The magical effect of old computers
Town &
Country Planning, April 2000
Wasted people, wasted
resources, wasted buildings &emdash; they can all underpin
local economies. Or so I claimed in the last column I wrote
for T&CP magazine &emdash; with the kind of
assertion only journalists and politicians can quite
manage.
There was no rumbling sound afterwards, no creaking noises of a million disadvantaged neighbourhoods rummaging through their lofts or setting their elderly grandparents to work, which is something of a relief.
What I meant was, although people are considered to have no 'marketable skills' in a market economy, that doesn't mean they have nothing to offer. In fact there is a vast amount that badly needs doing in the social economy.
The same goes for things, and there is one category of things without market value which is being increasingly brought to bear on underpinning local activity and exchange in the USA. Old computers.
When you think about it, computers are an extreme example. As many as 15 million of them are put into landfill in the USA every year, many of them are perfectly good &emdash; they just happen to be last year's model o last year's colour. This is especially so for 486 models, because they were overtaken so rapidly by pentiums.
The flow to the dumps has been staunched ever so slightly by an executive order from the White House to government departments, urging them to recycle instead. But the impact of Y2K may mean that a whole new generation is heading rapidly for the scrapheap.
It's a bit of a tragedy. Because not only does all the mercury and other chemical cocktails then leach into the ground, but there are millions of people out there &emdash; especially schoolchildren &emdash; who really need computers, but can never afford one. Except by drug-dealing.
So led by the Long Island-based LINCT Coalition &emdash; operating under the slogan 'eliminate the virtual ghetto' &emdash; thousands of computers are now being recycled and refurbished by trainees across the USA, all the way from Chicago down to Phoenix.
A similar scheme, started by an ambitious organisation called Charity Logistics, has started in the UK. Chief executive George Cook has now taken over an empty 17-storey office block by the Thames in Vauxhall, three floors of which are now full of computer parts, waiting to be reconstructed by young people &emdash; who are also being trained at the same time.
But what is particularly interesting about the US idea is that the refurbished computers are not being given away, or sold for cash. Instead, they are being earned in the social economy.
Teenagers serving on youth juries, disaffected 16-year-olds tutoring 14-year-olds after school, single parents on welfare learning computer skills, are all earning 'time dollars' for their efforts. And when they have earned 100 of them, they can buy a refurbished computer, using a software called New Deal which gives them fast internet access using a 386.
The tutoring project has been particularly successful in 17 problem schools in downtown Chicago, now in its fourth year. Not only do the grades of participants improve but, more unexpectedly, bullying is markedly down &emdash; because it is considered a major no-no to bully your tutee, or to let anybody else do so.
In an extra twist, the final four time dollars need to be earned by the pupils' parents, either in the same programme or helping out in the local school in some other way. It sounds like an intrusion, but actually the parents tend to welcome it, because they find they enjoy feeling useful and discovering - sometimes after years on welfare - that they are needed and have something to contribute.
That sense, for parents and children, can be transformational. And transformational time economy that makes it all possible is underpinned by computers with a nil market value.
It makes you think, doesn't it.
David Boyle is an associate of the New Economics Foundation and the author of Funny Money (www.funny-money.co.uk)
