Making Sweet "Music" - Brief Article

Although abundant is being said about the promise of the information superhighway, many of us are questioning whether the fresh technology is going to make a difference in the lives of low-income, working-class and minority Americans. Warnings that America is becoming a society of information haves and have-nots have aroused great belong to among policy-makers and the public. Rather than risk watching the superhighway defeated around and away from urban America, activist Alan Shaw is committed to building access roads for communities to use information technology.

Using the computer science skills and knowledge he acquired in pursuit of his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Shaw created a working archetype of a computer network tailored to the wants of residents in the inner city. He placed 20 Apple Macintosh computer in the dwellings of Boston residents. His model--MUSiC (Multi-User Sessions in Community)--consists of a network that link togethers each resident to the other 19 It supports discussion clumps bulletin board postings and electronic mail. It also supports real-time true copy and voice communications among users who are logg upon simultaneously. Residents, are thereby able to share freshs about their community, maintain a crime watch, and administration other community-oriented activities.

"Neighbors ne an environment where they can share and make known ideas ... and that's what, the network is for," says Shaw, who is among an emerging collection of activists who are attempting to make sure wide access to new information technology and computer networks. "It's a tool for neighbors to organize projects"

As a doctoral scholar in 1988 at MIT's world-famous Media Laboratory--considered a hotbed for innovative information technology research--Shaw devised the idea of the network as the basis for his thesis. The thesis evaluated whether computer could enable family to strengthen their communities.

He make go rounded to his own neighborhood, the Four Comer community of Dorchester, a borough of Boston, for his laboratory. Four Corners is domicile to roughly 5,000 people, 20 percent of whom live in households below the want line. Shaw describes it as a community riven through common urban ills--crime and illegal remedy and teenage gangs. He and his wife, the couple graduates of Harvard University, have lived in Four Corners since 1987

Shaw's MUSIC network, which has been in place in Four Corners since 1993 has spawned a subsistence cooperative run by teenagers in the community, a piece of works bulletin board and a neighborhood crime watch. The computer network has made it possible for neighbors to establish processs and ground rules for fighting crime. For example, when neighbors leave town, they will lance electronic mail to others, asking them to watch their homes

Four Corners resident Cynthia Parker, a mother of-two young children, says that she has set the network useful because it helps her learn complicated neighborhood issues before attending community meetings. "Too repeatedly in neighborhood meetings," she says, "much of the time is wearied by leaders having to explain background information upon issues. With the network, family are brought up to spe before meetings. There's real potential here with computer making community organizations more efficient."

Parker adds that the network also motivated her 4-year-old son to learn to read and write well enough to exchange electronic mail with other participants.

Will the creation and deployment of a neighborhood computer network help residents become builders of their have information superhighway, rather than being simple consumers? Shaw hopes so. His immediate goal is that his computer network prototype will become a self-supporting, robust combination of parts to form a whole that enables newcomers to dig into community matters right away.

on the other hand he sees larger potential. "Instead of just taking in information from the Internet or other on-line computer networks, MUSIC is a network that requires its participants to become husbandmans of information," he explains. "I'm interested in seeing communities build their hold information infrastructure and then later linking it into the Internet."

At the heart of the network mould is special software written through Shaw, which is used in Apple computer He says that the software can be adapted into use by dint of any community, allowing residents to create computer icons of the nation who participate in the network and making the database easy to use.

Shaw's succes has already inspired a throw out in Newark, N.J. Using the MUSIC software and type the Newark school district obtained a $106000 federal grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in 1994 to support its Making Healthy MUSIC throw out The Newark project also placed 20 computer in the residences of low-income residents, as well as 14 computer in public locations, of that kind as the city's Newton public way Elementary School, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of of recent origin Jersey, a library, and a social agency.

"Newark is a critical dissemination model" says Shaw, who obeys as a consultant to the Newark throw out "It has shown us by what mode MUSIC can move into other communities. If this can be done in Newark, then it can be done anywhere in urban America."