INET96, Montreal,June 27, 1996 Session: Communities and Networks

RHETORIC AND REALITY IN CANADIAN COMMUNITY NETWORKING

Garth Graham 
Telecommunities Canada, Board of Directors, Director for Research [1]
Box 86, Ashton, Ontario  K0A 1B0
613-253-3497

Leslie Regan Shade 
McGill University, Graduate Program in Communications
and, Consultant, Constructive Advice
221 Patterson Ave.,Ottawa ON K1S 1Y4 CANADA
613-234-5038

Keyword List:
Internet and  Social Transformations; (Identity, Culture, Community)
Expanding and Enhancing Internet Access

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the
authors, and do not represent the views of Telecommunities Canada or any
particular community network. 

1. THE POLICY PROBLEM: ACCESS TO WHAT? 

This article will discuss a disjuncture between the definitions of
community networking [1] used by the community networking movement,
federal policy, and the business view, and will highlight the tensions
between the grassroots organization of community networks and their
control and reconceptualization by policy making bodies. 

Access to national communications and information infrastructure must
occur on two levels, only the first of which is addressed by Canadian
"information highway" policy.  The first level of access is "hook up,"
involving connection to communications technologies, applications and
services.  The second level is a function of the interactive, distributed
and open systems nature of the Internet, involving access to the means of
participation in the virtualization [2] of social networks.  In effect,
the Internet creates a new zone of socialization. In order to acculturate
to it, you need to be there. 

The social sector gets left out of the loop of policy dialogue that occurs
between government and business.  Perhaps because of inexperience with the
social impacts of interactive communications, the Federal Government
appears reluctant to address the significance of the second level.  On the
other hand, responsible citizens who become active in the creation of
electronic community networks are immersed in that reality.  They fully
understand that the purpose of community networking is local control of
access to electronic public space as a new zone of socialization. 

2. THE PURPOSE OF COMMUNITY NETWORKS

2.1 Electronic public space as a new zone of socialization

Community networks share a broad-based focus on serving the communications
and information needs of a local community in a specific geographic
location.  Because of Internet connection cost consequences, that location
is usually bounded by the local telephone flat rate dialling zone.  Beyond
geography, community networks encompass the description of needs within
the metaphor of community "space" within an "electronic commons", whereby
members can visit the electronic equivalent of a school, hospital, town
hall, post office, citizens' forum, etc.  They emphasize the role of the
member as citizen of that electronic public space, and encourage dialogue
and interaction among those citizens by offering them equal access to a
common and convenient medium of computer-mediated interactive
communication. 

People need to connect, with as little control and interference as
possible.  The existence of a viable structure of community networks
across Canada would provide a guarantee of affordable access to some means
of open networking that is citizen controlled. 

Community nets are not inherently content providers.  Their purpose is to
defend universal participation in, and access to, electronic public space
as a commons.  The community itself is the network.  It supplies the
content as a byproduct of its communications behaviours in electronic
public space.  In defense of the public good, both Canada's
Telecommunications and Broadcast Acts assume that traditional media
operate in a commons.  Yet we seem to be abandoning this assumption in the
extension of public policy into cyberspace. 

Community Nets are a means whereby communities can participate in the
design and evolution of the Net as a new zone of socialization and
learning.  Communities must have a say in how that learning occurs by
experiencing it directly through participation in the design of the
process.  Because the strength of community is grounded in locality,
externally imposed communications systems can sever that link. Whenever a
sense of control in self-definition of community is lost, the impact of
the Information Highway will be to increase social isolation.  Canada, as
a knowledge-based economy, needs community networks in order to learn its
way towards social integration in a context that is changing beyond
recognition. 

2.2 Learning through Universal Connectivity

The rapid movement towards setting up community based computer networks
across North America, which is growing expansively in the 1990's, is
indicative of the need felt by many localities and individuals to assert
the primacy of the local community in creating and sustaining educational
opportunities, communicative associations, economic development, and civic
participation.  In the emerging sociotechnical and policy landscape,
community networks have often had to define themselves by what they are
not. These definitional tensions posit the duality between the local
versus the global and the non-commercial versus the commercial. 

Indeed, community networking activists have championed the idea of
community networks as being a distinctly Canadian communications facility,
reflective of the goals of the federal Information Highway Council; jobs,
cultural identity and universal access. As well, community networks have
fostered the creation of public spaces in the communications and
information infrastructure. This conviction that 'cyberspace is public
space' and that spectrum and bandwidth are in the public domain, reflects
the belief that there must be electronic areas where all citizens can post
information, conduct free and unfettered communication on a diversity of
topics, and interact with their municipal, provincial and federal
governments, and with community and national groups. It is believed that
creation of such an 'electronic commons' would allow all citizens to
participate in the widely bandied 'knowledge economy' in support of 'life
long learning'. 

