Ben Scott, Free Press

The internet. Not since the printing press has social life been changed so profoundly by an information technology. Few of us understand exactly how it works, but we all know we have to have it. Our homes have to have it. Our schools have to have it. Our businesses have to have it. Every elected official from the dog-catcher to the President is touting the benefits of universal access to high-speed internet service. Never mind that the dot.com bubble burst in 2001, everyone seems to accept with an eerie unanimity (in these polarized times) that the future of civilization is located somewhere on the information superhighway.

Creating new metaphors for the digital divide and how we're going to bridge it has become a national pastime among public interest nonprofits (including my own). But when it comes to actually delivering the promises of broadband, we haven't been nearly as successful. Compared to the rest of the developed world, our performance has been downright pathetic. Since 2000 the United States has slipped from number three to number 16 in the world rankings of the leading broadband nations. We pay between ten and 50 times more for broadband than other countries. A third of U.S. households don't have internet access, and another third are stuck with dial-up. We have not yet established a national broadband policy, and we are only beginning to realize the potential for building community networks to serve community needs. But therein lies the answer to our broadband problems.

We have spent too much time focusing on only one aspect of the digital divide - availability of service. It is not enough just to make technology available. We have to find ways to encourage adoption and training, and we have to create and promote applications that matter to people and improve their quality of life. (I would quote an adage here about horses being led to water or fishing rods instead of fishing poles, but we need a 21st century analogy.) What we're after, in short, are ways to go beyond making technology available (though that is of course important) and move toward making available technology matter.

So what needs doing? How do we bring the promise of network information and communications technologies to bear and generate beneficial outcomes in such diverse places as e-government, heath care, social services, education, economic development, media, public safety, and umpteen other areas?

We need to solve three key problems. First, we need to make access to broadband technologies universally available and universally affordable. Second, we need to encourage technology adoption by pairing it with social programs and a competitive content market that deliver services, media, and applications that matter to people. Finally, we need to plan for a future that expands the capacity of our networks, fosters innovation, and treats the creation of the information superhighway as a common social good, not the fiefdom of monopolists.

One of the most promising developments is the community broadband movement. Wireless broadband provided through low-cost, high-speed, community-based networks is a relatively new idea, but it has really caught on. New wireless networks crop up across the country every day. Clouds of wireless connectivity now cover business districts in urban areas. They blanket entire towns in rural areas. We ought to have ubiquitous wireless broadband offered in every community. More community broadband will bring more community development across the board-business, schools, churches, governments... you name it.

The explosion of municipal and community wireless networks has been grand. Now our task as social organizations is to engage them and make them our networks. What makes a municipal broadband network different from one provided by a telephone or cable company is the degree to which it has a public service component at the center of its mission. This means the price of access must be kept low, the value (cost per megabit of speed) must be kept high, and access to the network must be delivered to underserved communities in a package with training and applications that make the technology matter.

Hats off to folks like One Economy and their Beehive project for pioneering this game plan. But it is one that we can duplicate in a great many sectors of society. Educators, health care providers, independent media channels, and e-government initiatives have been quick to take up the reins as well. These programs should be encouraged with public investment and philanthropic support. The internet is the first multi-point to multi-point communications system in the history of the world. It has no gatekeepers. It is a perfect commons that invites, enhances, and distributes collaborative production of social goods. That's a mouthful, but it's a beautiful thing.

Off on the horizon, we cannot lose sight of our big-picture goal. Community broadband networks are a stepping stone on the way toward building an eight-lane information super-highway that passes by all of our houses. For once traffic will be a good thing. We need to use the successes of public service technologies to promote policies that develop bigger, better network access for everyone. It's a virtuous cycle. We make better networks available. We help people learn to use and adopt them. New applications and services fill the rapidly expanding social and economic space and create more demand for availability. Before long, we will all be joined together as netizens searching the byways of cyberspace for the perfect metaphor to describe how we closed the digital divide.