Broadband First, Then Health and Education

Geoff Daily, a blogger for AppRising, has some advice for the Obama administration on what priorities it should tackle first. As quoted in a Dec. 3 article on the Web site operated by the alternative newspaper The Independent Weekly, based in Durham, N.C., Daily said:

Instead of thinking health care, business, government, education, broadband, we need to put broadband first and say, we've got issues, how can we solve them through connectivity?

The argument is that broadband will create jobs by building the nation's infrastructure needed to support business growth. The problem is that it is still only available in urban and suburban areas.

Why is broadband important? According to John Horrigan, an associate director of research at the Pew Internet and American Life Project in Washington:

Let's go through some Internet activities to illustrate what I mean by these two phases of what [it] means to be connected.

I. Health & medical information online

II. News on the internet

III. Science news and information

IV. Politics

V. Getting help with major life decisions

We see that, in time, people are being drawn into richer engagement with the Internet. This sets the stage for the next phase of what it means to be connected to the Internet.

For those with broadband, "The Internet will become, for many people, a seamless part of their lives," Horrigan concludes.