More than conventional wisdom underlies the importance of the phrase "life
long learning."  We have departed from an Age where the concept of
Universal Education shaped what we could think and know.  In the Age we
now inhabit, what we can think and know is coming to be shaped by the
concept of Universal Connectivity. 

It is our thesis that the social activists who apply computer mediated
communications in the development of electronic community networks
understand the impact of this shift in our way of seeing the world.  As
"early adopters", they seek to retain community control of communications
in a milieu where all of the processes that allow people to group and to
structure local community and governance are being virtualized.  Their
experience is a necessary and vital resource in understanding how
communications technology and social change can interact to enhance the
quality of life in the physical locations where we actually live. 

The ultimate purpose of community networking is to utilize a period of
"restructured" instability in order to localize political power.  The key
objective of community networks must be to find the means of sustaining
significant community ownership of the application of converging
communications technologies at the local level.  There is evidence that
some governments at the municipal and provincial level in Canada
understand this "bottom up"  grassroots objective and support it.  There
is also evidence that government at the national level in Canada
understands this objective and chooses to ignore it. 

We submit that this federal rejection is based on a model of political
power from the Age of Universal Education that seeks to balance tensions
between the center and the periphery.  On the other hand, the model of
power in the Age of Universal Connectivity that motivates community
networkers is based on achieving balance through distribution of functions
across a range of self-defining networks in an open systems context.  In
effect, it is participation, and not the correct pricing of electronic
products and services, that increases the utility of networks. The route
to maximizing socio-economic benefit in an Age of Universal Connectivity
depends on unblocking the channels that allow connecting links among
people to form.  The closer you get to the "ground," the better your
ability to increase the rate of flow in these channels. 

3. THE STATUS OF COMMUNITY NETWORKS IN CANADA

3.1 Mapping community network experience

In Canada, the widespread creation of community networks has become a
powerful model to many for enabling citizens to support and sustain
community, participate in the public sphere,exercise democratic
imperatives, and also to reinforce Canadian identity. At this moment, the
number of operating community networks is not clear, but likely exceeds
35; and, the number of community associations in the planning stages has
increased since the May 1995 count but likely exceeds 200. (Graham, May,
1995).  There is no current collation of the membership of operating
networks, but it could not be less than 250,000 and could easily exceed
600,000. 

With the recent emergence of an organizing committee in Prince Edward
Island, every province in Canada now has a community networking presence. 
The federal Industry Canada program, Community Access Project, (URL: 
http://cnet.unb.ca/)in December 1995, approved 271 grants for "sites" for
basic public Internet connectivity in remote and rural communities.  A
substantial number of the sites intent to utilize the grant to implement a
community network. 

In their recognition of the continuance of Canadian cultural
protectionism, official policy-making bodies such as the Information
Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and public interest groups such as
the Coalition for Public Information (CPI) have recognized that local
community-based networks can foster Canadian content, revitalize
communities, contribute to network literacy, and reinforce tenets of
universal access at the level of service.  But they have never really seen
community networking on its own terms. 

As a dynamic and essential component of the "Internet culture," the
experience of electronic community networks provides visible evidence of
Canada's social transformation toward a knowledge-based economy. 
Provincial and local governments are willing to explore that experience,
but federal politicians and bureaucrats apparently ignore it.  In effect,
as conventional governance institutions continue to disintermediate toward
the global on the one hand and the local on the other, institutions where
power depends on centralization exhibit the strongest negative reactions. 
The Canadian federal government's obliviousness to the emergence and
socio-economic advantages of a grassroots electronic community networking
movement demonstrates this reality in specific ways. 

3.2 Telecommunities Canada [3]

Telecommunities Canada (TC) is a registered not-for-profit national
corporation, but its formal organizational structure is very embryonic.
Substantively, all that is in place is seven elected volunteer board
members.  Although an informal structure and interim board came together
at the second annual conference of community networks, Ottawa, August
1994, it wasn't until May 1995 that TC was formally incorporated, and the
third annual conference in Victoria, August 1995, that the board was first
formally elected. In its first year of operation, the board is exploring
national community networking activities, methods and priorities within
the limits of extremely small resources. 

The board members are scattered across Canada, and all of them are more
highly active in local community networking organizations than they are in
national activities.  Most of the board's collaborative work is
accomplished via email.  There is no office, no staff, and no consistent
source of funds other than project grant administrative overheads and
residual annual conference revenues.  There has been some Department of
Industry funding for each of the three annual community networking
conferences. The revenue generated in the current operating year will be
just barely sufficient to cover the logistical costs of 4 face-to-face
board meetings. There is no money for anything else. 

