Toi o Tamaki

A very Auckland atrium

Auckland’s new Art Gallery invites me to breathe deeply. Returning from smoky, grimy tourist destinations to rediscover my own city, I have the sense I’m wandering into a big holiday marquee put up by my relatives. Call in any time. Plenty of room. We’ve pitched the big tent on the back lawn under the trees. Make yourself at home. The first inclination on approaching is to drop your head back to gauge the height of the entrance atrium, billowing like slung canvas.  Kauri posts echoing traditional pou appear to take the weight of all that timber but, as if there is a paradoxical fluidity and plasticity in the whole, the pou – like Tane Mahuta – push sky from earth, Rangi from Papa as in the creation story.  Inside, pillows of air and shade invite you in to see more of the pulsating flowers overhead, so far only glimpsed through the glass.

Choi Jeong Hwa, Flower Chandelier

Turns out you have to get clear of the lobby, climbing a flight of stairs to a mezzanine before you get to see this confection of inflated plastic cascading from up there and filling the huge space with its disarming, preposterous, gorgeous vibrancy, each flower swelling briefly as air gasps into it, then falling back to rest before breathing again.  I’m not sure if the motorised whooshing is slightly disturbing, or as reassuring as the machines that whir and flicker in intensive care units: all vital signs under control.  I think the latter.  This pneumatic centrepiece would be rather tragic in a state of detumescence, after all.  But the deliciously vivid creation isn’t the first splash of tropical colour at Toi o Tamaki.  Choi Jeong Hwa has also created the pure “Red” installation – a flush of plastic blossoms – lying in silky dribbling water on a black plinth at the gallery entrance.

Choi Jeong Hwa, Red

O colour how I love you. How my heart dives into you.
The water shimmers like a fine tissue of silk, blown by breaths of breeze gentle enough to dislodge dandelion fluff.
The red and the black. Familiar from Maori art. Resonant for Chinese culture.

Seems curious – but I’ll go back for many more visits to what I think of as a metaphorical family marquee for Tamaki Makaurau / Aotearoa New Zealand, to get to know the galleries and their contents better – that the representation of Maori in the history of the region’s art is, here, pretty one-dimensional. The gallery is named Toi o Tamaki. I find the noun toi translated as tip, point, summit, art, knowledge, origin, source (of mankind), native, indigenous, aboriginal in the Maori Dictionary. The architecture of the place (Richard Francis-Jones) responds strongly to the location – in particular to its contemporary vegetation, a lush canopy of trees – and the hill once called Rangipuke, and the Pā site, Te Horotiu, where the Art Gallery is situated.  Yet the art displayed within it, as well as the tour guides’ uncritical interpretations for tourists (and, lamentably, locals) of the cultural context of the Goldies, Lindauers et al, elevates a European reading of Auckland cultural history.

Later, after the tour, I linger over many works. One that speaks clear as a bell is McCahon’s 1970 Are there not twelve hours of daylight?  Described by NZ Museums as responding to Jesus’s cryptic assertion about walking in the light of the world…

Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Colin McCahon, 1970

NZ Muesums’s 2001 guide explains that for McCahon, freshness and immediacy of communication was something which had held the artist spellbound even as a young boy, when he recalled watching a signwriter laying down gold-leaf letters on a shop window in Dunedin. In numerous works after this McCahon’s own paint-laden brush set down words as scripted light, as disputational voice, prophetic declamation, lament, song and haunted recitation. McCahon’s written paintings somehow fuse the wonder of angelic utterance with the simple language of a roadside chalkboard…

Such a brief for the pursuit of an artistic mission could work just as well for a building, which after all is speaking to us through its forms, if in ways other than words. Toi o Tamaki as metaphorical home, gathering place and representation of who we are works beautifully at the level of invitation to shelter, to contemplation, and inspiration, but arguably less well at foregrounding cultural issues.

Airy tree-house…
…pitching up to the sway of the tree canopy…
…and out like taut canvas tethered to trees in the back garden, the new design feels like home.

Of all the images I gazed at on this visit, the one I keep coming back to is inspired by Auckland’s west coast: a luscious Gretchen Albrecht, Golden Cloud, unusually a rectangle rather than her favoured lunette shape.

