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Advanced Information Technology, Low-Income Communities, and the City
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Date: Mon, 18 Mar 96 15:57:42 EST From: anneb@MIT.EDU (Anne Beamish) To: communet@elk.uvm.edu, URBANET@msu.edu, PUBPOL-L@VM1.SPCS.UMN.EDU Subject: Web site for Colloquium on Advanced Information Technology, Low-Income Communities, and the City
A colloquium on information technology and the city is underway this semester at the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT.
For those who cannot attend the sessions, we've been putting the speakers' notes and the transcripts on our web site at:
http://sap.mit.edu/projects/colloquium/
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Colloquium on Advanced Information Technology, Low-Income Communities, and the City Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning Spring, 1996
http://sap.mit.edu/projects/colloquium/
SUMMARY
Advanced computer and telecommunication technology has the potential to change our world fundamentally through the development of new forms of electronic communications, media, and information systems. Technology-driven changes are occurring rapidly in the structure of the economy, the roles and functions of cities, and the status of low-income communities. Technology enthusiasts envisage a bright new future in which "Being Digital" becomes our dominant mode of being, and the "City of Bits" becomes greater in importance than the traditional spatial/physical city of the urban planners. On the other hand, technology skeptics question the positive transformative power of the new technologies, fearing the emergence of new forms of social control, and worrying that the communities of the net will erode, rather than support, the development of communities of place. Both the enthusiasts and the skeptics are concerned by the prospect of a society made up of computer-haves and have-nots.
If community leaders and planning professionals are to guide the uses of the new technologies toward livable cities, vital communities, and improved economic prospects for low-income populations, they must understand the issues at stake and enter into dialogue with the advocates and developers of cyberspace.
In order to illuminate these issues and promote such a dialogue, the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will conduct a 12-week colloquium during the spring of 1996 on "Advanced Information Technology, Low-Income Communities, and the City". The colloquium will bring together a group of distinguished social scientists, planning practitioners, and technologists, as well as representatives of low-income communities in the Boston area.
Based on a set of commissioned and invited papers, participants in the colloquium will take a practical and critical look at the potential impacts of the new technologies on: the form and function of cities, the political and social lives of communities, and the prospects for access to employment and education on the part of low-income populations. We will examine specific proposals for new uses of digital technologies to enhance access to employment, foster democratic debate and decision making, and promote dialogue between agencies of government and human services, and their clienteles. We will critically examine the assumptions that underlie such proposals. And we will examine a variety of institutional means for increasing access to advanced technology for the residents of low-income urban communities.
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Anne Beamish Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning Room 9-547, Massachusetts Institute of Technology anneb@mit.edu Cambridge, MA 02139 617-253-0607
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