I Still Think We Had it (Almost) Right

Community Networking, the Forgotten Gene of a New Better Internet

Résumé

This personal and non-exhaustive account of an exciting (and Quixotic?) time in the history of computing, before the Internet was ubiquitous and controlled by corporations, describes The Community Networking Movement. It was a brief but exciting moment for community and civic action. Community networks, along with public libraries other civic innovations, were motivated by civic purpose. They were locally controlled sites on the Internet that typically free services including training and hardware donations, as well as e-mail (years before Google and others got involved) web space, and community forums. This was all done without exhaustive surveillance and the gathering and sales of private information. The paper discusses the movement in general, as well as what went wrong, what if the movement had succeeded, and whether it may be possible to regain some of the much-needed civic purpose in the future. In addition to the obvious case of being massively outspent and ignored, the organizers had shortcomings of their own, including underestimating the threat, inadequate institutional ties, and inattention to the potential of scale. If we had succeeded the current online environment may have been less-commodified and more diverse and empowered than the one we have now. But we will never know. Today we see a world beset with problems that are colossal, quickly worsening, and are threatening our planet and our species. Building robust and resilient civic intelligence planet should be a top priority. Sadly, it is not. It may be the case in fact that our collective ability to address our problems may be eroding. Community networks with civic purpose, seem like better candidates for dealing with global—as well as local—issues, than today’s corporately controlled environment.