Community Technology Centers:

The assistance and support of many people have helped me greatly. I'd like to thank Bruce MacDougall for constantly pushing me to "think big," and for funding this research, and Ann Forsyth deserves thanks for providing more time and constructive criticism than duty called for. I'd also like to thank the many people who took the time to speak with me on the phone, or faxed, e-mailed, and mailed me the information I needed, especially Jo Lowe, who seemed to have limitless enthusiasm.

Finally, thanks go to Elissa Sternberg for praise and encouragement.

This research uncovered a number of potentially important roles for community technology centers in rural Massachusetts, including lowering barriers of technology cost, knowledge, and availability. A consulting and education role, with staff to perform it, is important. Rural community technology centers, as multi-purpose community centers where telecommunications and other forms of communication mix, can reinforce social ties, and they can be tools for keeping more of the activities of residents in the community.

This research also indicates some general recommendations about how to develop community technology centers. Public and private users can complement each other if both are involved. Significant local ideas and participation are necessary to bring increased access to information and communication rural Massachusetts. Developing networks of support, advice and assistance for centers is useful. Many centers require up-front subsidies, though some can become financially self-sufficient. Rural community technology centers may start small, but they should have the capacity to grow as they serve the needs of diverse users. Larger anchor users can provide on-going support. Local educational institutions may provide a key source of this support.

She waved to Angela as they passed the drop-in computer lab to let her know that they were on their way out. Angela stopped showing her fifth person of the day how to search the state-wide library database of holdings just long enough to smile back. Habitually, she thought of the next appointment in the video conferencing room. It was Orin Savitch, watching a national satellite broadcast on the new tax laws. Orin was an auditor for the IRS who had given up his early-morning, late evening commute to Boston three days a week and instead worked here, out of the Prescott, Massachusetts Community Technology Center, close to home. Tax time was coming up. "Won't he be popular," thought Angela sarcastically, as she reminded herself to order more paper for the fax and copier.

Angela was an Information Consultant, or, as she liked to call herself, "the on-ramp to the Information Superhighway." She liked to think that there wasn't any technology question she couldn't answer, but in fact she had to e-mail Doug in Virginia and Pat in Colorado every now and again to get her unstumped. Well, what were friends for, anyway?

Two-fifteen. Almost time for her meeting with Craig Grabowski. Even though his Reservoir Recycled Products, Inc. had left the Center's small business incubator six months ago, he still came in every time the Center got a new piece of computer hardware or on-line service "just to see if I need one for myself." Not that Angela minded, but he must have asked her a dozen times to show her how to make a World-Wide Web home page. "He'll never learn," she muttered.

From all the way down the hall, Angela could hear someone yelling at the town's attorney, who had arranged to use the all-purpose meeting room. It was something about a denied zoning variance. Well, it was obvious that not all communication needed technology.

The preceding description of a community technology center in rural Massachusetts is a work of fiction for the time being. However, the impact of information and communication technology on communities is not a work of fiction. There have been many examples in recent years of the applications of the distance-shrinking effects of telecommunications and computer technology. These technologies and developments have been used in the United States and other parts of the world as an aid to economic or community development in rural areas. In particular, recent years have seen the development of many forms of local and regional centers intended to facilitate the use of computers and telecommunications. There are few standard terms for these centers, but "telecenters" is a very general term that can be used to refer to them.

The community technology center is a particular kind of telecenter, and represents an effort to bring together the different functions of telecommunications and computer technologies in locations where there are barriers to the successful adoption of these technologies by any single user or group of users. Rural areas and depressed urban neighborhoods are two examples. Community technology centers are so young as a concept that they are the subject of only a relatively small amount of analysis, and there are no community technology centers at this time in rural Massachusetts.

A rural community technology center, generally, is a building, office space or collection of offices in a central location within a rural community or region equipped with computer and telecommunication equipment and services superior to those that the users generally have themselves. These are shared by a number of users such as businesses, government entities, schools, and community members. It may or may not have additional equipment and services associated with it. It provides hardware, software, and support to a group of individuals and organizations that, alone, might find them unavailable, difficult to understand, or more expensive. Just a few of their possible uses are small-business technology cooperatives, remote work sites, government service sites, and education centers.

The community technology center is a young concept, but one with considerable promise. This study explores the community technology center concept and develops an understanding of them, especially rural ones: What are they? What are they like? What roles might they play in a rural community? Where have there been efforts to develop things like community technology centers? How have they developed in some locations, and how might they develop in other locations? It also investigates and describes some of the factors that could influence the development of community technology centers in the rural parts of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: What functions does communication and information technology perform for various user groups in rural Massachusetts? What functions might a community technology center perform for them? What is the telecommunications network context in Massachusetts?

The overall economy is becoming more and more based on services and information. Telecommunications and computer technologies have the ability to lessen the importance of distance in the processing of information and the provision of certain services. The potential for rural communities to lag seriously behind in the spread of a new infrastructure is real. For example, in 1935 rural Massachusetts had less than five percent electrical service coverage, at a time when much of Europe and New Zealand had near universal service (Cisler 1994, 2). Rural communities also have special challenges that these technologies have the potential to ease. Their more dispersed population can make many forms of interaction more difficult; they are also more isolated (Kimel 1994). (This isolation can be simply the long commutes in an exurban region or the greater isolation of other rural regions.) In the past, many rural regions unserved by electrical power banded together to form rural electric cooperatives (Cisler 1994, 2). Community technology centers and related telecenters have been proposed by some and implemented by others as a way of overcoming the challenges presented by new technology and rural communities. In a sense, they are the new rural information infrastructure cooperatives.

The community technology center addresses the communication and information technology needs of rural regions. Rural regions face special challenges when they try to adopt information and communication technology. They lack economies of scale because of their smaller population size, and they generally have a smaller base of human and technological resources upon which to draw (Kimel 1994). There are many possible ways to define rural. The Center for Rural Massachusetts has found the population density of towns to be a useful indicator of rurality. It is a relatively uncomplicated measure and accounts for the wide differences in the areas of towns in Massachusetts. If 500 persons per square mile is used as the threshold of rurality, then there were 190 towns (or more than half) in Massachusetts that could be called rural in 1990 (MacDougall and Campbell 1995, 37). Low population density means ground-based telecommunications networks are more costly per user.

The word "community" is used here on purpose for its vagueness. This examination does not rule out the possibility that a rural community technology center could serve communities on a variety of different scales and in a variety of different forms. "Community" is also used here for another reason. In contrast to years past, the physical isolation of rural places is more associated with social isolation than social cohesion (Cisler 1994, 5). There is a danger that telecommunications, deployed in certain ways, can exacerbate this trend. The community technology center is a way of mitigating some of the more destructive potential effects of technology on community.

The first section of this study looks at background information for community technology centers. The next section takes a more detailed look at existing information on community technology centers and related concepts. This study also includes two sets of case studies. One set profiles two telecenters, and another profiles seven representatives of potential user groups of a rural Massachusetts community technology center. This study looks at telecommunications networks in Massachusetts, examining state initiatives to promote networks and providing an overview of the telephone, cable TV and Internet infrastructure in rural Massachusetts. This section examines how these networks and these initiatives might affect the need for community technology centers and their form. The last section draws upon all of the preceding ones to lay out some preliminary conclusions on how the community technology center might apply to rural Massachusetts communities.

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Last updated July 22, 1995
by Christopher J. Campbell

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