CIVIC NETWORKS Building Community on the Net By Scott London london@west.net March 1997 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Contents: Introduction The Virtual Community The Networked Community Public Space Deliberation Social Capital Conclusion Notes Credits and Related Links ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All sorts of reasons have been advanced in recent years to explain the decline of community in America, from the way we design our neighborhoods to the increased mobility of the average American to such demographic shifts as the movement of women into the labor force. But the onslaught of television and other electronic technologies is usually cited as the main culprit. As Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam observes, these technologies are increasingly "privatizing our leisure time" and "undermining our connections with one another and with our communities."[1] In his essay "The Strange Disappearance of Civic America," Putnam draws a direct parallel between the arrival of television and the decline of what he calls "social capital" -- the social networks, trust, and norms of reciprocity that are the essence of healthy communities. As he points out, a "massive change in the way Americans spend their days and nights occurred precisely during the years of generational civic disengagement."[2] It follows that computers, VCRs, virtual reality and other technologies that, like television, "cocoon" us from our neighbors and communities exacerbate the loss of social capital. With the advent of computer networks and "virtual communities," however, some feel that electronic technologies can actually be used to strengthen the bonds of community and reverse America's declining social capital. Advocates stress that electronic networks can help citizens build organizations, provide local information, and develop bonds of civic life and conviviality. While the claims are no doubt overstated in many cases, as they always are when new technologies are involved, there is growing evidence that this may be the case, particularly in local community networks. The social and political ramifications of electronic networking has become a favorite topic of speculation in recent years. Cover stories, conferences, books, Web sites, and radio and television programs devoted to the subject have grown exponentially. In looking over the burgeoning literature on the political uses of the Net, I find that most of it falls into three general categories: 1) questions of democratic culture and practice, such as the pros and cons of direct democracy, issues of privacy and social control, and the changing nature of public opinion; 2) how on-line petitioning, electronic voting, information campaigning and other forms of "netactivism" can promote politics more narrowly defined; and 3) the implications of networking technologies for communities. This paper leaves aside the first two categories[3] and focuses specifically on the third: whether computer networks can be used to strengthen and enhance the bonds of community. A great deal of attention has been focused on electronic or "virtual" communities that knit together individuals who may be geographically dispersed but who share common interests. While I take up some of the problems with this idea, my main focus is on geophysical communities - - municipalities, counties, regional areas, Indian nations, etc. -- and the ways they are using networks to build healthier communities. As I hope to show, electronic networks, especially when augmented by face-to-face networks, can strengthen communities by serving as "free spaces," by fostering dialogue and deliberation, and by enhancing the bonds of trust, reciprocity and connectedness that make up social capital. Virtual Community When Vice President Al Gore introduced the idea of an "information superhighway" in a speech in 1992, it conjured up all kinds of visions: videos on demand, electronic voting, on-line shopping, instant access to government information. But just as the metaphor of the information highway began to catch on, a book called The Virtual Community appeared which offered an altogether different vision of the digital revolution. As Howard Rheingold saw it, people are not interested in interactive entertainment and information so much as the opportunity to form relationships and interact with other people. The real promise of electronic networks, he said, is that they bring people together in new ways. Rheingold defined virtual communities as groups of people linked not by geography but by their participation in computer networks. They share many of the characteristics of people in ordinary communities, he said, yet they have no face-to-face contact, are not bound by the constraints of time or place, and use computers to communicate with one another. Even though communities can emerge from and exist within computer-linked groups, he added, the "technical linkage of electronic personae is not sufficient to create a community."[4] Community includes more than merely the exchange of information; it is usually characterized by "social contracts, reciprocity, and gift economies."[5] Moreover, it often includes many of the features that characterize regular communities. As Rheingold pointed out, when "a group accumulates a sufficient number of friendships and rivalries and witnesses the births, marriages, and deaths that bond any other kind of community, it takes on a definite and profound sense of place in people's minds."[6] Using anecdotes from the virtual community to which he belonged -- the WELL -- Rheingold described computer networking as decentralized, informal, eclectic, and essentially self-governing. It is difficult to generalize, he noted, for "there is no such thing as a single, monolithic, online subculture; it is more like an ecosystem of subcultures, some frivolous, others serious."