Infonaut Ann Treacy does a blog at Blandin on Broadband, focusing on broadband use, access and trends as a project of Minnesota’s Blandin Foundation. She had an interesting post this weekend on including rural broadband projects in President-elect Barack H. Obama’s proposed economic stimulus package.
I have been interested in applications of broadband technology since I was in college, in particular when I worked for the now-defunct Center for the New West think tank in Denver. This makes it all the more ironic that I’m still mired on dial-up at home, but that is a post for a day to come.
The post brings in two other salient points.
- “broadband is all rural areas have seen or heard from Obama up to this point.” (ref. Daily Yonder)
- “we’re pouring more money into a solution that didn’t work the first time around” (ref. Public Knowledge)
I have personal issues with the stimulus packages we’ve seen last year and this; however, aside from that, on a professional level we should be concerned about larger issues present. Broadband is great, but it’s just a tool. We need broader rural development strategies. We also need much better research benchmarking economic development tools that work. You know that. I know that. It’s just not cheap nor easy to accomplish.
Treacy’s packing alot to think about into this focused, tightly-written blog. I suppose I ought to take notes.
-john shepard
(cross-posted at jcshepard.com: “it’s great that he mentioned rural and broadband”)
One other point on original post this morning that I missed, Art Brodsky at Public Knowledge uses the term "connectivity". This, to me, implies more than just "broadband". It better connects the use to the tool. Words have meanings, if we mean them or not.
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