TC is an association of associations that either operate or intend to
operate community networks.  Membership fees have not yet been set or
charged, although possible membership criteria were discussed at the
August 95 Victoria conference and board recommendations on this subject
will go to the August 96 Edmonton conference.  There are two activities
that have defined declared "membership" to date.  The three annual
conferences and a project to produce a Directory (now one year old and
thoroughly dated by the rapid growth of community networks) has produced a
mailing list.  There are two subscription-based mailservers, can-freenet
and tc-members that self-generate lists of community networking activists
and surface new community associations.  TC was definitely created by
community networks to give themselves a capacity to articulate community
networking interests in Canada on their behalf, regardless of the current
informality of membership. 

3.3 Virtualizing community development processes [4]

It is useful to spell out just what the experience of community networks
actually means in terms of social change.  The following factors describe
shifts in social networks that occur as a consequences of applying the
technologies of computer mediated communication.  Understanding the
interaction of these factors gives a picture of how a virtualized
community organizational structure may appear and what it will do. 

Understanding these factors is also a way of anticipating what may happen
to an organization that initiates a networking project with communications
as its central focus.  In effect, a virtualized organizational structure
becomes a community.  It moves towards learning systems and away from
managing for control.  Applying an understanding of these themes can
result in them becoming drivers in making conscious choices about change

a.  Experiential expertise becomes valued more than professional
expertise. 

b.  A situational response to problems governs organizational patterns
more than does a structured response. 

c.  Disintermediation via knowledge process replacement is valued over
decentralization of power. 

d.  Information as context becomes valued more than information as a
resource. 

e.  Interdependence structures relationships more than the dynamics of
cooperation and competition. 

3.4 Lanark County Integrated Community Network Project  (LCICN)[5].

The issues now facing community networks can best be illustrated by
reference to a concrete example. The people of Lanark County, Ontario, are
organizing a not-for-profit community controlled public communications
utility.  Their chief partner in this project is Bell Advanced
Communications, which has trade marked the name "Integrated Community
Network." 

LCICN held an open meeting to develop an action plan in Carleton Place,
December 1, 1995, attended by 165 community leaders representing key local
government organizations, businesses, and institution partners.  Key
partners in the provisional Board of Directors include Boards of
Education, municipalities, hospitals, the large multi-site CAP project,
and the former municipal "Umbrella BBS," as the "content"  side of a
community network in the Telecommunities Canada sense of the word. 

Bell asked LCICN to identify 30 institutional clients for advanced
"applications" requirements for what is viewed as a cooperative local mix
of proprietary WANS, and LCICN does not anticipate difficulty in meeting
Bell's threshold market target.  When they deliver the "customers," Bell
has indicated that, assuming certain regulatory changes occur,
implementation via installation of Newbridge switches in several local
exchanges is possible in the summer of 1996.  LCICN objectives include: 

* To ensure that Lanark County has a telecommunications infrastructure
that keeps the community in the forefront of the emerging information
economy. 

*  To organize a coalition of people and institutions that takes advantage
of shared common communications services to create and control a digital,
switched, broadband information highway at the local level. 

* To act as a single point of contact among the residents,institutions,
businesses and prospective telecommunications service providers. 

* To consolidate functional requirements, permitting planning for total
network capacity and shared cost benefit. 

The real significance of the involvement of this particular corporate arm
of Bell in the plans of one rural Canadian community is really a matter of
balancing local/national concerns. The community control of communications
represented by Lanark County has implications for the national issues of
privatizing the backbone.  Ca*Net, the Internet backbone in Canada, is
moving to the private sector. When the "transfer" is complete, it is most
likely Bell Advanced Communications that will "own" what mostly public
money and (and a huge amount of volunteer effort) has built.  It is also
Bell Advanced Communications that has implemented the national ATM
network.  it is not yet clear how the "culture" of the Internet can
survive this transfer. 

The stated reason for completing the quiet privatization of the Internet
in Canada relates to costs.  The doubling of use of the Internet
eventually results in a doubling of the costs of "supplying" access to it
( the relationship of rising supply costs to rising rates of utilization
is not linear).  Ken Fockler, head of Ca*Net, refers to this as the
'grains of rice on the chessboard problem." [6]. But what's really broke
is not the technology.  It's the cobbled- together nature of the alliance
of for-profit and not-for- profit regional organizations that manages it.
Orchestration of the transfer is largely driven by Industry Canada.  The
real reason Ca*Net becomes a business is because its 75% federal funding
via CANARIE soon disappears.  When that money goes, apparently the will to
hold the alliance together also disappears. 

However much we might wish that the federal government saw the Internet as
more than a market opportunity, the survival of the Internet may not
depend on federal understanding.  The "dis-intermediation" of the national
level of Internet public management in Canada to a global private
corporation (Bell Advanced Communications) may not matter all that much. 
With community communications utilities like the Lanark Community Network
prototype controlling the local "backbone"  at the head-end, and control
of the national backbone and the ATM network on the flow-through, Bell
Advanced Communications implements an end-to-end approach to satisfying
the communications needs of everybody.  But the capacity to think about
the public interest that disappears from the Internet at the national
level stays in place at the local level, where it really does matter. 

