Community Informatics

In class today we talked about ways technology can build or even leverage social capital. This is a topic to further that discussion, or just aggregate ideas. (Possibly with an eye toward implementing some of them.) I was intrigued by the "couch network" idea for the CIC Web. I wonder, though, how that would work. It's not a question of posting comments to a forum, but rather a state that you want to be in: "I'm a CIC Couch offerer. Contact me if you're coming through area A." Perhaps a clickable map with flags where CIC-ers dwell. However, if students or others are posting their NEED for couches on which to crash, then a forum makes sense.

The paper mentions the work on John Dewey in the context of community informatics. Especially for those of you who have studied Dewey, help us better this relationship. Point to other works (especially of a tutorial nature) for further reading by those less familiar with the work of Dewey.

This paper contains the following statement: "Community informatics (CI) is increasingly calling for research that recognizes the ability of even the most impoverished communities to conduct inquiry and use appropriate information and communication technologies (ICT) in ways that respect local meanings and goals. From your own imagination, or better yet, your experience, give an example of an a CI activity that has been successful or unsuccessful in using ICT in ways that respect local meanings and goals.