How can community computing positively impact:

the support necessary to sustain a community and the reflection necessary to evolve and grow a community (and its members)?

Membership--members have a feeling of belonging;
Influence--members have a sense that the group matters;
Fulfillment--the association must be rewarding for its members; and
Emotional connection--in particular, a shared history.

(from McMillian and Chaves)

Computing can change oe's relationship to community by enabling new forms, by analyzing discourse, and by visualizing (and reflecting upon) community practices.

Community can change one's relationship to computing and enable new opportunities for collective problem solving.

SilverStringers is a community-centric approach to news coverage and presentaion, tapping into the strength of the older generation to develop techniques for th enext generation coverage of cities and towns. Persons over the age of 60 have unparalleled wisdom about the communities where they have lived and worked.

Walter Bender and Jack Driscoll

The social organization of The Junior Journal is very different from that of The Melrose Mirror. Since the participants are scattered around the world, they conduct all the logistical planning and organizing of new issues entirely in an on-lone forum.

Brian Smith and Jack Driscoll

The Future of Learning group subscribes to a theiry of emergent design that takes best advantage of the “intelligence in the leaves” and hence we encourage communities to build their own solutions from a growing collection of distributed knowledge-creation and discource-analysis tools and activities.

Dr. David Cavallo and Seymour Papert

Unwiring the World: Your location no longer limits your ability communicate. From anywhere in the world--mountain, jungle, or city--you can now telephone, email, and web-browse using a pocket-sized, battery-powered wireless communicator whose components cost only a few dozen dollars.

Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland

The Computer Clubhouse, a worldwide network of after-school learning centers, focuses on youth from underserved communities who whould not otherewise have access to technological tools and activities. Clubhouse members design their own animations, robots, videogames, etc.

Prof. Mitchel Resnick

Community
Computing

community

what

why

Bender

Smith

Cavallo

Pentland

Resnick