Broadband data search & virtual community September 24, 2009

1. Broadband data search & virtual community September 24, 2009

2. 1. What is Community Informatics • CI: the study or practice regarding the continuity of local, historical communities meeting the transformation of information technologies • Libraries by reinventing themselves (I&R, job centers, OPACs) invented community networks (made of silicon-plus-carbon) • From social informatics comes three key ideas: network society, hacker ethic, and digital divide …the LOCAL community is the central focus here

3. 2. Community: ‘Race’, place and history • Science says, One race, the human race. Our species has always migrated, our differences are within group not between group. No one trait is found across a group. • Racism is real … What to do? Stay educated (on past, present, future) … Practice diversity in curriculum, profession, library • Class: an emergent phenomenon, as well as a categorical or positional reality, thanks to techno-economic changes • Root Shock: Severing people’s connections to places. “The traumatic stress reaction to destruction of one’s emotional ecosystem.” Mass upheavals have ripple effect. Solution: Acknowledge. Create healing places. Displacement the 21st C problem. • ‘Damned by ourselves, saved by community.’

4. 3. Dig Div, Community as network • Dig Div: a fxn of the information revolution. Persistent, multidimensional & changing. CI solutions mean a) communities not individuals b) seeking sustainability • Society ≠ Individuals … Society = Ties ! • Wellman/Leighton: Urbanization brings… • Community found/strong nhood networks? • Community lost/no networks? • Community liberated/metropolitan networks? • [Q: where do space and time go in SN theory?] • Coleman: Closed networks build social capital • So do open networks! e.g. Murchison Center

5. 3a. Network models groups as nodes strong & weak ties…dense and sparse networks

6. 4. UC2B • UC2B: 36 million in stimulus/other funds. 2 cities + univ. Fiber laid across cities, 100 Mbps to 137 critical anchor institutions, 5 Mbps to 2500+ homes in 12 low-broadband census tracts. Above ground, support for broadband adoption. • UC2B Above Ground, 3+ years, guided by GSLIS: • 45 + 1 public computing centers boosted or established • Mad Lab in N Champaign (Music Access Digitization), HQ for community helpdesk, 14 outreach/support staff • 17 cybernavigators serving 46 ctrs + 12 sectors serving low income people (health, ed, libs, homeless, seniors, women, disabled, safety, churches, comm ctrs, media/culture) • Three course sequence for 50 UI/Parkland/high school students, public video • Broadband 101 spring: what’s it all about • Broadband 102 summer: paid broadband internships • Broadband 103 fall: community-serving bband entrepreneurship, $50K in awards • UC2B’s community helpdesk • Community advisory committee, research advisory committee, PCCNet • Community first, technology second (CI approach) • Similarly nationwide 2010-2012; nat’l bband plan by Feb 2010; broadband.gov

7. 4a. Community and disaster: recap to come Link to entire UC2B applicationon City of Champaign site:http://tinyurl.com/completeUC2B

8. Agenda • Your community in cyberspace may be the same or different as the actual community? Does this matter? • Next assignment: Computer Learning Month • Virtual community: Wikipedia and the WELL • 590CO: Eric on Lih and Andrew on Rheingold • 590COL: Marcela on Lih and Nancy on Rheingold