BytesForAll (also known as B4A or BfA) is a South Asian initiative to focus on how information technology and the internet
can help in taking up social development issues. It is one of the
oldest ICT4D (information and communication technologies for
development) networks in South Asia. It was launched at a time when
ICT4D was yet to become a buzz-word on the development circuit, and was
still largely unnoticed for its potential.
FLOSS-inspired
Co-founders
of BytesForAll, Frederick FN Noronha (left) and Partha Pratim Sarkar
(right), at an April 2006 APC-organized meet in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
BytesForAll_Readers
had some 1,548 subscribers as of October 2006, and describes itself
saying it "is particularly designed for BytesForAll readers and
supporters who want to take part and want to be updated about ICT and
development-related issues in South Asia."
The BytesForAll mailings and discussions via its mailing list are
summarised and published each month in the i4d magazine published from
near New Delhi each month. BytesForAll has also shared contents and columns with the Spider internet magazine of Karachi, Pakistan (Dawn Media Group), and earlier with the Express Computer magazine of the Indian Express group of Mumbai, India.
Among oldest
BytesForAll
also describes itself as "being one of the oldest network on ICT4D
issues in South Asia". Its mailing list, which is watched by a number of
ICT
enthusiasts and academics across the globe sees itself as a forum that
"encourages a free flow of information and a lively debate and
discussion on people-oriented IT practices."
The first issue of BytesForAll e-zine (July 1999) is archived online by the Inti.be website.
Volunteers, team
Run by a volunteer administration team.
One of the goals of the BytesForAll project is to build
people-to-people links across the diverse yet similar countries of South
Asia, a region which is home to a huge population, but also faces a lot
of political trouble at times.
BytesForAll is a virtual organisation
which does not have a physical office or entity. Its members and
volunteers interact via cyberspace, through email and occasional group chat sessions.
News, criticism of South Asian ICT issues
BytesForAll has emerged as one of the credible sources of news and
criticism of the ICT4D networks in South Asia. It is read by
campaigners, activists at the grassroots, people involved with actual
projects, funders, key players in the development debate and also
academics in both South and North.
One of the early, tone-setting essays is titled When a Modem Costs More than a Cow and is by noted Dhaka, Bangladesh-based photographer Shahidul Alam who has founded Drik based in the locality of Dhanmondi. In it, Alam argues strongly a case for ICT
and technology to reach the poor. He says, "Where information is power,
denying information to marginalized communities, actively prevents the
rural poor from overcoming the unequal power structures that they are
trapped within. While it is in the interest of the powerful in society
to restrict such access, it is also in the interest of the powerful
nations to deny access and maintain domination. The unrestricted flow of
general information is an essential pre-requisite for an egalitarian
society."
Covering the field
Over
the years, BytesForAll has been intensively covering the field, mainly
through its volunteer network of journalists and writers. BytesForAll
has highlighted and tracked the growth of certain projects from South
Asia, including the Hole In The Wall project, the Simputer, and free software (or FLOSS). BytesForAll has actively debated the growth of Free Software and Open Source in South Asia.
In mid-2006, BytesForAll set up its BytesForAll_FLOSS network to build links among supporters of FLOSS and techies dabbling in it, in South Asia.
Over the years, BytesForAll has been able to build links and
bridges among techies and development activists (specially those with a
tech focus) in the South Asian region.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Human Development in the Program in
Science, Technology, and Society and Director of the MIT India Program
Prof. Kenneth Kenniston has called BytesForAll "the single most valuable
source of information on 'IT for the people' projects anywhere in South
Asia."
"Beyond the ... digital divide"
BytesForAll has argued that it goes "beyond the popular concept of digital divide.
We not only recognize that there is a widespread disparity between
information have and have-nots (in terms of access and distribution) but
also raise and analyze the issues that put them trapped into it and
bring about solutions wherever they exist." It adds that this network "want(s) to see how IT are being used for the
benefit of the dis-empowered, one who has no purchasing power to tempt
the market to build solutions for him or her."
BytesForAll has taken online issues relating to IT and public
health, disaster mitigation, non-English computing, mass education and
the like. It described its activities thus; "Each month an offline
E-zine goes out to its interested readers. In doing so, it has managed
to highlight a surprising number of often-unnoticed success stories from
a region where access to computers is still a class privilege."
It has focused repeatedly on issues such as efforts to promote computing in regional languages through Linux;
the Learn Foundation's experience in laying a knowledge pipeline in
rural Bangladesh; PraDeshta's idea of deploying a broadband
communication network in Bangladesh; SDNP Pakistan's success in
developing a knowledge network within the country; Kothmale's implementation of innovative "community radio" services in rural Sri Lanka, among others.
Themes it has also focused on include IT-for-public health, Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS),
ICT and human rights, emerging ICT technologies, community radio
concerns, ICT for poverty alleviation, ICT for mass education, the
knowledge society, local language computing initiatives, the "digital
divide" generally, ongoing conferences and seminars in the region, and
e-governance issues.
Community computers at the Chermside Library in Brisbane, Australia.
