Digital Divisions

The digital New Deal

The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting op-ed up on their website about a Digital New Deal. With a recession and a lot of young people coming of age having used the Internet for most of their lives, the author, Helen De Michiel, argues that the government should start an online public works program. The program would put savvy young ‘millennials’ to work building a public commons, kind of a super-social networking site, commercial-free and open to all.

This sounds like an interesting idea, especially with an impending recession that some have said will much worse than what we’ve seen in a while.

There is a response to the article at PBS’s Mediashift Idea Lab that brings up the most important issues of a kind of Digital New Deal, stuff that was not addressed in first article: broadband penetration and willingness of people to participate.

I think the priority of a Digital New Deal should lie in doing something about these issues. Like the effort to provide electricity and telephone service to rural areas in the ’30s and ’40s, we need a serious push to wire rural areas and neglected parts of urban areas for Internet access. Connected Nation, Inc.,, and not-for-profit that promotes broadband adoption and computer literacy, released a report that said that increasing broadband availability would add an extra $134 billion to the economy every year. That’s economic stimulus.

I think once this is done, we can discuss the possibility starting an online digital public works project. There is much that could be done with the Internet to improve our society and government, but we can’t leave people behind because they can’t get or afford access to it.