In energy sector public utilities, "demand side" planning is called
least-cost end-use planning.  By picking the most efficient and effective
means of meeting energy demands, huge cost savings are achieved, so much
so that new demands can be met out of existing generation capacities,
without building expensive new power dams or nuclear reactors.  Lanark
Community Network is establishing itself consciously as a public
communications "utility".  The "shared common services' approach of
LCICN's planning for communication is an example of demand-driven
planning.  By focussing on the actual need (demand) for local
communications, it becomes easier to see that there are many ways of
supplying it.  As long as Lanark's planning methods remain similar to
those of demand-driven energy utilities, they should have very similar
effects on cost reduction. 

The Lanark experiment will probably show that local partnership
relationships, rather than "customer"  relationships, are a win / win deal
for both the demand and the supply sides of the communications digital
bit-flow equation.  It also highlights that, essential to its success, is
that community control of communications infrastructure via local SOCIAL
institutions stays in place. 

The leaders of the LCICN Project understand that the community is the
network, not the technology.  In effect, the "Internet" is merely the tool
that virtualizes relationships among community residents and institutions. 
Viewed in this way, it becomes clear why the survival of community depends
on not-for-profit community control of communications infrastructure. 
With community control, we get to know both the price and the value. 
Before the big infrastructure decisions are made, we can answer the socio-
economic impact question of who benefits and who pays within a framework
of local responsibility. 

Although you might imagine that Bell Advanced Communications' chief
interest in the Lanark County Project is connectivity and signal traffic,
in fact, it's content.  [7] Bell is developing a "content strategy
including; HTML development support, server farmers, electronic commerce
including virtual office software for Intranets, and partnerships with any
content providers "where there is a business case."  Clearly Bell is
anticipating that reciprocal interactive communications creates business
opportunities for both partners, and that they will get to support the
community's "voice" going in both directions. 

4. AN ABSENCE OF FEDERAL POLICY

There are gaps in Canada's approach to national communications and
information infrastructure that make it difficult to dialogue about the
needs and significance of community networking. 

4.1 Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC)

The Information Highway Advisory Council's final report, Connection,
Community, Content: The Challenge of the Information Highway, was released
in September 1995, and called for a competitive, deregulated,
market-driven environment. [8] Its insistence on calling Canadian citizens
`consumers' of information grated many, and the report was not without
controversy; a minority report by Jean-Claude Parrot, of the Canadian
Labour Congress was submitted, reflecting his concerns on behalf of the
labour movement and workers. 

Even though our real shift to an Age of Universal Connectivity is more
than a matter of technology, the IHAC Report gives little sense that the
implications of this are understood.  Despite its appropriation of the
word "community" in it's title, it placed a peculiarly negative spin on
it's few brief references to community networking. 

"Commercial and non-commercial networks - including community-based
networks such as FreeNets, which are being used more and more across
Canada - will also increase access to the Highway....However, MANY
COMMUNITY-BASED NETWORKS DO NOT HAVE STABLE FUNDING...." (IHAC, September
1995, 45). 

In a side box that describes community networks as access without charge,
they say, "COMMUNITY NETS ARE VICTIMS OF THEIR OWN SUCCESS; BUSY LINES
OFTEN MAKE IT DIFFICULT TO GET THROUGH." (Ibid, 46). 

In Recommendation 13.11, the opportunity is missed to legitimize the
vitality of the community networking movement by centering the major
action example within the scope of a particular federal program: "The
federal government, working with other stakeholders whenever applicable,
should develop a variety of financial support mechanisms such as tax
measures and seed-funding programs to ensure the long-term viability of
community networks and to establish and maintain a network of public
access points in all communities to enable Canadians lacking other means
of access to connect to the Information Highway.  For example, THE SCOPE
OF PROGRAMS SUCH AS THE SCHOOLNET COMMUNITY ACCESS PROGRAM SHOULD BE
EXTENDED TO MEET THIS OBJECTIVE, and Canada Post service outlets could be
equipped for use as public access centres." (Ibid, 173). 

"Re-inventing" government means steering the boat, not rowing it.  A
kindly interpretation of the recommendation might suggest that it's an
open door.  But, to date, there has been no public attempt by any federal
agency to follow it up in a concrete manner.  The example of the CAP
program mentioned in the recommendation, however beneficial to rural
connectivity and federal experience of community networking it turns out
to be, is a unilateral, internal and top-down initiative.  It's not an
endorsement of grassroots citizen initiatives that are characterized by
self-generated community-based action that is somehow unregulated, and
beyond control. 

