It's an open question whether if everyone in the US had equal, cheap or free access to broadband, we'd still find a big enough majority of the kind that was dumb enough to turn its future over to neoconservatives.
Since the late '80's -- and maybe well before that -- there have been sounds in the background as people try to put together a fairer and more even distribution of access to media. One of those projects was chaired by Al Gore and I was lucky enough to be friends with someone working with him, so I knew some of the details.
Yes, that was the Al Gore who was tarred for "boasting" he'd "invented" the internet when in fact he was working his butt off to make the internet available to all regardless of where they lived or what their economic circumstances were. Dangerous stuff and particularly dangerous to people who want to a) control information and b) seize the profits from the distribution of information. Not doing something about it may contribute to problems in the area of public safety -- that "interoperability" problem everyone was talking about after 9/11.
If this problem and finding a solution to it gets you excited, you'll be very, very turned on by this discussion at the New America Foundation. Here are people who are doing it!
You can listen, or you can watch, here.
NB: The New America Foundation has been providing great programs for a while. There's been a change: these programs are now much, much more accessible for those of us who are among the "rural deprived" -- which is to say, those of us who rely on our computer video and on audio sources for good stuff like the program I link to today. The new website at NAF is splendid. The whole thing works very well.
