1970s: Local Self-Sufficiency In the 1970s,
Karl Hess and Therese Hess organized with neighbors in the
Adams Morgan neighborhood to form the
Adams Morgan Community Technology Project. The
five year experiment used technologies like
aquaponics and
solar power to advance community self-sufficiency. Karl Hess published the book
Community Technology, documenting the lessons learned and philosophized on the role technology can play in advancing collective autonomy. Hess critiqued the extreme concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the wealthy and saw community technology as a way to disperse and redistribute power. Gentrification weakened the social base powering many of the community projects in Adams Morgan. The Hess's eventually relocated to West Virginia where they applied the principles of community tech to build a largely self-sufficient home. Karl Hess taught courses on community tech at the
Institute for Social Ecology.
1980s and 1990s: Community Technology Centers When computers became widely available, but not yet common household items, the
community technology center (CTC) emerged to provide public access to computers. Libraries and schools established computer labs available to the community. Some community technology centers were their own standalone places. In the 1990s,
Independent Media Centers were a specific form of CTC that the
global justice movement used to document and broadcast its protest and events as a counter narrative to mainstream media coverage.
2000s: Tech Literacy and Community Access In 2001,
TechSoup (then called CompuMentor) created the Community Technology Network to a "rapidly growing need for public digital literacy training." In 2008, they became their own independent nonprofit.
2010s to present: Counter Power to Big Tech Community organizers and technologists gathered together in 2015 for the Community Tech Network Gathering (no relation to the Community Technology Network). This established a new framing for a community tech movement that emphasized a technology built for and by community members. Core organizers and participants of the gathering included the Detroit Community Technology Project, Palante Tech Cooperative, the
Open Technology Institute and Co.open Media Cooperative. In the United Kingdom, a similar tendency of community tech is active via a community of practice and newsletter. == Community Tech Definition and Examples ==