Embrace the wire
Posted: 27 March 2004 at 01:51:04
Either President George W. Bush is a visionary man with — as Radio and TV personality Sean Hannity puts it — “moral clarity” or he’s got some smart people helping him plan his re-election strategy.
In a speech at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds in Albuquerque today, President Bush said that affordable high-speed Internet access should be available to all Americans by 2007.
“This country needs a national goal for broadband technology, for the spread of broadband technology. We ought to have a universal, affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007, and then we ought to make sure as soon as possible thereafter, consumers have got plenty of choices when it comes to purchasing the broadband carrier. See, the more choices there are, the more the price will go down. And the more the price goes down, the more users there will be. And the more users there will be, the more likely it is America will stay on the competitive edge of world trade.”
As a sidenote, something else President Bush said should be used by UTOPIA in all future presentations:
“The role of government is to create an environment in which the entrepreneurial spirit is strong, and in which people are able to realize their dreams. ”
In any case, meeting a goal like this would be a major achievement for the president and the U.S. It’s disheartening for me to see the United States of America, the country responsible for creating the Internet, fall behind other countries in terms of how “wired” the population is.
Which countries have leapfrogged the U.S. or will soon if we don’t get moving again?
South Korea - Currently South Korea leads the world as the Most Wired Country with over 70% of the population online. In addition, South Koreans have access to more advanced wireless technology than most other countries boasting 10-times faster wireless connections than what is currently available in the U.S.
Canada - Canada has zipped past the U.S. to provide data service to all areas of their cold country.
Signapore - The tiny island of Signapore is a beautiful nation where everything is clean and Internet access is plentiful and fast. Signaporeans don’t enjoy the same set of liberties as we in the U.S. do, but they do enjoy a higher quality of life... as long as they don’t break any rules and get caned or executed.
Finland - The home of NOKIA and Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
Other countries which are said to be making more aggressive movements to wire the population than the U.S.: Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Great Britain, Australia and Japan.
Estonia is an interesting story. Most residents of this former Soviet republic didn’t have hot water in their homes 15 years ago. Now a growing majority of them have access to fast, reliable Internet access.
China is also bringing huge numbers of their population online at a whirlwind pace.
Because the U.S. is the foundation of this technology, there is no reason we can’t springboard back to the number one spot on the list of most-wired countries and stay there.
Melting the hardened cynics
The majority of people I deal with online are anti-Bush. Most say they are liberals and many buy into conspiracy theories that Bush orchestrated 9/11/2001 or that it, along with imaginary WMD, was used as excuses to invade Iraq for oil.
Most of these libs don’t know what they’re talking about, but wave a fiberoptic cable in front of them and they’ll do whatever you ask... like vote for you in the 2004 presidential election.
So, I wouldn't be surprised if this gesture of support of widespread deployment of broadband services is bound to win the president at least one or two percentage points in the polls.