1. THE OPPORTUNITY
The most promising experiments involve a wide variety of institutions and interests. What these institutions have in common is that they are stakeholders in the community - they exist in the community and for the community. They are not just the public media we are familiar with - the public broadcasters,the civic nets and the cable access channels - though they will have an important role to play. They include any institution that provides a service, or uses a service, or employs people within the community. They include all forms of education,the social services,civic organizations,cultural institutions and voluntary activities. They are both public and private, commercial and noncommercial. Together, they form the infrastructure of the community - the things that make it work.

The process many of these interests are beginning to engage in is the process of forming coalitions,or alliances,to make use of the new technologies in the public interest - on behalf of the community as a whole. What form these alliances will eventually take is still a matter for speculation (and it will be different from community to community),but it is fair to say that their general objective is the creation of a community portal - a gateway that will connect all branches of the community to each other, through cyberspace, through digital broadcasting and eventually through broadband connections.

The communities involved in these experiments are responding to a unique window of opportunity - a time when computer technologies are developing at extraordinary speed,when digital television is providing broadcasters with huge new capacity, when interactive technologies are accepted (and urgently required) in business,education and many other aspects of daily life, and when broadband is beginning to be recognized as the dominant distribution platform of the future.

At the same time, the availability of these new technologies, and access to them,is steadily percolating through American society. With the help of over $6 billion in technology discounts through the federal E-Rate program,most public schools and public libraries now have computers and Internet access. Digital broadband (the largest and the fastest communications conduit yet invented) is widely available in the workplace and is expected to be in almost 20% of homes by 2002. And there is digital television. No one knows how quickly, or how generally, it will be accepted by viewers (it does, after all, require them to purchase either a new receiver or a set-top converter),but a large number of commercial stations (and some public stations) have already inaugurated digital services, with their ability to multicast six or more simultaneous channels within the same frequency.

Here, then, is the window of opportunity. The time for communities to assemble their coalitions and create their community portals is now, while the revolution represented by the new technologies is still work in progress, and before it solidifies into a way of life. The commercial sector has no doubts about it. So why should the noncommercial sector? The experiments already under way show that there is more than one way of doing this. Communities have different needs and different strengths, and support comes from a variety of different sources.

• In Connecticut,the principal public broadcaster has taken the lead in building a statewide alliance through the intricate method of "mapping the assets." IBM's Research Division is providing substantial in-kind assistance, and the state government has provided $10 million for digital transition.

• In Grand Rapids,Michigan,a thriving community media center could become the focus,providing a radio station,a community cable access channel,a media advocacy institute, and an organization that helps nonprofits get connected to the Internet.

• In Philadelphia, a public broadcasting station,WHYY, has built a new digital facility and proclaimed it "civic space." The entire community of the Delaware Valley is invited to share in it,both actually and virtually.

• In Texas, the state government has earmarked $10 million in grants for community networking and technology centers.

• In Indianapolis, Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis (IUPUI) is building a communications technology center, and has invited the public broadcaster, WFYI, to relocate to it in order to build a digital community alliance.

These are just examples, but they illustrate one of the important conclusions of this re p o rt - that eve ry community needs a focal point, acatalyst. Publicbroadcasters, with their huge new digital capacity, have a natural and obvious affinity with the idea of creating a community portal, but they are not the only ones capable of taking the lead. It might just as easily be a library, a university, a community network, or one of the new technology centers the Clinton Administration is proposing to fund in a thousand different communities in 2000-01.

Contents | Introduction | Opportunity | Agents | Alliance Concept |Case Studies | Conclusions

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