Building the Electronic Commons
Peter Levine · The Good Society · 2002
On the West Side of St. Paul, Minnesota—a poor neighborhood with a large population of Hmong and Latino immigrants—young people are building an "information commons." They call themselves the "Community Information Corps," and as a first major project, they are constructing a database of their neighborhood's "learning opportunities:" everything from formal classes at the high school to an elderly Mexican immigrant in a retirement home who is willing to teach traditional Indian medicine. Citizens will soon be able to enter a word that describes their interests and see the local learning resources displayed on a map. The Commons website also provides materials about neighborhood history, news articles, poetry, and streaming videos created by local teenagers.