President-elect Obama, in his Press Conference last Saturday, spoke about how poorly our broadband adoption in the US is and vowed to improve it. I was shocked that we are 15th in the world. That is sad.
He went on to say, "Here, in the country that invented the internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they'll get that chance when I'm President, because that's how we'll strengthen America's competitiveness in the world."
Now I clearly agree that we should have much higher adoption of broadband usage (which means we need broader and cheaper broadband made available). And clearly, the youth of today are the ones that are the hope for our future competitiveness. But I think it will take a little more then just getting every child online: we also need to rise above the competition from other countries on Instant Messenger, Facebook, YouTube, etc.. And in my house of 3 boys, we definitely can take on the world in Fantasy Football.
All kidding aside, it is embarassing that we are 15th in the world in Broadband adoption. Maybe part of Obama's works program will include a national grid of internet accessibility. This might be a good use of wimax. Eric Peterson's letter to Obama (which was excellent) should have a p.s. added to it on building an accessible internet grid. Also a good reason for a E-Gov Czar (or Chief Internet Officer) to be added to the office of the Government CIO.
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Posted by: lisa | October 03, 2009 at 06:05 AM