4.2 Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)

Telecommunities Canada's interest in CRTC Telecom regulation is a public
and not-for profit interest.  Generally, its members are concerned with
community-based control and participation in the local utilization of
digital interactive and converging communications technologies.  As a
national "voice" for community networking issues, this makes TC's chief
long-term regulatory interests the "Internet," and community control of
computer mediated communications (or "backbones") at the local level. 

These issues are apparently not CRTC's direct responsibility.  In fact,
there isn't yet a specific regulatory responsibility for Internet-related
issues in Canada.  TC has made decisions to intervene in CTRC's
educational special rate and convergence hearings.  But these decisions
were, in fact, just "best guesses" at where it might gain some attention
on long-term public interest issues that the "Information Highway" policy
process has not yet fully addressed.  In effect, TC has asserted to the
CRTC that the existence of community networks in an Age of Universal
Connectivity Society is an essential public good.  On the face of it,
almost nothing in the current climate of national communications and
"Information Highway" policy debate actively endorses this view. 

Telecommunities Canada has told the CRTC that it believes the changes
occurring in Canada's communications and information infrastructure cannot
be fully understood by reference to the word "design."  Rather, a set of
ideas about new means of achieving cooperation and responsibility are
converging around the word "Net."  In a social sense, Canada is a network
of people, just as, at the local level, a community is a network of
people.  As a tool, the Net is an extension of social networking by
electronic means.  Electronic community networking associations help
Canada achieve this externalization of social networking by: 

- acting as the community-based component of universal access to full
digital networking services and capacity,

- helping people to learn what full digital networking services actually
are, and to use that experience to make informed decisions about the
design and development of a national Net in period of rapid change,

- allowing people, regardless of location, to interact as neighbours,

- allowing small businesses to thrive where they are located, by altering
the relation of location to profitability,

- balancing the advantages that local infrastructures have in competition
with global infrastructures. 

4.3 Is the policy problem political or structural? 

In a January 28/96 speech to the Canadian Political Science Association,
David Cameron of the University of Toronto made a distinction between
understanding the problem of Canadian unity as "political" or
"structural." [9]. If governments perceive a problem as political, then
nothing is fundamentally wrong except what citizens believe to be true. 
Appropriate action becomes a matter of political manipulation of opinion. 
However, if the problem is perceived to be structural, that is to say a
matter of substance rather than belief, then the approach to action would
be quite different. 

The public utterances of current Canadian federal Cabinet Ministers
provide ample evidence of a conviction that fundamental problems of public
policy are merely matters of belief, and that blind public trust in their
outcomes can still be achieved [10].  This conviction does affect
Information Highway policy planning.  In December 1995, journalist Greg
Weston wrote an article [11] on Minister of Industry John Manley's
information highway public relations strategies.  He describes how two
well connected public relations firms quibbled over the fairness of
government contracting procedures. 

"Earnscliffe was originally hired on an untendered contract by Manley's
shop in May to help prepare the Minister's June pitch to cabinet on the
status and proposed future of the information highway....After Manley had
flogged his information-highway strategy to cabinet, it was time to try
out the idea on ordinary folk.  That's when bids were called to 'build
awareness, understanding and support for the plan...The government must be
seen to be showing leadership and that Industry Canada is capable of
managing the initiative." 

In effect, public perceptions of how the Minister's department was coping
with information highway policy was of sufficient concern to justify the
letting of a $100,000 contract. 

4.4 Price and markets

Policy researchers [12] are also finding a "what's the problem?'" attitude
in the federal government, because of an ideological feeling that the
right "price" will allow the market to address the affordable part of
affordable access to the information highway, without the necessity of
considering public interest, social policy and socio-economic impact.  In
effect, if the price is right, Canadians don't need to know who benefits
and who pays in order to make correct decisions.  This attitude ignores
the magnitude of social transformation.  They can avoid the necessity of
making hard choices about power and first principles because of the
presumed superior quantifiable rationality provided by market price.  As
David Noble said, this is "progress without people". (Noble, 1995). 
Public interest groups can understand why business likes this.  But it
baffles them why their government would allow business to avoid
accountability for the consequences of its actions. 

4.5. Communications is about talking, not the transmission of bits

As Menzies (1996) has pointed out, the transmission model of communication
has been the dominating sensibility inherent in economic ('market driven')
evaluations, and this model is reflected in the current discourse on the
information infrastructure. 

In contrast to the community model, which sees communication as a dynamic
social and cultural process, the transmission model posits communication
as a transportation mechanism in moving static goods (i.e., information as
a product and ever-expanding commodity) over vast stretches of geography. 
"From a policy perspective, supporters of this model interpret content as
a separate issue and suggest that policies appropriate for the goals of
content can be achieved within an infrastructure devoted to transmission. 
But the infrastructures are far from hospitable to any communications
content: far from it; because of the bias of the communication built into
those structures" (Menzies, 1996, 146). These biases include the
compulsion towards a centralization of decision-making and authority,
while decentralizing work; the persistence of global 'virtual'
corporations over local organizations; and a consequent homogeneity of
participants and content. 

