For many people, today's information environment is changing from one-source broadcast to a networked system. That change means two-way and many-way communication, more voices with a chance to be heard. It's a change that could allow for more universal access to information. Despite the hype about new technology, it's not a panacea. We're just beginning to learn how to use it. As this change unfolds, the skills of listening and face-to-face community building will be more important than ever to avoid noise and information overload. In the Puget Sound region, high-tech businesses, along with not-for-profits and news media, have an unprecedented opportunity to influence the development of a communications infrastructure which supports citizen problem-solving, imagination, and lifelong learning.

The first two sections of this report described why communication is difficult between not-for-profit organizations and news media. They also suggest how improved relations could make this region's communication better for all of us. But whether or not that happens, the interactive capacities of new communication technologies — and the expertise of local businesses developing them — offer unprecedented opportunities to build social capital. This social capital is the fabric of trust, accurate information, and ability to be heard which undergirds any healthy community. Instilling the ability to build social capital in our communication systems is especially possible here and now because:

• The Puget Sound region has a reasonable amount of social capital on which to build
• Our high-tech businesses have spun off energetic and savvy public servants, philanthropists, and volunteers
• We still have a bit of "frontier spirit" which makes us less set in our ways, more open to change.
  
  

But it won't be easy, and it won't happen by itself. It will take leadership from high-tech businesses and volunteers. It will take self examination and continued community scrutiny by news media. It will take leadership by community-sector organizations who are not accustomed to embracing communication issues as their own. And it will take a vision, supported by elected officials, for how the region can develop communication systems which work to make all three sectors of society — government, business, and not-for-profit — more responsive to citizens.

What is different about today's communication environment? Call it "new media." There is no single information source pumping out stories or messages to the masses. It's messier: many voices, from many perspectives — speaking, shouting, sometimes even shrieking out information, views, experiences to whomever happens to find them in cyberspace. The Internet allows people not only to talk back to the media, but to talk to each other, to create their own media. There's much talk and debate about creating communities, colonizing cyberspace much like the '49ers did to the old West during the gold-rush days. These communities are coalescing via: electronic mail (e-mail), newsgroups, listserves, websites, and various on-line bulletin boards. This new stage of evolution is just beginning as our regional economy, once based on trees and airplanes, becomes further linked to the global information economy.

As communication technology evolves, though, it's important for communities in Puget Sound, and everywhere else, to ask: Who's looking out for citizens' needs for accurate, honest, timely information about their communities? Who's focused on the common good? Who's building common spaces and civil conversations online? Some local individuals and groups are beginning to ask those questions. And according to high-tech experts interviewed by Good News/Good Deeds, these questions need to be asked and discussed. They need to be considered in the context of many changes in the information environment in recent months and years. For example:

• For many, e-mail has become a major way of doing business, sending organizational news and news releases and even relating personally. Folks at Microsoft say, in the words of Slate Magazine editor Michael Kinsley, "We don't do phones. E-mail us."
  
  
• The World Wide Web has engulfed us, whether we've ever "surfed" it or not. Internet connections allow people to transmit and access information, photos and artwork, even sound and video. Homeless people scan and respond to Internet information at the Seattle Public Library. Internet cafes offer education and access. Seniors trade information about telephone scams.
  
  
• Homegrown and independent publications ranging from SeaZine to Real Change to Eat the State! are increasingly published online. They link isolated communities, provide a voice for the voiceless, and help people realize they're not alone in their concerns.
  
  
• Electronic mail lists called listserves and topical "newsgroups" allow for focused discussions on specific issues and areas of interest. They work best when moderated, and when there's a specific topic of burning interest to participants. People who might not talk to each other face-to-face can learn from those with vastly different perspectives in these virtual discussions.
  
  
• Seattle school children communicate instantaneously with their counterparts in Japan, or follow their teacher's climb of Mount Everest, through the Internet. "Pen pal" letters and digital photos take seconds, not weeks, to reach their destinations.
  
  
• Video conferencing is replacing some face-to-face meetings. Rather than flying in an expert, for example, people can participate in meetings via two-way television hookups. More and more people are members of a "virtual" workspace, earning a living from a desk at home or in an office separate from "headquarters." (Yet the most successful organizations contend frequent face-to-face meetings are critical. They give people the "high touch" contact needed to balance the speed and efficiency of "high tech" communication tools.)
  
  
• Books like Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities by John Hagel III and Arthur G. Armstrong suggest that communities are the places where people will feel most comfortable buying and selling. Therefore, the skills of community building are becoming ever more important to those in the high-tech industry — as well as more traditional news media — who hope to peddle their wares in cyberspace.
  
  
• Some experts predict continued "convergence" of technologies within ten years: it seems inevitable that computers, television, and telephones will converge into one communications console which allows people to call up television, film, newspapers, or mail. They may also make it possible for people to chat one-to-one or in groups.
  
  

These examples point both to great potentials and to potential problems.