[7] Nevertheless, there is a distinctive quality about the sort of discourse that takes place online, he said. It can be compared with the conversation that arises in cafes, community centers, bars, beauty parlors, and other public places. The virtual community, in this sense, is analogous to the concept of the public sphere. The Virtual Community became a bestseller and almost singlehandedly changed the way we talk about the on-line world. Today, networks are increasingly conceived in human terms; not as digital highways but as communities of people. Howard Frederick, who has written extensively about the new technologies, observes that "what we call `community' used to be limited to face-to-face dialogue among people in the same physical space, a dialogue that reflected mutual concerns and a common culture. Today, neither community nor dialogue is restricted to a geographical place. Modern media have expanded our sense of place by reallocating space and time. In the past, personal relationships relied on meeting at a cafe, signing a contract together, shaking hands, or interacting in the village square. With the advent of the fax machine, telephones, international publications, and computers, personal and professional relationships can be maintained irrespective of time and place. Today we are all members of international `non-place' communities."[8] The trouble with virtual or "non-place" communities is that they tend to exacerbate, rather than challenge, the atomization and fragmentation of modern society. They give their members a sense of belonging without any of the obligations of old-fashioned communities. As a result, they foster a watered-down notion of community that is convenient and virtually free of commitment of any kind. When we virtualize human relations, as naturalist David Ehrenfeld puts it, we are no longer in touch with the essential ingredients of community, "for at the end of the day when you in Vermont and your e-mail correspondent in western Texas go to sleep, your climates will still be different, your soils will still be different, your landscapes will still be different, your local environmental problems will still be different, and -- most importantly -- your neighbors will still be different, and while you have been creating the global community with each other, you will have been neglecting them."[9] Virtual communities are, more often than not, pseudocommunities. They lack many of the essential features of real communities, such as face- to-face conversation, the unplanned encounter -- the chance meetings between people that promote a sense of neighborliness and familiarity -- and, perhaps most important, the confrontation with people whose lifestyles and values differ from yours. In this sense, virtual communities tend to be utopian -- they are communities of interest, education, tastes, beliefs, and skills. The result, as Stephen Doheny- Farina writes in The Wired Neighborhood, is that "much of the Net is a Byzantine amalgamation of fragmented, isolating, solipsistic enclaves of interest based on a collectivity of assent."[10] Information is the currency of virtual communities, like many other marketplace cultures. The way it is shared and transmitted therefore has direct implications for the overall identity of the group. It works better, as Howard Rheingold writes, "when the community's conceptual model of itself is more like barn-raising than horse- trading."[11] That may be so, but a more fundamental question is whether the exchange of information by itself is a sufficient criterion for community. Langdon Winner, in an essay called "Mythinformation," attributes this idea to a certain "optimistic technophilia" characteristic of on-line enthusiasts.[12] Community requires public dialogue and deliberation, he says, not information. Information is essential to public debate, to be sure, but it is only meaningful when tied to purpose, and only the community can give it purpose. The metaphor of the information highway, while inappropriate in many ways, accurately reflects what can happen to communities when they are woven into a larger social fabric. Just as the interstate highway system linked existing road structures and allowed rapid movement between them, digital networks allow vast amounts of information to pass between different locales almost instantaneously. The danger of the information highway, as futurist Robert Theobald points out, is that "we are building it before we have a local knowledge system in place. We shall therefore reinforce an already existing pathology of looking outside our own systems for the ideas we need rather than finding competence within our own communities."[13] In this respect, the push toward globalization flattens not only local economies and indigenous traditions, but also the knowledge base of a community by urging its members to look outside the community for answers. The Networked Community In his popular book Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte observes that the digital revolution has removed many of the limitations of geography. "Digital living," he says, "will include less and less dependence upon being in a specific place at a specific time, and the transmission of place itself will start to become possible."[14] Howard Rheingold acknowledges this possibility, but the virtual community, as he sees it, actually does require some ties to physical community. Most of the stories he tells in The Virtual Community involve people who live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area. When I asked Rheingold about this, he said that a sense of community first began to develop on the WELL after members of the group met face-to-face. "Different [on-line] conferences had different get-togethers," he recalled. "The parenting conference decided to have a softball game and picnic in the summer. We all met each other and the kids we had been bragging about to each other, and a lot of solidarity came out of that. Other groups had bridge games or poker games or went for Chinese food at different restaurants every Sunday." As a result of these face-to-face gatherings, he said, "we started to become part of each other's lives and a real community began growing up."