals in the US which does not exist in Germany. In Germany, the notion community is well-known but seldom used as a single word without a specifying context. The use is more specific, usually it is described what type of community is meant, e.g. community of victims (Notgemeinschaft) or more precise (Vereine, Gemeinde, Genossenschaft). The metaphor community does not intuitively projects a shared vision. For older people the notion is connotated negatively, because the notion "community of citizens" (= Volksgemeinschaft) was one of the myths of the Nazis to include resp. exclude individuals because of their races, religions, and origins.
These three examples show, that "local community network" is understood differently in the US and in Germany. Using the notion in Germany will not evoke positive actions. But I strongly believe, that appropriate metaphors are important for future design and use by citizens. In Germany this will not be the community or digital city metaphor. To enhance the political and societal use of the Internet for, with, and by citizens it is extremely important to construct new evoking metaphors for each cultural (sub)system.
These hindrances belong to the individuals' mental spheres, other factors exist as well, e.g. economic reasons, which currently restrain the development of community networks in Germany. Using the Internet or at least the telephone lines is more expensive than in the US. The carriers meter the local calls. Per hour at least 3 US Dollars have to be paid without the charge of the providers.
5. Actual developments in Germany
Actually two discrepancies can be seen which are intertwined: there is professionalization versus citizen-made and broadcasting versus interactive.
Professionalization versus citizen-made
The newest generations of web-pages are professionally made. The design and functionality differs from the home-made "home"-page. Design teams and journalists work hand in hand to present exiting pages. The time cycles of relaunching the appearances and look and feel get shorter. You can see this while surfing through the web pages of the political parties who are in the middle of the election campaign for the German Parliament. There is a widening gap presenting information done by citizens or professionals which will lead to a restriction in offering information by non-professionals. Twenty years ago, field trials were made with citizen channels for TV and local radio to empower citizens on a local level. This failed, because the users compared the outcome with the professional design, conventions, and behavior. In contrast to this the local non-professional attempts did not draw enough attention. This probably can happen with information presented by individual citizens in the near future.
Broadcasting vs. Interactive
The professional offers in the Internet (entertainment, commerce, education) and their use by citizens nearly explode since few years. This is a one-to-many relation, few are sending and the others are receiving (downloading). This is the typical broadcast concept which contradicts the radio-theory from Bertold Brecht that each citizen should be a sender and a receiver at the same time. Only this can lead to a democratization of the information flow and ban the concentration in the mass media industry. Although theoretically in the Internet everybody can send one-to-many (all), the normal behavior is the bilateral one-to-one sending of e-mails. Sending to mailing lists (one-to-few) or news groups is a higher hurdle for most of the citizens. So the coach-potato will be more probable than the interactive citizen as part of a lively virtual community. The actual trends towards professionalization and broadcasting in Germany are counterproductive for the development of local community networks.
6. Outlook
It is a normative decision to be active and campaigning for the political and societal use of the Internet for and by the citizens themselves. To succeed, different actors have to play different roles.
What role should government play?
The belief that the market will assure the political or societal use of ICT' s is a misbelieve for Germany. Government has to play a leading part. Especially in creating and guaranteeing access for all who wish to participate. Several types of access can be seen:
What can designers do?
There are lots of lessons learned from CSCW-system design. They can be transferred to the design of community networks or at least are design principles one has to think over developing or advising the design of community networks:
These are few design principles for community networks which had been analyzed in CSCW -- projects in Germany. Applying these principles rises the hurdle of establishing cooperative societal and political community networks for the future. But they are worth being regarded for future design.
7. References
DU91 Udekem-Gevers: Belgian "Digital Cities". A Sample of French-Speaking Websites. In: Computers and Networks in the Age of Globalization. Proceedings of the HCC5 Conference on Human Choice And Computers, Geneva, August 24-28, 1998.
Dutton, William H.: Network rules of order: regulating speech in public electronic fora. In: Media, Culture & Society 1986 (SAGE: London, vol. 18: 269-290.
Emmrich 1998: http://www.muenster.de/~emmrich/linksl.htm
Erickson, Thomas: Social Interaction on The Net: Virtual Community or Participatory Genre. In: SIGGROUP Bulletin, Vol. 18, No. 2 (August 1997) pp. 26-31.
IMD 1998 http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~rillingr/imd/imd.html
Irrgang 1998 http://pro-online.uni-duisburg.de/projekte/baynet/index.html
Kubicek, Herbert / Volker Redder / Peter Seeger / Ulrike Tisborn: Informierte Stadt durch elektronische Bürgerinformationsysteme? Bremer Perspektiven Labor Bremen 1993.
Rheingold, Howard: Virtuelle Welten. Reisen im Cyberspace. Rowohlt Verlag Reinbek b. Hamburg 1992.
Schuler, Douglas: Community Networks: Building a New Participatory Medium. In: Communications of the ACM Jan. 1994 / Vol. 37 No. 1, pp. 39-51.
W3B http://www.w3b.de/ergebnisse/w3b5/demographie.html