Info City CU: A Model of Public Engagement and Technology

Click on the picture to go tot he web site.
by Ann Abbott

 Yesterday I attended a meeting with our campus' new CIO, Mark Henderson, and a group of people from an initiative called Info City CU.

It was a positive, exciting meeting with like-minded people. One of those meetings in which you leave feeling really energized and happy that you work in this organization with really good people.

You can find out more about Info City CU at their website, but here are a couple of things that stood out for me.

One of the attendees likened an Info City to the older model of an Industrial City, in which the city was built up around corporations and organized according to their needs. In contrast, an Info City allows us to learn from the mistakes of the Industrial Cities and create a more just Info City. That was very helpful to me.

I also learned some new things and new terms. I had never heard before about:

  • One Web Day 
  • Webliographies, as opposed to bibliographies. Here is an example of a webliography.
  • Digirati, as opposed to the literati. Thinking about the digital divide, describing it and trying to eradicate it are very, very important projects.

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