A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Ubiquitous High-Speed Broadband

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A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Ubiquitous High-Speed Broadband

6/1/2005

By Terry Calhoun

A group of higher education associations has called for major changes in federal policy toward Internet communications. “The main thing that we’re calling for here is an advance telecommunications policy that looks 15 years out rather than one that rearranges the deck chairs. A more advanced Internet is really what is required, and that should be the goal.”

And it should be very, very fast; it should be open to everyone and to all lawful content; state and local governments should continue to be able to operate their own broadband networks; and the federal government should pour more money into new network technologies to get us there.

How could I possibly disagree?

In fact, it’s about time. In the past 10 years, what was initially a niche communications service is fast becoming the core communications service. It has reached a level with other “equal access and affordability” services, such as telephones, roads, and television. That’s a big change, and very little in our laws reflect that. And unlike other important things currently being left undone due to their highly-politicized nature–-Social Security, healthcare, etc.–-access to information is not seen by most as part of the culture wars.

It should be clear to just about anyone by now that the Internet, in all of its near-future permutations, is the primary communications network. And not just in the old sense of communications, either, as things that are now getting “communicated” are things we didn’t used to think of as communications at all. When I served in Vietnam in the late 1960s, a letter to or from home might have had a photograph in it. Now, such a communication is done by email and the images are digital and can include entire movies.

Who knows what’s coming in 15 years? With molecular assemblers using nanotechnology, it could well be that my mother’s kitchen can send a recipe to my kitchen and I can come home to a well-cooked meal which was whipped up from disassembled molecules out of my recycling bin. Some might think that is a bit far-fetched for 15 years; but it’s clearly possible in 30.

As Michael Dolence and Donald M. Norris put it in 1995, “Now is the time to think strategically and position institutions to consider pathways to transformation and act on them, not to engage in preemptive debate. This d'es not mean we lack evidence to support our assessments of current conditions and future opportunities. Precisely the opposite is true. But our experience with envisioning and developing Information Age tools suggests that if we wait until the vision is completely clear and risks have vanished, the opportunities will have passed, as well.” (Dolence and Norris, 1995, Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century)

So this new coalition of higher education associations, calling itself Broadband for Higher Education, is planning to use the influence of college and university presidents on local and regional decision makers to influence Congress as it takes on the first major changes in telecommunications laws since 1996. Can a Congress that seems to most enjoy culture war diversions wend its way through major telecommunications laws changes without politicizing things?