The old joke is that there are four seasons in Maine: almost winter, winter, still winter and construction. So as we approach the winter season when lobster traps and boats come ashore and lights become fewer and far between, we feel the pace of life shift to a different mode. We move indoors, physically and emotionally, and begin to explore interior worlds.
Mostly we start reading again as the frenzied days of summer and the cider sweetness of autumn begin to fade away. Maine is a state of exceptionally high literacy rates; we boast one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country, and as our small town librarians will tell you, our libraries boast some of the highest per-capita circulation rates in the nation. For the rest of the winter and still-winter seasons, we will also undoubtedly watch more TV, check out more videos, and spend more time on-line.
For digital pundits, one of the most alluring dreams of the near simultaneous appearance of the Internet and World Wide Web more than a decade ago (for most of us), was that the disadvantages of geography would wither away as commerce carried by electrons replaced expensive transportation. If this were true, then islands and the Internet were made for each other. But what is the reality? People often ask us if the Internet has changed — or will change — island life?
I don’t know. Reality is always more complex than we’d like to admit.
A few years ago, Maine became the first state in the country to provide every town within its borders with a free Internet connection, just ahead of West Virginia, another poor, rural, geographically isolated state that was the second. Maine was also the first state to provide Internet-capable laptop computers to all middle school students after then-Gov. Angus King returned from Ireland with the idea of applying the successful education development model that transformed that small rural country into a European tiger.
It’s hard to document the effects of Maine’s recent technology-based changes on island community life. Has the Internet brought new business opportunities to islands? Have Internet-based entrepreneurs moved out to islands to enjoy the quality of life, while telecommuting with far-flung offices and clients? Have Internet-savvy kids stayed on-island rather than moving away for opportunities elsewhere? My impression: not to any great extent. Not yet.
But I really don’t know. Our store, Archipelago, which provides a marketplace for Maine’s island and working waterfront artisans has gone on-line (www.thearchipelago.net), in an effort to extend sales off season, but it’s a slow and expensive process. But it is also worth recalling an irresistible story we originally published in Island Journal concerning a small island community, Eigg in the Scottish Hebrides, which had been put up for sale by its German laird. Faced with the prospect of losing their community to another absentee landlord, the islanders decided to try to buy the island for themselves. With the closing deadline looming and still desperately short of cash, the islanders were delivered a digital deus ex machina when donors who read about their plight on their website came through with the balance of the necessary funds for the purchase. The Internet, it would seem, has unquestionably saved at least one island community.
Commentators have long since documented the homogenizing effects of TV on small town and rural life. But TV culture that has ruined so many other communities did not transform Maine’s island and working waterfront communities to any significant extent. Maine island kids still look more like island kids than hip-hop cutouts. ATVs are a bigger issue on islands than MTV shows. In this respect island culture has proved more durable than TV culture — a tremendous commentary on the strength of island communities. Perhaps the Internet will have no appreciable effect on island culture either — for good or ill.
But the real purpose of this column is to ask you what the Internet has meant for your island or working waterfront community, school or library. Send us your stories and views on these and related questions — the good, the bad and the ugly — and we’ll share them with other readers in an extended, print-based chat room in the pages of future editions of this paper to help answer these questions.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.