1. Pick a real community that you value–maybe it’s a city like Bangor or Portland, maybe its a small lakeside or coastal town in Maine, maybe it’s your favorite National Park. Explain why this community means something to you–why you value it, what about it you value most and would not want to lose.

A community I really value is the community in Carrabassett Valley where Sugarloaf mountain is located. This community is especially important to me because it has managed to stay very localized and secluded, but also maintains a population with very similar interests/ lifestyles. This community being  developed in the middle of nowhere at a ski mountain, has caused a very small community of die hard skiers to be the only people residing in this area. Most members have been there their whole life, whether it was for weekend visits in the winter or for the entirety of the year. I really have found it so amazing how localized and positive this community has managed to stay since I’ve been apart of it. Especially looking at other ski mountain communities and seeing the industry and the spread of population take over the community and ruin the similarity the individuals there used to maintain. 

2. With your community in mind, which digital technologies would you keep or support?  Pick at least 2, and explain how this technology has a low enough footprint to justify its benefits, and to keep your community (and others like it around the world), healthy.

For this community, I would keep the camera and speakers. The camera is one of my favorite technologies strictly because of how it is almost able to capture more than the eyes are able to at some points. This can be particularly useful especially in a skiing community. Pictures and videos of skiing can capture something that happens so fast it is hard for the eyes to fully take in everything that occurs. As for the speakers, I’ve found loud music or concerts to be one of the best ways to bring a large group of people together and inspire them or connect them. Whenever there is bands or live music at Sugarloaf it seems to connect everyone and anyone is welcome to have a good time. I don’t feel like either of these technologies have terrible repercussions, speakers may cause sound pollution, but that is relative and can be controlled, so I’m not too worried. 

3. Which digital technologies would you ban and why? Pick 1 or 2 and explain how banning this digital tech would benefit your community (or others like it around the world).

I would remove cell phones and computers. I think removing both of these would benefit the community greatly because it would encourage interaction. Growing up in this community it was still pretty rural, and I got to see first hand how welcoming it can feel when you can talk or interact with anyone you could potentially encounter within a community. Well I have found it especially useful to use the cell phone as a means of communication while on the ski mountain, I think there are other means of enabling this communication without all of the other features that come with the average cell phone now. Walkie talkies for example, were extremely common in the community before the rise of cell phones. As for computers, I don’t feel like there’s anything they’re really necessary for within that community besides business perhaps, but I think as the past has proven there are ways around that. 

4. Finally, how do you think communities should decide which tech to promote and which tech to ban? Is the a democratic way to do this, and if so how?  And if not, how could it be made more democratic?

I’m not sure how communities can control the tech within them. I say this because I don’t know exactly what defines membership to specific communities, therefore don’t know how you could know who to enforce said rules upon. For example, within my community at Sugarloaf, there’s the locals, people who live there year round and most likely work there. Then there’s property owners, who will consider themselves Sugarloafers, but will typically only be in the area on weekends in the winter, lastly there are regulars, people who don’t own property in around the community, but are often at the mountain, so much so some of them may consider themselves a part of the community. I feel like this is a very special case where you have a community with lots of different levels to it, and in that case enforcing something like this would have to start with which levels you’d want to enforce what on, and figure out exactly how to identify who belongs on each level.