Gretchen Albrecht, Golden Cloud, 1970

Flowing horizontal washes of thin acrylic paint capture the shimmering glow of sun on cloud, the dark of night imperceptibly closing on on the day. The deeper colour below is suggestive of a momentary green flash, that secret of nature sometimes revealed as the sun sinks over the horizon… (Brownson, R. 20011. Art Toi: NZ Art at Auckland Art Gallery, p. 233).

This painting is my heart-sense of Auckland, pitching and tossing under the winds of two oceans, whether I’m contemplating the end of the day looking east or looking west.  And so Toi o Tamaki is drenched with colour, image and voice.  Reds redolent of pohutukawa blossom, blacks and slates of iron sand, lustrous gold, greens that only New Zealanders know and yearn for when they’re away.  Dare we ask for more? More confident arrangement of the images and voices that can speak through the collections to make for a truer cultural account.

Gatti di Venezia

In the quiet streets of Giudecca there are cats. One of them, black and white and charming, adopted us immediately, and became our Venetian holiday friend. A couple of tabbies hunched into the cobbles next to the walls along Calle Michelangelo, near the heavy security gate we had to unlock to get into the big open courtyard, didn’t like my approach. But a black and white cat who lived behind the security gate in the apartment complex made himself known, and his availability as a rent-a–moggie, a bit later. We gave him a name too.

The apartment, one of several in the large, gated courtyard open to the blue dome of Venetian sky, was modern in design, squat and thick-walled, with a heavy front door, a ground floor and a mezzanine. The page of instructions that came with the key said to insert it like a nail. Turning and turning the strange long pointed key, around and around in the lock, we could hear heavy bolts doing everything but free the door. Thankfully a kind neighbour who witnessed the scene and took pity, came to our rescue. Grazie, grazie! We could see four heavy bolts set into the door that thudded into place when the lock engaged. Relief – it had been a long day finding our way to Venice, searching with barely-contained panic for the office holding the key as the afternoon sun angled toward evening, heaving luggage onto the vaporetto that would take us to the Zitelle stop on Giudecca, finding the correct address and then being defeated by the heavy door.

In the following days I became aware of lions in Venice – on the Venetian flag, in stone sculptures, on the digital clock in the Piazza de San Marco. But it was the lions’ little cousins that made us feel at home. Domestic cats, gatti, have been part of Venice life for a thousand years, helping to keep the rodent population down in the city of canals. Speculating, I wonder if in breeding on this island city has made them distinctive: our holiday friend had very large paws, and it appeared that many others did too. They all appeared sturdy in build, often short in the leg, with very thick coats. By mid-November the nights and early mornings were getting bitterly cold: big feet, nimble little bodies and thick fur could come in handy. Others have photographed and written about the Venetian cats. As with the Pompeii dogs, the locals look after the gatti who have no homes, and small cat kennels can be seen where cat ladies feed them and provide warm bedding.

Faz came inside the apartment with no hesitation. He would sit outside in the garden courtyard area, clearly a local resident. At the opening of our door and friendly noises being made, he approached at a trot, tail up. He held himself up to the stroke of a hand, looking up eagerly; he explored and sniffed luggage, scouted out the kitchen, circulated around all the legs and friendly hands. We let him stay as he liked, leaving the big heavy door open a little so he wouldn’t feel alarmed at being trapped. He watched, he circulated, he fell asleep on a bag under the bed.

Over the course of our stay he came to us every day. When we returned around 4 or 5pm after a long day of walking, pensive after the soothing motion of a water-bus ride home, he was either waiting or he would arrive soon after. Two mornings at the end of our week, when I woke in my little portable bed by the window on the ground floor right by the garden, unable to sleep as the pinpricks of stars gradually faded with the dawn, I peered out between the vertical blinds. Waiting for the others to stir, I used the time gazing up at the velvety sky and thinking. On those two mornings, a little movement to my right turned out to be a black and white face at the window right beside me, paws up on the low block window ledge, checking out if anyone was home. The name we gave him for our few days was made up of the initials of other names we had toyed with – Fergus? Sylvester? Where the ‘A’ came from I can’t recall, but he became, to us, Fas – or Faz.

So yes we fed him – bits of the inevitable prosciutto, the milk in the bottom of the breakfast cereal bowls, a cup with some milk poured in. I reckon he liked the warm floors – heated tiles – when it was so cold outside. But when he had had enough of us, he was happy to leave, walking swiftly and purposefully out to the centre of the large courtyard garden without a backward glance, and then he was gone. He had other fish to fry. His well-padded body and friendly ways told me he had someone looking out for him. Cats have ever been thus.

