Steven Lacey has his say about Charleston’s failure to get behind real technological innovation, especially something as simple as providing wireless access throughout the city. We’re not alone. The U.S. is quickly falling behind. It’s so bad that Estonia is beating us. I know. What country? That’s the point. —J.S.
. . . . .
By now, everyone is aware that efforts to provide the city with free wireless access have gone the way of the dodo. Despite plans to blanket the entire peninsula in a wireless signal, the cost of hardware eventually made most involved pull the plug.
In a few years it will be in instances like this — when we wonder why we’re falling so far behind the rest of the country technologically — that we’ll be able to point the finger of inferiority and say, “Yep, that’s when it happened, right there.”
Full story . . .
One Comment
If we really set up free wi-fi infrastructure, it would be inevitably co-opted be consumer networks like Skype and iPhone backpackers consuming bandwidth like bit-snorting warthogs.
The money to wi-fi a tech-medieval nostalgic theme-park like Charleston would be better used setting up public terminals and (most importantly) computer education classes at libraries and other public facilities.
Wi-fi is a panacea for nothing other than giving people who are already connected a cheap (and anonyomous, IP free) way of doing what they already do.
The internet is much greater than youtube videos of cats spinning on ceiling fans and porn. There are geographically and culturally isolated groups of people who are starving for some kind of connection beyond what they get in their daily lives.
Keep in mind that public education is actually working. Kids are growing up aware of a world beyond whatever environment they come from.
Giving those kids a continuing access to the taste of a world they got in school is valuable.
But they need actual computers to see it.
Wi-fi is the new class division. If you can get it, you already have the computer.
I see no widespread benefit in making Charleston a wireless city.
Also, in case you’re interested in what’s happened to the world’s most connected country, check out this Wired article where Russian hackers crippled Estonia’s infrastructure.