Given that most government public policies in North America and other
parts of the world are advocating that privatized and market-driven
initiatives be the catalyst for successful deployment of information
technology across all strata of society, the community model, which indeed
embraces inclusivity, aspects of 'strong democracy',and notions of
conviviality, is in danger of being sideswiped by the very powerful
interests of the global marketplace; increasingly characterized by a
potpourri of stakeholders joined together through convoluted mergers and
acquisitions. 

Not surprisingly, then, "it follows that a privately owned and managed
information highway will be turned toward the interests, needs, and income
of the most advantaged sectors of the society... sometimes this systemic
tendency can be modified, but to do so requires the pressure of a strong
political movement" (Schiller, 1996, 96). 

4.6 Provincial information highway policies

The BC government's "Accord" has specifically negotiated a support for the
BC Community Networks Association to take on the role of community
networking development throughout the province. [13]. The Ontario ONIP
program recently hosted a series of five regional meetings across the
provinces where community networks were provided an opportunity to share
their experiences and concerns

5. CONCLUSION: CLARIFYING AMBIGUITIES

5.1 Balancing the global through the local

Conventional macro-economic thinking causes nation states to view
globalization - export-oriented industrialization that integrates national
economies into a world market - as the only strategy for competitive
advantage.  In effect, they judge that the best transition from an
industrial economy to a knowledge-based economy will only occur through
the development of more industry.  The catch 22 in this strategy is that
an integrated world market works by ignoring the controlling role of
nation states. 

There is a difference between making Canadian corporations globally
competitive, and making Canada globally competitive.  A "Canada" strategy
would include a micro- economic dimension that put community networking on
centre stage.  If there are no viable, healthy and confident communities,
there is no base for global competitiveness.  The federal strategy should
begin with local community and end with global competitiveness.  Instead
it begins and ends with global issues and leaves out any reference to the
essential qualities of a knowledge economy that would make it worth living
in. 

Canadians know their communications tools.  As the world leader in
utilizing telecommunications to overcome problems of distance, Canada is
probably further ahead than most countries in reaching a national
consensus on the value and impact of changes in communications technology. 
But how do we get to building the public sphere from the bottom and the
top? 

The climate in which to raise this issue is improving.  The federal
government is becoming a hands-on user of the World Wide Web, if not the
Internet.  This will make it increasingly difficult to ignore the impact
of interactive communications and virtual social networks on
organizational structure in government.  There are people scattered
throughout the federal government who know a netizen when they see one. 
The vitality of the community networking movement and a rapid but largely
invisible growth in social sector networking is becoming harder to ignore. 
Because they aren't "connected," many politicians and senior technocrats
don't appreciate the speed of the shift.  But what is to them an unknown
is on the brink of becoming ordinary.  All that's missing is an
acknowledgement that a top-down / bottom-up strategy gives more leverage
than any other approach. 

From the Lanark example, we can see how community networks are finding
ways to point out to business just how effective they can be in generating
and concentrating market demand for Internet-based services.  Even if the
national dialogue on change in communications and information
infrastructure continues to stand apart from the social sector,
government's partner, the business sector, through experience may bring a
broader definition of access to the table. 

In summary, a federal government that views language as merely broadcast
messages is confronting local self- organized initiatives to virtualize
community development processes that view language as communications in
the broadest sense of the word.  The feds want to speak, but the
communities want to talk.  Talking is about reciprocal sending and
receiving, speaking and listening, at the same time.  This is the essence
of the "interactive" in interactive communications. 

5.2 Post-IHAC Canada

In contrast to our current scenario where federal policy makers and
technological pundits envision national information infrastructures as
existing in a privatized and deregulated environment, early wired city
proponents saw the technological infrastructure as a public utility,
rather than a private commodity. Public policy was thereby encouraged to
support universal service in a just and equitable fashion, with
appropriate subsidization. 

Given that national and global information infrastructures are now being
promoted and legislated in such a de-regulated and competitive
environment, where private industry can have unbridled (albeit
interoperable) control, community networks, which are indeed a social
utility, and those individuals and entities seeking public spaces, could
find themselves in a vexatious position. McChesney (writing just before
passage of the U.S. Telecommunications Reform Bill of 1996 yet close
enough to anticipate its passage) is blunt when he says that "the current
promarket policies are going to be little short of disastrous for the
quality of life for a majority of people in the United States and
globally. In the coming generation there will be a pressing need for
alternative policies that place the needs of the bulk of the citizenry
ahead of the demands of global capital" (McChesney, 1996). How the U.S.
policy trajectory will influence future Canadian policies as the fate of
'Post-IHAC' Canada is determined is not known as of the writing of this
paper, but if the past is any indication, then the assimilation of
American policies and sensibilities will become the Canadian de facto
standard. 

