UNFOLD a map of Europe and let your eye travel upwards across the North Sea towards Iceland. There, 200 kilometres from the northeastern tip of Scotland is Shetland, an archipelago of 100 windswept islands. Perhaps only the Faeroes, 200 kilometres nearer to the Arctic Circle, could fight for the title of the most remote spot in Europe. London is 1000 kilometres to the south and Aberdeen, the nearest large city, is a 14-hour ferry journey away.
Shetland offers its 22 000 inhabitants vast skies, miles of convoluted coast and 23 hours of daylight in the summer. But the locals are not basking in a rural idyll. In the 1960s, island entrepreneurs built up their economy on fishing, agriculture, knitwear and tourism. In the 1970s they turned to oil with the Sullum Voe terminal reaching out to the North Sea fields from the largest island, Mainland. Now enterprising locals see electronic communications and the Internet as a potential money spinner.
Last year, Shetland became one of the first rural areas in Britain to have both its own free, electronic bulletin board network and full connection to the Internet at local call rates. And it already looks as though the islanders will not use networks in the way city dwellers do. They have no intention of letting Shetland vanish into the global village. Instead, they hope computer networks will strengthen community ties and enable them to increase their employment opportunities while keeping the rest of the world firmly at arm鈥檚 length. Shetland鈥檚 women 鈥� who are the most cut off from jobs 鈥� look likely to gain the greatest benefit.
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That a society composed chiefly of crofters and fisherfolk should think of turning to computers is not so surprising. 鈥淚n Shetland, ordinary people have long needed very many different skills to survive,鈥� says Jonathan Wills, a freelance journalist who lives in the capital Lerwick. It is not unusual to find Shetlanders with four or five jobs. In fact, Wills says, this isolated community could claim to have invented the concept of flexitime.
Net interest
Whether the computer and the modem will become just another part of the crofter鈥檚 life depends greatly on Shetland鈥檚 small but growing Net community. Leading them are a self-confessed former hippy, a Pakistan-born grocer turned electronic entrepreneur, a newspaper editor, a photographer, a coastguard who claims at least seven other job titles, and a woman grocer turned telecrofter.
Ken Beer is the former hippy. He followed a girl to Shetland in 1974, married and never returned to England. While working shifts on a fishing boat, he took evening classes in BASIC, and signed his cat Moggie up at the same time because the course was in danger of closing down due to lack of students. Then he realised that, 鈥淚t didn鈥檛 matter where I lived. With a computer I could always earn my living and do so in an intellectually satisfying way鈥�. The oil boom helped. After working at Sullum Voe, he obtained a contract to write software for BP, Sullum Voe鈥檚 main user.
Now he has his own company, Kildrummy Technologies, with three local partners and clients for his software scattered across Europe.
Last year, tired of paying huge bills to log onto distant e-mail servers, Beer decided Shetland ought to have its own network. The managing director of the local newspaper leapt at the idea. He saw that contributors from all over Shetland could use e-mail to post their copy and advertising on a Shetland Times bulletin board and browse through it for local information. In June 1994 Shetland鈥檚 first public e-mail service was set up on an old IBM machine at the newspaper鈥檚 office in Lerwick. What鈥檚 on offer? Besides local news, shopping, Citizens鈥� Advice Bureau and weather, there is 鈥渄emocracy, intelligent conversation, a Shetland-English, English-Shetland dictionary and even Grandmaster Chess,鈥� explains Beer.
At the moment the service is free, but that is about to change. 鈥淲hen we start charging we will have to get a lot more information to make it worthwhile,鈥� says William Sandison, systems manager at the Shetland Times. He anticipates posting ferry and bus timetables on the bulletin boards, a What鈥檚 On page, small ads, public notices and news snippets. 鈥淲e see the BBS [bulletin board system] as a tool for increasing the productive capacity of Shetlanders,鈥� says Beer, 鈥淎nd we expect to move toward total coverage of Shetland over the next couple of years 鈥� not just because we want to, but because there is a mood in the community that this is the way to go.鈥�
Global links
The Shetland Times Information Project (STIP) was only just on-line when a second system appeared on the scene, in the shape of Zetnet, offering full Internet connection for just 拢6 a month. Zetnet is the brainchild of Ghufar Razaq and Graeme Storey. Razaq was born in Pakistan but has lived in Shetland since his family moved to Lerwick when he was two years old. After computerising his family鈥檚 retail business, he teamed up with Storey, a freelance photographer who moved from Edinburgh with his family 18 years ago. Storey and Razaq set up the Internet connection. The two systems are not in competition. 鈥淪TIP is primarily intended for the use of Shetlanders,鈥� explains Beer. Zetnet provides international links.
