Placing the social and cross-cultural at the centre of community informatics

It is accepted in principle that social and cultural factors are important for the study of the individual, family and community use of technologies. Design too aims to be user-centred. The tussle in community informatics, as with human-computer interaction, lies in communicating and translating the importance of the social and cross-cultural factors to technologists, designers, businesses and policy makers. Focusing on issues of security, I show that communication and translation are particularly difficult when social and cultural practices challenge the assumptions of design and policy. In security design, for instance, it is assumed a person will be using confidential access codes for his or her individual computer to conduct transactions. Consumer protection policy in Australia also makes these assumptions. It is also assumed that a person will be using an individual computer. Social and cultural practices challenge these technical and policy assumptions for two reasons.