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Idaho Gets Serious About Broadband
prostoalex writes "In an effort to boost the economy state of Idaho legislated tax credit for companies, who were investing in broadband Internet infrastructure. According to the latest news, the plan worked quite well, and about 150 thousand people can soon take advantage of tax-sponsored buildout. Speaking of wiring rural areas with cheap Internet access, there was an article in NY Times ($free_registration_quote), where Bill Gates admitted that in many cases building Internet in the rural area just speeded up the exodus of farmers, who were able to find a job somewhere else."
I don't see how broadband would boost the economy, except for creating (likely not too many) jobs in the broadband sector. Almost all the advantages of broadband are related to entertainment anyway... Unless you are downloading lots of videos or playing games (not stuff that helps the economy) a standard ISDN line is fine for internet access.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
WTF is this article about? The "Power of the Interweb" is turning dirt farmers into city slickers?
How did we go from taxpayer-financed broadband to a Hyperlinked Bill Gates Quote?
I think I know what happened between Michael reading the article on NYT and adding this story to slashdot. It's called marijuana. And I'm jealous.
Not that many years ago the federal gov't undertook to guarantee to rural customers telephone service, and electricity, and in the very early days postal service. The idea is that while these services are more expensive to provide and won't develop from market pressures alone, providing them at equal prices to rural areas is both just and, in the long run, good for the country.
Would a National Internet Access Initiative be a good thing? Or is internet access is some way frivolous, other than for people who work directly in the field? (In other words, its easy to picture why Ma and Pa Kettle need mail, electricity, maybe even cable TV -- but internet?)
My tentative answer is yes, that it's really just an expansion of telephony. But how ironic that it may result in a "brain drain" from rural areas (NYT article).
In the meantime internet service providers will be available in Louisiana as soon as gators stop chewing on internet backbone or when Dukem Nukem Forever comes out whichever comes first. Seriously though that sucks that even Utah is ahead of us..
Oh well at least we got shrimp and crawfish down here so there! Take that Utah!
Bill Gates Views What He's Sown in LibrariesBy TIMOTHY EGAN
OLFAX, Wash. -- Bill Gates predicted in 1995 that the Internet would help rural people stay put, in part because they would have the same advantages as city slickers in the virtual world.
He made that prophecy in "The Road Ahead," a book whose jacket showed Mr. Gates standing in the middle of an empty highway in remote eastern Washington.
But when Mr. Gates, the richest man in the world, returned recently to the land of no stoplights as part of the last phase of a five-year philanthropic effort to put computers in every poor library district in the United States, he acknowledged that the road ahead was full of blind curves.
There is scant evidence, for example, that the wiring of rural America has done anything to make Mr. Gates's prediction about population flight come true. The new computers may even be aiding the exodus from rural America, as people go online to find jobs far away.
"I thought digital technology would eventually reverse urbanization, and so far that hasn't happened," Mr. Gates said, munching on a cheeseburger and fries at the Top Notch Cafe in Colfax, population 2,880. Among the bib overall set at lunch, he was largely unrecognized.
"But people always overestimate how much will change in the next three years," Mr. Gates said, "and they underestimate how much will change over the next 10 years."
He could well apply that maxim to himself. Three years ago, when stock in Microsoft, the company Mr. Gates co-founded, hit an all-time high of $119 a share, Mr. Gates was worth nearly $75 billion in Microsoft holdings alone.
Now, he is about $40 billion lighter, on paper, but he shrugs it off. "My value is still so much higher than I ever expected it to be by a factor of about 50," Mr. Gates said. "So the fact that at one point it was say, a factor of 60, well -- that wealth is all going back to society anyway."
The charitable group that Mr. Gates started with his wife, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is now giving away $1.2 billion a year. Mr. Gates said he was pleased that its first major philanthropic effort, the library project, had helped to narrow the digital divide. More than 95 percent of public libraries now offer free Internet access, including those here in Whitman County, which mainly serve wheat farmers and received $93,000 from the Gates Foundation.
Inside the Seattle headquarters of the foundation, a giant map shows the progress of the campaign to give computers to libraries in every state. The campaign started with the poorest regions, mainly in the South and Great Plains, though distressed urban areas are included, too. But if superimposed over a map of population decline, it would show that many of these areas are not holding onto people, no matter how wired they become.
"They come into the library, and they may use the computer to get a job and leave," said Kristie Kirkpatrick, who is in charge of a library district in Colfax.
This land of rolling wheat fields has lost 10 percent of its population in the last two years alone, Ms. Kirkpatrick said. But she said the new computers had also changed many people's lives for the better, giving them more access to medical and agricultural information.
