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Creating Community Technology Centers which ensure Internet Access for the Community, including low-income families, seniors and rural area folks.
We have been discussing the Framework which RAIN Network was establishing in the early 1990's to help define the National development of Community oriented Internet Networks.
That first Framework for Community Internet was made of these parts:
•Services to Small Farms, (early Ag-Tourism efforts, Small Farm online marketing, Permaculture and Sustainable Agriculture teaching and support as well as use of our GIS system for land, water, and crop 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
•Services to non-English language speaking community residents
To help make these services available and understood in the Community RAIN Internet hosted technology skills classes and provided online access at Farmers Markets, Schools and Senior Centers using the Network’s web site and for on-site classes we used RAIN's Internet Bus. The Internet Bus was developed through USDA funding, designed to provide a mobile Computer learning lab with solar panels on the roof of the bus providing power and a satellite dish on the roof providing Internet connectivity.
The idea was to have a local Community Technology Lab and a mobile Tech Lab that could get out to those in our Community who did not have transportation to get to the Lab.
For 12 years, from 1994 to 2006, RAIN’s Community Technology Center in Santa Barbara, California, U.S., provided a model for other communities to follow in setting up an effective, well used Community Technology Learning Lab, library and meeting place. The Santa Barbara Tech Lab 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, to learn about the Internet and build Technology Literacy Skills. The Santa Barbara RAIN Community Internet Lab was the Training Lab for Teachers, Physicians, Small Business owners, seniors and students.
Community Technology Centers are as important to every town and city as Public Libraries are. 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, Mexico, South America and Europe represents a point of Free Access for members of the community who might not otherwise have that access.
Here is a bit of history:
In the mid-1980’s RAIN Community Network was formed as a BBS system designed to link Santa Barbara's public library, city hall, community non-profits and small business and small farmers together.
Up until 1990 our main conversations with other Network developers were primarily about the issue of “user interface”. Early work with BBS systems and early Internet tools like Gopher did not provide what was needed. The “Network” or as it was to become the “Internet” was not the main point of discussion.
There was a need to resolve the human to network server interface and get a Framework established for putting education, health, local government and non-profit agency as well as business information online in the most accessible way.
When we decided to move from the University, (UCSB), out into the Community there was suddenly a great deal of conversation and cause for meetings regarding the new issue “should the Internet bandwidth be given over to the public?, (that is a curious thought today, isn't it). Many in the Academic community felt the Network should be kept for research and academic use only.
We had argued that the Community at large had as much use for the bandwidth for health, education, business and local government as the University did. We were lucky. Then State Senator Jack O’Connell was very supportive of the early efforts to build this new technology into the Community. Ultimately, when we began the first of what would be 5 USDA Rural Distance Learning and Telemedicine grant projects that would take our Network model out to 150 rural communities in California and the Southwest. State Senator O'Connell and Congresswoman Capps continued to be a strong supporters of the Community Internet Network as a necessary part of our Nation's larger Technology growth.
Things have changed a lot since then. The Internet is now very much Private Enterprise. Back then there was a feeling that it was a “Public Utility”, something created through Government funding that should remain a resource for the Public.
But back in 1989/90, we sat in the most remarkable meetings with professors, administrators and government representatives while the issue of "public use of the Network" was discussed. In the end, we took RAIN Community Internet out into the community starting up a Hub at the Santa Barbara Unitarian Church where we made our first two hundred 2400kbps baud modems active in 1991.
As the Internet becomes more and more an Internet with management and control shared between many Countries, it is important to recall what some of the original goals and expectations were. Should management of the Network remain with the United States or should the United Nations be made responsible for management of this Global Resource or should the responsibility go to each Country on a revolving schedule?
In our next blog we'll discuss our most recent work with rural community connectivity, telemedicine and Public Internet Video broadcasting.