Pompeii dogs

The dogs of Pompeii are still with me. One of us decided on the spur of the moment to give a name to the small golden one with the fluffy tail arcing back towards his midsection. He had followed, falling into a trot beside us and eventually showing us out past what appeared to be smart new kennels and onto the Viale delle Ginestre. The little troupe of five of us, four humans and one little golden dog, made its way around the perimeter of Pompeii back to the fairground jumble of panini and gelato vans and souvenir hawkers, to the main entrance where the persistent tour guide woman had by this time shut up shop, and the Circumvesuviana train was due to arrive. By that time the dog that had briefly been “Philip”, for reasons best known to the youngest sister who chose it, had peeled off with a purposeful set to his head and tail, back into the ruins peopled with tourists and the whiff of half-eaten sandwiches.

We first saw Philip from the top tier of the amphitheatre, where you come in what would once have been the main entrance to this ancient entertainment complex. Coming in from a stand of whispering trees, for a moment you adjust your senses to a neat semicircle of open-air seating spilling away to a stage below. No sound, no movement. The silence and stillness remind me that time is really all one thing, not a filing cabinet containing a past that still exists. With eyes, ears, noses we merely record moments that evaporate with the flicker of our senses and thoughts, and then cease to be. Wasn’t it really just a moment, a flash, a time-warp ago that the voices of Pompeians filled this air?

The small light coloured dog lay asleep, his back pressed against the curved stone of a seating tier about half way down. Despite the fading day, the sun would have warmed it enough to last another hour or two as a sleeping spot. I was curious about the dogs. I’d seen the first one, again lying prone and apparently happy, stretched out in front of the Tempio di Giove, the Temple of Jupiter, at one end of the city’s Forum. It was dark in colour and appeared quite large, something like a Labrador or German Shepherd or perhaps both. Dozing, it lifted its head and then let it fall. I walked on, wondering why it was there. It didn’t look hungry or neglected. I didn’t want to disturb its rest. But now here was another one in the amphitheatre, lying down there in a slight comfortable curve. My youngest asked if I had any food we could give it. I didn’t take much convincing. We began to walk down to get a closer look. Would it be a bit mangy, rangy, unkempt? Should we keep our distance?

This was a dog that was out to it, submerged in an ocean of sleep, the sort that induces twitching in a creature’s lips and whiskers. We had brought the usual Panini with us from Naples, filled with prosciutto and cheese, and half the price being asked at Pompeii, and fresh sugary doughnuts. My panini was half-eaten, the doughnut having taken care of the rest of my rumbling appetite before we set out exploring the city, so I approached “Phil” thinking if he looked hungry he could have the leftovers. But he was so heavily asleep….why didn’t we just walk on? We dangled a piece of prosciutto near his nose to see if the aroma would rouse him. No need to wonder really. A couple more dangles to waft the smell and the little dog woke. Cautious, it accepted the meat and ate it politely. We gave it more, and then the cheese. He took it without snatching or bolting it. I knew what would happen of course. Much as we might like to simply administer our charity and walk on, pleased with our generosity and consciences salved, a gift of food establishes a relationship. Sure enough, Philip stood up and joined us. We talked to him, patted him.

These Pompeii dogs weren’t begging. Not like the “old women” holding out tin cups where tourists throng, bent over with shawls pulled low over their faces, or prostrate on the footpath as if struck down by a vision of holiness, swaying, praying audibly, urgently. These dogs asked for nothing other than a spot in the sun. The thing is, once you give something you are acknowledging your role in a shared universe, and that we have a duty to care and to act on it. But once you commit to an act of kindness you create expectations of future acts, and the possibility of dependence. And you should remain committed.

Little fair Philip disappeared for a few minutes. I was briefly relieved we were off the hook, even though I liked him and was a bit regretful that he’d gone. Then I spotted the distinctive curved golden tail, fringed when held up like a flag, moving along the top of a stone barrier, and then the plume of it vanished down a flight of steps. We hadn’t managed to shake him after all. Chastised by the other two who didn’t want the guilt of leaving a little friend behind to starve, we moved on a little more quickly, aiming to look nonchalant, not looking back. Food? What food? But Philip had by now reappeared and trotted along with us, looking for all the world like he was ours and knew exactly where we were going. Somehow we were pleased to see him. We greeted him like an old friend, patted him, took photos of him, and felt guilty all at once. What would become of him? Why was he here?

