by Leslie D. Goodbar

The recently reopened Baldwin Hills Library and student interns from Bresee Foundation have teamed up to provide greater computer access services to local residents. The program is one of the first of its kind to combine the strengths of The Los Angeles Public Library system and a community technology center to help close the technology gap.

"We had two very good city librarians who believed very strongly in technology and in taking advantage of every opportunity. It's a process that's been building over fifteen, twenty years," said Laura Dwan, Baldwin Hills senior librarian.

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Dear Friends,

We'd like to welcome you to the introductory issue of Technicity Times and tell you about it.

Almost every school, library and community center in America has some variety of technology program. Everywhere you turn, people are serving the needs of kids, seniors, teenagers, people with disabilities, the homeless, the poor and the disenfranchised using technology. They may not realize it, but these people are all part of the community technology movement. And that movement is growing.

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Do you remember what you were doing when you first "got it"? Do you remember where you were when you first started to understand that the Internet and the new technologies have the potential to radically change the way we do things?

I remember when I first got it. It was a little over 10 years ago, on August 20, 1991. It was the day after Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank and denounced the coup that was then underway in the Soviet Union. And that morning the text of Yeltsin's speech was there in my inbox, on a primitive e-mail account I had with a service called Peace-net.

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The Children's Partnership (TCP), along with the California Community Technology Policy Group (CCTPG) and PolicyLink, has launched a campaign to survey all candidates in California about community technology. The campaign is designed to not only help voters make an educated decision about candidates at the polls this November, but also to help candidates learn about community technology issues and understand what is happening in their own communities.

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Citing original research indicating a persistent digital divide in content for low-income communities, The Children's Partnership, along with the Markle Foundation, launched the Community Contentbank (www.contentbank.org), a new online resource that provides low-income communities with information and tools to serve their unique needs.

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Maybe you know something about assistive technology, or perhaps you've heard the term on occasion and simply filed it away into the black hole of techno-speak.

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Send in your technology-related projects, Web sites, dj tracks, and first-person stories or experiences. We're also looking for articles and interviews about you, written by you. If you are an aspiring writer, reporter, photographer, or graphic artist, e-mail us at submissions@technicitytimes.com

We really want to hear your ideas, questions, thoughts, reactions, best practices, worst practices, compliments and suggestions. Write to us at editor@technicitytimes.com. We reserve the right to edit submissions for grammar and space considerations.

Q: We're considering getting high speed Internet access (DSL or cable) for our office but one of the staff remains skeptical and resistant. Aside from the speed, what are the real advantages of DSL? What are the potential issues that we should be concerned about?
     - Need for Speed

A: Dear Need for Speed,

High speed Internet access, also commonly referred to as broadband, is great and I personally can't live without it. Then again, Dr. T is an unusually dedicated hard-core user (read: nerd with no life.) Before you start contemplating DSL or cable, one of the threshold questions you should be asking yourself is whether or not the Internet is an important part of your organization's work. For example,

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Send us your conundrums and questions about using your technology more effectively, solving that one niggly question that everybody else is wondering about too, or topics on future trends to DrT@technicitytimes.com.