Community informatics (CI) is an interdisciplinary field that is concerned with using information and communication technology (ICT) to empower members of communities and support their social, cultural, and economic development. Community informatics may contribute to enhancing democracy, supporting
the development of social capital, and building well connected
communities; moreover, it is probable that such similar actions may let
people experience new positive social change. In community informatics, there are several considerations which are
the social context, shared values, distinct processes that are taken by
members in a community, and social and technical systems. It is formally located as an academic discipline within a variety of academic faculties including information science, information systems, computer science, planning, development studies, and library science
among others and draws on insights on community development from a
range of backgrounds and disciplines. It is an interdisciplinary
approach interested in using ICTs for different forms of community
action, as distinct from pure academic study about ICT effects.
Background
Most
humans live in communities. In some urban areas, community and
neighborhood are conflated but this may be a limited definition. Communities are defined as people coming together in pursuit of common
aims or shared practices through any means, including physical,
electronic, and social networks. They proliferate even while the ability to define them is amorphous.
Cultures ensure their growth and survival by continuing the norms and mores that are the bases of their way of life. Communities can use the infrastructure of ICTs as a method of
continuing cultures within the context of the Internet and the World
Wide Web. Once a cultural identity is defined within the context of these
technologies, it can be replicated and disseminated through various
means, including the sharing of information through websites,
applications, databases, and file sharing. In this manner, a group that defines its cultural identity within the
construct of technology infrastructure is empowered to hold valuable
exchanges within the spheres of economics, political power, high and
popular culture, education, and entertainment.
Since the inception of the Internet and the World Wide Web, we have seen the exponential growth of enterprises ranging from electronic commerce, social networking, entertainment and
education, as well as a myriad of other contrivances and file exchanges
that allow for an ongoing cultural enrichment through technology. However, there has been a general lag as to which populations can
benefit through these services through impediments such as geographic
location, a lack of funds, gaps in technology and the expertise and
skills that are required to operate these systems.
To date there has been very considerable investment in supporting
the electronic development of business communities, one-to-many social
tools (for example, corporate intranets, or purpose-built exchange and social networking services
such as eBay, or Myspace), or in developing applications for individual
use. There is far less understanding, or investment in human-technical
networks and processes that are intended to deliberately result in
social change or community change, particularly in communities for whom
electronic communication is secondary to having an adequate income or
social survival.
The communal dimension (and focus of Community Informatics)
results in a strong interest in studying and developing strategies for
how ICTs can enable and empower those living in physical communities.
This is particularly the case in those communities where ICT access is
done communally, through Telecentres,
information kiosks, community multimedia centres, and other
technologies. This latter set of approaches has become of very
considerable interest as Information and Communications Technology for
Development (ICT4D) has emerged as significant element in strategic (and
funding) approaches to social and economic development in Less Developed Countries. ICT4D initiatives have been undertaken by public, NGO and private sector agencies concerned with development such as the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation; have emerged as a key element in the poverty alleviation component of the UN's Millennium Development Goals; and as important directions for private sector investment both from a market perspective (cf. the "Bottom of the Pyramid") and from companies concerned with finding a delivery channel for goods and services into rural and low income communities.
While the progress of ICT4D has been remarkably fast in general
as communities become more information-based, digital divide appears to
be a great challenge to its proponents. Although access to information
technology in North America and Europe is high, it is the complete
opposite in other regions of the world, particularly in Africa and in
some parts of Asia. For instance, in the ASEAN region alone, there are
countries who are leaders in digital technology such as Singapore,
Malaysia, and Thailand while on the other side of the pole are countries
who have very poor access to and development in digital technology
including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The effectiveness of ICT as a tool for development is highly contingent
on the capacity of all countries to accommodate and maintain
information and communications technology.
There is thus growing interest in Community Informatics as an
approach to understanding of how different ICTs can enable and empower
marginalized communities to achieve their collective goals.
Understanding communities
It
is crucial to know how communities are formed and evolved and how the
participation to a community occurs and differs while formation process. Understanding the nature of communities and the participation process
will surely ensure designing and implementing a successful ICT solution
that benefits members of community while communicating with each other
or performing certain tasks. The following points include a brief description of the nature of each potential community formation.
Community as a place
A group of people may form a community according to the place in which they live, enjoy staying, and work. They usually participate in communities within these three places since
they gather together on consistent basis so that it is highly expected
that such community is formed. Beside the home and the work gathering, people usually like to spend
their time at informal places called third places in where they meet
their new or old friends or have a chance to meet new people.
Community as a socio-spatial entity
A group of people may form a community as they have frequent direct interactions or live in close proximity to each other. The members of such community may have strong bond and focused common
goals which give them a higher status over other communities. Moreover, as the number of the members increases, the community may
become reputable and has a higher status over other communities.
Community as links between people
A group of people may form a community as they have common shared identity. People may form such community to support and advocate common shared values, morals or norms in which they believe. Such a community may have a set of symbols and be associated with a status over other communities. The inclusion and the exclusion to such community depend on whether or
not a member share the same identity with others in the community. For instance, people who descend from one origin may form a community
in which only people from that origin can join the community even though
they do not know each other in advance.
