How do you keep an agrarian attitude in the digital age?
Colorado's Telluride Ideas Festival 1993 (July 23-25) will feature a series of conferences centered around the theme of "tele-community." The object is to discuss the issues involved in creating sustainable rural communities in the digital age.
A key event at the festival will be the formal launch of the Telluride InfoZone, an ambitious project of the Telluride Institute, with participation from local government, schools, libraries, and businesses. Part local BBS, part window on the digital universe, the InfoZone is intended to serve as a test-bed for a system that will enable a small town to maintain its essential character while surmounting the disadvantages of geographic isolation.
While the initial version of the Zone will be text-based, it will eventually be used to develop people-friendly interfaces through voice and graphics, and to deliver sophisticated digital content like medical imaging.
Program director Richard Lowenburg points out that Telluride (population 1,309), best known for its ski peaks, is not typical of small rural towns. Still, it suffers from infrastructure problems common to out-of- the-way places - schools that are poorly connected to the outside world, lack of access to state-of-the-art medical facilities, and rising costs.
"What we want to do," Lowenburg says, "is something that's pragmatically effective for this community. There's also a lot to be learned about the long-term economic and social implications of all this: Who's going to be paying for this stuff? Does this increase face-to-face contact? Does it really make a community better to live in?"
The Telluride Institute (tellinst@csn.org): +1 (303) 728 6960; fax: +1 (303) 728 4919
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