Untitled - socium.ge

334 Lisa J. Servon and Randal D. Pinkettcoined this disconnect, the “organizational divide,” and highlighted programsacross the US that are integrating community technology and communitybuilding successfully. As a recent Seedco (2002) study found, however, theseCBOs remain the exception.Fifth, and finally, as the original funding sources for community technologyprograms continue to diminish, it will become increasingly incumbent onprogram directors to identify alternative sources of support as well as newand innovative approaches to service delivery. Scale and sustainability arecritical current issues for the community technology movement. These areperhaps the movement’s greatest challenges as well as its greatest opportunitiesas they may force practitioners to wrestle with each of the aforementionedissues of capturing the late majority, disseminating best practices,moving beyond access to outcomes, and facilitating greater alignment withcommunity builders. In other words, the strategies needed to sustain themovement could serve to elevate those programs that have utilized resourceseffectively and necessitate changes among those that have not.Naturally, there are a number of CTCs that have overcome these hurdlesto play a significant and effective role in the communities they serve. In somerespects, they could be considered models for the future of the communitytechnology movement, serving as new “public spaces” or places that engagediverse groups of people and contribute to positive local change.CONCLUSIONSThe community technology movement has grown up at the edges of establishedinstitutional arrangements, in the interstices between traditional policyspheres and existing community-based movements. It has incorporatedaspects of community development, economic development, education, andorganizing. This movement is a response to the larger socioeconomic transformationthat has created the information society. The response has resultedin a new set of locally based institutions and programs – community technologycenters – that act to diffuse technology, engage people in civil society,and connect traditionally disadvantaged groups to the opportunities offeredby the new economy.In the short time that they have existed, CTCs have helped countless individualsand communities to harness the power of the information society andreap its benefits. But CTCs are too small, scattered, and vulnerable to thevicissitudes of the funding world to be the answer for society at large. Ontheir own, they are unlikely to make a significant dent in the problem of thedigital divide or to substantially narrow other longstanding divides.CTCs are a growing, new form of community organization. Although