Greg Goldman, the CEO of Wireless Philadelphia, defends cities’ pursuit of digital inclusion in an op-ed piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer. He praises EarthLink for the risks it took in partnering with his organization and urges that “the long-term potential of these initiatives not be sacrificed to short-term objectives.”Greg Goldman, the CEO of Wireless Philadelphia, defends cities’ pursuit of digital inclusion in an op-ed piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer. He praises EarthLink for the risks it took in partnering with his organization and urges that “the long-term potential of these initiatives not be sacrificed to short-term objectives.” Greg highlights the success of Wireless Philadelphia’s digital inclusion program in the distribution of 300 refurbished computers to low-income families in the city.
In a comment on the piece, Glenn Fleishman at Wi-Fi Networking News looked for the effect of the distribution and asked “In what ways are their lives better?” That’s certainly a fair question at some point but I’m not sure we’ve reached the point just yet.
Wireless Philadelphia only began delivering free computers to low-income families in June and just recently Wireless Philadelphia received a grant from the William Penn Foundation to study the impact. I remember back to the dark ages when I got my first computer. It took me some number of days to learn the basics of word processing, several weeks to master it (and I was pounding a keyboard eight hours a day as a newspaper reporter then). Spreadsheets remained a mystery for quite some time and the Internet took a bit of exploration before I could get my mind around what to do with the tsunamis of information that came in on every search. It won’t be until the recipients of these computers and free broadband service have learned some basic research techniques, begun using e-mail, identified online support groups and maybe dabbled in e-commerce that we’ll see the impact on their lives.
Glenn’s other counterpoint to Goldman is more spot on. He writes: “Since networks now won’t be built by using a money cannon to shoot dollar bills at utility poles, cities may need to step up to the plate if there’s a translatable benefit to society.”
A bit snarky but it’s true that cities pegging social agendas to their muni wireless networks found in EarthLink a partner that was so eager to carve out major markets, it was willing to subsidize public objectives with its own money. It was a rare and unusual flip-flop in the free market model: public entities on the private dole. The problem with that is a community’s own sociel and economic goals end up tied to its partner’s internal financial priorities and the priorities of its stockholders. Munis do need to step up and be more active and willing participants in their futures. Case in point: Granbury, Texas.
Click here to read Greg’s opinion piece.
Click here for Glenn’s take.
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