New Directions Radio
(Page 3 of 6)
May/June 1974
By Copthorne Macdonald
BERKELEY AND SAN FRANCISCO
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Theobald speaks of "abundance regions" and "scarcity regions" in several of his books, and after a couple of days in the Bay Area Jim Stamper dubbed the Berkeley/San Francisco district an "abundance region for alternatives". For those of us struggling in the "scarcity regions" to get it together with a few friends, such richness really boggles the mind.
Eleven years ago, when Elly and Howard Harawitz moved to Berkeley, the food co-op there already had several hundred members. In the intervening years, over 60,000 people have joined that organization! The Eastbay Community Resource Handbook put out by People's Energy (4911 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, California 94609) lists more than 300 alternative and change-oriented groups in the Berkeley/San Francisco vicinity.
Just one example: It you walk into Berkeley's Whole Earth Access Company—down the aisle past the wind generator-and turn to the right at the rack containing the back issues of MOTHER, you'll find a computer terminal. It's part of a community access information system put together by a non-profit local group called Resource One (1545 Dwight Way, Berkeley, California 94703). Ephram Lipkin explained the basic idea: putting sophisticated technology (comput ers) directly into the hands of ordinary people so as to "bypass the information gatekeepers" who filter, edit and otherwise control the flow of knowledge. He feels that these techniques could lead to "decentralized, humanized politics".
The present Community Memory works like an electronic filing cabinet. Anyone can go to one of the public terminals and type in an informational "message": anything from your latest poem, to a statement that you're a good guitarist looking for a rock group that needs one, to an offer to take riders on your upcoming trip to Denver. Your info goes by phone line to the computer in San Francisco where it's tucked away in the device's storage along with whatever indexing "keywords" you feel a person searching for your type of notice might use.
To retrieve information you simply type in a keyword. I experimented with RADIO, got a readout that consisted of the first line of each of nine stored items . . . and requested a complete printout of the three that looked most interest ing. Then I finished up by entering my own item (No. 10) and indexing it under the keywords RADIO, AMATEUR, HAM and NEW DIRECTIONS. While I was there, incidentally, a woman tried the words SILK THREAD. No source of thread appeared, but her consolation prize was finding out about a guy who is going to the Orient shortly to buy silk.
The system functions and—if enough terminals can be placed in the right spots-it promises to become a very effective community tool. The computer, as I see it, comes into its own when there is a high volume of information. (In many places, like the town I live in, which doesn't even have a food coop, a 2' X 3' bulletin board would be more than adequate! I rapped with Resource One about possible system tie-ins with ham radio teletype and concluded that such arrangements were technically feasible, but that people living out of the area wouldn't have a whole lot of use for the current Berkeley community information. Somehow, though, I'd like to see that wealth of experience with alternative activ ities become available to people in other parts of the country.
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