Community of interests
A group of people may form a community as they have similar affinity for a particular activity, experience, or subject. The geographical location is not necessary while forming such
community, and the inclusion and the exclusion to such community depends
on whether a new member has that affinity or not.
Communities linked to life stage
A group of people may form a community if they share a similar experience in a distinct life stage. The experience could be related to the members themselves or to their relatives, such as their children. For instance, parents of elementary school children may form a
community in which they care about their children while in school. As it is mentioned in the previous type of community formation, the
members of such community have a common interest which is caring about
their children while in school. This type of community may persist over time, but the inclusion and the
exclusion to it may happen consistently as people are no longer in that
distinct life stage.
Communities of practice
A
group of people who share a similar profession may form a community in
which they work to attain their goals and advance in their profession. Three important concepts are considered while forming community of
practice which are mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared
repertoire. In a community of practice, the members have to be mutually engaged
with each other by establishing collaborative relationships that will
allow them to willingly work on certain joint activities. In the second concept which is joint enterprise, the members of a
community of practice are supposed to discuss and agree upon the work
responsibilities so that they can work in harmony, and each member knows
his responsibility and his expected contributions to the community. In addition to these two concepts, the members of the community of
practice have a shared repertoire of procedures or ways to perform
certain tasks. They usually agree upon these procedures and practices that they establish and develop over time.
Conceptual approaches
As
an academic discipline, CI can be seen as a field of practice in
applied information and communications technology. Community informatics
is a technique for looking at economic and social development within
the construct of technology—online health communities, social networking
websites, cultural awareness and enhancement through online connections
and networks, electronic commerce, information exchanges, as well as a
myriad of other aspects that contributes to creating a personal and
group identity. The term was brought to prominence by Michael Gurstein.
Michael Gurstein says that community informatics is a technology
strategy or discipline that connects at the community level economic and
social development with the emergence of community and civic networks,
electronic commerce, online participation, self-help, virtual health
communities, "Tele-centres", as well as other types of online
institutions and corporations. He brought out the first representative
collection of academic papers, although others, such as Brian Loader and his colleagues at the University of Teesside used the term in the mid-1990s.
CI brings together the practices of community development and
organization, and insights from fields such as sociology, planning,
computer science, critical theory, women's studies, library and information sciences, management information systems, and management studies. Its outcomes—community networks
and community-based ICT-enabled service applications—are of increasing
interest to grassroots organizations, NGOs and civil society,
governments, the private sector, and multilateral agencies among others.
Self-organized community initiatives of all varieties, from different
countries, are concerned with ways to harness ICT for social capital,
poverty alleviation and for the empowerment of the "local" in relation
to its larger economic, political and social environments. Some claim it
is potentially a form of 'radical practice'.
Community informatics may in fact, not gel as a single field
within the academy, but remain a convenient locale for interdisciplinary
activity, drawing upon many fields of social practice and endeavour, as
well as knowledge of community applications of technology. However, one
can begin to see the emergence of a postmodern "trans-discipline"
presenting a challenge to existing disciplinary "stove-pipes" from the
perspectives of the rapidly evolving fields of technology practice,
technology change, public policy and commercial interest. Whether or not
such a "trans-discipline" can maintain its momentum remains to be seen
given the incertitude about the boundaries of such disciplines as
community development.
Furthermore, there is a continuing disconnect between those
coming from an Information Science perspective for whom social theories,
including general theories of organisation are unfamiliar or seemingly
irrelevant to solving complex 'technical' problems, and those whose focus is upon the theoretical and practical issues
around working with communities for democratic and social change
Given that many of those most actively involved in early efforts
were academics, it is only inevitable that a process of "sense-making"
with respect to these efforts would follow from "tool-making" efforts.
These academics, and some community activists connected globally through
the medium.
A first formal meeting of researchers with an academic interest
in these initiatives was held in conjunction with the 1999 Global
Community Networking Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This meeting
began the process of linking community-based ICT initiatives in developed countries with initiatives undertaken in developing countries, which were often part of larger economic and social development programmes funded by agencies such as the UN Development Programme, World Bank, or the International Development Research Centre.
Academics and researchers interested in ICT efforts in developed
countries began to see common and overlapping interests with those
interested in similar work in less developed countries. For example,
the issue of sustainability as a technical, cultural, and economic
problem for community informatics has resulted in a special issue of the
Journal of Community Informatics as well as the subject of ongoing conferences in Prato, Italy and other conferences in South Africa.
In Canada, the beginnings of CI can be recognized from various
trials in community networking in the 1970s (Clement 1981). An essential
development occurred in the 1990s, due to the change of cost of
computers and modems. Moreover, examples of using computer networking to
initiate and enhance social activities was acknowledged by women's
groups (Balka 1992) and by the labor movement (Mazepa 1997).
