Slashdot Mirror
Is Google Making the Digital Divide Worse?
theodp writes "As Google Fiber forges ahead into new metro areas, Michael Brick reports on worries the fiber project will create a permanent underclass. Building the next generation of information economy infrastructure around current demand, experts say, will deny poor people the physical wiring needed to gain access while the privileged digerati advance at hyperspeed. 'The fiber service deployment means multiplicity of the digital divide, multidimensionality of the digital divide,' says Eun-A Park of the Univ. of New Haven. 'You can see it in Google's trial in Kansas City.' Speed matters, explains Google, 'because a world with universal access and 100 times faster internet could mean 100 times the learning.' Without universal access, as is the case in KC due to pricing that's out of the reach of many of the city's poor, one presumes the outcome could be 100x the learning divide. Another case of the unintended consequences of good intentions?"
I'd like to hear more about this.
Wow, if only there were some kind of organized system of, say, i don't know, governance for ensuring that under-represented members of our communities get equal access to economic resources? Like a set of written guidelines or maybe rules that all members of a community need to abide by...
"...'because a world with universal access and 100 times faster internet could mean 100 times the learning."
Oh, you funny crazy optimistic Google guys. You confused 'learning' with 'pornography and memes'.
Besides that, what about people in rural areas? What about people who still rely on dialup? They're already in existence but because some rich people in certain cities will have stupid fast Internet, there's suddenly an Internet class divide?
The only people harmed by Google's high speed access are the CEOs of companies that have sucked down billions in government money for providing high speed internet access while doing nothing to actually provide it.
So, a faster speed is bad because some won't have access to it? How is not implementing a faster speed option going to help them? This is the exact same problem with, for example, real estate: Since some people can pay for better houses, should we prohibit such houses because it gives them an unfair advantage? It seems that the author does not realize that the problem is of much greater dimensions than: "Google is discriminating people by income." Capitalism is discriminating people by income, and if that is his complaint, then his article sucks at conveying it.
Yes, the company offering free service if you pay a one-time fee for the hookup (a fairly reasonable one, at that) is totally making the digital divide worse. Clearly.
The pricing of their gigabit offering is fantastic. And while that price is undoubtedly out of the reach of poor people, so is almost everything. If it's really that important to have gigabit internet for the nation's poor, then that's something the government (as well as charitable organizations) needs to subsidize, just like with anything else that is deemed necessary (but too expensive for the poverty-stricken to afford). In no way can Google be reasonably found to be at fault here.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Having widespread gigabit internet should, in theory, continue to benefit the entire society, not just those capable of affording it. Even if the lower segment of society can not afford it, they should still benefit from it. After all, libraries and other public access points should be able to afford it, especially given that encouraging education is part of their mandate.
That being said, I disagree with the logic that one needs to have access to top-tier internet in order to advance one's education. Most of that bandwidth, in private use instances, is going to be taken up in streaming netflix, videogames, and torrents. (and related services) Very little is going to be used for educational purposes. If one is actually intent on learning, a tiny fraction of a gigabit connection is all that is needed, so long as one focuses on that and not trying to multitask.
Z
From the link they provided, you can get FREE basic internet, and IIRC, they were even waiving the $300 setup fee that the page mentions.
It's 2100, and we only have a few years to go before the last sub-saharan gets a modem and we can turn on the internet!
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
...Ford is making the transportation gap worse by producing vehicles that the poor can't afford, and I am making the car analogy gap worse by making car analogies people who don't read Slashdot can't see.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
That's what I call Google fiber: this goddamned company is trying to control anything, from the OS (Android) to carrier to search engine to the entire freaking internet.
Don't you see? It's not the digital divide we should fear, it's the Google monopoly. Once they control everything, they'll dictate what you can do and not do on their internet.
Super-fast internet connectivity attracts internet users like honey the proverbial fly. That's why Google offers it. Once we're stuck in the honey though, we'll be in real trouble...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
'because a world with universal access and 100 times faster internet could mean 100 times the learning.'
Yeah, uh, no.
There are so many wrong assumptions there I don't even know where to start.
BTW, I'm still waiting for TV to revolutionize learning like was promised ...
Who is paying this shill?
the only reason i have 20/2 is for netflix and youtube. the latter being the most educational, but the educational videos can be played on slower speeds
everything else would work with under 10mbps internet
wikipedia doesn't need 1gbps and that's the most educational site there is
there is only one reason for fast internet and that's to make you spend more money buying on impulse. 1gpbs you can buy that movie NOW instead of waiting for the blu ray. or get that PS4 game NOW instead of driving to gamestop or best buy or waiting on amazon
...Another case of the unintended consequences of good intentions?...
It is more a case of leaping blindly into unsubstantiated conclusions based upon the cherry-picking of information that suits your intent.
