Note: this is a rumor, but it's interesting if this service will be lauched: "With Circles, I believe that Google will attempt to accomplish something critics from the blogosphere, academia, SXSW 2010 keynoter danah boyd, privacy watchdogs and others have all called on the social networking world to do: to allow our online communication to respect the same boundaries that our offline social lives do."
nothing has been announced yet. it is interesting that google is so visited and has so many users, but has yet to effectively incorporate social networking... i.e. buzz and wave had huge hyped, but it quickly burned away.
This is the direct link the National Digital Literacy Corps as proposed by the FCC in their 2010 "National Broadband Plan." If Congress decides to adopt and fund the recommendations, the corps will be modeled after Americorps.
The program would target non-adopters, users who are new to ICT and the internet. "The Corps should target segments of the population that are less likely to have broadband at home, including low-income individuals, racial and ethnic minorities, senior citizens, people with disabilities, those with lower education levels, people in rural communities, those on Tribal lands and people whose primary or only language is not English."
It is recommended that the corps recruit people with language skills so the classes and instruction would be provided in user's primary language.
A former colleague of mine passed this along to me today, and I thought it was interesting in light of our class's discussions on technological trends.
This is a few years old but it's a slide presentation from Paul Adams, ex-Googler, currently Facebook product manager. His work was influential in the new Facebook "groups," and the rumored Google product "circles."