Communities of the future? Telecottages and the televillage in 1990s Britain

Abstract

In the early 1990s, it seemed that new technologies were opening up new possibilities for the organization of work and community life. This article focuses on the development of telecottages and the televillage through the decade to explore one vision of a new kind of rural community life based around these technologies, which gained support from a range of rural development interests, and how they worked in practice. The telecottage was designed to be a hub for teleworking, also offering training and computer hire for locals. However, telecottages soon became a bubble, as upwards of a hundred opened around the UK through the decade, yet struggled to find their niche in an increasingly competitive marketplace of internet cafes and affordable home computers. Though propped up by funding from local authorities, most failed to become self-sufficient. Alongside this, the development of the first televillage, in Wales, intended to house teleworkers, also demonstrates how hopes of innovative forms of in-person community would fail to materialize. This story of techno-optimism shines a light on how technology was seen as a pathway to rural regeneration in the 1990s.