The Virtual Plaza

I first visited in the 1970's and again in 1994 when Apple Computer was supporting a new community network that was starting up in Taos. The aim of La Plaza Telecommunity was to metaphorically take back the old plaza from the tourist stores that surround the square and to give a virtual version to the people of Taos by providing local information and Internet access and training. This was a time when there were very few Internet service providers in New Mexico and community networks were growing. The vision of the founders, which included Patrick Finn (now a telecommunications consultant in town), was compelling enough to win sizable grants, the largest of which was from the library program within the Kellogg Foundation. La Plaza Telecommunity had rapid growth but a very stormy administrative history. New management took over after a few years and La Plaza continued its services with more outreach in some areas, supplementing grants with fees, and more competition from for-profit Internet Service Providers (ISPs.) At present they are one of seven ISPs in the area. This is a very large number of a population of less than 15,000. More than in other MIRA states, this one ISP is linked to some of the things that happened during MIRA and on up to the present. Because of La Plaza a large number of local people were exposed to ICT in 1994, years before other small town inhabitants were. Outlying areas were linked by wireless connections before the technology had caught on elsewhere (see the chapter on the Nebraska and the Chase 3000 project). Over the past seven years many people had integrated the use of the tools in their daily lives.

For me, it was helpful to read the La Plaza mailing list archives where the New Mexico MIRA steering committee stored their communications and to read the dry summaries of business conducted on behalf for the MIRA teams. The archive mailing list is a way of preserving history and providing transparency to others who wanted to know what happened at a meeting they might have missed. Everyone I interviewed mentioned or was somehow connected to La Plaza. La Plaza is an excellent example of the way a telecommunications company--in this case, a non-profit one--can help and affect many different lives and projects. Many of the results are not technological but social.