This weekend was supposed to be spent catching up with the “To Do” list; but, guess what? A longtime community network enthusiast, Judy Hallman of RTPnet in North Carolina posted historical archives dating back to 1984, and traced their involvement with a movement that was to capture my interest in 1995. That was the year we formed PetalumaNet, and then – in 1998 – the Petaluma CyberCity Roundtable. I couldn’t help myself. I had to put the “To Do” list aside and read these articles, newsletters, speeches and other publications that document the “emergence and evolution of Community Networking,” as we know it today.

Remember my story about the “tuning forks” in Remembering Bill Soberanes #6? Well, after reading a paper prepared by the Morino Institute and presented at the “Ties That Bind” Conference on Building Community Networks, in Cupertino, CA (May 5, 1994), I started to “vibrate” again. Although we had not started PetalumaNet, yet, the similarities in philosophy and guiding principles were unbelievable. No wonder I felt like a tuning fork, and I’m still oscillating between the Then & Now comparisons with excitement, as I H&P away on this bolg. This week, I plan to extract what I believe to be the most significant similarities between the earlier days of CN, and what we’re still trying to do with PN, after a decade. “Why?” you ask. “Because the job isn’t finished.” In spite of many success stories over the past 20 years, many communities have yet to realize the maximum potential of a movement that some people believe started in 1984 with the creation of the “National Public Telecomputing Network.” (NPTN) Some other folks might say that the CN adventure started with the creation of ARPANET in the 1960s, which eventually led to what we now know as the Internet. (The “Advanced Research Projects Agency Networks” is another story for another time.)

How many readers remember the Cleveland Free-Net that opened on July 16, 1986? Dr. Tom Grunder (often referred to as the “father of community networking”) and a few of his colleagues at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine created a free electronic helpline for the community. (Please remember, the World Wide Web hadn’t been created yet.) The Cleveland Free-Net survived until September 30, 1999, when new technologies made it obsolete.

The important lesson is that “a new way to serve the community” through “greater use of electronic communications” was being developed. Community Networking is basically a process designed to serve local communities by responding to the needs of that particular community and coming up with the resources necessary to resolve the problem. This is the exactly why, PetalumaNet was created in 1995 to serve as a “think tank.”

In summary, ICT facilitates this community’s strengthening process by -. (These bullet points have been extracted from the Morino Institute paper. They are just as valid, today, as they were in 1994. Bottom line: “Clearly, community networking is an emerging phenomena with the potential to effect social transformation.”

• Bringing people within local communities together and focusing their attention on key issues within the community to debate, deliberation and resolution.

• Organizing human information and communication relevant to the community’s needs and problems on a timely basis.

• The participation of a broad base of citizens, including community leaders, activists, service providers, and sponsors.

• Striving to include people in low-income neighborhoods, those with disabilities or limited mobility, and the struggling middle class.

• Making basic services available at fair and reasonable cost – or, as many espouse, at no cost – for broad-based access within the community.

• Most importantly, doing what commercial providers find difficult to do well: represent local culture, local relevance, local pride and a strong sense of community ownership.

Tuning Fork #1 is humming. Stay tuned for more “lessons” and “tuning fork” vibrations., tomorrow. We hope to be back, online, with more historical tidbits about Community Networking and how they relate to Our Cyberplace – Petaluma.