I’ve been reading Jeffery Sach’s book Common wealth and I’ve learnt the following; smart people are more likely then dumb people to contribute to society and Information leads to intelligence. So I believe that the internet is a source of information and so the internet should be available to anyone.
One of my favourite stories from my university days is how me and my buddy split cable internet over our apartments – him on the 12th floor me on the 11th and us being one apartment over from each other it was no small feet. That was how badly we wanted high speed internet access. It made us more connected, made us more knowledgeable and the fact that we’re both in the technology industry today probably has a lot to do with throwing the cable over the balconies in our apartment building about ten years ago. Okay, he was studying math and had courses in computer science so not a huge leap for him, but I was studying health sciences for pete’s sake!
The government funds libraries, it subsidizes higher education – in some countries footing the whole bill for it, and it funds a lot of stuff to ensure that its population are able to contribute to society so why not funding free wifi access for all taxpayers? It’s been trialled in a couple of councils here in the UK, as well as in Philadelphia and other cities. Sure the providers have an issue as their making lots of money on it. But screw ‘em, they’re complaining about data charges pipes and infrastructure so governments should squeeze them out of them out.
Personally, I think this could have huge impact in the developing world. Imagine if every villager had the ability to access the internet, perhaps through a project like the one laptop per child to ensure that every village had an access point, I truly think people could be better informed, make better decisions and thus contribute to society more.
