A new survey, prepared by the University of Minnesota Crookston and the Center for Rural Policy and Development in St. Peter, was released this week, showing that a majority of rural Minnesotans actually have access to faster Internet connections.

But having access to and actually using are two different things.

In fact, according to the report, even though the trend toward better Internet access across rural Minnesota is improving, one in four Minnesota households, mostly older and poorer residents, have no computer at home, and are in no position to avail themselves of broadband connections even when they are available.

Growing Access

Ten years ago, only 6 percent of Minnesota's rural residents had access to faster Internet connections. By 2005 this number had risen to about 25 percent. Today, nearly two-thirds of those living in rural areas can in fact buy a fast Internet connection, could they afford it.

The Actual Divide

For rural Minnesota, it comes down to age and income as the factors that determine the digital divide.

According to the radio report, more than 80 percent of Minnesota's rural residents 55 and younger have a computer at home, compared to less than 40 percent of people who are 65 or older.

Income brackets show a similar trend, as while more than 87 percent of those making $50,000 a year or more have a computer at home, only 42 percent of those making less than $25,000 do.

Education and Finance

In order to bridge the digital gap, and bring better health care, education and business development to rural parts of not only Minnesota but other parts of rural America, the older rural population must first receive sufficient education about the Internet and broadband to see their benefit, and given that the demand is now raised, a means to actually supply these areas at an affordable rate has to be found.

Minnesota Summit

A University of Minnesota summit, organized by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and featuring FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, and focusing on rural broadband access drew a standing-room-only audience last Tuesday.

Genachowski said the challenge to closing the Internet divide in rural areas is to find a way to use the universal service fee that all telephone customers pay, to help expand broadband access.

Some smaller communities in Minnesota are getting a financial boost to help improve broadband access, in the form of federal grants.

Lac Qui Parle County was one recipient -- receiving a grant worth more than $9.6 million.

Among other things, it means 5,000 of the county's 8,000 residents will someday have access to a fiber optic Internet connection.

Access does not mean Affordable

However, again, having access to does not translate directly to affording and buying. Not only do those on the other side of the Digital Divide need to see the benefits of a broadband connection, but this connection has to be made available within the means of this public. Black fiber in the ground means nothing if no one can afford to light it.

You can lead a digital horse to water, but if he cannot afford to drink, you'd better re-think your approach.

Yes, there were still some 78 RPMs hanging around (we called them stone-plates), but for the most part they went out of style in the two decades before my arrival--although, truth be told, my parents had a stash of them in the house (full of things referred to as "Evergreens", and my first record player did have a three settings for speed: 33 1/3, 45, and 78.

Then, we're talking the 1970s now, came the cassette, and thank you so much for that, for playing LPs on the road was near impossible, whereas the great cassette was playable almost anywhere (especially on the great new little creatures called "Sony Walkman").

Somewhere in there arrived (and quickly vanished) the 8-track cassette player as well. I never owned one, nor did I own any 8-track cassettes, but I've seen pictures of them, and occasionally they've featured in some movies.

No, as for the 70s through 80s it was the compact cassette for me in its various degrees of quality. The single album cassette usually held up fine, but the double album cassettes--such as Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde"--would jam the player mechanism at the drop of hat (the tape, to play twice as much music in the same format was much thinner than regular tape).

Toward the end of the 80s arrived the Digital Audio Tape, a truly great format (and I still have a player) which recorded sound digitally, and played it back in never waning quality for as long as you'd like. It was a great technology which was headed off at the U.S. pass by legislation to protect the music industry--the thought was that these darlings were so good that they could reproduce any album with absolute fidelity, and it would carry that fidelity on through any amount of copies or generations. This was seen as a threat by the music industry, and its lobby managed to attach such an exorbitant tax on blank DAT tapes that it was often cheaper to buy the album, or the CD, for they had now begun to appear.

