Well, folks, I'm back. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I'm limping along. Is it possible to perish from a migraine? While this is not a site dedicated to the discussion of health concerns, I'd be interested in tapping into the collective wisdom of how to cope with two or three days of agony every month. So, if you have something to add to the topic, don't be shy.Anyhoo...my friend Steven posed a series of very interesting discussion questions to me last week and, post-weekend/post-headache, I'm finally able to attend to his questions and give them some thought. I hope to include the products of my ruminations in this and future blog entries.
Steven is interested (correct me if I'm wrong, Steven) in the role of information technology in fostering community, in breaking down the barrier of distance, and just generally collapsing the commonly-held notion of "local." Before I write anything else I should probably disclose that I'm more technology phobic than savvy. Am I, then, qualified to speak to this topic? Not terribly, no. But that doesn't mean I won't try. I'll bring to it what I can and I hope some of you will post comments and add to the discussion.
The question of Steven's that most interested me is this: How much inherent value is strictly in the physical proximity of a local producer? In other words, is something still lost even when technology makes it possible to know the conditions of production of your favorite tea 7,000 miles away? And while this is a question I hope to return to many times, my initial response to this question is, I don't know. Do I think something is lost? Certainly. I'll go into some of the more obvious qualities that would be lost by replacing localization with technological connection. How much is lost? Well, I'm not sure. It depends on what each lost quality means to an individual and to a community. In the end, all I can do is discuss what I think would be lost and why.
So, what exactly is lost when we substitute technology for actual proximity? The use of local resources to meet local needs, for one. The internalization of all of a product's costs (it's one thing to pay the true cost of a product when it's made nearby and you know some of the people you're supporting with your purchase--it's another thing to pay 3 or 4 times as much for the box of tea when you don't have a direct investment in the success of the enterprise that brings it to you) is another. Additionally, and, to my thinking, most importantly, in a scenario in which technology collapses distance and obfuscation in trade, wealth is still largely funneled out of a locale, rather than staying put. I see this as the biggest potential loss when one tries to imagine substituting IT for local economies. I would like to support communities all over the world, but that is impractical. A much more elegant arrangement is one in which I buy things that are locally produced, and I support, in perpetuity, the labor and resources that I consume. By the same token, if I'm the producer of a local good and I'm responsive to the needs and demands of my local consumers, I would rather have their business, than the business of someone from another place who could be helping their own community instead.
I realize that this is a simplification and that it assumes that other communities will be providing local goods and services to meet their citizens' needs. There is still another assumption that frames my thinking on this. I assume that the members of a community learn to discern between needs and wants. For surely no local economy can respond to all of the individual wants of its people. But I do think that providing for a community's needs and keeping much of its wealth localized in order to do just that is a desirable objective. That's the place I'm coming from.
Quite honestly, Steven's questions have triggered many thoughts, most of which aren't yet fully formed. But I'm inspired to continue thinking them through and to test my own understanding of what local means in the 21st century. I sincerely hope that others will (respectfully and productively) comment on this topic, or any other that it has inspired.
Until tomorrow...
1 comment:
You make some good points, as I expected you would.
I'd agree that the most empirically measureable advantage of local goods is the decreased cost of it, particularly the distribution aspect of the marketing, for our purposes. This can be somewhat offset by economies of scale that large specialist producers may attain. I think that even if a remote producer could supply a good (of equivalent physical quality) for a lower price, the intangible benefits of local production can be persuasive.
It's these intangible benefits that motivated my questions. I'm interested in the feelings at work here -- the emotional payoff possible from the kind of local community support we're talking about. I wonder to what degree those might be produced in a virtual space, and what the ramifications of that might be on real communities. A better understanding of this might encourage designers to make upcoming tech more meaningful and supple, or at least less damaging.
I don't know the answers to these questions either. Nobody does, probably. But we're likely to confront these issues directly in the near future as ever more amazing technologies dawn. At least you have done a lot of thinking about local community issues and the impact on people's finances, health, and social well-being. So please speak on.
About your assumption "that the members of a community learn to discern between needs and wants." I get where you're coming from there, certainly. Obviously the distinguishing line between need and want would be drawn differently for each community. But designing a mechanism by which such an agreement might be attained is an intriguing problem.
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