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The telecentre movement is more than two decades old. What started as an attempt to help farmers in rural Sweden1 learn more about their financial accounts from spreadsheets has morphed into a worldwide movement. And 'movement' is the right word rather than institution, organization or system.

The source fuel for the people that start, manage and grow telecentres is their service to the community and the skills they learn and grow. Telecentres have mushroomed into worldwide phenomena because of the unbridled advocacy for their usefulness that those who have had the telecentre experience possess. This experiential learning and professional passion is difficult to share without the actual experience of helping a telecentre and the movement succeed.

What is the role of research and the researcher in this type of movement? Does the researcher stand outside the movement and offer detached empiricist observation disconnected from the actual development experience? This volume illustrates the intellectual movement of its author from that of abstracted positivist to applied telecentre partisan. Her research isn't aimed at a disinterested academy where the goal is only professional promotion. It is focused as much on helping telecentre practitioners understand from one another's experiences and, equally, building a bridge to those who don't yet understand, and should.

Because the telecentre movement is without the normative patterns of more traditional institutions, it is sometimes difficult for academics to understand what they are observing. As they sit outside the tacit knowledge, informal learning, unstratified relations and networked knowledge dissemination, the culture of the telecentre and its movement can seem disorganized and in need of 'professional' guidance. It is only by entering the gestalt of the digital development experience the telecentre represents that understanding of its assets and its needs for further development can really be achieved.

As a young professional researcher, the author has managed this in a

1 The first rural telecentre, or telecottage as it was then called, was established in Velmdalen, Sweden in 1985 by Henning Albrechtson.

remarkable way. Her volume speaks to the commitment of the telecentre activists she has worked with and observed. It also speaks to the fact that this she, and this volume, have now become a part of the telecentre movement.

Rich Fuchs
Director
Information and Communications Technologies for Development
International Development Research Centre

Document(s) 1 of 12