Also, Google is providing free gigabit connections to public schools, libraries, etc. in the neighborhoods that are getting gigabit fiber: https://fiber.google.com/about/communityconnections/
This seems as good a time as any to dust off Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
Assuming Google fiber will force the competition to lower prices or increase their own bandwidth this is a simplified example of what is happening.
Would you rather have:
Google Fiber allowed: 50% of people have 1000 Mbit internet and 50% of people have 10 Mbit internet
or
Google Fiber is not allowed: 50% of people have 20 Mbit internet and 50% of people have 5 Mbit internet
Forcing equality often just means lowering the standards of living for everyone. Even for people at the bottom.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
This is complete bullshit. In other markets we're paying the same prices for far slower speeds and those who can't afford the Free that Google is charging for 5/1MBit aren't getting Internet here either.
Internet access needs to be more widely available. Internet access needs to be cheaper. What the fuck does that have to do with Google Fiber specifically?
Cities that want to help business should embrace fiber and use their dollars to help build it out, instead trying to attract business via cheap loans or tax relief. Spend the tax dollars to improve everyone's life.
Man, wait until he/she finds out that Comcast is charging us $80/month for a fraction of that speed.
Don't assume that access to the internet is making anybody smarter. I think that's the real question. If anything, access to the internet is making people less intelligent, and I think there is more evidence to support that claim. The child who walks to the library and picks up a book and reads is going to end up smarter than the kids who hits up wikipedia, youtube, and various blogs to get his information.
As we all know, Google's charter starts with the phrase "First, Do Evil".
Look, there's literally a 100 GB/second pipe in the building I'm in, and two more just 2 blocks away, and 40 GB/second pipes all over the UW Seattle campus and the UW Tacoma campus.
Almost all top tier US and Canadian research universities have this, and we could easily build this out within a few miles if we actually wanted to fund that as a National Priority, just like we went to the Moon when we wanted to.
There are choices.
We just aren't prepared to fund them as a nation.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
>And you morons vote for this shit. Really? The irony.
I bet that the difference between having 50 KB/s connection and having no Internet is greater than between having 50 KB/s and 50 MB/s.
People also use the internet for learning.
It increasingly seems to me that the demand for fairness is a race to the bottom and results in a loose-loose situation. Because if not everyone gets the good stuff noone should get it - because of the so called fairness.
This happens so often as to make me angry - and I'm far from privileged.
Before you had to choose between crappy cable or crappy dsl and watched as other nations like South Korea were on the lucky side of the digital divide.
Now we have three tiers: Crappy American connection, Awesome South Korean connection, and Fantasy Google connection.
Thanks Google for giving people unrealistic dreams. ... As soon as they announce where they are connecting in Austin, I'm moving.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
You can't hold back progress just because not everyone has gotten aboard the train. That train is leaving just as soon as it can make a buck.
Po'boy can't get no youtube lickitysplit on an ol' busted DSL line, but he can still browse wikipedia. And back when he couldn't get wikipedia he could still hit up a library. And I imagine people will complain that the poor unwashed masses with their slow and broken fiber lines won't be able to access the hivemind as quickly as and as comfortably as his rich relatives.
You're bitching that the digital divide is increasing because someone is plowing ahead. The poor will always be playing catchup. It's part of what makes them poor. And sure, that sucks. But would you blame the Wright brothers for keep the poor downtrodden and earthbound while making a device that only the rich could afford? No. So please, kindly, GTFO of the way of progress. CHOO CHOO!
Oh wait... this astroturf is being provided by the cabletelcos, right?
If this argument were true, than when telephones were introduced (require landlines) it must have created a huge information divide. Then, when cable companies came along and allowed you to watch 20 times the TV channels than OTA, this must have got even WORSE. Learning hampered, communication blockaded for people without somewhere to hook up their TV and phone.
So let's make the cable and telephone companies give away high speed bandwith over the air, and see if that closes up this huge gulf we've been experiencing for the past 75+ years.
Let's not forget those evil universities whose teaching is not affordable to everyone, those sure are creating a learning divide - we need to close them all. How about those premium bed and mattress manufacturers, good night of sleep definitely helps learning, so someone with a better bed definitely has an unfair advantage. How about those healthy food providers, health is a definite advantage - we should force everyone to eat only what the poorest can afford to level the playing field. Those evil doctors who date to cure people who pay them, hang them all! We all need to go back to the stone age where everything was equal, oh wait, there was this guy who produced stone tools and only gave it to his family and friends, gotta axe him too.
What a retarded communist argument to make... I bet it's the other telco's who sponsored this.
I'm pretty sure this is how it all starts.
http://www.wired.com/wiredente...
And Google Fiber is already having positive effects on their cable competition:
http://consumerist.com/2013/01...
http://www.pcworld.com/article...
