Techno to Tactile

By Anne Macleod Weeks

In my hometown, a university town, there were kiosks on the main street that sported notices of upcoming events. These kiosks were always somewhat messy, but they were a visual reminder of the intellectual and creative environment continually burgeoning in a small university village. I say "village" because it was truly a village. The shops in town were owned by local families, everyone knew each other, and a policeman was just as likely to take time off from his beat to help a bunch of kids search for night crawlers in their front lawn as he was to give a parking ticket. Summer nights were spent riding bikes across undeveloped lots, down alleyways, and across the university grounds, stopping to catch fireflies or to eat at the Dairy Queen.

Recently, I heard first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton talk about the necessity of a village in raising a child. Her metaphor can cross many venues, whether it be the nuclear family, a true village, or an educational community. Though I was raised in a true village, I also think of the stories my father often told of being educated in a one-room schoolhouse; how this created an intellectual village that eventually prompted him to pursue his dream of becoming a professor and a minister, roles that allowed him to create other "villages" within which he was able to touch the lives of others.

One day several years ago, I read about a movement to remove the kiosks in my childhood village because they were eyesores in a town becoming less and less a village. The small, family-owned shops were disappearing, replaced by conglomerates intent on making everyone look alike. The personality, warmth, and connectedness of a once-village community was slowly diminishing in a world being...