[15] Rheingold's experiences confirm the view that electronic networks are best understood not as separate worlds in cyberspace but as "nervous systems for the physical world," as long-time Internet observer Phil Agre puts it. "Face-to-face meetings will always be indispensable for cementing relationships and sharing worldviews, but the Internet is valuable before and after those meetings."[16] This point is echoed by Francis Fukuyama in his work on trust and social capital. The advantages of technology, he says, are not in creating new communities but in strengthening already existing social networks.[17] This premise is at the heart of a burgeoning movement sometimes referred to as "civic networking" which is using computer-based communication to create new forms of citizens-based, geographically delimited community information systems. These systems, variously known as civic networks, Free-Nets, community computing centers, or public access networks, are proliferating around the world today. In his book New Community Networks, Douglas Schuler estimates that more than 500,000 people are regular users of the hundreds of community networks currently in existence in the United States and abroad.[18] They usually bring together a variety of local institutions, such as schools and universities, local government agencies, libraries, and nonprofit organizations into a single community resource that then serves a variety of functions, from allowing people to communicate with each other via e-mail to encouraging involvement in local decision-making to developing economic opportunities in disadvantaged communities. The rationale for civic networking is that community information systems can knit together the diverse elements of a community, provide access to and information about local government, stimulate public education, promote socioeconomic development and equality, foster lateral communication among and between citizens, and enhance civic participation. Mario Morino, in an oft-cited 1994 paper, defined civic networking as a "process, facilitated by the tools of electronic communications and information, that improves and magnifies human communication and interaction in a community." It does this in a number of ways: * By bringing together members of a community and promoting debate, deliberation and resolution of shared issues. * By organizing communication and information relevant to the communities' needs and problems on a timely basis. * By engaging and involving the participation of a broad base of citizens, including community activists, leaders, sponsors, and service providers, on an ongoing basis. * By striving to include all members of the community, especially those in low-income neighborhoods and those with disabilities or limited mobility. * By making basic services available at fair and reasonable costs, or free. * And, most importantly, by represent local culture, local relevance, local pride, and a strong sense of community ownership [19] The prototypical example of a community network is the Cleveland Free- Net, which began as an experiment in making medical information publicly accessible over an electronic bulletin board system. Today it has evolved into a sophisticated network serving over 160,000 registered users in the greater Cleveland area. Cleveland Free-Net founder, Tom Grundner, captured the spirit of the civic networking philosophy when he observed, America's progress toward an equitable Information Age will not be measured by the number of people we can make dependent upon the Internet. Rather, it is the reverse. It will be measured by the number of local systems we can build, using local resources, to meet local needs. Our progress ... will not be measured by the number of people who can access the card catalog at the University of Paris, but by the number of people who can find out what's going on at their kids' school, or get information about the latest flu bug which is going around their community.[20] A great deal has been written about community networks as tools for promoting civil society and they have been the focus of intensive study in recent years. Nevertheless, much of the literature is still of an advocacy genre and empirical evidence is difficult to come by. How, then, do we measure the effectiveness of on-line networks in fostering stronger communities? In what follows, I outline three qualities vital to healthy communities -- public space, deliberation, and social capital -- and examine the extent to which networks can support and enhance these qualities. Conclusion The trouble with the virtual community metaphor is that it implies that technology itself can create community. Usually its effect is the very opposite: it hastens the breakdown of traditional community. Still, electronic networks can play a role in strengthening communities if they are used to augment social networks that are already in place. In addition to their obvious benefits as text-based information systems, networks can serve as public spaces for informal citizen-to-citizen interaction, they can support rational dialogue and, in some cases, deliberation, and they can promote the social connectedness, trust, and cooperation that constitute social capital. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 1997, Scott London Scott London, "Civic Networks: Building Community on the Net." Paper prepared for the Kettering Foundation. March 1997.