Fresh forms of consumptive disease

HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND LOW INCOME COMMUNITIES: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology. Edited by Donald A. Schon, Bish Sanyal and William J. Mitchell. MIT Press, 240pp, Pounds 19.95. - ISBN 0 262 69199 X.

Will information technology create a route to prosperity for those from low-income communities or will it instead exacerbate social inequalities? The question itself is indicative of a particular stance towards the power and influence of technology. Critiques of technological determinism notwithstanding, it is one that is still very divisive.

This situation was confronted in a colloquium organised by the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Two groups of academics with different perspectives on the potential of technology for low-income communities were joined by activists who were working with computers in the community.

The book based on the colloquium begins with a set of essays that provide a useful introduction to many of the major writers in the field. Manuel Castells argues that cities are increasingly socially and spatially polarised but suggests that in the right context IT could lead to a more humane city. Mitchell identifies four broad communication alternatives depending on different conjunctions of real or tele-presence and synchronous or asynchronous communication, and explores the ways in which these might affect various activities.

Mitchell also has an article in the second part of the book where he maps out the "complex and multi-layered" nature of access. Even if every house were wired up at an acceptable quality and cost, access would still depend on users having an appropriate computer, good interface software, literacy, English-language competence and the capacity to produce services. For Mitchell, access is incomplete while people remain passive consumers of information.

Anne Beamish reviews approaches to community networks, stressing the importance of moving beyond the broadcast model where target groups are seen as consumers but not producers of information and where the capacity of the technology to support communication is not realised.

The chapters that describe community initiatives make this book really distinctive. These are not naive accounts that gloss over the difficulties or claim to have delivered more than seems plausible. Instead, they are textured accounts that add as much to ideas of learning and community building as they do to understanding of how computers can be used. These include Jeanne Bamberger's account of how computers were used with children with difficulties at school to help them mediate between their often excellent understanding of the way things work in the real world and the symbolic representation of that knowledge that denotes academic success.

Through the experiences of one school dropout who became a professional graphic designer as a result of participating in a computer clubhouse, Mitchel Resnick et al articulate principles of learning based around active participation and ownership, motivations for learning, learning as participation in a culture of those who are already practitioners, and through an environment of respect and trust.

In a rather different, pre-web example Bruno Tardieu describes the creation by children of a community encyclopedia housed on a computer which increased their sense of identity and continuity. In a later example, which utilised multi-user access to shared databases, Alan and Michelle Shaw describe how the opportunity to share knowledge and views stimulated a range of community activities and stronger relationships with schools and health centres.

Sherry Turkle attempts to capture some of these ideas more analytically when she describes how knowledge that was professionalised and taken out of "information commons" can be returned to the community using PCs.

The book has excellent introductory and concluding chapters where the editors engage with and at times contest the approaches of contributing authors. There is a tendency to ignore the heterogeneity of low- income communities. Ethnicity clearly features but its significance for exclusion receives limited attention, as do issues of age. Divisions based on gender are at best implicit. Nevertheless this book provides a challenging and at times inspiring account of how technology can be used with low- income communities, which stresses that outcomes are not pre-determined.

Sonia Liff is a senior lecturer at Warwick Business School, Warwick University. She is currently researching social inclusion and access to computers and the internet as part of the ESRC's Virtual Society? programme.