Local Communication Systems Key to Enhancing ‘Social Capital’

Harvard University political scientist Robert Putnam is experiencing a burst of public exposure these days because of his provocative, and now famous, article of last year titled “Bowling Alone.” Putnam somewhat facetiously reported that statistics show that more people are bowling than ever before but that fewer people are joining bowling leagues. His conclusion was that more people must be bowling alone, an image that conjures up the bleak, surreal allegories of Samuel Beckett.

Putnam’s more serious point is that American sociability is on the decline--more people are living lives of atomized isolation and spending more time at home.

Membership in organizations such as the PTA, League of Women Voters, Kiwanis, Rotary and Red Cross is down by as much as 50% from 20 years ago. Putnam says the United States is paying a price in diminishing “social capital,” a phrase he coined to describe the importance of community “networks, norms and trust.” Putnam believes that social capital is as important as economic capital to a community’s health.

Technology is partly to blame, Putnam says. People are staying home because of the easy distractions offered by television, recorded music and now cyberspace. “Technological trends are radically privatizing or individualizing our use of leisure time and thus disrupting many opportunities for social capital formation,” he writes. This is especially true among young people, who are the least likely to be active in civic organizations.

Right now we’re all being pounded by appeals from advertisers about a “new age” of telecommunications and digitized entertainment that will be delivered to our homes. Telecommuting promises to free us from daily travel to an office. High-tech “home theaters” make going to a public theater less compelling, and Nintendo machines have replaced local pool halls and even playgrounds. As someone put it, we’re witnessing an epidemic of electronic agoraphobia.

*

In a rich and important new book, “New Community Networks: Wired for Change” (Addison Wesley), Douglas Schuler explores how technology might be used to enhance “social capital” instead of kill it. Schuler, the national chairman of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, says his aim is a “marriage of community and technology.”

Community computer networks, such as the various Free-Nets around the country--including one in Los Angeles--have typically been viewed as low-cost access to the Internet. Free-Nets, which started in Cleveland, have put public-access Internet terminals in public libraries, community centers, schools and other neighborhood sites. Many Free-Nets have operated with outdated text-based interfaces so that they can be accessed by older computers and slower modems, opening access to people who can only afford used equipment.

Although Schuler supports the goals of Free-Nets and other community networks in providing low-cost access to the Internet, he is most interested in how these networks can help revitalize communities.

His views are shared by a number of community network activists. “We really see our strength more as a community resource than as an Internet service provider,” says Avrum Bluming, president of Los Angeles Free-Net.

Richard Civille, Washington director of the nonprofit Center for Civic Networking, puts it in even stronger terms: “We’re talking about the future of our economy.”

The new telecommunications reform law, for example, is certain to concentrate control of media in a handful of giant corporations--such as with the proposed merger of SBC and Pacific Telesis, the two Baby Bells of the West. This legislation has created a stampede for market share, and, says Tom Grundner, the originator of the Free-Net concept: “When there’s a stampede, somebody always gets trampled. Always.”

What’s likely to get trampled in coming years is community-based communication, as more media sources are “rationed” to serve the maximum number of markets instead of tailored to serve individual communities.

Community computer networks, Schuler says, should be used primarily to support the real-world life of a community, not to replace it with “virtual” diversions. Community networks can help people build organizations, provide local information and develop bonds of civic life and conviviality, all leading to enhanced “civic culture.”

*

In his book, he offers an astonishing diversity of examples across the nation, such as the Electronic Cafe in Santa Monica, the Seattle Community Network, the network of the Oneida Native American nation and the Playing to Win computer network that began in a housing project in Harlem.

Political theorists have insisted on the importance of a “third sector” of voluntary associations as a bulwark of democracy. Hannah Arendt, in her classic study “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” attributed the rise of Nazism in Germany principally to the atrophy of public life in the period between the world wars. Atomized, privatized individuals are not only poor citizens, they are also vulnerable to demagoguery and authoritarianism.

*

Ironically, recent calls for a renewal of civic responsibility are coming from people in public life who are doing everything they can to dismantle the means people have for sustaining alternatives to media control by remote mega-corporations.

Researchers have shown repeatedly that Americans long for a renewed sense of community, even as we “cocoon” in our homes, cars, air-conditioned offices and the virtual world of cyberspace. Schuler notes that it is common to think of technology and community as irreconcilable opposites--one is “hard,” the other “soft”; one is “rational,” the other “emotional”; one is machine-oriented, the other people-oriented.

But the community network movement, if it can be called that, is trying to show another way. Schuler quotes Theodore Roosevelt: “What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for our community lives long after we’re gone.” This wisdom is what the United States needs most today.

* Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of Texas in Austin. His e-mail address is gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.