Shaping public access technology: The development and use of a metropolitan community information system

In the early 1990s there were numerous local efforts in cities throughout the United States to use emergent information and communications technologies (ICTs) for objectives such as “community networking” and “reinventing government.” This research compared two Seattle-based efforts to employ emergent ICTs for social and organizational objectives. The development and use of the nonprofit-owned Seattle Community Network (SCN) and the City-owned Seattle Public Access Network (PAN) during the mid-1990s was examined. Known as public access networks, SCN and PAN were designed to provide public access to local community and government information. The networks were computer-based and accessible via home dial-in, the Internet, or publicly available terminals. They were also designed with two-way communication capacity including e-mail, forums, and chat.; A social construction of technology approach was used in this examination of public access networks. This approach was use to illustrate the primacy of social actors in the shaping of technology. The data for this research were collected from in-person interviews with 26 key informants and online surveys of 122 active users of SCN and PAN. Relevant memos, documents, newspaper accounts, and field observations supplemented the interviews and surveys.; This examination of public access networks in Seattle revealed the contextual and contingent nature of the social shaping of technology. ICTs were employed as the appropriate tools for the social, political, and economic objectives being sought by the developers of SCN and PAN. This research showed that the processes involved in the shaping of the public access networks included stakeholders acting independently as well as collaboratively.; This research revealed that the independent and collaborative development strategies of SCN and PAN operators, and simultaneous local nonprofit activities and entrepreneurial business ventures, coalesced as a metropolitan community information system that was profoundly augmented by the Internet. This research also revealed evidence of community building through the development of the networks as well as being augmented by the networks' interactive and information capacities.