Had the latest in a sweries of very interesting sessions with David Wilcox yesterday, whose experience and involvement in early UK communities online work gives him a valuable perspective on newer initiatives based on linking up people on the basis of networked individualism as well as coommunally.

Today he writes about research into the effectiveness of UK Online Centres in reaching out to the socially excluded: Designing for Civil Society: Nonprofit tech centres reach more 'excluded' users:

"The researchers add that: "Whatever the future funding regime, more funding should be targeted on the successful informal services that many UK online centres have developed to attract excluded groups and those not involved in learning"... which may not square with the Government's push towards reliance on mainly formal computer and Internet courses often more favoured by public sector and college-based centres."

Elsewhere, David Brake suggests that other evidence questions the value of public access centres at all, claiming that they do not really manage to reach out ot the genuinely excluded.