Exiting onto the Viale delle Ginestre, I spotted clean, dry kennels, and the story began to fall into place. The dogs were cared for after all, even if they didn’t have a home. Philip kept pace as we took more photos and then stopped to read all about the [C]Ave Canem project, implemented by the Commissario delegato for the emergency of Naples and Pompeii archaelogical areas, explained and illustrated on large display boards with photos of the Pompeii dogs that are cared for and may be adopted. And so we were conducted out to the road that would take us back around the perimeter to the entrance, the ticket booths, the place where we would find the train back to Naples. Our small Pompeii guide took us through the food vans, the stalls, and was greeted – patted fondly – by a stall owner. Ah, so he is known around here. He has a Pompeii family. He trotted along looking straight ahead, apparently oblivious and unperturbed by cars that were now careening past, heading out to the main road. Briefly, he barked and ran at a car, challenging it to get off his road, then resumed his trotting pace. The girl who’d named him Philip was anxious – we don’t want you to get run over! I said dogs that run at cars know how close they can go, it’s all right. Pompeii dogs are all right. We don’t need to feel bad. They’ve been here always and never and now and forever. Cave canem – Beware of the dog! Pompeii guardians. Old souls.

Te Rongo Haeata – the informative beam of light

Anne Milne, Mike Usmar: Exploring authentic community informatics taxonomy from a Maori and Pacific worldview

This has been a hugely powerful and important address. Anne Milne, Principal of Kia Aroha College in Auckland delivered the most challenging and credible presentation I have heard for a very long time. It cast, yes, a fierce beam of light on research that, despite the context of Community Informatics, focuses on the informatics and doesn’t really show much interest in community. What I heard was a strong call for authentic responses to community empowerment issues, grounded in real commitment to research and practice that honours cultural context and values of self-determination. Implicit in the address was a sense that conventional approaches continue to embed top-down, institutionalised interests that serve elites and perpetuate inequity. A cogent questioning of the ethics of much community research was implicit.

Milne spoke of it being unthinkable to embark on any research that would continue to inflict damage on Maori and Pasifika people. Are we sure the benefits of research will outweigh the cost? Her reference to Eve Tuck’s article (2009) drew our attention to “deficit models” and “damage-centred research” that “operates, even benevolently, from a theory of change that establishes harm or injury in order to achieve reparation” (Tuck, 2009, p.413). Tuck sees this as a flawed theory, often used to leverage resources for marginalised communities but simultaneously the research reinforces their position. Ouch, on behalf of so many CI researchers…

Some critical points made:
. Whose knowledge counts? Oracy is paramount in Maori & Pasifika culture.
. Kaupapa Maori (Maori philosophy) methodology recognises storytelling as a counter to the deficit and damage stories of traditional research
. Research must be culturally relevant. Otara, where there is widespread mistrust of research, has been over-researched for decades, and under the media microscope. Technology still happens “at” Maori. IT becomes a further instrument of colonisation.
. Understanding these cultural differences is critical to Computer Clubhouse 274. Her, youth are engaged in learning through design – they create their own social networks, games, animations – and learn how to express themselves through their use.
. Sociocultural constructionism “argues that individual and community development are reciprocally enhanced by independent and shared constructive activity that is resonant with both the social environment of a community of learners, as well as the culture of the learners themselves” (Pinkett, R.D., 2002, p. 366). A sociocultural construction is “a physical, virtual, or cognitive artifact that is resonant with the social and cultural milieu” (ibid.).
. Paolo Freire (1972) argued that education should be learner-centred, empowering, and liberating.
. Few Computer Clubhouses are on school sites, where the structures and environments can be counter-productive to creativity
. A framework for addressing Maori knowledge in research, science and technology (Cunningham, 2000)
. What about a Community Informatics Research Taxonomy? Community centred – community driven?
. Authentic research: refer to “Culture counts: changing power relations in education
(Di Russell Bishop,Ted Glynn, 1999) where the idea of “whanau of interest” is argued.
. Who has the power?
. Planning must include making indigenous knowledge explicit and embedded

Maori know about a way that is born of time, connectedness, kinship, commitment and participation

Milne put forward some serious challenges to the power relations and ethical positions inherent in other “community” informatics research – an implicit message being that the community is not truly considered at all.

//
Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79 (3), p. 409 – 427.

