Gordon says broadband should run like water
Posted in All posts, Learning, New Technologies
Gordon Brown made a speech in January anticipating the publication this afternoon of Lord Stephen Carter’s ‘Digital Britain’, in which he said that broadband should run like water or electricity which most of us reading this would find hard to dispute.
The report might be one of those ‘good reads’ that either changes all our lives, or just documents our lives. Certainly there are going to be weighty pronouncements about us all being wired to superfast broadband by 2012 – but, the question, as ever, on our lips, is will millions of older people suddenly get involved just because the technology is ‘on tap’.
The report is going to be all about how we now and in the near future communicate with each other and what on earth we as a nation are going to do about minor (!) details like how we’re going to finance it all, and how we’re going to include the dis-included, dis-inclined and just generally, for one reason or another, ‘left out’.
One thing is for sure, just as the roads and the railways changed our landscape, and our family lives, for ever, so the information superhighway is shaping our every daily detail from our social habits to our shopping.
There’s loads out there on the BBC and all the media, right now and they’ll be covering it all as it’s announced this afternoon. So watch out for reports on the news. For those who are feeling totally modern today, you could do worse than follow Steve Busfield of The Guardian on his blog, as a) you can comment b) it segments the issues nicely and c) it gets updated minute by minute if you click the ‘on’ button for this feature. So you’ll be super-informed, super-fast and, if you’ve got wireless broadband that extends to the garden, you could spend quality time with things that can’t be rushed, at the same time. Oh, some technology is bliss.
Please add in any links, thoughts, observations to this blog, as you hear about them, see them…we’d be grateful.
June 16th, 2009 gilladams | 5 Comments »
June 16th, 2009 at 11:16 am
You can read more from Gordon here
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6506136.ece
Why can’t I feel excited about this?!!
June 16th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
BTW here is the Final Report
http://www.dcms.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx
and here is something that made us laugh
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/16/carter_live_twitter/
June 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Best concise news feed re #digitalbritain on Twitter from Bill Thompson http://www.twitter.com/billt (IMHO)
June 17th, 2009 at 8:40 am
‘Fast Lane Foxy’ Martha Lane Fox (founder of Last Minute Dot com) is going to help the 17million not yet online to become online citizens (includes our 10 million older people). Let’s hope she lives up to her nickname:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/5551647/Martha-Lane-Fox-appointed-Britains-Digital-Champion.html
June 17th, 2009 at 10:11 am
And the centrepiece of the report – or at least the bit that’s getting most of the headlines – is a “broadband levy” (aka stealth tax)on telephone connections. So the millions of people, most of them older and poorer, who do not want to use the Internet, will be paying to give others broadband.
Why not make the ISPs, who will be the beneficiaries of the extended infrastructure, include the levy in their charges? Then at least it will be paid by those who use the technology.
Or is that too simple for the likes of Lord Carter?