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New Media & Society
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The Dialectics of Place and Space

On Community in the `Information Age'

ROGER S. SLACK

University of Edinburgh

ROBIN A. WILLIAMS

University of Edinburgh

This article takes a social learning perspective to examine the development of a community information service in terms of the changing computer interfaces used and their relations to a variety of more or less competing discourses around the related concepts of community, access and service. We show how both the enthusiasm of internet proponents and the pessimism of writers such as Castells does not take account of the complex interplay of local and global concepts of what the information society can be. Taking a sceptical middle course between, we show how some of the debates around the `information society' elide some crucial distinctions in the development of community information services. Through an ethnographic analysis we show how these discourses have been worked out in struggles around the development of appropriate interfaces for a community information service.

Key Words: community • information society • interfaces • local use of ICTs • user constituencies

New Media & Society, Vol. 2, No. 3, 313-334 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/1461444800002003004
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