Taub Urban Research Center Taub Urban Research Center[Ed: Links to web pages and/or e-mail addresses which have become inactive since the publication of this article have been enclosed in curly brackets { }. Replacement links have been provided where possible.]
The Internet promises to dramatically redefine the basic means of communication and interaction in our society. E-mail offers a cheap and easy way to send important, timely messages, creating far-flung networks of friends, clients and colleagues that never could have existed previously. At the same time, the opportunities for free speech offered by the Web have taken the desktop publishing revolution of the 1980s to a new level.Yahoo! Internet Life magazine recently ranked NYU as one of the most "wired" campuses in the country. Greenwich Village's proximity to the new media companies of Broadway's "Silicon Alley" has made the Internet an important part of daily life for everyone, from the professor of economics to the undergraduate majoring in art history. The phrase "I'll e-mail you" has become commonplace this year as NYU-NET blooms to embrace the entire student body, both at school and at home.
Yet in the city outside the university community, and particularly outside Manhattan, on-ramps to the Internet are just slightly more frequent than on-ramps to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. However, unlike the arrival of highways, which split and destroyed dozens of vibrant neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Sunset Park and Tremont Park, it is the very absence of infrastructure and knowledge of the Internet that threatens to leave many communities behind in the 21st century.
Just what is a community network, and why are advocates so adamant about its ability to help disadvantaged groups help themselves? Doug Schuler, a pioneer in community networking and author of New Community Networks: Wired for Change (ACM Press, 1996), says, "Community networks are not designed to be on-ramps to the Internet, as this metaphor implies that the purpose of the system is to help people escape from their local community."
To Schuler and others, the greatest need that FreeNets and community networks serve is to facilitate communication in neighborhoods, housing projects and communities where people have become isolated due to high unemployment, discrimination, language differences or crime.
New York City lags far behind other cities in the degree to which it has developed community networks, despite the rapidly growing new media industry, the many philanthropic foundations headquartered here, and the city's vibrant and hard-working non-profit community.
Several efforts over the years, including BigAppleNet and the East Side House FreeNet, failed to develop into the kind of feasible low-cost alternatives to the commercial Internet Service Providers that dot cities across the nation. The FreeNet in Austin, Texas, a city with barely one-tenth the population of New York, has over 7,000 users served by more than 200 volunteers. Even in Los Angeles, which is fast becoming a place where the rich avoid the problems of the poor with gated communities and private security forces, activists have established a FreeNet with thousands of users throughout the city.
Several isolated groups are demonstrating excellent programs around the Big Apple to diffuse technology and knowledge throughout the entire city. The University Settlement House on the Lower East Side of Manhattan has a new computer lab and an extensive schedule of classes and workshops for its clients, providing job training and English skills simultaneously. Other groups, including Playing to Win, Chocolate Chips, and Urban Technologies, Inc., are developing models for neighborhood computer centers, yet funding for citywide expansion has been slow to materialize.
As the New York Times reported in a recent article ("Washington Hears Testimonials on Program to Connect the Masses," Oct. 29, 1997), the federal government supports the development of programs aimed at connecting disadvantaged communities to the growing web of digital communications networks. According to the article, this program is not only the most competitive grants program in the federal government, but it also carries the heavily anti-urban bias of all federal programs. Dubbed the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP), one of the program's main goals is to help overcome geographic barriers to telecommunications access -- putting urban New York's applicants at a disadvantage compared to those in less densely populated areas. Few in Congress realize that poor inner-city residents have about as much access to advanced telecommunications as the Unabomber sitting in his Montana shack in the woods.
Philanthropic foundations, of which New York boasts the largest array in the nation, have failed to fill this funding gap for community networks. In fact, the non-profit community nationwide has lagged far behind business and even government in providing services and information electronically via the Web. In New York, skepticism about the merits of the electronic media, combined with decades of intellectual stagnation among major private grant-making organizations, have left start-up FreeNets and community networks starving for cash. The economics of computer facilities also defy traditional funding logic; the cost of physical equipment, which grantors prefer paying for over salaries and operating costs, are typically less than 15 percent of the annual budget of a computer lab with full Internet access. The real expense is in training, staff and telecommunications charges -- "soft" expenses in the non-profit world which leave little concrete evidence to show in foundations' annual reports. One need only look at the recently announced Web Development Fund program to get a sense of how far behind other cities and states New York is in funding technology and telecommunications projects of a community nature. Envisioned by Marc Weiss, creator of the popular PBS series "P.O.V.," the fund gives grants of up to $50,000 for websites exploring specific social or political issues. With any luck, a small amount of this modest program will be used for community-oriented projects. In contrast, the Saint Vincent Hospital in Billings recently won a whopping $465,000 TIIAP grant to explore telemedicine in rural Montana.
Information is the raw material of the industries that will create ninety percent of the region's jobs over the next fifteen years, and without the necessary tools to transform raw data into valuable knowledge, city residents, particularly the most disadvantaged, will find themselves locked out of more and more employment and career options. Community networks provide, at the least, the familiarity and confidence with computers that many of our city's workers need.
For more information on community networking and how to get involved, follow these links:
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Posted January 20, 1998. Last reviewed December 6, 2005.
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