Manifesto Points Summary

Manifesto Points Summary

These summary points are taken from the discussion of the Manifesto on CONET during November 1999. The comments have in part been paraphrased and some are direct but anonymous quotes from individuals. It is in no way representative of CONET as a group.

The manifesto statement carries something of a top down paternalist flavour.

Must support the notion of distributed communities (e.g. disabled, or people from small but distributed ethnic groups). These are not 'local' to each other but still form communities so should not be excluded.

The technology and knowledge needs to be targeted at those who have a real passion of something and an established network of relationships. What technology can do is develop those relationships (whether local or distributed) and empower action.

Key points are variety, inclusiveness, mixed motivations, growth and decay, mergers and spin-offs. They may be local or global, single purpose or multi-purpose, simple or complex. The common features are 'community' (a group with a shared interest) and on-line (connected by current ICTs.)

E.g. virtual resource centres: This makes sense for geographically related communities ("local") with physical centres and needs every encouragement. But it misses the crucial advantage of the Internet - it is based on telecommunications and allows communities of interest (like CONETters) to collaborate. So champions need to be supported in 'spatially unrelated' communities and partnerships too.

Need to use broad forums like the Virtual Resource Centre, but the term could apply equally to a National Resource Centre, Regional and Local Resource Centres. All of these have a part to play in sharing knowledge and best practice.

It doesn't matter how much ideas are disseminated in cyberspace, communities will only be empowered when the capabilities of people who are passionate about doing something at a local level are developed.

There is little interest in giving Government "a banner to wave" (We Help Communities) in the face of a constituency robbed of pensions, support for disabled people, added measures for lone parents.

If community control of Internet access and resources is to be enabled and determination of their own evolution as players in online-UK, capacity building (making able), representation (inclusion), and structuring (its not all one big discussion) must be attended to.

"How do these proposed technology centres differ from (say) telecentres, telecottages etc that already exist?" and "Do they go alongside existing centres or add to them?". Those telecentres that have survived the last ten years have evolved with the times, why not just keep on evolving?

E.g. Pathfinder Projects: the innate danger of a unified pathfinder programme (i.e. one under common programme management) is that genuine diversity and experimentation is more difficult under such a scheme.

One important idea for any local facility to develop is to join forces with the local media (newspapers, freesheets, local radio, local TV) to run joint programmes and promotions.

Another important idea to think about is to make sure the local facilities are properly signposted in the more general places people search online, such as Alta Vista et al. This is easy and cheap to do and being easy to find online says something about any site, while finding that one's very own local community network has not bothered to list itself is always disappointing.

Another element is "global outreach". One of the hidden strengths of a local community can be its invisible connections with the rest of the world. Most UK communities have alumni who are now working in many different parts of the world and who still have ties of friendship, family, allegiance. Other UK communities have particular ties to distant homelands - for example to China, Pakistan, East Africa . . . One of the most immediately valuable features of the Internet is the "death of distance"; making bridges for "local" people wherever they may be world-wide is a powerful activity that is too often overlooked in CN planning. Such bridges need very good visibility in all the relevant places (for example links in Alta Vista et al in the appropriate languages, links in national search engines in the appropriate countries).

Local community networking falling into the hands of commercial vested interests (eg Tesco, the Beeb, FreeServe or whatever); this can be avoided by local community network organisers ensuring that any deals they make for (eg) webspace, access bandwidth etc don't allow the providers any editorial or process control and don't prevent the community from readily switching to alternative provisions

There is a need to state what kind of support is needed to address the particular issues of particular kinds of neighbourhoods, such as:

communities in areas of high unemployment
communities with problems of neighbourhood crime, vandalism
low-income communities
communities with internal problems of racial discrimination or tension
communities with external image problems (eg can't get a job because of your address)
communities that have local problems in education (provision, motivation, attainment)
isolated communities (at a distance from centres of economic and social activities)
rural communities (dispersed populations)
communities with very little hi-tech employment and activity
middle class communities
communities with particular languages difficulties (eg, in England, those with a large proportion of people whose main language is not English)
affluent communities
communities suffering from economic or other "shocks" (eg the pit is closing/has just closed)

Powerful Terms such as "Helping", "assisting" and "empowering" need to be in the manifesto.

"[The aim is that]. . . grass roots community groups become motivated to organise and manage their own online community environments and have access to the relevant know how, learning and other appropriate support".

Community perspectives and values on the Internet need to be reflected on equal terms with those of commerce and government

It is important to establish the internet/web/cyberspace as a public interest space as well as a commercial marketplace