Notes Towards an Integrative Agenda and Community Informatics Theory
Michael B. Gurstein · TSpace (University of Toronto) · 2006
Research is at the very core of Community Informatics; and the basis of CI research is a recognition of the dialectical role of networked communities within the contemporary environment. Where once communities were a necessary and taken for granted element of lived society isolated in themselves and only with precarious links to the outside world, in the modern world it is the external environment which is pervasive and communities exist precariously and in seized and struggled for spaces within and between globally pervasive and invasive electronic networks. The “Wal-Mart” effect as a model of how the “new economy” and the new technology environment is being deployed is one where there is little space for community and where communities only exist through an act of assertion, will and ultimately struggle and notably a struggle against almost overwhelming odds. That there is an ever-extending structure of such networks both parallel and interconnected through e-governments, ecommerce systems, e-learning structures is a condition of our time and provides the framework and the backdrop for the development of Community Informatics as a critical discipline and for Community Informatics research as one of the tools in these overall efforts in responding to and resisting these encroachments.