My apologies, as a colleague pointed out in response to my post and forward of this morning, the logic in the argument I was presenting was not as clear as it should have been. Please see below... A lot of people, myself included, have looked at Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) as presenting opportunities for remote and rural and other excluded populations to improve their relatively disadvantaged economic position if they are able (and willing) to get on board the technology train fast enough and clever enough. That's what my job has been here in Cape Breton for the last four years. A lot of people have put considerable time, energy and talent into trying to make it work--and to some (and even a surprising) degree it has worked. However, at the same time as we've been trying to create an information based economy here in CB, the same forces of ICT have been facilitating not only our work but also the work of those who in the interests of "efficiency/productivity/downsizing" etc. have been centralizing and consolidating in a range of areas--health, education, wholesaling, public administration, etc.. All of this is taking place in CB in the context of a collapse in the resource economy, which can only peripherally be linked to ICT of course, but which makes the challenge of rebuilding here even greater. As five and ten jobs (or work situations) are created here using ICT, 50 and 100 jobs are being lost because of the resource economy. And in addition others are taking advantage of the opportunity that ICT presents, to centralize the services that support the Island and mostly to Halifax where employment and wealth are growing largely as a result of expansion in government and administration and in the IT sector that these support. We've argued and demonstrated that we could execute many of the functions of public administration and management cost-effectively from CB . The danger at this moment is that with the recent lay-offs the population will go into a downward spiral and there may no longer be the population density to support the infrastructure which has been established and on which any rebirth locally must be built. Public administration is the only source of stable relatively well-paid employment that is likely to be available for location/relocation locally and, overrall the Island has perhaps 50 to 60% of the provincial government employment and administration that would be warranted by it's proportion of the provincial population. That's where Dr. Scott's experience links into the work that we've been developing over the last couple of years. Knowledge intensive work can be done cost-effectively from here, there is an absolute need and a "fair share" argument. What is lacking is the political will and/or the bureaucratic imagination to address the very real problems with the only tools that are realistically available such as those that she and others at UCCB have been trying to create on the Island. The technology enables decentralization it doesn't enforce it... In fact as we have found with our inability to have Rural IT or other R&D projects and programs installed anywhere but Halifax, the bureaucratic "default" position (in the absence of political will) is towards centralization and concentration even when it so evidently makes sense that some other strategy be implemented. If anyone is interested I've been writing in various places on this subject <http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca/articles/ict&jobs.html> and <http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca/articles/GLD2.html> and elsewhere at <http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca/cceng/papers.html> and I hope to have a book out in the autumn dealing with a lot of these issues tentatively titled: "BURYING COAL: The Centre for Community & Enterprise Networking, An Experiment in Community Research & Development Using Information & Communications Technology For Local Economic Development". Comments as always, are appreciated. regs Mike Gurstein >Mike, >Your comments today, however, puzzled me and seemed a little >ambiguous, viz, >>If anything, the technology which many of us had hoped would offer a >>solution to the problems of centralization and concentration of >>skills/skilled jobs/research and development provincially in Halifax, >>overall has had the opposite effect. >>Even as the jobless rate in Cape Breton increases to 3 times that of >>Halifax (as our traditional industries are in free-fall) the technology >>has only had the effect of facilitating even more centralization and >>concentration of resources and jobs away from the Island as public >>administration, wholesaling, banking, and medical services have all used >>the technology to support the deskilling/dejobbing of our local area. >The attached article seemed to suggest that the problem was political: >your comments suggest that it may be in the nature of IT to be centralizing. >Further comment on this from your perspective would be helpful. How we >think about the effects of the technology is a vital question for all of >us. I think most of us have assumed that it would be devolutionary in its >effects but you have had much more experience than most of us with trying to >make this work. If you are concluding that by its very nature it cannot >be made to work this way then that is a very substantive matter. If, >on the other hand, the issue is political prejudice at the federal and >provincial government levels, then one would think about it differently. >Cheers,