Social informatics beyond an immediate concern for a community
Social informatics refers to the body of research and study that
examines social aspects of computerization—including the roles of
information technology in social and organizational change, the uses of
information technologies in social contexts, and the ways that the
social organization of information technologies is influenced by social
forces and social practices. Historically, social informatics research has been strong in the Scandinavian countries, the UK and Northern Europe. In Europe some researchers have pointed out that in order to create
awareness of the importance of social issues of computing, one has to
focus on didactics of social informatics. Within North America, the field is represented largely through
independent research efforts at a number of diverse institutions. Social
informatics research diverges from earlier, deterministic (both social
and technological) models for measuring the social impacts of
technology. Such technological deterministic models characterized
information technologies as tools to be installed and used with a
pre-determined set of impacts on society dictated by the technology's
stated capabilities. Similarly, the socially deterministic theory
represented by some proponents of the social construction of technology (SCOT) or social shaping of technology theory see technology as the product of human social forces.
Criticisms
There
is a tension between the practice and research ends of the field. To
some extent this reflects the gap, familiar from other disciplines such
as community development, community organizing and community based research. In addition, the difficulty that Information Systems has in recognising
the qualitative dimension of technology research means that the kind of
approach taken by supporters of community informatics is difficult to
justify to a positive field oriented towards solutions of technical,
rather than social problems. This is a difficulty also seen in the
relationship between strict technology research and management research. Problems in conceptualising and evaluating complex social interventions relying on a technical base are familiar from community health and community education. There are long-standing debates about the desire for accountable – especially quantifiable
and outcome-focused social development, typically practised by
government or supported by foundations, and the more participatory,
qualitatively rich, process-driven priorities of grass-roots community
activists, familiar from theorists such as Paulo Freire, or Deweyan pragmatism.
Some of the theoretical and practical tensions are also familiar from such disciplines as program evaluation
and social policy, and perhaps paradoxically, Management Information
Systems, where there is continual debate over the relative virtue and
values of different forms of research and action, spread around
different understandings of the virtues or otherwise of allegedly
"scientific" or "value-free" activity (frequently associated with
"responsible" and deterministic public policy philosophies), and
contrasted with more interpretive and process driven viewpoints in
bottom-up or practice driven activity. Community informatics would in
fact probably benefit from closer knowledge of, and relationship to,
theorists, practitioners, and evaluators of rigorous qualitative research and practice.
A further concern is the potential for practice to be "hijacked"
by policy or academic agendas, rather than being driven by community
goals, both in developed and developing countries. The ethics of
technology intervention in indigenous or other communities has not been
sufficiently explored, even though ICTs are increasingly looked upon as
an important tool for social and economic development in such
communities. Moreover, neither explicit theoretical positions nor ideological
positioning has yet emerged. Many projects appear to have developed
with no particular disciplinary affiliation, arising more directly from
policy or practice imperatives to 'do something' with technology as
funding opportunities arise or as those at the grassroots (or working
with the grassroots) identify ICT as possible resources to respond to
local issues, problems or opportunities. The papers and documented
outcomes (as questions or issues for further research or elaboration) on
the wiki of the October 2006 Prato conference
demonstrate that many of the social, rather than technical issues are
key questions of concern to any practitioner in community settings: how
to bring about change; the nature of authentic or manufactured
community; ethical frameworks; or the politics of community research.
A different strain of critique has emerged from gender studies.
Some theorists have argued that feminist contributions to the field have
yet to be fully acknowledged and Community Informatics as a research
area has yet to welcome feminist interventions. This exists despite the presence of several gender-oriented studies and
leadership roles played by women in community informatics initiatives.
Research and practice interests
Research and practice ranges from concerns with purely virtual
communities; to situations in which virtual or online communication are
used to enhance existing communities in urban, rural, or remote
geographic locations in developed or developing countries; to
applications of ICTs for the range of areas of interest for communities
including social and economic development, environmental management,
media and "content" production, public management and e-governance among
others. A central concern, although one not always realized in
practice is with "enabling" or "empowering" communities with ICT that
is, ensuring that the technology is available for the community. This
further implies an approach to development which is rather more "bottom
up" than "top down".
Areas of concern range from small-scale projects in particular
communities or organizations which might involve only a handful of
people, such as telecentres;
an on online community of disabled people; civic networks and to large
national, government sponsored networking projects in countries such as
Australia and Canada or local community projects such as working with
Maori families in New Zealand. The Gates Foundation
has been active in supporting public libraries in countries such as
Chile. An area of rapidly developing interest is in the use of ICT as a
means to enhance citizen engagement as an "e-Governance" counterpart
(or counterweight) to transaction oriented initiatives.
A key conceptual element and framing concept for Community Informatics is that of "effective use" introduced initially by Michael Gurstein in a critique of a research pre-occupation with the Digital Divide as ICT "access". CI is concerned with how ICTs are used in practice and not simply
facilitating "access" to them and the notion of "effective use" is a
bridge between CI research (research and analysis of the constituent
elements of effective use), CI policy (developing enabling structures
and programmes supportive of "effective use") and practice (implementing
applications and services in support of local communities).