Systematisation of community informatics research: An exploration of social development as a framework for comparison and understanding

William Tibben, University of Wollongong, Australia

The socio-technical nature of CI research sets it apart as a difficult area to study.

Rob Kling advises that a useful first step in developing theory is the systemisation of case study research to enable a body of coherent knowledge to be developed.

Framework for systemisation

Hall and Midgley’s normative theories of social development – they observe that social development programmes appear to be factored on three alternative normative approaches to social development:

• Populist

Social development is best achieved through the actions of groups of people working cooperatively for the benefit of their community

Assumption: community based processes invariably lead to social development

• Enterprise

Social development is best achieved through the commercial provision of services by the private sector

Assumption: a viable commercial market exists.  Individualism is the basis

• Statist

Social development is best achieved through provision of services by government

Assumption: government invariably works to achieve social development outcomes for its citizens.  Govt sponsorship/management of programmes.  Based on a collectivist philosophy.

// Discussion //

Hall and Midgley try to bring the three approaches together….Tibben has tabulated these. He suggests they are useful lenses through which to understand research design.

Digital inclusion projects in developing countries: Geoff Walsham

Geoff Walsham – Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK

Prato, Italy. On the sunny first morning of the Community Informatics Research Network annual conference:

Processes of institutionalisation and issues of measurement

In this first address to the CIRN conference, Walsham began with the usual starting-off point: the Digital Divide is not just unavailability of ICTs, but also social, political and institutional contexts shaping lack of access- as in Warschauer et al. His address looked at two projects he has been involved in.

Institutions are “multi-faceted, durable social structures, made up of symbolic elements, social activities, and material resources.” Scott, R.W. (2001). Institutions and Organisations (2nd ed) London: Sage.

// Akshaya telecentre project in Kerala, India //

- Launched in 2002 as a pilot in Malappuram District
- Strong backing of the state government e.g. loans to entrepreneurs
- Linked to their egalitarian development model
- Vigorous grass roots campaigning to mobilise communities
- 630+ telecentres + a widespread e-literacy programme – one person per family – by 2003

The post e-literacy stage:
- Can the project sustain its value as a conduit for socio-economic development?
- Concerted effort to generate new commercial revenue streams for entrepreneurs, with limited success
- Also new health mapping project but suspicion from local health planners – felt jobs being threatened by this.

“Rollout” to six more districts:
- But fewer centres and thus less coverage
- Entrepreneurs were mainly business people aiming to make a profit rather than stimulate wider socio-economic development

…but projects can’t be cloned.

// Siyabuswa Project in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa //

Started in the late 90s providing additional teaching to high school students.
Achievements of the project:
- Computer literacy courses for many community members
- Grads often found computer-related employment
- Attempt to expand elsewhere: Three communities selected, computers installed and training started in 2003
- Use of outside people problematic, but the facility is now self-sustaining and became independent of the University of Pretoria in 2006

// Discussion //

- The projects are a complex mix of success and failure
- Projects change significantly over time
- Early successes may not be sustainable or scaleable
- But persistence sometimes brings rewards
- Walsham derived four key processes of institutionalisation:

These are:

1 Getting symbolic acceptance by the community: achieved in e-literacy projects in Kerala by linking to Kerala’s development philosophy. More problematic later when goals shifted to stimulating entrepreneurial activity

2 Stimulating valuable social activity in the relevant social groups: e-literacy in Kerala reached those often excluded eg Muslim women; but will later phases do so? Siyabuswa spread from school children to community at large.. but the attempt to widen constituency failed

3 Generating linkage to viable revenue streams: Kerala state-funded; but problems in later stages in generating adequate entrepreneurial revenue. Siyabuswa became self-financing but long-term backing of University of Pretoria was crucial. LONG PERIODS OF TIME ARE REQUIRED – long-term perspective is needed, even up to 15 years – very slow social processes, and very complex, and they go up and down – again the idea of rollout or replication is foolish.

4 Enrolling government support: strongly political nature of institutional process of digital inclusion in developing countries; crucial stat government support for early phases of Kerala project.

// Issues of measurement //

- Quantitative or qualitative?

Use an appropriate blend. Walsham is all in favour of numbers – provide a contextual background; but don’t use only numbers – it’s not possible to sensibly quantify government development philosophy, symbolic acceptance processes, which social groups should be prioritised… and so on. Your need a much more complex acceptance method.

