The digital divide scene in Chicago is littered with empty shells, the rubble of heavy construction activity in 2006-7 that hasn’t been completed. Everything feels like part of one larger network, and it’s as if all the staff were suddenly vacuumed up sometime in late 2007 and transported to a distant universe.
The Chicago Digital Access Alliance has not posted anything in years, and the link to their central report is broken. Their mailing list has gotten hundreds of what look like automated (but relevant) forwarded messages in the last month, but held no discussions.
The homepage of the national Community Technology Centers’ Network is filled with five filled with broken links and ASP pages that no longer execute. That’s one clue — did the funding stop? Did a systems administrator leave? The CTCNet Chicago page is (c) 2002, and its most important link goes to a domain placeholder.
Maybe, but even the influential Benton Foundation’s website is filled with references to projects that ended in 2007 — or earlier. They’re the source of a lot of financial support, but the mysterious two-year blight has had a similar effect on their public face.
The Digital Divide Network’s page looks great, but once you start reading, you realize that it’s been overrun by spam bots. All the recent activity has centered around Russian linkbombing.
Maybe this all is a sign that all these organizations are actually doing something, and are too busy to update on the web. But I doubt it. It’s a mini-mystery that I hope to solve.
Tune in next week for another episode of Masterpiece Theater Contemporary.