Another way to understand CI is Clement and Shade's "access rainbow" (Clement and Shade 2000). Clement and Shade have contended that accomplishing insignificant
specialized connectedness to the Internet is no assurance that an
individual or group will prevail with regards to appropriating new ICTs
in ways that advance their improvement, independence, or empowerment. It
is an approach which has multi-layered socio-specialized model for
universal access to ICTs. It is displayed as seven layers, starting with
the fundamental technical components of connectedness and moving upward
through layers that inexorably push the essential social framework of
access. The seven layers are:
7. Governance
6. Literacy / Social facilitation
5. Service / Access providers
4. Content / Services
3. Software tools
2. Devices
1. Carriage
Even though all elements are important, the most important one is
the content /service layer in the middle, since this is where the
actual utility is most direct. The upper layers focus on social
dimensions and the lower layers focus on technical aspects.
Many practitioners would dispute any necessary connection to
university research, regarding academic theorising and interventions as
constraining or irrelevant to grassroots activity which should be beyond
the control of traditional institutions, or simply irrelevant to
practical local goals.
Some of the commonalities and differences may be in fact be due
to national and cultural differences. For example, the capacity of many
North American (and particularly US) universities to engage in service learning
as part of progressive charters in communities large and small is part
of a long-standing tradition absent elsewhere. The tradition of service
learning is almost entirely absent in the UK, Australia, or New
Zealand, (and of limited significance in Canada) where the State has
traditionally played a much stronger role in the delivery of community
services and information.
In some countries such as the UK, there is a tradition of locally
based grassroots community technology, for example in Manchester, or in
Hebden Bridge.
In Italy and the Netherlands, there also appears to have been a strong
connection between the development of local civic networks based around a
tradition of civic oppositionism, connected into the work of
progressive academics.
In Latin America, Africa and many parts of Asia these efforts
have been driven by external funding agencies as part of larger programs
and initiatives in support of broader economic and social development
goals. However, these efforts have now become significantly
"indigenized" (and particularly in Latin America) and "bottom-up" ICT
efforts are increasingly playing a leading role in defining the future
use of ICT within local communities.
In Canada, The Canadian Research Alliance for Community
Innovation and Networking (CRACIN) was established in 2003. Their goal
is to explore and archive the status and achievements of CI activities
in Canada. It is a research partnership between scholastics,
specialists, and public sector delegates.
Networks
There
are emerging online and personal networks of researchers and
practitioners in community informatics and community networking in many
countries as well as international groupings. The past decade has also
seen conferences in many countries, and there is an emerging literature
for theoreticians and practitioners including the on-line Journal of
Community Informatics.
It is surprising in fact, how much in common is found when people
from developed and non-developed countries meet. A common theme is the
struggle to convince policy makers of the legitimacy of this approach to
developing electronically literate societies, instead of a top-down or
trickle-down approach, or an approach dominated by technical, rather
than social solutions which in the end, tend to help vendors rather than
communities. A common criticism that is frequently raised amongst
participants at events such as the Prato conferences is that a focus on
technical solutions evades the social changes that communities need to
achieve in their values, activities and other people-oriented outcomes
in order to make better use of technology.
The field tends to have a progressive bent, being concerned about
the use of technology for social and cultural development connected to a
desire for capacity building or expanding social capital,
and in a number of countries, governments and foundations have funded a
variety of community informatics projects and initiatives, particularly
from a more tightly controlled, though not well-articulated social
planning perspective, though knowledge about long-term effects of such
forms of social intervention on use of technology is still in its early
stages.
Public libraries and community networks
Even
though that community networks and public libraries have similitudes in
various ways, there are some obstacles that upset the probability of
cooperation in the future between them. Albeit both CNs and libraries
are concerned with giving information services to the society, an
exchange is by all accounts lacking between the two communities. The
mission of libraries is frequently rather barely engaged and, with
regards to managing people and different institutes, their methodology
can be to some degree unbending. Thusly, CN specialists, while
institutionally more adaptable, rush to expel the part of public
libraries in the community, tending to see the library essentially as a
store of books upheld by public subsidizing. Public libraries have a
long-standing custom of association with their communities, yet their
conditions and concerns contrast from those of community networks (CNs).
In computing, time-sharing is the concurrent sharing of a computing resource among many tasks or users by giving each task or user a small slice of processing time. This quick switch between tasks or users gives the illusion of simultaneous execution. It enables multi-tasking by a single user or enables multiple-user sessions.
Developed during the 1960s, its emergence as the prominent model
of computing in the 1970s represented a major technological shift in the
history of computing. By allowing many users to interact concurrently
with a single computer, time-sharing dramatically lowered the cost of
providing computing capability, made it possible for individuals and
organizations to use a computer without owning one, and promoted the interactive use of computers and the development of new interactive applications.
The earliest computers were extremely expensive devices, and very
slow. Machines were typically dedicated to a particular set of tasks and
operated by control panels, the operator manually entering small
programs via switches one at a time. These programs might take hours to
run. As computers increased in speed, run times dropped, and soon the time taken to start up the next program became a concern. Newer batch processing software and methodologies, including batch operating systems such as IBSYS (1960), decreased these "dead periods" by queuing up programs ready to run.
