US/ND-3: Reality Check
Reality Check
Frank Odasz (franko@bigsky.dillon.mt.us)
Sun, 15 Sep 96 11:50:28 MDT
VIRTUALLY CLUELESS
Who knows how to bring people together electronically
to make good things happen?
by Frank Odasz
franko@bigsky.dillon.mt.us
http://macsky.bigsky.dillon.mt.us/
(The following two paraphrased paragraphs are borrowed from
"Share Our Strength" by Bill Shore.)
Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has visited more than one thousand
schools over the past decade to teach young people about jazz. He
was quoted in Life magazine as saying "What a kid learns about
jazz is how to express his individuality without stepping on
somebody else's. The first thing I tell kids is "Play anything
you want but make it sound like you." The next step is learning
to control that self-expression. Don't just blurt something out,
adapt it to what the other guy is doing. Being a good neighbor,
that's what jazz is all about. Jazz is democracy in action.
Teaching jazz is teaching the language of community. (page 106)
Current political thinking appears to have polarized between the
Republican's belief that the free market is the key to solving
today's social ills, and at the other extreme the Democrats have
the belief that government holds the keys to taking appropriate
action. What both parties seem to have missed is the necessity of
action by the civic sector, as the third leg of the milkstool to
provide support for a vital America.
What both Democrats and Republicans fail to see is that the
government and the market are not enough to make a civilization.
The language of the marketplace says "Get as much as you can for
yourself." The language of government says "Legislate for others
what is good for them." We're missing the distinctive moral
language of a civil society. All of us have to go out in the
public square, and all of us have to assume our citizenship
responsibilities. Rebuilding civil society requires people
talking and listening to each other; making music together as a
community, through songs of action, caring; with a spirit of
giving freely without measuring it out precisely, or demanding
something in return. (Page 12)
The potential of the NII, community networking, and of each
individual, hangs squarely on this issue of joining with others
to leverage the public good, without thought of personal gain.
Who controls our ability to do this effectively? You and me.
Today, an increasing number of individuals are awakening to the
personal empowerment of today's easy-to-use webbed Internet,
complete with search engines and free software. Many of these
individuals have a vision beyond a society of solo browsers, they
have experienced true human sharing and a sense of community
through their online social experiences and have realized that
with the will to do so, people anywhere, anytime, can bond
together to work toward common goals, no longer limited by
distance, time, or the lack of access to adequate information.
Many community networks operating today are the result of the
work of such individuals who have diligently attempted to impart
their visions to others by providing a model online environment
combining the vision and the tools with citizens eager to benefit
others.
Will the big communications corporations preempt these budding
'bottom-up' community networks? Citizens will determine the
winners through their participation.
The options for any group of individuals to use a BBS, email,
listserv, newsgroup, web conference, or other emerging means (3D
VRML avatars, CUSEE-ME desktop video-conferencing, etc.,) are
increasing. It's to everyone's advantage for the big corporations
to provide as high a quality of infrastructure as possible, with
citizens being primarily in charge of their choice of
communications tools and in the purposes for which they use them.
The reality of the situation is that creating autonomously
controlled local networks demonstrating the authenticity of
widespread purposeful citizen participation can only be achieved
through a "Win-Win" ongoing partnership between the builders, and
the users, of our emerging National Information Infrastructure.
The former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment clearly
states: "The diversity of applications necessary for a successful
NII can only come from the citizens themselves."
THEORY VS PRACTICE
In around 1867, when the first transatlantic telegraph was
installed, wonderfully flowery visions of our global human family
being joined together were ushered from many a pulpit. Most of
these visions have yet to be realized, even with today's
technologies. The point is there's a big difference between
espousing theoretical benefits and demonstrated
practice/realization of specific benefits.
Beyond basic physical connectivity, universal service needs to
focus on the social infostructure by which people become aware of
the validated, not assumed, benefits of connectivity at all
levels.
Effective citizen engagement in lifelong learning and
purposeful public problem solving, that improves lives, is a key
issue. We need ongoing evaluative metrics to measure what's
really happening after connectivity is made available. Caring and
connectivity are two related types of bandwidth which must
interact with common sense.
As a society, we still don't know how to work together online
productively, yet. We're a passive preliterate video society
evolving toward becoming a proactive literate society.
We're all kindergartners in the information age, experimenting
with various ways of communicating and working with others
productively online. Problems arise; such as a listserv
discussion group growing so large that most members become too
intimidated to post their ideas, or a few members choosing to
dominate public discussions with sophomoric 'spitting contests,'
airing freely their negativity and causing the majority of
discussion members to recoil in distaste.
Worse even, are discussions without leadership which are reduced
to circular hodge-podge messaging, where the same issues are
discussed over and over again with no one summarizing, archiving
and disseminating former quality messages and "collected
knowledge." When value and knowledge are not aggregated, and
decisions not reached, forward progress is lost.
It is the specific processes by which citizens aggregate
knowledge and engage in purposeful public problem-solving,
effectively, that we need to turn our focus. Without a national
"knowledge collection" effort in understanding how to leverage
these dynamics effectively, to allow us to define the direction
forward in realizing our joint potential, we'll continue to
be...virtually clueless.
\ /
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/ \ Frank Odasz; franko@bigsky.dillon.mt.us
Western Montana College of the University of Montana
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