Zetnet is already awakening new international opportunities on one of the remotest of these northern islands. Dave Wheeler lives on Fair Isle, a tiny island only 6 kilometres by 3 kilometres which lies 70 kilometres south of Lerwick, halfway to Orkney. It is inhabited by 70 people. He is a crofter, freelance meteorologist, airstrip manager, auxiliary coastguard, fireman, registrar of births, deaths and marriages, and part-time teacher of information technology at the local primary school (which has four pupils). 鈥淭here is a tremendous future for an online community,鈥� he says, 鈥淪mall communities who by themselves have little clout can work together and become a larger voice.鈥�
Zetnet is most useful to him in his capacity as meteorologist. Weather is a preoccupation in Shetland. Because winds gusting up to 80 miles per hour are not uncommon, ferries between the islands are frequently disrupted. So people who commute to Lerwick from the outer islands rely heavily on Wheeler鈥檚 hourly forecasts. Since setting up an account with Zetnet he has gained access to satellite pictures and computer models which he uses to tailor forecasts and weather alerts to Shetland. Wheeler has even used Zetnet to advise an American in Wisconsin on breeding Shetland sheep.
The full potential of Zetnet will not, of course, be realised without the word being spread beyond the small group of experts. That is where Laura Baisley comes in. Baisley lives on a croft with her partner and 150 sheep on the island of Yell, 50 miles by road and two ferry crossings north of Lerwick (population 7000). She moved from England to the island of Fetlar in the early 1970s to run its only grocery shop and post office and then embarked on an Open University course in information technology. 鈥淭hat was the first time I came across the word telecottage and I thought, what a great idea.鈥� Since then she has become Shetland鈥檚 acknowledged telecroft pioneer.
In 1991, she set up the Isles Telecroft on the northern island of Unst, commuting daily from her home on neighbouring Yell. The telecroft is a corner of a warehouse on the outskirts of a village called Baltasound. It offers basic training in information technology to people who want to work from home. Baisley also takes her computers and modems to outlying areas, training people in their own homes. Over the past three years, she has trained 20 people to the level where, with Zetnet, they could potentially work anywhere in the world.
Most are women 鈥� the group in Shetland which has most to gain from electronic communication. When crofts were divided up at the beginning of this century they became too small to be economically viable and so women began to bring in much of the family income. To supplement a subsistence based on oats, potatoes, sheep and a few cows, they knitted 鈥榮pencers鈥� or woollen vests which they bartered for food. Knitwear remains one of Shetland鈥檚 most important industries, but with the coming of oil, women felt excluded from the workplace, says Dennis Geldard, a lecturer in communications studies at the Shetland College of Further Education. Now they are starting to benefit from growth in part-time jobs and teleworking.
Jobs for the girls
All of the five staff at the Isles Telecroft are women. One, Pat Odie, works from her home on Yell since she gave up an office job to look after her children. The telecroft has a contract with a company in Inverness to distribute data about European development programmes. Information from Brussels is posted to Odie who then retypes it and sends it off by e-mail to subscribers all over Scotland. 鈥淭here are not many jobs to be had in Yell,鈥� she says. 鈥淲ithout the training I got from the telecroft, I certainly wouldn鈥檛 have any work now.鈥� Mary Blance, a presenter at Radio Shetland, agrees. 鈥淭he opportunities for part-time work are magnificent,鈥� she says.
Already, the trend towards teleworking which began with Laura Baisley is accelerating. Inspired by the Isles Telecroft, the local council and Shetland Enterprise obtained money from Brussels in March 1994 to set up the Shetland Telecentres and Rural Training (START) scheme, with six telecentres each offering IT training and support for people who want to work from home or their nearest centre. Each centre employs workers on a flexitime or part-time basis and has a 鈥渃ore activity鈥� 鈥� for example, the centre on the west side of Mainland produces and develops multimedia CD-ROMs containing educational and tourist information about Shetland and Zetnet sets up about 10 new accounts a week. 鈥淲e鈥檙e expecting an explosion of customers,鈥� says Razaq.
But communication is just the tip of the iceberg. The advertising potential of the Net could also, he claims, provide a lifeline for small local enterprises. In February, for example, Zetnet created a World Wide Web page advertising Shetland wool carpets and knitwear. 鈥淎t the moment most of our customers are in Japan and it costs us over a pound a time to send brochures out,鈥� says Louise Irvine, manager of Shetland Knitwear Associates. This way, she believes they can save a fortune in advertising.
Best of all, Shetlanders can sell their goods to virtual customers without having to put up with hoards of souvenir-hunting tourists. Zetner has provided a means for people to reach ShetIand without actually going there. 鈥淲e want their money, not them,鈥� says Storey.
Teleworking may help another group of people too. Derek Cox, director of public health for Orkney and Shetland explains that the islands have the highest incidence of multiple sclerosis in Britain. One of Laura Baisley鈥檚 former students, Maclellan, was diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis ten years ago, in her early forties. 鈥淚 thought my life was over,鈥� she says.
She now works for the telecroft as a part-time trainer. In the future, if she does become housebound, she says she will be able to keep on working thanks to e-mail. One advantage of e-mail is that you can compose your message before going online, so saving your phone bill
For those disabled users who can only speak and type slowly that can be a huge benefit.
Shetlanders are aware that they have to work together to survive economically, and they pride themselves on their community spirit. The islands have almost no crime. According to Razaq, Zetnet makes no profit from its local customers. The service they provide is paid for by users on the mainland.
And in the words of Ken Beer: 鈥溾�楥ompetition鈥� in the sense beloved of Tories is not a practical strategy for survival in a small island community a few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle. We all know each other and support each other. It is clearly in our interests for every Shetland business to succeed, and for our own 鈥榲irtual island鈥� to maintain our prosperity.鈥� (see Map)
