Mike Gurstein’s comments on enabling and empowering communities with information and communications technologies and other stuff.
Michael Gurstein is currently Executive Director of the Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training (Vancouver BC and Cape Town, South Africa). Canadian, he completed a B.A. at the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Cambridge.
From 1995 to 1999 Dr. Gurstein was the NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change at the University College of Cape Breton, where he pioneered in the development of sustainable community-based technology applications.
His edited book “Community Informatics: Enabling Communities with Information and Communications Technologies: (Idea Group, 2000) provided a focal point for the development of “Community Informatics” as the discipline concerned with enabling communities with Information and Communications Technologies. He is currently on the Steering Committee of the Global Telecentre Alliance, and on the High Level Panel of Advisors of the United Nation’s Global Alliance for ICT for Development.
He is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net and Foundation Chair of the Community Informatics Research Network. He has consulted in the area of ICT for Development to the governments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Nepal, South Africa and Jordan and to the Ford Foundation, the UN Development Program, and the European Union among others. His most recent book is “What is Community Informatics (and Why Does It Matter)?”, Polimetrica, Milan (2007)