- Formative or summative evaluation?

Formative – guiding next activities; summative – has this project been effective? Walsham: mostly formative, and over a number of years. it’s impossible to predict changes in complex digital inclusion projects over time. But formative evaluation can help in assessing history and status to date, setting goals for the next phase… Summative evaluation is highly regarded by some funding bodies but is often too short-termist, politically distorted and simplistic.

- Neo-Newtonian development practice or adaptive pluralism?

Idea from Chambers, R. (2010) ‘Paradigms, poverty, and adaptive pluralism’. Working Paper 2010 No. 344. Institute of Devt Studies. This paper is highly recommended – Chambers sees a big role for Community Informatics in the future.

//

Walsham suggests Community Informatics is under-theorised (although he is not a theory ‘groupie’ – eg structuration theory is more of a meta-theory which enables you to think about the world). Quite likes Actor Network Theory – a guideline for conducting empirical work. Would be nice to see a flowering of competing theories in CI.

Things of value

What price, what value can we put on being connected? Should we regard internet access as a basic human right? How important is it that we have it at home, or else that we have a mobile device – laptop, phone, iPad – so that we can access it where we might be? I write in my lounge with a laptop. A recent virus that disabled its hard drive had me briefly in a panic at the lack of internet service at home. Not everyone is like that, of course – at NetHui people wondered about the (growing?) number of ‘refuseniks’ who in different ways decide not to be connected or to use Facebook or a mobile phone – but of more interest to me is the number of people who do not have the choice, and who have never had home internet.

I’ve been volunteering for a while in ICT training sessions for parents who are preparing to take home their own PC and 6 months free internet. During 20 hours of training they learn the basics of e-mail, search engines, risks and viruses and safety, social media, word processing – and when they’ve done this, they graduate from the course and take home their computer.

It’s been a privilege to watch the dawning realisation of what this will do as a tool for the family, as parents master the skills and anticipate being able to use these at home. The other night at Rosebank School I joined the celebrations, and felt humbled to see glimpses of the value attached to technology that many of us have been lucky to take for granted in our everyday lives.

How do we respond to the harm?

Harvard University Professor of Law Lawrence Lessig is widely known in the global Internet community as a vocal proponent of reduced legal restrictions on digital copyright, and a champion of notions of ‘fair use’ and ‘free culture’..

Edgy stuff from Lawrence Lessig: a highly engaging exploration of the ‘platform’ for bringing people together that is The Internet…. a network designed for sharing – so we shared. What some people call sharing others call piracy. Guess what, governments?

THERE IS AN INTERNET

Governments: accept the inevitable – people will share. Issues about the music industry are actually more about a pricing problem. There are no “leaks” (as in Wikileaks) but data dumps that contain all sorts of useful information. So support best practices responsibly – engage in free speech activity that minimises harm.

Open access policies play a core role in high-performing countries. NZ started off wrong – then in 2006 a more progressive policy towards broadband expansion was adopted, and BB penetration has taken off. We are now above the OECD average and ahead of Italy!… but a long way to go. In the US, broadband is very poor, and perpetuating inequality – local monopolies control the situation.

Lawrence offered – no, demanded of – us that we resist the corruption of the USA in regard to copyright and open access. Show us. Teach us. Help us.

Clearly he views NZ as a rational, sensible democracy – well suited to pushing a balanced regime. He’s not a copyright abolitionist – it is needed – but it needs to be reformed so we can isolate the extremists (such as Hollywood moguls) on both sides.

The architecture of capped data is terrible! What NZ needs, because of its geographic isolation, is fast, open access.

We need the same kind of access that Japan, Korea, UK and others have. Push for it! No reason why we should not have it.

STANDING OVATION

//

Lessig goes on to talk about the futility of governments trying to stop file-sharing, and the attempts to disable WikiLeaks…. and the assumption that these practices are actually harmful. The question is – how do we respond to the harm? Here is the only inevitable response, the key fact:

THERE IS AN INTERNET

We have to accept the inevitability of data dumps; we have to support best practices – minimising the harm.

….and finally:

Lessig looks at how New Zealand is well poised to resist the extremism of the US, so that its corruption is not exported here.

Rod Oram at NetHui

For New Zealand’s future, Rod proposes the Seven sisters of strategy

Threads of Rod’s address this morning echo Sir Paul Callaghan at PRiNZ … especially the notion that in NZ we work very hard and quite efficiently, but at low-value things, like tourism.

