The American Library Association’s
has a nice mention of The Prince George’s
Information Commons.
I see our local work on this experimental "information
commons" as an effort to fill an important gap. The national public interest
groups that work on media issues use a model pioneered around 1970 by Ralph Nader
and John Gardner (founders of Public Citizen and Common Cause). Today, these groups
perform extremely important functions in tracking complex federal policies and
lobbying and litigating on behalf of values that would otherwise be unrepresented
in Washington. However (with the exception of the ALA and a few other groups),
they lack a grassroots base. In part, this is because their issues are so complex
that most people cannot, and will not, keep up. In part, it is because the original
Nader/Gardner model depended on a large population of active citizens who were
prone to join groups, to follow and discuss issues, and to make contributions.
Public Citizen and Common Cause were born at the demographic peak of what Robert
Putnam calls "the long civic generation." Now that people are generally
less likely to follow the news and to join groups, the "public-interest community"
in Washington lacks a base. So our strategy is to start building independent (that
is, non-partisan, non-profit, and non-governmental) groups at the community level—as
places where people can develop social ties and learn to use the complex new media
for public purposes. I believe that we should never try to push these groups to
take any particular political positions. Even after people start using the Internet
for public purposes, they may still not be upset (as I am) about corporate monopolies
or a lack of diversity in the mass media. They may have other concerns. But they
will be active, participatory, experienced, experimental, and independent; and
so they will provide the missing voice.