Searching for community online
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Monday
I decide to start my civic
networking by elbowing into the world's biggest on-line kaffeeklatsch: America Online. And right at the top of AOL's Digital City Boston Web page (digitalcity.aol.com/boston/), I find my opportunity: an invitation to sound off on the issues of the day.
The topics, however, are straight outta talk radio: Ban nude male dancing? Legalize pot? Allow Sunday liquor sales? Each question gives me a multiple-choice option. Am
I: 1) pro male nude dancing; 2) anti male nude dancing; or 3) pro nude dancing in general. I feel as if I were taking an MCAS test crafted by John Silber's dimwitted evil twin. There was also a ''comment'' option, but the posted responses appeared almost evenly divided between ''Don't we have more important things to discuss?'' and passionate pleas for more nudity, for everyone, preferably all the time.
Time to civic-network with a new crowd. I sparked up AltaVista, and entered ''civic networking'' in the search box. AltaVista found 1,683 relevant Web pages; the first two went to the same place: the Center for Civic Networking at www.civic.net. I clicked over to the site, which describes itself as ''an organization dedicated to applying information infrastructure to the broad public good.'' Sounds promising, I thought, happily noting that the organization is Boston-based. Then I began navigating the site's dense thicket of worthy-sounding links: the Institute for the Study of Civic Values, The Journal of Municipal Telecommunications, etc. Each re-source seemed to lead to another entire directory of links.
It was almost enough to send me back to the simple world of male nude dancing, pro or con? But then I had an idea. Before I logged off, I clicked on an e-mail link to the president of the Center for Civic Network-ing, Miles Fidelman. I asked if he had any recommendations for a fledgling civic networker lost on the Web.
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