  Community Informatics (CI) is the application of information and
communications technologies (ICTs) to enable community processes and the
achievement of community objectives. CI goes beyond the "Digital Divide" to
making ICT access usable and useful to excluded populations and communities for
local economic development, social justice, and political empowerment. CI
approaches ICTs from a "community" perspective and develops strategies and
techniques for managing their use by communities both virtual and physical
including the variety of Community Networking applications. CI assumes that
both communities have characteristics, requirements, and opportunities that
require different strategies for ICT intervention and development from
individual access and use. Also, CI addresses ICT use in Developing Countries
as well as among the poor, the marginalized, the elderly, or those living in
remote locations in Developed Countries. CI is of interest both to ICT
practitioners and academic researchers and addresses the connections between
the policy and pragmatic issues arising from the tens of thousands of Community
Networks, Community Technology Centres, Telecentres, Community Communications
Centres, and Telecottages globally along with the rapidly emerging field of
electronically based virtual "communities".
  Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Centre for Community
Informatics Research, Development and Training (Vancouver BC), a Director of
The Information Society Institute, Cape Peninsula University of Technology,
Cape Town South Africa; and Research Professor in the School of Computer and
Information Systems at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark.
