medium. A first formal meeting of researchers with an academic interest in these initiatives was held in conjunction with the 1999 Global Community Networking Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This meeting began the process of linking community-based ICT initiatives in developed countries with initiatives undertaken in developing countries, which were often part of larger economic and social development programmes funded by agencies such as the UN Development Programme, World Bank, or the International Development Research Centre. Academics and researchers interested in ICT efforts in developed countries began to see common and overlapping interests with those interested in similar work in less developed countries. For example, the issue of sustainability as a technical, cultural, and economic problem for community informatics has resulted in a special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics as well as the subject of ongoing conferences in Prato, Italy and other conferences in South Africa. In Canada, the beginnings of CI can be recognized from various trials in community networking in the 1970s (Clement 1981). An essential development occurred in the 1990s, due to the change of cost of computers and modems. Moreover, examples of using computer networking to initiate and enhance social activities was acknowledged by women's groups (Balka 1992) and by the labor movement (Mazepa 1997). Social informatics beyond an immediate concern for a community Social informatics refers to the body of research and study that examines social aspects of computerization—including the roles of information technology in social and organizational change, the uses of information technologies in social contexts, and the ways that the social organization of information technologies is influenced by social forces and social practices. Historically, social informatics research has been strong in the Scandinavian countries, the UK and Northern Europe. In Europe some researchers have pointed out that in order to create awareness of the importance of social issues of computing, one has to focus on didactics of social informatics. Within North America, the field is represented largely through independent research efforts at a number of diverse institutions. Social informatics research diverges from earlier, deterministic (both social and technological) models for measuring the social impacts of technology. Such technological deterministic models characterized information technologies as tools to be installed and used with a pre-determined set of impacts on society dictated by the technology's stated capabilities. Similarly, the socially deterministic theory represented by some proponents of the social construction of technology (SCOT) or