Comparatively inexpensive card punch or paper tape
writers were used by programmers to write their programs "offline".
Programs were submitted to the operations team, which scheduled them to
be run. Output (generally printed) was returned to the programmer. The
complete process might take days, during which time the programmer might
never see the computer. Stanford students made a short film humorously
critiquing this situation.
The alternative of allowing the user to operate the computer
directly was generally far too expensive to consider. This was because
users might have long periods of entering code while the computer
remained idle. This situation limited interactive development to those
organizations that could afford to waste computing cycles: large
universities for the most part.
The concept is claimed to have been first described by Robert Dodds
in a letter he wrote in 1949 although he did not use the term time-sharing. Later John Backus also described the concept, but did not use the term, in the 1954 summer session at MIT. Bob Bemer used the term time-sharing in his 1957 article "How to consider a computer" in Automatic Control Magazine and it was reported the same year he used the term time-sharing in a presentation. In a paper published in December 1958, W. F. Bauer wrote that "The
computers would handle a number of problems concurrently. Organizations
would have input-output equipment installed on their own premises and
would buy time on the computer much the same way that the average
household buys power and water from utility companies."
The meaning of the term time-sharing has shifted from its original usage. Up until 1960, time-sharing was used to refer to multiprogramming without multiple user sessions. Later, it came to mean sharing a computer interactively among multiple users. In 1984 Christopher Strachey wrote he considered the change in the meaning of the term time-sharing a source of confusion and not what he meant when he wrote his paper in 1959.
There are also examples of systems which provide multiple user
consoles but only for specific applications, they are not
general-purpose systems. These include SAGE (1958), SABRE (1960) and PLATO II (1961), created by Donald Bitzer at a public demonstration at Robert Allerton Park
near the University of Illinois in early 1961. Bitzer has long said
that the PLATO project would have gotten the patent on time-sharing if
only the University of Illinois had not lost the patent for two years.
The first interactive, general-purpose time-sharing system usable for software development, Compatible Time-Sharing System, was initiated by John McCarthy at MIT writing a memo in 1959. Fernando J. Corbató led the development of the system, a prototype of which had been produced and tested by November 1961. Philip M. Morse arranged for IBM to provide a series of their mainframe computers starting with the IBM 704 and then the IBM 709 product line IBM 7090 and IBM 7094. IBM loaned those mainframes at no cost to MIT along with the staff to
operate them and also provided hardware modifications mostly in the form
of RPQs as prior customers had already commissioned the modifications. There were certain stipulations that governed MIT's use of the loaned IBM hardware. MIT could not charge for use of CTSS. MIT could only use the IBM computers for eight hours a day; another
eight hours were available for other colleges and universities; IBM
could use their computers for the remaining eight hours, although there
were some exceptions. In 1963 a second deployment of CTSS was installed
on an IBM 7094 that MIT has purchased using ARPA money. This was used to support Multics development at Project MAC.
Throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s, computer terminals were multiplexed onto large institutional mainframe computers (centralized computing
systems), which in many implementations sequentially polled the
terminals to see whether any additional data was available or action was
requested by the computer user. Later technology in interconnections
were interrupt driven, and some of these used parallel data transfer technologies such as the IEEE 488 standard. Generally, computer terminals were utilized on college properties in much the same places as desktop computers or personal computers
are found today. In the earliest days of personal computers, many were
in fact used as particularly smart terminals for time-sharing systems.
DTSS's creators wrote in 1968 that "any response time which
averages more than 10 seconds destroys the illusion of having one's own
computer". Conversely, timesharing users thought that their terminal was the computer, and unless they received a bill for using the service, rarely thought
about how others shared the computer's resources, such as when a large
JOSS application caused paging for all users. The JOSS Newsletter often asked users to reduce storage usage. Time-sharing was nonetheless an efficient way to share a large computer. As of 1972
DTSS supported more than 100 simultaneous users. Although more than
1,000 of the 19,503 jobs the system completed on "a particularly busy
day" required ten seconds or more of computer time, DTSS was able to
handle the jobs because 78% of jobs needed one second or less of
computer time. About 75% of 3,197 users used their terminal for 30
minutes or less, during which they used less than four seconds of
computer time. A football simulation, among early mainframe games written for DTSS, used less than two seconds of computer time during the 15 minutes of real time for playing the game. With the rise of microcomputing in the early 1980s, time-sharing became
less significant, because individual microprocessors were sufficiently
inexpensive that a single person could have all the CPU time dedicated solely to their needs, even when idle.
However, the Internet brought the general concept of time-sharing
back into popularity. Expensive corporate server farms costing millions
can host thousands of customers all sharing the same common resources.
As with the early serial terminals, web sites operate primarily in
bursts of activity followed by periods of idle time. This bursting
nature permits the service to be used by many customers at once, usually
with no perceptible communication delays, unless the servers start to
get very busy.