The foundation has fared much better than Mr. Gates's personal fortune. Other philanthropies, notably those started by David and Lucile Packard and by Ted Turner, have seen their assets shrink considerably with the stock market collapse. By contrast, the Gates Foundation has grown, and now has assets of $24 billion -- far more than any single philanthropy in the country. The foundation weathered the storm, Mr. Gates said, because less than 2 percent of its money is invested in stocks, though Mr. Gates said that could rise to 25 percent over the next four years, as it pursues bargains in the market.
"They are the only major foundation that is still doing great," said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Mr. Gates used to think he would wait until he was in his 60's to give his money away. At 47, Mr. Gates has handed out $5.5 billion for global health issues, education and the library project, which is the first major initiative at the foundation to essentially run its course.
"The more I learned, the more I realized there is no time," he said in a recent speech to the United Nations.
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Critics say Mr. Gates has raised his philanthropic profile at the same time his company has been battling court rulings that found Microsoft to be a monopoly that violated the law in trying to dominate the personal computer market. Even giving 40,000 computers to libraries is seen by some as simply an effort to create a bigger customer base for Microsoft products.
Patty Stonesifer, the president of the foundation, who started at Microsoft more than 15 years ago, says Mr. Gates was committed to putting computers in every library well before he was labeled a monopolist, and would be committed to it long afterward.
"He said, `History will get this right,' " Ms. Stonesifer recalled, referring to Mr. Gates's belief that the Internet can have a democratizing effect.
But whether history will show that bringing the digital world to places like Parrotsville, Tenn. (population, 127) or villages in the heart of American Indian Country had the effect that Mr. Gates intended is an open question.
Miriam Tarlton, 77, lives alone in a cabin 14 miles from the nearest town in the mountains of northwest Montana. She discovered the Internet at her library in the town of Eureka not long ago, after the Gates Foundation donated a computer and software.
"Oh, my gosh, it was like going on a ship to Mars," said Ms. Tarlton, who now uses the Web to find recipes, garden information, quilt sites and to keep up an e-mail correspondence with family members.
Andrew C. Gordon, hired by the foundation to evaluate the library project, labeled it a "a success, but not an unqualified one." In his surveys of libraries where the computers were installed, Mr. Gordon found that library use went up and usually not at the expense of books. He also found that most people who used the donated computers were poor, in the income bracket where the digital divide has been greatest.
But the No. 1 thing that people used the computers for was to keep in touch with family and friends through e-mail, Mr. Gordon said. He also found that 22 percent of new computer users in the libraries said they helped them find jobs; whether those jobs were in a different location was never tracked.
Staff members of the foundation answer questions and provide support to librarians, but that will be phased out in the next two years. The biggest question about the project is whether it will sustain itself once the Gates people walk away, after spending about $250 million on the project.
Mr. Gates seems ready to check the library project off his to-do list. His model was Andrew Carnegie, who left hundreds of sturdy libraries standing in small towns as part of his philanthropic legacy.
"You know, Carnegie was a pretty hard-core guy," he said, leaving Main Street here, where the biggest digital sign displays the price for wheat: $4.80 a bushel. "I'd be happy if I could think that the role of the library was sustained and even enhanced in the age of the computer."
broad band is an amenity that many companies and individuals require. Typically those home users requiring broad band are tech savvy. Thus making them valuable capitol. Also many small businesses are now at a point where broad band is a requirement. I'm a Admin for an Architecture firm with several sites and our locations that do not have accessibility to broad band are a pin in our side. relocating the office was a valid option until Allegiance gave us a T1 for half the cost of the local Telco.
This sounds a bit like how the South Korean fiber lines that were built for use during the World Cup ended up being the infrastructure that let them install broadband access to a significant percentage of homes.
Admittedly, South Korea is a different sort of place than Idaho, but comparing it to a state is probably much better than comparing it to the whole US.
The problem is that no one really wants to pay for infrastructure unless they can see the "step n. Profit!" at the end of it. It is like roads and railways, infrastructure that allows companies to do business, but which is shared by others. I think this is a form of the 'free rider' problem, but I'm not an economist. Generally, the government gets to pay to keep the infrastructure going, and gets the money for it from taxes.
Short answer: good infrastructure allows many other activities, but individual entities are not always willing to make the investment.
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See we arent just redneck potato farmers anymore, we are edjumakated and inforamated redneck potatoe farmers who fix dells ( We have the national dell call center ).
-Brandon Jank
Resident of the great state of Idaho
Long live the potato!
( We make the best memory too )
PRINT "Signature line broken."
GOTO 1
heyyy... did you just copy something off of NYT's site?
*pulls out the ban stick*
What, working for ADM?
