INTRODUCTION: EXPLORING THE RURAL NETWORK SOCIETY

Two Rural Vignettes and the Beginning of a Story

The following introductory paragraphs appeared in an article published in the Canadian Journal of Educational Communication in 1987:

In the small Swedish village of Vemdalen, the visitor can witness an unexpected sight. On the first floor of the building containing the local general store, a considerable number of modern computers and other equipment are being used diligently by local people from eight o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock in the evening. The equipment is worth a closer look: PC ATs, 15 personal computers from the United States and Japan, word processors and teletexts from Holland, Telefax, Videotex; in short, lots of high technology in the heart of a sparsely populated mountainous part of Sweden (Vemdalen today boasts having more computers per capita than any other part of Sweden).

The first Scandinavian telecottage, Härjedalens Telestuga, was opened here on 13 September 1985, and shortly after its inception, all this equipment was being used by 15 per cent of the people in the village, with everyone from 10-year-old children to pensioners represented. The funds for establishing the telecottage came from the County Government Board as part of a project for the propagation of modern technology in sparsely populated areas, Swedish Telecom and the municipal board. The aim of the telecottage was to open up the vast opportunities of the information age to the people in this remote part of Sweden (where there is less than one inhabitant per square kilometre) by providing access to a variety of computers and modern telecommunications equipment for anyone willing to invest time and energy in learning how to use the hardware and software.

Modern information technology has, for the first time in history, given people in remote regions of the earth the opportunity to overcome their worst handicap: their distance from the centres of learning and development. The new information technology may lead to further centralization and to the development of a comparatively small elite, worldwide and in each country. However, if used properly, it may also further decentralization and the development of local democracy. In the Nordic countries, governments are eager to prevent the cities from growing too large, and the grassroots drive towards local democracy is very strong indeed. (Albrechtsen 1987, 327-28)

At the time of writing this article, the author was the Chairman of the Board of the Association of Nordic Telecottages (FILIN), and of the International Union of Telecottages (IUTC). Established in 1986, FILIN was the world's first telecentre association. It launched a newsletter, FILINFO, conducted the first survey of telecentres, and became instrumental in popularizing the telecentre movement in Scandinavian countries in the 1980s (Murray et al. 2001). In a short span of ten years since the inception of the first telecentre, it became quite popular in Europe. As noted by Colin Campbell:

Telecottages have existed ... since 1985. The concept apparently was first implemented in Sweden, where their official names are Community Tele-service Centers. These centers have central locations in isolated rural communities and typically have personal computers, printers, a modern, a fax machine, and a consultant. The telecottage idea has spread to a large number of countries. The Telecottage Association, a British organization, counts 120 telecottages in the United Kingdom, 49 in Finland, 40 in Australia, and 23 in Sweden. It also lists telecottages in Germany, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Canada, Norway, and Brazil Typical Nordic and British telecottages offer many similar kinds of services, though sometimes they are classified somewhat differently. (Campbell 1995)

Approximately 15 years later, after the first telecentre was established in Sweden, and when the telecentre movement became popular across Europe, the following news report appeared in the New Fork Times:

Embalam, India — In this village at the southern tip of India, the century-old temple has two doors.

Through one lies tradition. People from the lowest castes and menstruating women cannot pass its threshold. Inside, the devout perform daily pujas, offering prayers. Through the second door lies the Information Age, and anyone may enter.

In a rare social experiment, the village elders have allowed one side of the temple to house two solar-powered computers that give this poor village a wealth of data, from the price of rice to the day's most auspicious hours.

'If I can get a job through this, I'll be happy,' said V Aruna, 14, who pestered her father, a farmer, until he agreed that she could come here each day to peck at a computer keyboard, where she learned Word and PowerPoint. 'I want to work instead of sitting in [the] house.'

At a time of growing unease about global gap between technology knows and knows-nots, India is fast becoming a laboratory of small experiments like this one at the temple that aim to link isolated rural pockets to the borderless world of knowledge. Local governments and nonprofit groups are testing new approaches to provide villages where barely anyone can afford a telephone with computer centers that are accessible to all. (Dugger 2000)

Both reports have some striking similarities and dissimilarities. Both are talking about computers installed in rural telecentres where children through the elderly use them. Both articles see this development as an important achievement in linking the rural countryside with the outside world. Both talk about the opportunities that it offers to villagers. Both accounts share an optimism and enthusiasm with regard to the benefits of the projects. Nevertheless, separated by space and a gap of 13 years, the former account about a social experiment with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in a developed country and the latter about a similar project in rural South Asia have, unsurprisingly, obvious differences in the backdrop, organizational settings, sources of funding, mode of working and the socioeconomic impacts. Participants in the telecentre movement in Europe, as citizens of the social democratic welfare state, arguably enjoyed better access to personal resources, economic opportunities and social equality within a liberal democratic political framework that ensured constitutional and civic rights and workable mechanisms to contain societal fissures and tensions. So the telecentre movement itself was initiated as part of a larger state and private sector involvement in reducing regional technological gaps through social experiments using ICTs. These experiments aimed to establish new forms of social organization using information technology in various sectors like agriculture, health care and education and involving local...