If we consider the net as a communication tool and accept that the vast majority of our communication is both in our local language and within a fairly small geographical horizon within which our most important social, economic and political activity occurs.
The technology is able to facilitate, accelerate and archive that communication for many purposes, most of them benign. But it will only do that effectively if it is available to people when and where they need it (walking 5KM to a telecentre is not the answer), through an interface that they can use (if it doesn't support non-literate users it will fail), in a language that makes sense to them (must be local).
While it is a great thing that we can also use it to communicate with like minded, and alternatively minded people all round the world, and there are significant benefits in that, its greatest value, and sternest test comes in figuring out how to be relevant and worthwhile in our daily lives.
This applies both in poor and rich communities and there is increasing evidence, and discussion around the ways that Internet tools and services are being used to enrich and empower local, real-world communities.
I have some material that deals with these issues here
- Telecentres: How Did We Lose the Plot?
- How Can ICT Help Alleviate Poverty?
- Jhai Foundation Remote Villages Network
- ICT and Poverty: The San Bushmen (Waiting to go online)
- Communications Networks Access in Developing Countries (Waiting to go online)
This story on the BBC shows that the localisation process is a growing factor in internet use among those with good access. Perhaps we could shortcut the process for poor countries by not forcing them to follow the same, frequently dead-ended road that the rich ones have been down.
Online communities get real
Weblogs, e-mail and instant messaging are enabling people to maintain relationships and pass information in unexpected ways, say researchers.
A study of online communities by UK think-tank The Work Foundation has found that the web is much more localised, more honest and less chaotic than original predictions thought.
So-called social software - e-mail, messaging systems, weblogs and shared online diaries - is allowing people to make the net work for them and bring the virtual world home.
New phenomena such as weblogs have allowed people to share their interest and passions with a wider audience but often provide a quite mundane and honest view of life.
"Increasingly technologies allow people to find out about others in the real world and keep in touch with their day-to- day lives," said the report's author Will Davies.
The longer we do this, the more I suspect we will discover that this technology will expand our horizons, of course, but also intensify our local communities and their interactions.