Miller (1996) has persuasively argued that we need to build this public
sphere from the bottom up as well as from the top-down: "Focusing the
implementation of the NII at the bottom of our social hierarchy will also
help influence those who set policy at the top.Rooting cyberspace in the
social realities of neighborhood organizations increases the odds that the
needs and priorities of potential `have not' areas will be aggregated and
expressed effectively. It is the activism of these kinds of grassroots
organizations that eventually will push top-down NII policy in democratic
directions" (Miller, 1996, 248). 

Community networks and other seekers of public spheres find that they
occupy the ground between government and the private sector which Barber
(1995) calls civil society, or civic space: "...it is not where we vote
and it is not where we buy and sell; it is where we talk with neighbors
about a crossing guard, plan a benefit for our community school, discuss
how our church or synagogue can shelter the homeless, or organize a summer
softball league for our children. In this domain, we are 'public' beings
and share with government a sense of publicity and a regard for the
general good and the commonweal; but unlike government, we make no claim
to exercise a monopoly on legitimate coercion". (Barber, 1995, 281). This
civic space is voluntary, embraces cooperatism, consensus, and the common
ground. The challenge that we face now is in ensuring that in our current
rush to privatize, deregulate and commodify the information
infrastructure, we don't dynamite our social infrastructure. We can't
afford to neglect the multiplicity of people and the wider public sphere
that need to shape and be accommodated by this information infrastructure. 

If you believe that structure, and not "politics-as-usual"  is the
problem, then you re-think principles in different way.  The grassroots
actions of community networks provide one serious (and free) way of
directly tapping the experience of the public in doing just that.  The
public's ability to understand change in social structure is better than
that of the ruling elites. 

6. FOOTNOTES: 

[1] The Morino Institute, a non-profit organization concerned with the
impact and development of community networking, identified, in 1995, over
300 community and public access networks in North America, alternatively
and interchangeably referred to as: free-nets, community-based computer
networks, community computing, community telecomputing, community bulletin
boards, civic networking, telecommunity systems, public access systems,
and community information systems. See Morino Institute. Directory of
Public Access Networks. Reston, VA: The Morino Institute, 1995. URL:
http://www.cais.com/morino/htdocs/pand.htm

Schuler (1994, 1996) has likened community nets to a democratic
participatory medium, whose characteristics include: "Community-based: the
system promotes participation because everyone has a stake; Reciprocal:
any potential `consumer' of information, commentary, issues, or questions
is a potential `producer' as well; Contribution-based: forums-both
moderated and unmoderated-are based on contributions from participants;
Unrestricted: anyone can use the community network; Accessible and
inexpensive: the systems are readily accessible from a variety of public
as well as private locations; Modifiable: users can design or co-design
new user interfaces or services".See Doug Schuler,"Community Networks:
building a participatory medium". Communications of the ACM, v.37, n.1
(January 1994):39-51; and Doug Schuler, New Community Networks:  Wired for
Change. Reading MA: ACM/Addison-Wesley, 1996. 

[2] As we are using the term, virtualization includes two interlocked
processes.  The first is "disintermediation,"  whereby material and human
"resources" are replaced with knowledge processes and the middle of things
disappears.  The second is the simulation or modelling of "reality,"
whereby you become the creator and consumer of an artificial experience. 
In effect "modelling" and "replaced with knowledge processes" are two
different ways of saying the same thing.  Current models are crude in
relation to what they will become. 

[3] Telecommunities Canada is the "national voice" for the rapidly
developing Canadian community network movement.  In August 1994, over 40
Canadian community network associations and Free-Nets came together for a
conference in Ottawa.  They recommended the formation of a national
association, to support their common interests in the development of the
Canadian community networks movement.  They affirmed their interest in
having the means to share the practical experience that they are gaining
of Canada as a Knowledge Society, and to speak to
federal-provincial-municipal interests that affect their development.  But
they want that "means" (ie. Telecommunities Canada) to be true to the
grassroots nature of community networking and to be autonomous from
governments. 

As a national voice for the needs and concerns of community networks,
Telecommunities Canada is an association of associations. Ordinary
membership in Telecommunities Canada, with full privileges, is limited to
Canadian electronic community network organizations that: operate on a
not-for-profit basis; have their legal membership open to every citizen of
their community; and provide equitable access to all citizens in their
community. For more information see TC's webpage at URL:
http://www.freenet.mb.ca/tc/index.html

[4] This description of change drivers is adapted in part from: Kuhn,
Marilynn and Garth Graham.  Connecting for Canada's children: a report for
the Child Welfare League of Canada.  Ottawa, CWLC, April 1996, 29-31. 

[5] Project contact: Bob Leitch, Chairperson, Provisional Board of
Directors, LCICN Project, Lanark County Board of Education, 15 Victoria
Street, Perth, Ontario, K7H 2H7, Tel:  613-267-4210

[6] Personal communication with Ken Fockler. 

