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We must create Community Technology Services which ensured Free Public Access for any part of the Community which needs that access. In these very troubled economic times in America RAIN Network has started providing scholarships for anyone who is unemployed, as well as for low-income families, seniors and youth.
The RAIN Community Internet Network is determined to work in a way which will help ensure that we keep alive the idea of Universal Access, not just for those who can pay, but for all of our Community. We are at a turning point in the evolution of the Internet. Corporate ownership of bandwidth, search engines and online sources of information has reached a point where the original idea of an open Internet could become just a memory of the good old days when the Net was new.
And the challenge of building a peaceful Global Community requires that traditional American values of Democracy and Freedom of speech be shared. Even if America has been in a difficult phase, with a Government that did not appear to value Free Speech and Social Justice, the majority of American’s do value those things and we need to remind the world of what real American Culture is.
The Internet, like Literacy, is a powerful tool for Democracy and Global Community. It is a tool unlike any we have know before, to link people and communities around the world in shared work towards sustainable environment, social justice and economy.
If the Internet becomes, as the printing press and publishing industry did in the early 20th Century, (when nearly all sources of publishing came to be owned by a few individuals and families), just another Corporate tool for marketing and social control, we will have lost a resource that will not be easy to regain.
I am often reminded of how important the “Small Press” became in the 1950’s and 60’s, to help establish a source of publishing, (of News Papers, Magazines and Books), that represented an “alternative” to the small community of Corporate Publishing Houses that virtually controlled all news and book publishing.
Today, independent online publishers like the RAIN Community Network, keep alive that “alternative”, working to represent local communities, local concerns and local needs.
The RAIN Network was establishing in the early 1990's to help ensure the National development of Community oriented Internet Networks or “FreeNets”.
The Framework for those early Community Internet Network’s was made of these parts:
•Services to Small Farms, (early Ag-Tourism efforts, Small Farm online marketing, Small Farm land and water management)
•Services to community non-profits and community government
•Distance learning services for public schools, charter schools and home schools
•Telemedicine services for rural and chronically underserved urban seniors, families, and youth.
•Services to community Small Business to build new e-commerce skills
•Community Technology Literacy Skills development for teachers, doctors and regional (County/City) Government.
•Services to non-English language speaking community residents
To help make these services available and understood in our community RAIN Internet hosted technology skills classes free to everyone and provided online access at Farmers Markets, Schools and Senior Centers, often going to the Senior Centers using RAIN’s Internet Bus. The Internet Bus was developed through USDA funding to provide a mobile Computer learning lab. The Internet Bus is powered with solar panels on the roof to providing power to computers and with a satellite dish on the roof to provide Internet connectivity.
For 11 years, from 1994 to 2005, RAIN’s Community Technology Center in Santa Barbara, California, provided a model for other communities to follow in setting up effective, well used Community Technology Learning Labs. RAIN helped other community networks learn how to use library’s and schools as meeting places. In RAIN’s own region the Community Technology Center was used by over 500 non-profit organizations, over 2000 local small businesses as well as by families, teaches, seniors and youth, as a place to come to get online, learn about the Internet and build Technology Literacy Skills.
Community Technology Centers are as important as Libraries and should be part of every town and city. They provide a place where low income families, seniors, youth, (basically, anyone in the community who needs it) can come for free Internet Access and regular Technology Literacy Skills classes.
The Community Tech Centers are as important for the growth of American Technology as access to adequate bandwidth for rural areas. They ensure that the Internet becomes something regular folks understand. It is important to remember that each Community Technology Center in the United States and Europe represents a point of Free Access for members of the community who might not otherwise have that access.
Recommended Links:
• RAIN Community Internet: http://www.rain.org
• RAIN Community Learning webs:
Camp Internet: http://www.campinternet.net
Homeschools: http://www.rain.org/homeschool
• RAIN Community Wellness and Telemedicine webs:
Telemedicine: http://www.rain.org/video-magazine
Family Health: http://www.rain.org/littlesteps
Rural Telemedicine: http://www.rain.org/health