It's the old communist argument - everyone must be equal. That this boils down to is bring everyone to the lowest common denominator. World isn't fair, and good thing because if it was we'd all be on welfare (to be fair to the lazy guy who doesn't want to work, we should all not work to have the same this) - oh wait, who would pay for this welfare for all? I know, the rich guys. Ok, let's see, if we were to spread Bill Gate's fortune across the population of the world, we'd all get what, $10 each? Not to mention there would be no food since all farmers, bakers, and other professions would also be on welfare so it would be fair.
So, Google Fiber is offering 7 years of free internet service at current cable speeds for the $300 cost of installation (they allow $25 for 12 months, then 6 free years after that). Since they are providing the current provider speeds at significantly reduced rates, wouldn't that narrow the divide more than extend it? If you have a house with no Internet access, and you provide access, isn't that infinitely more enabling than providing gigabit to those with 10 megabit speeds?
I live in KC and Fiber is being installed down the street. We discuss what the speed increase provides, and almost universally agree that the benefits are minor, although power users will find a way to use some of the bandwidth.
The idea here is that when a significant portion of the internet population has 100mb/s connections then web site owners will start building services that cater to those people and require that quick of a connection. This will leave the people that are wayyy on the other side of the curve that much further behind. There is not analogous effect in real estate, i.e. if 10% more of the population has larger houses then it doesn't eventually make your small house less functional.
Anyway, I disagree with your argument but not with your point. I think a better analogy would have been car ownership. It's very hard to get around and keep a job (outside of the inner city) without a car. The infrastructure of our society has become so dependent on cars that only the very poor don't have one. However, if anyone seriously tried to argue that making better cars was promoting the class divide they would be laughed at. It misses the point.
Some people having slow connections instead of fast connections is clearly superior to everybody having slow connections.
The fault in causing the digital divide lies not with Google for being fast, but rather with every other ISP for being slow!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Google offers a free fiber internet connection with monthly cost guaranteed for 7 years. There is a 300 dollar install fee to cover the cost of the modem, but thats it. Seems pretty damn reasonable.
Since some people can pay for better houses, should we prohibit such houses because it gives them an unfair advantage?
Well, that's the general "inequality" idea ... I agree that it makes no sense. But everyone from the president on down seems to believe it
Very rarely. I live in Los Alamos and am mostly familiar with which studies were happening in parallel in which Tech Areas. Some are 10+ miles from others.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
America is way behind where they should be for bandwidth in the residential sector, everywhere. ISPs gobble up money and don't produce value. I think this is mostly a side effect of the fact that, as a society, empowerment isn't high on the to-do list, compared to, say, surveillance, so the already-empowered-by-huge-swaths-of-cash can maintain "order" (Me, first! Me, absolutely! Me, above all else!) Google is doing what's right in this case as they are giving us what we have long since paid for as taxpayers and exploited value-producers in terms of last mile internet performance. If that's because they believe in their own mission of "don't be evil" or because they see a way to "monetize" (amorally exploit for money) the flood of data remains to be seen, but raising the bar in any way here is generally positive.
It used to be you could browse the web just fine over a 14.4kbps modem, and people would berate you if your web page was more than a few dozen kilobytes, images included. Care to guess at the size of the average web page these days, and how that effects what people on dial-up can comfortably do online?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
First sentence of the article:
"In the future envisioned by Google, Internet access will be a basic human right"
a right?
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
You are right, I missed that point and your analogy is better. Nevertheless, I also think that it is unlikely that the educational content of the internet will devolve into a bandwidth hungry activity (anyone have insights on this?), which is the cited example. After all, the elite of the United States is still educated in classrooms, and the most data that can come out of that is a video stream. See, for example, oyc.yale.edu, which provides video of lectures (and even transcripts), problem sets, tests and other materials. I think that a bandwidth divide just promotes a luxury divide (something acceptable in capitalism) and does not make the divide larger by affecting other divides, such as education.
Or help the digital divide for that matter.
The real divide is between populated areas and rural areas and giving people in cities another better option isn't going to change that one way or the other.
Perhaps the problem is that poor people couldn't order it until they can spring for a new computer !!!
That pricing page locked up XP/IE8. Not even the usual reload and/or error, just stuck. Getting them to spring for a new computer AND new internet service might be too much. Exactly what new groundbreaking tech is required to display a price list?
Guess I'll have to find my login here so I can use chrome, tried as AC and um...no.
An old joke about neighbor envy ...
An angel in disguise visit a peasant's hut and is brought inside. The peasant shares what little food he has, and lets him sleep under his only blanket.
The next morning the angel reveals himself and tells the peasant he will be rewarded, but the catch is, whatever the peasant asks for, his neighbor will get double.
The peasant, agonized, thinks on it all day. Finally he tells the angel "I ask that you put out one of my eyes".
