This afternoon I got an e-mail request from Care2 - 'the global network for organizations and people who Care2 make a difference' - to 'take sixty seconds and test your high speed internet IQ.'
Thinking I knew something about this - I've only been ranting for decades, seems like, that Appalachia was woefully under-served when it came to internet access and accessibility - I clicked on the link and took the quiz. Follow me to find out how dumb I was. (And please note the 'meta'-tag because there's a lesson here about Daily Kos and the Democratic Party's reliance on the internet.)
Last fall, in a top comments diary, I opined on this topic:
Way back in the good old days, 1994 or so, while in graduate school, I learned from some fellow grad students to do simple web-pages - well, to be honest, they were ALL simple then, weren't they? My 'fellows' were studying cultural geography while I studied history but we all worked as GRAs in the same policy research center. I recall many pseudo-theoretical discussions about the potential for the Internet to radically transform the eco-social landscape of American society, especially Appalachia.
In a unabashedly top-comment moment one night, I remember struggling to explain the vast disconnect that I saw between ACCESS TO the Internet and ACCESSIBILITY TO the Internet for most Appalachian people who lived along the 'Net's inevitable potholes - and I popped off like this:
[The 'Net is] like hip pockets on a boar hog - ya' gotta be able to get close enough to PICK the pockets to find out if there is anything inside. You know? It gives the illusion of having utility but may prove, upon closer inspection, to be purely ornamental. It's got to be worth the struggle.
Translation: If you ain't got a computer AND/OR you can't get to the community college library to use a computer 'cause Granny bought her blood pressure medicine this month instead of getting a new transmission for the truck AND/OR the phone company ain't NEVER going to bring broadband to your aging coal camp 'cause the dominant landowner (coal company) wants you and all your kin to git out so they can remove the mountain behind your mama's kitchen garden - THEN your 'access' might not exactly be 'accessible' in the same sense that we were getting in our T1-line ivory tower.
Hah! I thought I knew something about this subject but after taking the quiz at Care2, I found out how little I did know. All but one of my answers were wrong. The biggest pothole in the global information technology realm is US - yes, the United States.
But wait - there's more bad news!
SPOILER ALERT!
STOP HERE IF YOU WANT TO GO TAKE THE QUIZ FIRST.
DO NOT READ FURTHER.
SPOILER ALERT!
On the first question, I guessed that the US would rank about 7th for high speed internet distribution. WRONG!
The United States has fallen to 16th place for high speed internet penetration, behind countries like Japan, South Korea, Iceland, and Canada. As the country that invented the internet, it's embarrassing that we've fallen so far behind our competitors.
Japan, Iceland, Germany, Canada, Sweden, Finland, and South Korea all have:
higher median connection speeds than the United States. While the median speed in the United States is around 2 mbps, Japan's is over 30 times faster at 60 mbps. In South Korea the median speed is 45.60 mbps. Even Canada's median download speed is almost four times faster than the United States.
And how about the price? Here's their question: "In the U.S. consumers pay about $40-$50 a month for cable modem connections that reach 3-5 mbps per second. How much do consumers in Japan pay for connections that are more than five times faster than the fastest cable connections in the United States." I took a guess and got it right:
Customers in Japan pay about $22 a month (about half of what consumers in the United States pay) for internet speeds that are more than twice as fast. The contrast is even more striking when expressed in terms of cost per 100 kbps. The top speed generally available in Japan is 51 mbps at a cost of $0.06 per 100 kbps. The top speed generally available in the U.S. is 6 mbps available at a cost of $0.72 per 100 kbps.
I took another guess but missed the next question as well:
"High costs and poor broadband deployment to rural and lower income areas have created a digital divide in our country. More than 62% of households with incomes over $100,000 subscribe to high speed broad band at home. What percentage of households with incomes below $30,000 subscribe to high speed broadband?"
The situation is even worse than I thought:
Just 11% of U.S. households with incomes below $30,000 a year have high speed internet access in the home, compared to 62% of households with incomes over $100,000 a year. Millions of Americans - especially in rural and low-income urban areas - do not have access to high speed broadband because it does not yet pay for providers to invest in these areas.
So what's my point, you ask? We need to shut off our damned computers once and a while and get out among those who don't have access to the 'tubes. There are many, many potential voters who aren't getting any of our messages, who will never read a DKos diary, who don't give a flying fig about TU-status. And they're not getting our insider knowledge of the Democratic Party either. They're too busy trying to stay alive, pay the electric bill, buy gas, feed their children, and make do with less and less.
I'm fed up with talk about the poor 'middle' class. Guess what, folks? You can't have a middle without something lower. The great USofA must have a permanent under-class so that some people can comfort themselves that they ain't hit bottom yet. See?! Look at Appalachia! That's the bottom for white folks and that's not us!
I've received dozens and dozens of fund-raising e-mails in the last week from Democratic candidates and/or Democratic campaign committees. But I've also gotten important messages from Ted Kennedy and other Democratic leaders about Republican mis-steps and obstructionism - stories that aren't getting picked up by television, radio, and newspapers that serve rural areas. The 'natural' constituency for the Democratic Party - rural and urban poor people - aren't getting the same news that I get, thanks to my computer and marginal ability to keep the broadband bill paid.
And we wonder why so many think that Faux-News and Rush Limbaugh must be 'okay' - they're not watching, hearing, or reading anything contradictory.
What's the solution? Is there one? Will we just keep talking amongst ourselves? Are any of the candidates willing to promise broadband AND a decent computer for every American?
The one that does will get my vote.
Unless it's a Republican, that is.
Even I - an Appalachian native and thus accustomed to lower-class status - can't sink that low.
Always the mountains,
va dare