Topic 21: Thoughts from Other Rural Communities By: Mick Winter (mick) on Sat, Jul 24, '93 4 responses so far Since it seems that topic 12 LIVE! - From Telluride should really be saved for postings *from* Telluride, I thought I'd start a new topic to provide a place to put postings like the following. 4 responses total. Topic 21: Thoughts from Other Rural Communities # 1: Mick Winter (mick) Sat, Jul 24, '93 (10:27) 68 lines I also am looking forward to the post-conference "mind-dump". I have a feeling the only way to keep distant participants in touch during an actual conference is to have electronic posting an integral part of a conference for the use of the f2f participants, rather than as an add-on for the benefit of the distant folks. It does look, however, like you're trying to approach that with your reporters and such. I would have loved to gone to Telluride. This is the next best thing. Thanks. As much as I enjoy and value virtual communities, I am more interested in using networks to enhance physical communities. Which I gather is the purpose of the Telluride conference. Here in the Napa Valley we have a similar situation to Telluride, a community that is a geographical (and to some extent cultural) entity somewhat separate from nearby communities, Telluride being, I gather, much more isolated than we are. Although hardly typical rural communities, both are situated in rural areas. Telluride has skiing and the arts; we're basically a lower-middle class rural community with a thin veneer of wine-related culture, with little recreation or arts. Hmmm. As I write this, I wonder if perhaps we are just a typical rural community, that just happens to have a number of over- priced restaurants that city folks like to visit. Seeing us as *not* unique gives me a different perspective. Here in the Napa Valley we have a large, but economically rapidly declining middle class, a sizable but just beginning to politically wake up Hispanic community (which tends the vineyards and cleans the houses of the Anglo majority), and a small but very obvious wealthy class that owns the wineries, estates, and weekend homes and patronizes the chic restaurants and boutiques. Our county population is about 100,000. Napa has 60,000, smaller towns such as Yountville and St. Helena 3-5,000. Like Telluride, most of us (except developers) desire to keep most land in agricultural and drastically limit development. I'll be interested to see what comes out of the conference as to using an electronic network to strengthen an actual physical community. To me its purpose would be to not only share information and bring people together electronically, but to encourage face-to-face contact. This may indeed be the *most* important aspect of it. To encourage people to have more physical contact with their neighbors and then act together to improve their community and its quality of life. Dave Hughes should have some interesting things to say in this area Can an electronic network help unite these disparate economic groups? Or at least help empower those who most need it? And of course there are the usual problems of access and psychological compatibility with computers experienced by various segments of a community. Sorry about the length of this posting, but I find it was a great opportunity for me to have a fresh look at the situation and problems here in my community. Topic 21: Thoughts from Other Rural Communities # 2: Lisa Kimball (lcarlson) Sun, Jul 25, '93 (06:37) 22 lines I think that's a key question, Mick. I just got back from Athens, OH which is in the southeastern part of that state. We're working with folks there who are part of the Appalacian Center for Economic Networks to explore how telecommunications can make a contribution to community-based efforts to develop flexible manufacturing networks as an economic development strategy. While many of us have done a lot of work and thinking about supporting knowledge work online, there is a lot less known about how electronic networks can support VERY small businesses focused on production ... where people's time and energy is consumed by hands-on tasks and verbal excahnge is not at all the norm. We're experimenting with ways to make the computer part of the workshop and link a network of workshops to the market and distribution systems they need. One of the things that struck me last week when I was out there is that we so often speak in terms of bringing information IN from outside via telecommunications ... yet there is so much we could learn if we defined the rural "node" as being as much as source as a recipient of information. Topic 21: Thoughts from Other Rural Communities # 3: Cliff Figallo (fig) Mon, Jul 26, '93 (09:38) 6 lines Maybe for small towns and small businesses, the network can also serve as a collection place for real data on relevant economics. Questions can be posed by the residents/shop owners as to how various changes in development and marketing will affect the standard of living or the success of the particular workshop. Commonly-held beliefs about the affects of change can be supported or debunked. Topic 21: Thoughts from Other Rural Communities # 4: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Tue, Jul 27, '93 (10:56) 85 lines ============================================================== From: A.HYPER@applelink.apple.com (F.Nahrada,HyperCard Hotline,AT,IVC) Dear Telluridians! I am just looking at a picture of your community at the bottom of a majestic snowy mountain, as it appears in WIRED magazine, the sun sinking with "alpengluhen" on the high peaks and the village putting on its sparkling cluster of lights to prepare for the cold yet peaceful mountain night. It looks so much homy to me because we have a lot of similar mountain villages where we go for skiing in wintertime in the Alp mountains. You have gathered to your eighth annual Ideas Festival, and I am very pleased to hear that you have chosen exactly the same subject that we were dealing with last month at our "Global Village 93" conference in Vienna. The issue of sustainable rural communities in the age of digital communication is one of the most fascinating design problems of the present, and it is a global issue. There are at least three good reasons to believe that digitally linked small rural communities will not be an exceptional case, but rather the prevailing lifestyle of the future:..... The first reason is, that small settlements can deal much better with the issues of ecology and quality of life................. The economic gap between city and country has grown on one side enormously within the last decades, turning the countryside in deserted and desparate areas - but on the other side it is clear to many experts that this cannot go on for very much longer. The same process that has made cities so powerful is just about to destroy them. An increasing number of the population is working mainly with the computer. As The globally integrated village is therefore a mixture of mixture of high (micro)technology with unspoilt nature, of teleworking in virtual corporations with face-to-face meeting of local communities, of cyberspace and spirituality. Allow me now to tell you about our GIVE project, which is an attempt to create a stable compound out of this mixture. GIVE stands for "Globally Integrated Village Environment". GIVE is an organisation for research and action, linking ecological and technological issues in the field of new types of settlement, lifestyle, work, education and production in the age of telecommunication. The task of GIVE as a research organisation is to discover building blocks of a new post-industrial culture of living within nature by technology and to distribute information about successful models of technology applications supporting the formation of miniaturized "TeleEcocommunities" - places which combine the power of global exchange of information with technologically enhanced local material production and services, and a sustainable environment...... GIVE is currently starting its activities from Vienna, Austria, and is an independent research group affiliated to the Centre for Social Innovations "laboratories" science management network. The CSI combines research, education and consulting in the field of social sciences and has successfully concluded some Austrian Government and European Community projects, in particular in the field of technology assessment. We believe that the "conservation" of villages and cultivated nature can only take place on the base of an essential structural change: neither declining agriculture nor incidental tourism nor the false hope for successful industrialisation can for much longer be the order parameter of sustainable villages and towns. We want to focus on models for the "moving in" of a new core of information workers and service providers, who look for quality of life beyond the extent of the city.GIVE works - as organizer of events and networked activities in the middle stage; the opening of that stage was the congress "GLOBAL VILLAGE 93 - Architecture & Urban Planning in the Age of Telecommunication" at Viennas Technical University in June 1993, which will be followed by exhibitions in 1994 and 1996. Franz Nahrada Globally Integrated Village Environment Project - GIVE Jedleseer Stra'e 75 A - 1210 Wien/ Vienna Austria - Europe Voice: 011 - 431 - 278 78 01 ext. 77 Fax: 011 - 431 - 278 78 01 - 8 email: a.hyper@applelink.apple.com .