Summer-Fall 2001

We're extremely excited to be back and to have a new home for the Review at the UMass/Boston College of Public and Community Service (back issues are available online). Our enthusiasm is matched by our awe at the speed of development and change. Since the last issue and announcing the call for submissions for this one, we've learned an immense amount. Here are three key points we'd like to pass along.

First, we've learned a lesson about "leadership in the community technology movement." Although we've put together another very full issue, we know we have barely touched on our topic. There are profiles and descriptions of lots of projects we get completed - a Morino Institute paper, PolicyLink's analysis of community development, profiles of Cincinnati and other municipalities, updates from lap.org and the National Recreation and Parks Association, best practices and resources from HUD's Neighborhood Network program-and much that we confess we do not even know to ask about.

Nonetheless, we think we have made some a good effort to sketch out and report on a number of important sites on the map on community technology. Without providing too detailed a commentary on our table of contents, we've got a round-up of our key organizational sponsors, the Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet) and the Association for Community Networking (AFCN). You'll find asides about related programs through America Connects, Power Up, the Alliance for Community Media, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. There's a special take on the extensive digital divide resources associated with AmericaCorps*VISTA and the Corporation for National Service, with useful contributions towards grasping what's happening in the worlds of technology assistance to the nonprofit sector, community technology program development in higher ed, and in the public policy arena which affects everything.

Second, one of the definitive things we're learning is that major developments and transformations, which continue to take place within specific organizations and institutions, are also importantly being measured on municipal and regional scales-that's the lesson of our profiles on Atlanta, Georgia; Lowell, Massachusetts; and Seattle, Washington. As grassroots, municipal, corporate and foundation and association efforts converge, mapping efforts to grasp and coordinate further development become basic for our work more and more.

Finally, as we've come to develop the hard copy print journalism medium and explore the possibilities of its integration into online resources over the last several years, we want to step on to the next rung of the ladder. While you'll find only a limited number of web sites explicitly listed in the hard copy version of these pieces, we've encouraged our contributors to make very liberal use of hypertext links which you can see by the color of the print in contrast to the regular black text. When you go to the text in our online edition, you'll be able to click on the links that you care to explore in depth to your own liking. You'll be able to select, too, on extended versions of some articles which the contributors edited for the print version. We've really not even begun to convey the art that community technology has created, and we'll look forward to doing that in the coming issues. - Peter Miller & Richard Civille