Rural Mississippi: The Land That the Internet Era Forgot (wired.com)

New submitter lesedeuezghe writes with this Wired story by W. Ralph Eubanks about the efforts of the Extension Service to broaden its scope from mostly agricultural information to bringing broadband to rural communities. "In sleepy public libraries, at Rotary breakfasts, and in town halls, he [Assistant Extension Professor Roberto Gallardo] gives PowerPoint presentations that seem calculated to fill rural audiences with healthy awe for the technological sublime. Rather than go easy, he starts with a rapid-fire primer on heady concepts like the Internet of Things, the mobile revolution, cloud computing, digital disruption, and the perpetual increase of processing power. ('It’s exponential, folks. It’s just growing and growing.') The upshot: If you don’t at least try to think digitally, the digital economy will disrupt you. It will drain your town of young people and leave your business in the dust. Then he switches gears and tries to stiffen their spines with confidence. Start a website, he’ll say. Get on social media. See if the place where you live can finally get a high-speed broadband connection—a baseline point of entry into modern economic and civic life."

Comments

Re:Not the typical hitpiece

[KGIII]

You've never been to Mississippi, have you? Oh, man... I stopped in the Natchez delta region once, about four years ago, and sat down at a restaurant. Three days later, I finally waddled down to the riverboat casino and took a nap. See, Jackson was a dry county so I more than made up for it by staying right across the street and buying booze and walking back across the street. Which is how I ended up going the wrong way and getting to Natchez. I think I spent like another week in that casino and it was one of the few times in my life that I've managed to put on weight. I didn't keep it...

Anyhow, man... They feed you something special. I also learned when a pee-can becomes a peh-khan. When it finds its way into a pie. The music was awesome, the people were awesome, the food was awesome, and they tell me I had a good time. No, I don't think we should unleash the internet on these folks. They deserve better. Also, I lost my hat. :/