by Steve Cisler
Flyover country, backwater, hicksville, podunk, dime-box, boondocks, hinterland. All of these words describe rural America as undesirable, expendable, non-mainstream, out-of-it, disconnected, unsophisticated, and inconsequential. In short, a place to leave. Sal si puedes. Get out if you can. These are some of the attitudes I have encountered while working on information technology projects in rural America. In 1996, while working in the Advanced Technology Group at Apple Computer, I had concluded a number of technolgy grants to rural schools, libraries, Indian reservations, and communities. After visiting them I realized that many of the designers of software and hardware had no idea how their products were used in rural America or even what went on in small towns and villages outside of Silicon Valley. The design decisions were made by young men and a few women with an engineering or marketing background. They worked in a highly networked environment with fast connections, the best computers and large monitors. This influenced the sorts of products being turned out and sold around the world. Because every major small computer operating system (Linux, Windows, Macintosh, Sun OS) was controlled by people in urban areas of the West Coast of the United States, the design and marketing decisions had a great impact on rural America, even if the whole area was off the radar of the industry marketers.
Adding to this disconnect between the industry and the users, I was aware of a skepticism about technology as well as a vocal backlash that attracted national attention in the Second Luddite Congress in Barnesville, Ohio, in 1996. It was organized by Scott Savage, a former librarian who later received a Kellogg grant for one of his low tech projects. He published a magazine called Plain, disavowed his use of computers, and dressed like an Amish farmer. These neo-luddites were a distinct minority, including sophisticated technophobes who had sampled the wares (computers, the Internet, email) and then rejected them as well as people who had begun to live "plain" and not use electricity, automobiles, or telephones, the very technologies that had revolutionized American life a century ago. They believed the best choice was to avoid the high-tech wave and to carve out a much simpler economy and lifestyle, not tied to global markets, federal funds, and income from tourism.
On the other hand, many of the communities I worked with were building networks conceived of and run by grass roots groups of far-sighted citizens who saw a need and filled it. These community networks predated the thousands of Internet service providers that mushroomed all over the world starting in the early 90's. I saw the way community technology projects could bring people together to work toward a common goal: improving life, social capital, and economic health through improved access to telecommunications networks. In many of these projects the technological expertise exceeded the group organizational skills, and there were severe rifts that sometimes interrupted the expansion of the network infrastructure.
In 1997, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation convened a brainstorming meeting of people interested in the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in rural America. Caroline Carpenter was fleshing out the plans for a round of grants that came to be called Managing Information with Rural America. This was an initiative of the Food Systems/Rural Development program area. MIRA wanted " to draw upon the reservoirs of strength, tenacity, and civic commitment in rural communities and to help rural people use information systems and technologies as a tool to meet current and future challenges." Besides suggesting the title, I probably was more skeptical and critical of the usefulness of ICT for this purpose, partly because of the conflicting experiences I had encountered over two years preceding the project.
In the request for proposals the human side of the project was emphasized far more than the ICT aspect.
- "Focus on people in rural communities and their participation in building their own community development capacity.
- Value the resources and skills which people in rural communities have in the application of technology.
- Connect individuals, communities, and organizations, and help them work together in new and different ways.
- Promote sharing of information and ideas.
- Value diverse people, perspectives, networks, and experiences.
- Provide time to reflect on approaches to complex issues.
- Encourage development of shared visions and collaborative strategies to influence systems change."
Three different groups were encouraged to apply:regional clusters of small ad hoc teams; national policy organizations working on telecommunications and equity issues; local community non-profits that were working in the geographies of the first group The teams were groupings of local people who had normally never taken part in the planning processes envisioned by Kellogg. During the first year teams in Virginia, Texas, Hawaii, Iowa, Nebraska, and Idaho were supported. The second year teams in Colorado, Mississippi, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were funded. The Appalachian Regional Commission, in partnership with Kellogg, supported Ohio and Pennsylvania.The program was discontinued prematurely after the second round.
Other than talking to friends who were MIRA trainers and meeting some of the participants at rural telecommunication conferences in Aspen, Colorado, in 1998 and 1999, I had no further contact with the project until Caroline Carpenter asked me to write about the MIRA experiences in the fall of 2000.