[7] From a public presentation on Integrated Community Networks (tm), by
Joe Murphy, Associate Director, ICNs, Bell Canada, in Smith Falls,
Ontario, May 2/96. 

[8] The Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC) was established in
1994 with the mandate to make recommendations to the Minister of Industry
on a "national strategy to govern the evolution of Canada's advanced
information and communications infrastructure respecting the overall
social and economic goals of the federal government"  (Industry Canada,
1994, 33). 

Five working groups were established to cover the following broad areas of
interest: Access and Social Impact; Canadian Content and Culture;
Competitiveness and Job Creation;  Learning and Training; and R&D,
Applications and Market Development. Also identified were three main
objectives of the government's information infrastructure strategy: 1) the
creation of jobs through innovation and investment; 2) the reinforcement
of Canadian sovereignty and cultural identity; and, 3) ensuring universal
access at reasonable cost. 

The tenor of the initial IHAC issues paper reflected the conviction that
the implementation of a national "information highway" is of paramount
concern to ensure that Canadian businesses can remain internationally
competitive; to ensure that economic growth and new jobs will accrue from
the development of an advanced information infrastructure; and that
Canadian content will be retained in the global information
infrastructure. The Canadian Information Highway: Building Canada's
Information and Communications Infrastructure. Spectrum, Information
Technologies and Telecommunications Sector, Industry Canada. 
URL:http://info.ic.gc.ca/info-highway/rpt-fnl.txt

[9] Cameron, David. "National unity: our problems can't be wished away."
The Ottawa Citizen, February 22/96, A13. 

[10] Sheila Copps speaking on unity, "It is the duty of each of us to
build faith in our country." (Paul Gessell.  "Copps urges nation to
recapture spirit of '67." The Ottawa Citizen, March 1/96, A2).  Paul
Martin speaking on economic policy in a meeting with the Ottawa Citizen
editorial board, "I think that perhaps the most important issue you have
raised is the question of confidence." ("Economic policy key to peace with
Quebec." The Ottawa Citizen, January 12/96, A13). 

[11] Greg Weston: "Well-connected Liberals fight over spoils from federal
Infobaun contract."  The Ottawa Citizen, December 5/95, A2. 

[12] Personal communication; Dan Dorner, University of Western Ontario,
from research in progress on 'defining essential services on the Canadian
information highway." 

[13] Province of British Columbia, Information and Technology Access
Office. (1995).  British Columbia Electronic Highway Accord. URL: 
http://www.itao.gov.bc.ca/accord.htm

7. REFERENCES: 

Barber, Benjamin. (1995). Jihad vs. McWorld. N.Y.: Random House. 

Canadian community networks directory.  Telecommunities Canada, May 26,
1995. URL: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/freeport/freenet/conference2/menu

Graham, Garth.  --"Freenets and the Politics of Community in Electronic
Networks,"  Government Information in Canada, 1, No. 1.6 (1994). URL:
http://www.usask.ca/library/gic/v1n1/graham/1.html

--A Domain Where Thought Is Free To Roam: The Social Purpose of Community
Networks.  TC Brief to CRTC Information Highway Hearings, March 29, 1995. 
http://www.usask.ca/library/gic/v1n1/graham/1.html

--with Cornelius F. Burk and Henry E. McCandless. (Winter 1994).Governance
and information: myths, realities and the future.  Canadian Parliamentary
Review 17:4: 22-27. 

Industry Canada. Information Highway Advisory Council.  (September 1995).
Connection, Community, Content: The Challenge of the Information Highway.
Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada. URL:
http://info.ic.gc.ca/info- highway/ih.html

McChesney, Robert W. (1996). The Internet and U.S.  Communication
Policy-Making in Historical and Critical Perspective. Journal of
Communication and Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 4(1). URL: 
http://www.usc.edu/dept/annenberg/vol1/issue4/mcchesney.html

Menzies, Heather. (1996). Whose Brave New World: The Information Highway
and the New Economy. Toronto: Between the Lines Press. 

Miller, Steven E. (1996). Civilizing Cyberspace: Policy, Power, and the
Information Superhighway. NY: ACM Press and Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 

Noble, David F. (1995). Progress without people: new technology,
unemployment, and the message of resistance.  Toronto, Between The Lines. 

Schiller, Herbert I. (1996). Information Inequality: The Deepening Social
Crisis in America. NY; London: Routledge. 

Shade, Leslie Regan.  --"Roughing it in the Electronic Bush: community
networking in Canada" in Communities in Cyberspace, ed. Peter Kollock &
Marc Smith, forthcoming University California Press, 1997. 

--"Computer Networking in Canada: from CA*net to CANARIE". Canadian
Journal of Communication 19(1). (Winter, 1994):53-69.