Time-sharing business
Genesis
In the 1960s, several companies started providing time-sharing services as service bureaus. Early systems used Teletype Model 33 KSR or ASR or Teletype Model 35 KSR or ASR machines in ASCII environments, and IBM Selectric typewriter-based terminals (especially the IBM 2741) with two different seven-bit codes. They would connect to the central computer by dial-up Bell 103A modem or acoustically coupledmodems
operating at 10–15 characters per second. Later terminals and modems
supported 30–120 characters per second. The time-sharing system would
provide a complete operating environment, including a variety of
programming language processors, various software packages, file
storage, bulk printing, and off-line storage. Users were charged rent
for the terminal, a charge for hours of connect time, a charge for
seconds of CPU time, and a charge for kilobyte-months of disk storage.
In 1975, acting president of Prime Computer Ben F. Robelen told stockholders that "The biggest end-user market currently is time-sharing". For DEC, for a while the second largest computer company (after IBM), this was also true: Their PDP-10 and IBM's 360/67 were widely used by commercial timesharing services such as CompuServe, On-Line Systems, Inc. (OLS), Rapidata and Time Sharing Ltd.
The advent of the personal computer marked the beginning of the decline of time-sharing.The economics were such that computer time went from being an expensive
resource that had to be shared to being so cheap that computers could
be left to sit idle for long periods in order to be available as needed.
Rapidata as an example
Although many time-sharing services simply closed, Rapidata held on, and became part of National Data Corporation. It was still of sufficient interest in 1982 to be the focus of "A
User's Guide to Statistics Programs: The Rapidata Timesharing System". Even as revenue fell by 66% and National Data subsequently developed its own problems, attempts were made to keep this timesharing business going.
UK
Time Sharing Limited (TSL, 1969–1974) - launched using DEC systems. PERT was one of its popular offerings. TSL was acquired by ADP in 1974.
OLS Computer Services (UK) Limited (1975–1980) - using HP & DEC systems.
The computer utility
Beginning in 1964, the Multics operating system was designed as a computing utility, modeled on the electrical or telephone utilities. In the 1970s, Ted Nelson's original "Xanadu" hypertext repository was envisioned as such a service.
Security
Time-sharing was the first time that multiple processes, owned by different users, were running on a single machine, and these processes could interfere with one another. For example, one process might alter shared resources
which another process relied on, such as a variable stored in memory.
When only one user was using the system, this would result in possibly
wrong output - but with multiple users, this might mean that other users
got to see information they were not meant to see.
To prevent this from happening, an operating system needed to enforce a set of policies that determined which privileges each process had. For example, the operating system might deny access to a certain variable by a certain process.
The first international conference on computer security in London
in 1971 was primarily driven by the time-sharing industry and its
customers.
Time-sharing in the form of shell accounts has been considered a risk.
Cambridge Multiple Access System was developed for the Titan, the prototype Atlas 2 computer built by Ferranti for the University of Cambridge. This was the first time-sharing system developed outside the United States, and which influenced the later development of UNIX.
Compower Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Coal Board
(later British Coal Corporation) in the UK. Originally National Coal
Board (NCB) Computer Services, it became Compower in 1973 providing
computing and time-share services to internal NCB users and as a
commercial service to external users. Sold to Philips C&P
(Communications and Processing) in August 1994.
A telecentre is a public place where people can access
computers, the Internet, and other digital technologies that enable them
to gather information, create, learn, and communicate with others while
they develop essential digital skills. Telecentres exist in almost
every country, although they sometimes go by a different names including
public internet access center (PIAP), village knowledge center,
infocenter, Telecottage, Electronic Village Hall, community technology center (CTC),
community multimedia center (CMC), multipurpose community telecentre
(MCT), Common/Citizen Service Centre (CSC) and school-based telecentre.
While each telecentre is different, their common focus is on the use of
digital technologies to support community, economic, educational, and
social development—reducing isolation, bridging the digital divide,
promoting health issues, creating economic opportunities, leveraging
information communications technology for development (ICT4D), and
empowering youth.
The telecentre movement's origins can be traced to Europe's telecottage and Electronic Village Halls (originally in Denmark) and Community Technology Centers
(CTCs) in the United States, both of which emerged in the 1980s as a
result of advances in computing. At a time when computers were available
but not yet a common household good, public access to computers emerged
as a solution. Today, although home ownership of computers is widespread in the United
States and other industrialized countries, there remains a need for
free public access to computing, whether it is in CTCs, telecottages or
public libraries to ensure that everyone has access to technologies that
have become essential.
There are also CTCs located in most of the states of Australia, they are also known as Community Resource Centres
(often abbreviated to CRC) that provide technology, resources, training
and educational programs to communities in regional, rural and remote
areas.