Shall we just try to sell more stuff (like milk powder, wine, wool) to the rising middle classes in China and India? Maybe we can just hunker down doing the same old, same old…?

What’s really going globally is that it’s scarcity is driving innovation, not abundance. So what about reducing the amount of milk we produce, and go into lacto-pharmaceuticals? But we’re not doing the research to get us there. Instead of inventing things in sheds, in isolation of communities we could serve…what should we be doing?

Rod emphasised the role of community across all his proposed strategies, because while the issues are increasingly global…solutions are increasingly local. Solutions require, for one thing, strong, learning communities

So to the strategies:

People…to communities
We now have radically different ways to connect with people. TradeMe is a stunning example – a community of communities. People trust, cooperate, share to an extraordinary level of intimacy.
Also the related Old Friends site – being Kiwi is a state of mind, not geography. The largest message group by far is Parenting: 108,236 threads.
Imagine the kind of communities we can create – and thus have a way of relating with people – around the world.

Wealth through engagement
We have to reinvent the way we do tourism: from tourists – to travellers. A good example is Kiwi Experience – creating lasting relationships through, for example, online Driver Guide profiles.

Delegates – to global networks
Why do we continue to construct such ‘conventional’ convention centres (such as a new Skycity one to be built in Auckland’s CBD)? What about a new kind of convention centre that does brilliant AV – with daylight outside, not shut up in the gloom? This is actually possible. Do things differently to engage with the world.

From NZ – to the world
Great example: Icebreaker. Look at the way they use “Baacodes” – so buyers can trace the origin of the garment, and in this way build customer engagement. It’s a virtual world community involving eg a cluster of manufacturing plants in Shanghai where they are shareholders and where a lot of their garments are made – where work is completed to higher standards (e.g. environmental) than in NZ to enable them to turn out terrific clothes. Manufacturing ethics. Icebreaker is a truly global local manufacturing company.

Customers – to co-creators
Great local example – Obo, based in Palmerston North. It takes a very special company to want to be so intimately involved with its co-creators – with the communities we create around the world

Solo – to connected
Look at Farmville, which started on Facebook in 2009, and has so many people involved if it were real it would be a very large country. OK it’s virtual but it’s getting real through member fees generating quite large revenue which supports an actual farm.

Land – to ocean
Our land is only 5% of our potential – if you add together our extended economic zone and the Antartic region. It’s a huge responsibility to nurture and use this very large region sustainably.
What values, processes, learning will be required?
So our ultimate community is within a huge zone of ocean.
Could we pioneer a collaborative model with other countries and partners?
What would we need … world-leading politics? What else?

Communities
Engagement
World
Co-creators
Connected
Commons

When we achieve all this we will have reinvented New Zealand.
New Zealand will be what we make it.

Computers in Homes NZ

Di Das, National Coordinator of Computers in Homes (CiH), talked today at NetHui in the stream on Access and Diversity. In her own words:

Computers In Homes Programme (CIH) in New Zealand

This educational intervention programme began as a pilot project in 2000, in the lowest-income community in the country, its purpose being to raise the literacy level of children from low decile schools. The aim of the 2020 Communications Trust who launched the project is to provide a recycled computer, Internet access, training and technical support to families who would not otherwise have the opportunity to be part of the online world. Parents complete computer training at their children’s schools and make a small financial contribution before the PC goes home. They learn basic care of their machine, plus the support procedures set in place via the school. As the scheme has developed, parents have also embraced the learning experience for themselves, so the focus has broadened to family literacy. In some regions, the steering committees have expanded their vision further to encompass community literacy, and schools report increased school/home communication and more positive interaction between parents and teachers. Some parents have completed university degrees and other qualifications in teaching, social work, computing and the arts. What began as a project to bridge the digital divide has become a notable contribution to social capital in low income communities. Government new settler programmes have incorporated CIH into their education strategy for newly arrived refugees, with the additional support of interpreters, family liaison workers, transportation and babysitting to remove barriers to participation. It is envisaged that the access to information for new settlers and the engagement with their children’s schools will assist families to readjust to a new country and become part of the wider community.

Di’s presentation is here…

Computers in Homes New Zealand

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In further posts soon, I’ll set out some thoughts about a study I’m starting in a CiH community in Auckland – a partnership project seeking to assess the role of social media in supporting the sense of community among participant families.