Just to say both the community currency, and cyber centers caught my
attention. Please do keep us updated they seem very interesting.
Along the lines of community currency, I was always under the
interpretation that this was not legal in the states. Awhile back (in my
area) there was talk of a community currency and it was argued that it
violated the commerce clause of the constitution. Now with the World Trade
Organization it seems community currency would be a global issue.
As an example, if community (A) wanted money to stay in their community
they would trade in $ for the community currency, but not the other way
around. I like the idea, but it seems the commerce clause is politically
designed to stop those kind of revolutionary ideas, and with currency like
the Euro that kind of thinking is going global.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Dillon <dillonph who-is-at northcoast.com>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 17, 1999 1:03 PM
Subject: Re: personals, practice, genre, feeling, blocking
> Dear XMCA,
>
> I appreciated reading Bill's discussion of the sentencing/execution
boundary
> sentence and its possible meaning. There are many questions I have about
> that but instead I want to take him up on his request.
>
> >
> >It would
> >be nice if people who presented would send brief summaries of
> >their own work, relating it to CHAT.
>
> I am currently involved in three projects areas: research on student
> pathways through community colleges, establishing a system of
cyberculture
> centers , and nursing along the development of community currencies. The
> first I do thanks to the wonders of the internet in that virtual
> collaborative space it allows. I pursue both of the latter projects in
the
> Humboldt Bay area of California .
>
> All of these projects benefit from the discussions and research carried
out
> on XMCA from CHAT and related sociocultural approaches. My principal
roles
> in the cyberculture center project are grant writer and evaluation
> coordinator. In the latter capacity I make proposals on how to evaluate
the
> success of the project. The discussions of Zones of Proximal Development
in
> all of the permutations that it emerges in the specific threads of XMCA
or
> the articles I can access via internet or afford have all provided me
with
> good frameworks for those proposals. Perhaps in one year I will have
some
> interesting research to report on. The cyberculture center project is
aimed
> at pre-teen and teen age youth. These kids are primarily the sons and
> daughters of the last generation of people who enjoyed the blue collar
> prosperity generated by the exploitation of the old growth redwood
forests
> that used to fill the coast and coastal mountains. Being able to get a
job
> at the mill, the parents generally didn't need more than a high school
> degree to enjoy a good life. Their kids can't work in the mills anymore
> since they're virtually closed and gone. I work on the project with a
large
> local arts organization, The Ink People. One part of the project will
set
> up public access broad band/wireless public access "cyberculture centers"
> located in schools and teen centers throughout the area. Call it putting
> down the piers for bridging the "IT gap", These centers will provide any
and
> everyone in the neighborhoods with email, webpages, and free access time.
> The second part of the project will provide art based
multi-media/internet
> instruction at the centers primarily for the kids. We are hoping to
> stimulatestimulate an interest in manipulating more symbolic, less
material
> tools, among these kids. Call it the developmental anthropology of
> technology transfer. If I try now to explain how CHAT relates to this, I
> would end up writing on and on, looking in references, etc.
>
> The relation of CHAT to my other project areas is less direct. The
> community currency system we are developing will be totally computer
> mediated: smart cards for business, web and email transactions for
> non-business exchanges. This approach presents some interesting issues
from
> CHAT perspectives. First of all, money itself is a very interesting
> instrument that mediates many important relationships. The state and
banks'
> defacto monopoly on the creation of money leads many to not even realize
> that it is tool they can create for themselves. Interestingly it is a
tool
> that is always overty collective in its co-creation. Second, money
itself
> is a funny kind of tool since it is totally symbolic but, as Marx pointed
> out, presents itself in a reified form--which is why people forget that
they
> make it each time they accept it for payment. This shows up in funny,
> culturally distinct ways. Once Americans, for example, get past the
> feeling that they can't just "make money" they usually want to have
> something physical and tangible: a paper community currency. This is an
> interesting "cultural prejudice" since the British and Australians have
> created many electronic based community currencies (LETS) which are
cheaper
> and easier to start and run. Three years ago I began to research the
> message archives of the community currency mailing list, econ-lets, but I
> was unable to follow that project up. Reading Eva's work on multilogue
has
> rekindled that interest but the time for it isn't available right now.
But
> I'm sure that as the project develops here CHAT will provide a framework
> for my thinking about the activity systems chained through the creation
of
> the community currency.
>
> I worked for seven years as a tie-wearing, community college
institutional
> researcher. I continue to work on projects in that capacity (without the
> tie), the most recent being a long-term research/institutionalization
> project to improve remedial education in math and english. My work in
this
> project is the development of computerized systems for analyzing the
> movement of students within and through high schools, community colleges
and
> four year institutions. The level at which I work on this is both macro
> and micro. One on hand I look at broad demographic relations between the
> colleges and their service areas. On the other extreme I analyze
specific
> student transcripts (we have about 2,000,000 individual course records
in
> the cohort data we're currently analzying). This level of data is very
> secure since one can rest assured that most students will make every
effort
> to ensure that the grade on their record is the correct one. Since the
> geographic area studied is extremely diverse, numerous issues of teaching
> and learning in such diversity arise. Here as well, and obviously, the
> CHAT theories and discussions have significance. In fact Genevieve, with
> whom I collaborate on the student pathways research, was the first person
to
> tell me about XMCA and "zoneheads" (which made me think of Dan Akroyd the
> first time I heard it).
>
> (Un)fortunately, I don't go in straight lines for very long. I burst
> sporadic like the multilogues Bill models. I guess that's one reason I
love
> the XMCA virtual seminar: the short term collective memory, that always
> nevertheless seems to circle around a basic set of topics, fits me well.
In
> the past week I have carefully studied both of Eva's papers, Bill's paper
on
> the dynamic model, and read several of Gary Shank's papers. The entire
> question of the nature of the multilogue and the virtual community in
> general has direct significance for my work in the cyberculture center
> project. But several weeks ago, as the result of some other discussion,
I
> was sent in the direction of restudying Volosinov and Ilyenkov. So it
goes
> . . .
>
> The question: what is learning? looms greater and greater as a central
> theme reflecting in all of my work and I think CHAT and the related
> approaches that are discussed on XMCA make an important contribution to
> answering it, or at least formulating it more coherently.
>
> Paul H. Dillon
>