Types
Beyond
the differences in names, public ICT access centers are diverse,
varying in the clientele they serve, the services they provide, as well
as their business or organizational model. Around the world, some
telecentres include NGO-sponsored, local government, commercial,
school-based, and university-related In the United States and other countries, public access to the Internet
in libraries may also be considered within the “telecentre concept”,
especially when the range of services offered is not limited to pure
access but also includes training end-users. Each type has advantages
and disadvantages when considering attempts to link communities with
ICTs and to bridge the digital divide. Among the various types:
NGO-sponsored telecentres are hosted by an NGO, which manages
the center and integrates it, to one degree or another, into the
organization's core business.
Local government telecentres seek to further local development; they
often aim to disseminate information, decentralize services, and
encourage civic participation, in addition to providing public ICT
access.
Commercial telecentres, launched by entrepreneurs for profit, range from the purely commercial cybercafé to the social enterprise, where profit and social good objectives are combined.
School-based telecentres can be structured to involve community
members during off-school hours, but costs need to be shared by the
school system and the community.
University-related telecentres can offer social outreach to
disadvantaged and community groups, provide training, develop locally
relevant content, and establish and facilitate virtual networks.
Internet access in public libraries.
Need for telecentres
It
is estimated that 40% of the world's population has less than US$20 per
year available to spend on ICT. In Brazil, the poorest 20% of the
population counts with merely US$9 per year to spend on ICT (US$0.75 per
month). In Mexico, the poorest 20% of the society counts with an estimated
US$35 per year (US$3 per month). For Latin America it is estimated that
the borderline between ICT as a necessity good and ICT as a luxury good is roughly around the "magical number" of US$10 per person per month, or US$120 per year.
Telecentres and international development institutions
In the 1990s, international development institutions such as Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and UNESCO,
sponsored the deployment of many telecentres in developing countries.
Both IDRC and UNESCO are still very involved in the telecentre movement.
The former telecentre.org programme at IDRC was transferred to the
telecentre.org Foundation in the Philippines in March 2010 and continues to support networks of telecentres around the world. Within the Philippines, the Department of Science and Technology
(DOST) has rolled-out Tech4ED (Technology for Education, to gain
Employment, train Entrepreneurs towards Economic Development). This
telecenter program has implemented over 42,000 centers throughout the
countryside to
promote citizen participation in e-Government services and provide IT
education to the masses, specifically, the underserved and marginalized citizens within the
country. UNESCO continues to support the growth of community multimedia centers
(CMCs), which, unlike most other telecentres, have a local community
radio, television or other media component.
Sustainability considerations
In
light of the rapidly evolving technologies that support telecentres and
in light of the increased penetration of mobile technologies (i.e.,
cell phones), the telecentre model needs to continuously evolve in order
to remain relevant and to continue to address the changing needs of the
communities they serve. As mobile communication technologies become
more pervasive around the world, including in rural areas, the
telecentres may no longer need to provide phone services, yet they may
still be very relevant in terms of access to web-enabled e-government
services, e-Learning, and basic Internet communication needs (email and
web browsing).
Among the various sustainability considerations:
Evolving models — since the local demand for information
and communication services is evolving, the telecentre models need to
evolve as well. Franchises and other approaches to linking and
networking telecentres are proving to be popular.
Evolving technologies — wireless connectivity technologies, beyond VSAT
(known to be expensive) are being explored in many communities around
the world. These technologies provide new opportunities for connecting
communities through telecentres and eventually at the individual
household level.
Evolving services — the types of services that telecentres can and should provide is also rapidly evolving. As the fields of eGovernment, eHealth, e-Learning, eCommerce
are evolving and maturing in many countries, telecentres need to take
advantage of opportunities to extend the benefits to the community at
large, through their public access. Some governments are pursuing the
deployment of telecentres precisely as a means of ensuring that larger
segments of the population are able to access government services and
information through electronic channels.
Community stakeholders - identifying leaders among the
community who champion the concept of shared services through telecentre
mode, play a crucial role as a bridge between the telecentre operator
and hesitant villagers. Indeed, There is a maturing period during which
community leaders have to invest constant efforts to drive changes of
behaviour in the adoption of innovations.
Community involvement is required however, at the initial
phase of the telecentre set up, starting with the site selection and
creating a sort of empathy and feeling of empowerment. Furthermore, the
telecentre should be well rooted in the socio-cultural context of the
community.
Networks
The telecentres of today and of the future are networked telecentres, or telecentres of the 2.0 generation. Increasingly, telecentres are not operating as independent, isolated
entities but as members of a network. At times, the network takes the
form of a franchise. In other circumstances, the network is much more
informal.
In the United States, more than 1,000 community technology centers were organized under the leadership of CTCnet, a nonprofit association headquartered in Washington, D.C. CTCs are also organized under the banner of state organizations, such as the Ohio Community Computing Network, or city programs such the City of Seattle Community Technology Program. and Austin FreeNet.
Additional information about the practice of building and sustaining telecentres can be found in this page on Telecentre Sustainability.
Additional information about the social, political, economic, and
technical problems and challenges facing the development and
sustainability of telecentres can be found at Telecenters.
There is a growing research and analytical literature on
telecentres and other community based technology initiatives and
approaches particularly within the context of Community informatics as an academic discipline and through the Journal of Community Informatics.
