Amy, you might be interested in a community media pilot I did in the slums of India called Lok Darshan. The idea was to use digital media to create a community-driven, community-serving bottom-of-the-pyramid edu-tainment and marketing platform for appropriate technology. The model had its successes and lessons, some of which are on my blog posting about the project.
If you haven’t guessed my opinion already, I’m heavily biased towards how tools and technologies are applied rather than tools themselves.
Really, I see communities/conversations that go both ways - conversations around the tools themselves and around the ends those tools achieve. And yes- I think it matters very much that we have both!
If you just have folks discussing the ends, the results, you miss a lot of valuable conversation about making sure that the means even get you to an end result, or get you to the right end result, or get you there the right way! Conversely, if you have folks only discussing the tools, then you miss equally valuable conversation that is (in many, if not most cases) the purpose of the tools!
While sometimes the pendulum swings too far one way or another (the echo chamber gets too loud, or maybe we fail to notice how a tool is directing our conversation), it still takes both conversations (tools and their applications) to achieve a balance.
COMMENTS
BY rahul
ON October 10, 2008 09:42 AM
Amy, you might be interested in a community media pilot I did in the slums of India called Lok Darshan. The idea was to use digital media to create a community-driven, community-serving bottom-of-the-pyramid edu-tainment and marketing platform for appropriate technology. The model had its successes and lessons, some of which are on my blog posting about the project.
If you haven’t guessed my opinion already, I’m heavily biased towards how tools and technologies are applied rather than tools themselves.
BY Erin McMahon
ON October 13, 2008 06:44 PM
Hi Amy-
Really, I see communities/conversations that go both ways - conversations around the tools themselves and around the ends those tools achieve. And yes- I think it matters very much that we have both!
If you just have folks discussing the ends, the results, you miss a lot of valuable conversation about making sure that the means even get you to an end result, or get you to the right end result, or get you there the right way! Conversely, if you have folks only discussing the tools, then you miss equally valuable conversation that is (in many, if not most cases) the purpose of the tools!
While sometimes the pendulum swings too far one way or another (the echo chamber gets too loud, or maybe we fail to notice how a tool is directing our conversation), it still takes both conversations (tools and their applications) to achieve a balance.
That’s my 2cents (or shall I say pence?) 😊
- Erin