In planning this publication I decided to write about the program from a geographic perspective. In some ways, chapters on different themes would have stressed the commonality shared by some of the team projects: libraries, youth, digital video, economic development, political action, oral histories. However, I believe that the uniqueness of individual places is a critical factor that shapes the lives of the inhabitants. A question I asked many whom I interviewed was, "what keeps you in this town?" What was the importance of place in the lives of MIRA participants? While some places had a great natural beauty that attracted others to come and visit (Hawaii, the Shenandoah region of Virginia, the mild winter weather of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, the bridges of Madison County Iowa; the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania, the mountains in Idaho, and the mix of cultures in New Mexico), some had few scenic attractions. Instead, they emphasized other benefits: safety, good neighbors, a good place for families.
As I set out to visit the various states, I hoped to find out why these were "great places for you and your grandchildren," What led people to get involved in a project that was structured in such an unique way and what lasting effects did it have on some of the inhabitants. Because years had passed since the MIRA projects were in full force, the research was partly a history project. People had moved away, gone to college, forgotten details of what happened, and without funds dangling as a lure for involvement, many people just did not have the time to talk, write, or visit with me.
My first attempt to bring the participants into this project was the formation of a private computer conferencing area on Howard Rheingold's web site, Brainstorms. Howard and I had met on The WELL in 1985 and had remained friends. Rheingold had written the definitive work on so-called virtual communities in 1993. His web site was an electronic watering hole for about 1000 people interested in discussing a number of topics, and he offered a special place for MIRA participants, trainers, and foundation staff to reflect and talk about their experiences. I invited more than 200 people to take part. Fifteen signed up, but only four ever posted anything in the conference area, so I abandoned that tool as a way to gather stories late in 2000.
Tracking down people to visit proved to be the most time-consuming part of the project. The logistics of setting up trips to several states in one outing and then driving hundreds of miles to talk for an hour with a single participant or small group and then drive to another made it difficult to gather information. The very problem that many of the MIRA participants complained about: driving to attend the distant training sessions, was certainly a challenge for me. In spite of what Internet boosters may claim, distance is not dead. Ken Williamson, a rural sociologist from Pennsylvania, wrote eloquently about the "tyranny of distance." That remains a crucial factor for many of the MIRA participants. It separates them from each other, from health care and other services, and it points up how America would be crippled without access to cheap fuel for our personal transportation. Toward the end of my research, gasoline reach $2.00 per gallon. This is a great burden on those rural folk who commute long distances to work (as many did in Hawaii), and this expense plus the rising cost of heating oil, electricity, and natural gas could have a severe dampening effect that will not be offset by improved telecommunications in small towns.
What follows is a personal perspective of what I experienced in MIRA states. It is not exhaustive. In some places there were only a very few people to talk with and few written records. I was entertained warmly in many places. I was tolerated in others, and stood up several times because the project was completed and the people had other activities on their mind. The telephone conversations and interviews were very useful, even though I could not meet many of those I spoke with. I made use of some written reports submitted to the Kellogg Foundation, and I looked at the web sites, but the volatility of the Internet applied to the MIRA projects. Many links were broken, and much of the information had not been updated since the cessation of the projects. Other web sites were lively and filled with current information about the MIRA project and new projects that grew out of the initial ones. One site that included projects from many MIRA project began with more information and now has dead links and much less information, according to some of the participants. For all the excitement about the Web, it is not a perfect place for a historical record, unless there is a person devoted to archiving the different sites, even after they are taken down or abandoned by their creators. As a librarian, I see this as a major challenge for the Internet age.
My thanks to all of you who spent time with me, shared a meal along with your dreams and experiences. I want to especially thank Amy Borgstrom who helped me with the Hawaii and Ohio visits and gave me good feedback on the drafts of the chapters. Amy was involved in this project in so many ways: as a previous grantee she took part in the brainstorming as MIRA took shape, and went on the road for Kellogg: "I was a lunchtime cheerleader. ACENet had been getting Kellogg money for a couple of years for the community network, the tech center, and to work with schools. I visited the first round sites, showed some pictures, told some stories, and listened to their questions about the MIRA project." Later, ACEnet was one community support organization in Ohio. In the summer of 2000, Amy left the world of non-profits and Appalachia and relocated on the beautiful island of Kauai. The distance from her past involvement has given her an interesting perspective on the MIRA project and the way foundations are engaged in the communities they try to serve.
With that introduction let us reflect on the many facets of MIRA across the United States.
Glossary:
ICT. Information and communication technology
MIRA. Managing Information with Rural America. The name of this grant program
CCT. Cluster of Community Teams. Local grass roots groups that trained together and later worked on a technology project.
CSO. Community Support Organization. A non-profit organization in the same region as the CCT.
PSO. Policy Support Organization.National organizations that worked on rural policy issues.
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