A little over a year ago, Helen De Michiel in an editorial to the SF Chronicle suggested something very interesting in light of today’s economy and the technological ranking of the US among other countries of the world: What this country needs, she claimed, is a “Digital New Deal.” So, what exactly did she mean by this?
She founded this proposal on the fact that, although one of the world’s wealthiest countries, the US ranked surprisingly low in its Internet infrastructures. We ranked “4th – in network readiness to compete globally” and only “24th among industrialized nations in broadband.” This was shocking to me; and I thought – How is this possible — We are in the Silicon Valley, the home of nearly every other Internet start up, right?
To change this, she suggests that we need to encourage the youth of this country to engage widely in an effort to create a “new online public sphere” or a national public media depository, if you will. Thus, after graduating college they can become part of the solution to create an even greater and larger social networking/information exchanging/fully- connected online community. This in turn will create jobs, bolster the sharing of ideas and innovation, and create a new generation of broadband access. This can be achieved by teaming with more experienced specialists in the area, and will hopefully also bolster community-building and multi-generational participation.
De Michiel invited us to “Imagine after the 2008 election, a swarm of arts and culture leaders, public interest and policy advocates, energetic young software developers, philanthropists, media reformers and forward-thinking politicians banding together in a broad coalition to construct this Digital New Deal.”
“Creative potential will be unleashed through new media and social networking pathways in ways we have never experienced, influencing where we live and how we work.”
With Twitter, the iPhone & its many apps on the App Store, among other applications to do what we want in this realm…perhaps we are getting there!
- quotes copyright SF Chronicle, 2008
(To read De Michiel’s full OpEd, go to www.sfgate.com, Opinion, & search archives: “Digital New Deal” -or- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/11/EDJU103F1U.DTL)
Leave a Reply