The Internet: Research and Civic Work

Most of my writing and practical work related to the Internet is inspired by the following ideas:

  • The Internet was born as a "commons": a particular kind of public resource.
  • A commons can be beneficial for civil society and democracy, mainly because it permits people to be creative as citizens—to contribute things of value to the commonwealth. It is an antidote to consumerism and to passive forms of citizenship.
  • The most valuable forms of "free speech" on the Internet are not text (e.g., chatrooms, personal Webpages, discussion groups, emails), but fairly expensive and elaborate products such as moderated deliberations, maps linked to databases, streaming videos, online newspapers with original reporting, historical archives, and photo-essays (to name just a few).
  • Young people can contribute such products, thus exercising their creativity in the public interest. This is especially important since many young people are otherwise alienated from public and civic life.
  • The Internet commons is threatened by state regulation, but more seriously by corporate control. Corporations can increase their profits by restricting access to the commons and by treating Internet users as consumers, not co-producers.
  • Since the Internet commons is threatened by corporate control, and since the most valuable public products are expensive and elaborate, worthwhile uses of the Internet require institutional support and funding. This means that we need a broad, organized political constituency.

Building New Institutions

The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland has been leading an effort to strengthen the commons. Our original proposal was a new national institution, the Public Telecommunications Service (PTS). This would be a nonpartisan, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that would help citizens to use the new electronic media to build communities, revitalize public life, and deepen the civic skills and identities of individuals and institutions.

In June 2001, some of us convened a distinguished and diverse group of experts and stakeholders in Washington. They all endorsed the general idea of the PTS. Many felt, more specifically, that land-grant state universities should help to create this institution by starting local pilot projects that would ultimately grow into a national network. There are now pilots underway at the Universities of Maryland, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

Our initial ideas for a PTS are presented in a draft white paper (available in .pdf format). Some aspects of the plan were widely approved at the June conference; but others did not receive broad support. The latest version of our ideas can be found here: "Building the E-Commons:  A Project of the Democracy Collaborative," available from The Democracy Collaborative.

Articles on the Commons

I have outlined some of the core ideas behind the PTS and E-Commons (as I see them) in the following publications:

  • "The Internet and Civil Society," in Verna V. Gehring, ed., The Internet in Public Life (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), pp. 79-98. This is a revised and updated version of "The Internet and Civil Society," Report from the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy, vol. 20, no. 4, Fall 2000. This article originated as a talk on the same subject at the University of Tilburg (in the Netherlands). A long version has been published in a volume entitled Ethics and the Internet, edited by Anton Vedder (Oxford: Intersentia, 2001), pp. 177-193. In other versions it has been republished as "The Internet and Civil Society: Dangers and Opportunities" in iMP Magazine (May 2001) and by the Institute for Global Ethics' Public Policy Program.
  • "Kids, Communities, and the 'Scholarly Communication Commons'." Presented at the Workshop on Scholarly Communication as a Commons, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, March 31-April 2, 2004.
  • "A Movement for the Commons?" The Responsive Community, vol. 13, no. 4 (Fall 2003), pp. 28-39. See also this Webcast interview
  • "Building the E-Commons," The Good Society, vol. 11, no. 3 (2002), pp. 1-9. This is a shorter version of a document entitled "Building the E-Commons:  A Project of the Democracy Collaborative," which is available from The Democracy Collaborative.
  • "Campaign Web Pages and the Public Interest," in David M. Anderson and Michael Cornfield, eds., The Civic Web: Online Politics and Democratic Values (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). This was originally an invited paper delivered at the National Press Club for a conference on "Online Politics and Democratic Values," organized by the Democracy Online Project, March 29, 1999. It is about the need for non-profit voluntary associations to provide information about political campaigns—one example of the general need for institutional reform.
  • "Civic Renewal and the Commons of Cyberspace," The National Civic Review, Fall 2001
  • “Can the Internet Rescue Democracy? Toward an On-line Commons” in Ronald Hayduk and and Kevin Mattson (eds.), Democracy’s Moment: Reforming the American: Political System for the 21st Century (Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), pp. 121-137.

Work with Kids in My Community

The strongest conclusion that arose out of the PTS conference was the idea that we needed pilot projects in local communities. The national organization, if it developed at all, should be built from the "bottom up" (as an alliance of local associations), rather than from the "top down." Therefore, since April 2002, I have been helping to build an "Information Commons" for Prince George's County, in collaboration with Margaret Morgan-Hubbard and Carrie Donovan. In practice, this has turned into an after-school program for students at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, who are creating www.princegeorges.org. So far, the students have completed an unusual oral history project for that website, created audio complilations, and begun to build interactive "asset maps" of the community. Currently, they are working on two projects guided by University of Maryland graduate students: one on youth relations with police; the other on the safety of local streets from crime and traffic.

We currently have pending grant proposals that would allow us to conduct the following more ambitious projects:

Oral history: We hope to replicate our high school students' oral history project in several sites, including more schools in Prince George's County; Jackson, Mississippi; and Miami, Florida. Students will study the segregation and desegregation of their own school districts, during the period 1954-2004. They will interview surviving witnesses, think of several alternative strategies that could have been adopted in 1954, and create interactive websites to help community members think about what should have been done. (That's not an easy question, since each strategy would involve different risks and tradeoffs.)

Geography: A class of high school students and a class of undergraduates, with guidance from graduate students and professors from several disciplines, will walk around the community using Palm Pilots to collect data on an area that encompasses a very wide variety of physical forms, from dense urban areas to suburban subdivisions. The students will assess the safety (from both crime and traffic) of street segments and locate the available food and exercise opportunities. They will assess the nutritional quality and cultural characteristics of the food stores and restaurants and the type and accessibility of the recreational opportunities.

A much larger sample of high school students in the same community will keep 7-day diaries of nutrition and exercise. They will be asked exactly where they walked during that period, so that we can estimate distance traveled. Maps and a statistical model will be constructed by combining these two sets of data.

We have chosen this topic because regular activity plus healthy nutrition decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and may relieve depression and obesity. We know that on average wealthier people live healthier lives. Minority adolescents and youth from lower-income families are disproportionately at-risk for obesity and related diseases such as diabetes and hypertension; they are also relatively unlikely to lead active lifestyles. However, this knowledge gives us no means to improve health outcomes for lower-income youth. What is it specifically about being poor that contributes to unhealthy nutrition and exercise?

Geography is relevant to obesity. Past research has demonstrated that geographical factors may influence whether people walk and consume healthy food. These factors include the safety of streets (from both crime and traffic), the cultural appropriateness of local food sources, the attractiveness of streets, and the pattern of development. We will try to build a comprehensive model that provides generalizable findings of use to planners. As a spin-off, we hope to generate interactive maps of the community, showing residents where they can buy healthy food and walk safely.

Teaching

With Robert Wachbroit, I have twice co-taught a School of Public Affairs graduate seminar on information technology. (The syllabus and an online discussion are available on the Web.) We also organized a weekly lecture series on "The Internet and Society," with distinguished speakers from various disciplines and organizations. The topics have ranged from privacy to the Internet in developing countries.

Other Activities

I have also: