Group items tagged

They're just like the railroad in that if you were a farmer in the 1890s, the only way to get your goods to market would be to work through the railroad. ... We just can't operate without it. They're also like them in that they're expensive businesses to build in the first place — it's very hard to come in and compete against one of these guys once they've built one of these giant networks. They're also like the railroad in that it takes intentional policy to make them stretch all the way across the United States.

We seem to currently assume that communications access is a luxury, something that should be entirely left to the private market unconstrained by any form of oversight. The problem is that it's just not true in the modern era. You can't get a job, you can't get access to adequate health care, you can't educate your children, we can't keep up with other countries in the developed world without having very high capacity, very high speed access for everybody in the country. And the only way you get there is through government involvement in this market. That's how we did it for the telephone, that's how we did it for the federal highway system, and we seem to have forgotten that when it comes to these utility basic services, we can't create a level playing field for all Americans or indeed compete on the world stage without having some form of government involvement.

"Unless somebody in the system has industrial policy in mind, a long-term picture of where the United States needs to be and has the political power to act on it, we'll be a Third World country when it comes to communications."

Search giant Google has been working on Internet expansion technologies for at least a few years and its latest project could involve spending $1 billion on 180 satellites, according to the Wall Street Journal. Just like the balloons in Google's Project Loon, the satellites would be used to extend Internet access to large groups of people in remote areas

Since Project Loon was first revealed and subsequently rolled out in a test run over New Zealand, many people have praised Google for its Internet expansion initiatives. The majority of people on earth do not have access to the Internet and with Project Loon ability to provide 3G-like speeds, people could at least get online for simple tasks if there is no ground-based Internet provider.

As technology filters into every corner of the globe and tech cities spring up in some unlikely places from Bangalore to Tel Aviv, a new gulf is emerging to separate the digitally savvy from the disconnected: Poverty.

In India, over two-thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. But a United Nations report still says that mobile phones are more common than toilets, with nearly half of India's 1.2 billion population armed with a handset.

hierarchies created by digital literacy and the class systems that will be shaped by access to digital technologies.