"The potential integration of texts, images and sounds in the same system, interacting from multiple points, in chosen time [real or delayed] along a global network, in conditions of open and affordable access, does fundamentally change the character of communication." Manuel Castells

With this in mind Media Working Group has begun work with adult literacy educators to design integrated telecommunications policy curriculum and training for adult literacy programs. Working with a Civil Rights Forum and CTCNet MIRA Telecommunications Policy grant, we are partnering with Operation Read, a state-wide literacy program in Kentucky, and the Carnegie Center for Literacy, who work with low income, rural communities. Although telecommunications policy and politics have always been critical areas for citizen concern they have also been, like all infrastructure policy, obscure and marked by exclusive, arcane language. Now the language is still arcane but not obscure, the importance of telecommunications policy has moved front and center as it has been increasingly recognized as critical to the Network Society. Media and telecommunication technology are the definitive infrastructure of the times. The deployment of these technologies shifts the basic dimensions of life. Their use dissolves boundaries between institutions, redefines public and private space, and changes our fundamental notions of community.

It is important to work for increased awareness and activism around telecommunications issues and opportunities, especially in rural areas where market forces are not as likely to provide public resources. For example, in Kentucky there is no widely understood policy for the development of community-based applications using the Kentucky State Government's high-speed, broadband network, which is capable of transmitting voice, data, video and graphics. There are no policy education opportunities for learning how local, state and national telecommunications can have a positive impact on rural development or rural life in general. Similarly, there is a lack of understanding among Kentucky's rural populace, not unlike in cities and other states, regarding the public policy processes that are creating the telecommunications systems that are increasingly crucial to our lives.

As text, graphics, photography, video and audio move into the digital environment, the notion of text literacy becomes inseparable from "computer literacy." Teaching literacy should, if at all possible, take place in a digital-network environment. And any notion of literacy -- whether it be text, media or computer literacy -- should mean awareness of the social and political processes shaping the communication technologies with which we are literate.

The artists and educators of Media Working Group are very excited to be joining efforts in Kentucky to link grass roots literacy training with concepts of computer literacy and public policy. The curriculum will address how the public policy process works, who the players are, how the public can intervene and have a voice in the public process. It will work to familiarize literacy students with new and emerging information infrastructures, and with issues of access, particularly for telephone and Internet access.