It's not like you go apply for jobs at small farms. It's pretty much all family owned, or megacorp these days, not much inbetween, except for specialties like wineries, etc, which are closer to family owned, but may employ a good number of people at least seasonally.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I can tell you that I've never heard of this credit/plan/thingy before. And while I suppose the situation isn't *too* bad (I live in a town of about 5K, and afaik, everyone who wants it can get cable), I wouldn't say that we are the model of the modern major um, connected place :-) I guess I'm just bitter that after moving from Boise to Kuna (no, I didn't make that name up!), I had to downgrade from DSL to Crappy Cable. I'm serious, for the exact same amount a month, I get 1/3rd the upload speed, 3/4ths the download speed, and ten times the downtime... I never thought I'd prefer Qwest over *anything*, but at least my DSL line didn't drop out twice a week.
Oh, well. I'm probably going to get 20 responses from people living in Bliss and Sugar City (also names I didn't make up!), telling me I should praise the gods that I can even get cable. To them I say: "Move the hell out! I did!"
So have I, and I came to the opposite conclusion.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
"I thought digital technology would eventually reverse urbanization, and so far that hasn't happened," Mr. Gates said
Hightech and IT companies tend to stick together in certain areas for a reason. If you want a job in these industries, you better move away from the countryside since mentioned industries won't move to a small town in the countryside were they can't find enough skilled workers. I guess Bill thought that we all should be teleworkers, but most IT jobs require personal interaction, so you're still dependent on being close to the clients.
There are other reasons on why people wants to leave the countryside. It's not all about jobs, but the lifestyle you want. There are for instance more choices (eg. entertainment, restaurants) in urban areas. Thinking that the people leave because they've got the ability to search jobs is to make this issue a little bit too simple. This trend of urbanization is nothing new... and it will continue, with or without wired towns in the countryside.
I don't even need to read the article about Bill Gates to know how insightful his quote was.
For example, my farm has been in the familly for generations. These days it becomes harder and harder to compete with the mega-farm corporations and imported food products. Where does a man turn when faced with increased presure to sell the family heritage and give up his dreams? Bill Gates. Bill Gates is a man you can trust. He understands farmers because he is one.
...appears later in the article
Performance is important in a rural area, he said, especially as the potential and need for telemedicine and distance education applications increases.
I used to work for a company that builds and installs distance education networks in rural areas. With the infrastructure they're referring to in the article, much of the cost of such networks is already taken care of. Why is distance education so important in rural Idaho? Because local schools with small numbers of students can't afford the staff required to teach the state mandated curriculum, much less elective courses such as language or (gasp) high school computer science. Without the ability to share teaching staff across distance education networks, many of the local schools would have to close and the kids would be bused long distances on a daily basis.
So, yeah, it's nice that farmers get to surf the web. But the real benefit is elsewhere.
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
I don't see how broadband would boost the economy, except for creating (likely not too many) jobs in the broadband sector.
Many non-tech businesses require broadband Internet access. For example, a retailer of outdoor apparel might want to set up a modest e-commerce site. A patent attorney might need to do online patent searches. I know someone that moved from Missouri because he runs a small business and could not get broadband. He is now in Northern, VA.
Broadband is like electricity and running water for most businesses today. It's not a luxury. It's a basic utility that they need in order to function.
Not everyone grows up speaking english!
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I was amused to read Bill Gate's comments on computers and internet access halting the rural exodus by 1995. Having been born and raised on a large successful farm, I can tell you that yes, technology and computers are essential tools (even our tractors have computers in them that monitor and control every aspect of the engine and transmission, etc). But that's all they are. The tools need to be wielded better by farmers through education and better management.
There are several problems with farming in America that no broadband or computer is going to fix. (And thus the exodus will continue)
1. Farming is too innefficient. The days of small family farms under 640 acres are gone. You just can't do it any more. Sorry.
2. Farmers don't know how to manage their farms like a business. Even a family farm is a business.
3. Government subsidies eliminate incentives to improve these things and compete with the rest of the world. (Although Europe is the worst offender for subsidies.) Let's get rid of them.
4. Farmers are not diversivied enough. Thus my farm has gone from traditional wheat and grains to canola, peas, alfalfa, and flax. Also we use modern no-till techniques for increasing yeild without having to work the land. (stirring the soil can be counter-productive.)
My father has pioneered the use of computers in Agriculture as planning and managing tools (like a normal business, fancy that) since the IBM PC in 1981. The internet doesn't yet play a significant role in marketing, however, but it is a good tool for managing the books (online banking), researching and sharing ideas for innovation and so forth.
So things like rural broadband are nice, but if you don't fix the underlying problem, you'll soon have no rural population left and everybody will then wonder where their food is.
Michael
Whole areas of the "flyover states" are being depopulated. Marginal farming and ranching operations in cold areas far from civilization can't compete, even with near-zero land costs. Kansas actually has more "frontier counties" ( 6 people/square mile) than it did in 1890.