I went to school in the 80's and early 90's. Wouldn't it be humorous if I received a better education using old fashioned books, good teachers, a reasonable class size, etc.. than most Fancy Pants McMillenials who had a cool iPad with animations and whatnot?
These people are fucking crazy. By all means use technology judiciously in education, but pretending it is the end-all be-all of educational quality is god damned idiotic.
what are we making 100 times faster students? You can only consume so much then the rest is waste.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
The Google vision of the internet is one in which you don't own your own home, so to speak. If you don't have your own address and run your own servers, you can't take advantage of a lot of what the Internet has to offer. Since in their view everyone is a consumer and since there's really only so much porn you can masturbate to before you want to take a nap, I don't really see there being a digital divide anywhere other than between those who can afford a computer and can masturbate at home and those who can't, and have to masturbate at the library.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I hope Google brings this digital divide to my town next.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Another case of the unintended consequences of good intentions?
No, another case of natural consequences of the distribution of a limited resource in a naturally un-equal world.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Because google offers their downgraded service for free, or you can upgrade it by paying a monthly cost for a lot faster, that must obviously be better for poor people who currently only have the choice of no internet or to pay for internet.
That's grade A logic to me.
Because the last time i checked, something is better than nothing.
Doesn't matter to me whether my ISP is feeding me data at 50 mbs or 100 gbs. 50mbs works just fine and handles my every need. Unless I am trying to watch 4 movies at once or somesuch as that. I suppose the average mormon family, with 2 adults and 6 or more kids, might need faster speeds, but I just don't believe the average household needs 100 gbs.
Internet access is NOT a right....
No, but it is (arguably) a public good.
If we always worry about leaving anyone behind, we can never truly move ahead.
People should be free to try to do new things without having to accommodate everyone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Will it make the Verizon or Comcast dividends (if any) worse.. Else as other posters have said, speed != learning ability. Last I recall, the dot-com boom happened on dial-up.
Internet to your dwelling is not a right. If your neighborhood doesn't have Google fiber and it means that much to you, move to a neighborhood that does.
If you're living in the fourties and have billions dollars for your staff and expenses I'm sure you can have secretaries dealing with mail, paper stuff, appointments and meeting schedules ; sending telegraphic "e-mail" through teletypes ; shuffling blueprints and stuff around by car.
Today you can't afford a secretary so you need software and an internet connection instead =)
Google has really been on my shit list lately. I live near Silicon Valley and I am not proud of what these most visible companies are doing to people's lives. It doesn't really surprise me that Google's efforts to get there first with fast fiber would leave poorer areas in the dark, literally. Market capture and control of users, and if the article is correct, elitism, is part and parcel of the result of Google's business strategy over the past few years. Not that I have any sympathy for ISPs in general who behave like utility monopolies. A solution might be to steal bandwith form wireless carriers for public and free access. I also think that low power wireless with store and forward mesh networks is a possible solution. Low power solutions would still be legal under the terms which FCC has allocated bandwidth, especially if a free speech challenge is made to ISP control of bandwidth.
The whole point is that people need to be thinking of disruptive ways to prevent single vendor control of things at many levels beginning with Microsoft's illegal domination of the desktop and but also extending to Google's violation of open standards to create captive platforms. This extends to the undoing of the Internet, particularly for its control or chock points favored by governments who spy and businesses who create monopolies. We may have to trade some convienence and speed of access to get our freedom and privacy back. The bad guys always have the seduction of laziness to lure people in. If people want their power back they will have to make the effort to understand the tools they use better. The greedy people who run businesses know that this the the control they have ove most people, their lack of understanding. Rebellion creates an incentive for more resourcefulness and the impetus to find alternatives.
Exactly. And the goal of educational websites is to promote education amongst the underserved -- targeting the "haves" is kinda counter to their state goals. And if any of the popular education sites misses that point, then in theory the "invisible hand" should guide the smarter education sites to offer low bandwidth versions (and this would quickly be reflected in enrollment counts).
The most idiotic argument I've heard on an article in a while.... The not smarter, but not less smarter either, will benefit with more smarter people. A better decision on part of one individual on a society will probably benefit the whole society. I prefer much more to be a idiot on a sea of geniuses then a idiot in a sea of my pairs.
How many secretaries and how many hours a day does it take to match the efficiency of a 56kbps modem?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
We wish that pricing was the whole problem but it's not. 1) Google Fiber is out of reach for most renters, especially those in low income housing. They require landlords to foot the bill for $300 per unit. And, they won't run fiber to a multi-family unit unless someone pays for 100% of the apartments. Think any Section 8 landlords are going to do that? Absolutely not. 2) Their terms of use specifically state that fiber drops can be used by only one household. Sharing connections to multiple families using Wi-Fi, which would be very economical, isn't allowed. So Connecting for Good, which is referenced in the article,became a nonprofit wireless ISP in order to fill that gap - http://www.connectingforgood.o...