The Realist Idealist

Yesterday, I got sent a press release about the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based organization I’d never heard of dedicated to preserving a record of the Internet and to increasing access to the Internet. This week, the little known organization began offering free internet service to public housing projects at speeds far greater than any other city resident can receive. (!!!)

This digital divide issue is one that has bothered me for some time, though I certainly haven’t known how to solve the problem or even who exactly was working on it. While the internet makes possible so many new avenues to public service, dialogue, and civic engagement, it has thus far done so almost entirely for those privileged enough to afford broadband internet access.

This was a particularly stark point during the YouTube Debates several months ago when the concept of equal access to conversation/questions with the presidential hopefuls was finally a reality, however equal access was/is still not real. There was a call out to those with a video camera and high speed internet to help those without: “Equalize the CNN/YouTube Debate!,” but there is of course no substitute for truly equal access.

What makes the project of the Internet Archive even more unique is that the low-income apartments will not just be connected to the internet, and to the educational resources at the Internet Archive, but they will get that connectivity at 100 megabits per second for free.

Let me say that again. 100 freakin’ Mb/s …FREE! WAY faster than service offered by the telephone companies that deliver to places like my home and office (usually between 1 and 6 Mb/s).

The residents can instantly view DVD-quality videos of the thousands of lectures and other educational information from the Internet Archive’s collections, as well as get traditional internet access. (which, yes, does also mean they have ultra high speed access to porn, but hey, this is an age of open information, ideas, and umm…creative content

The Internet Archive is able to achieve this high speed by connecting the San Francisco municipal fiber optic network, which runs through the public housing developments, to an Archive switching center, which then of course connects to the Internet.

As most cities don’t rest directly on top of a fiber optic backbone like San Francisco, replicating the service (I’m assuming) would be difficult. That said, though, I do believe projects like this shine a bright light on how to move forward with solutions in other locations.

Hats off (and thrown in the air) to a the Internet Archive for a wonderfully innovative approach to solving a pressing societal problem.