The DAT remained a faithful vehicle for the recording industry, but it never made it in the public market due to excessive taxes on tapes.

And yes, the CDs had begun to arrive, and here is where the music industry saw the DAT as such a threat--the CD was recorded digitally, and by grabbing the digital stream and recording them on the DAT tape, there would be a perfect copy of the CD, for a quarter of the cost (until they brought the DAT tape taxes up to make up the difference).

Okay, CDs. What a boom. I had to buy all my LPs again (for a third time), and in fact just the other month added my last CD purchase: the Complete Beatles Box Set, something I dreamed about in the early 80s, and now finally.

CDs ruled the roost through the remaining 80s, the 90s, and into the new century when the innocuous thing called mp3 reared its ugly head.

And music delivery has never been the same.

iMusic and Other mp3 Vehicles

So what brought this reminiscing about?

I just came across an interesting Rolling Stone article about Album (as in CD) sales hitting a record low last week. Set me thinking: How much of the market does mp3s have these days?

Answer: Here -- iTunes have now topped 10 billion songs sold!

That is 25% of the total music market. The remaining mp3 online outlets such as eMusic have grabbed another 11% of the music market, leaving the traditional CD with only 64% of its former glory.

End of CDs is Near

Leading me to predict that in another decade the CD as a music medium will be all but gone.

And makes me think that the inventor of the DAT recorder now feels somewhat vindicated.

According to a "The Australian" article just out, incumbent Labor is beating the fiber-to-the-home drum.

The Labor government claims it is embracing a vital technology that will do everything from improving national productivity to transforming health and education services to reducing congestion on the roads to giving small businesses and households access to a bright economic future.

Says the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, "Without this technology, we will fall behind. It's the same as saying we will export jobs to Singapore, to Korea, to Japan. Without this technology, our schoolchildren will fall behind."

The price tag? Oh, $43 billion Australian. And that will cover 93 percent of all Australian households. The remaining seven percent will be connected through a combination of wireless and satellite services, at lower, but still much improved speeds over current telephone network dial-ups.

Utopia? Well, on paper anyway. But someone will have to pay the $43 billion, of course, and that's Mr. and Mrs. Australian tax payer. And for what? Critics argue that to only benefit of speeds like this over the foreseeable future would be to allow faster high-definition movie downloads and faster computer gaming with like-minded teenagers in Estonia or Brazil.

Point, I think, well taken.

Is There A Need?

Is there in fact a productivity and life-enhancing need for 100 mbps or a full 1 gbps running all the way to the house by way of fiber?

I can only speak for myself in this instance. I am not a hospital that has to download detailed MRI scans at 500 mb a pop in seconds. I am connected via Time Warner cable at a fairly constant 10 mbps, and, honestly, as a writer and online researcher, it works pretty well for me. The slowdowns I experience from day to day are usually due to remote server congestion.

Wireless

Add to this equation the constantly growing--and improving--wireless network, which soon--at least in Australia--will deliver 42 mbps to mobile devices such as phones and pads. That's four times my current connection speed, and if it were available here today, I'd probably jump on the wireless bandwagon in a heartbeat.

Although, lest we forget, wireless will degrade (just like cable) to the degree that the number of users grow. If everybody (I mean the word literally) were to access wireless networks hoping for 42 mbps, none of them would get it, at least not today.

With fiber, apparently, not this issue.

Entertainment

Also, the critics of monster bandwidth have a point. Most bandwidth today is used by gamers and digital downloaders/sharers. That spells entertainment which we can, quite easily, do without as activities that enrich not the soul, but the peddler in gaming and entertainment wares.

Believe me, 3D movies to the home is not the answer to the world's problems.

But there's always Moore's Law in the wings. The rate of technological advancement means that the $43 billion Australian today will probably be half of that in five years' time. At perhaps twice the bandwidth.

What to do with it all?

Me, I'm primarily a reader of books. Though, I confess, I do use the Sony PRS-600 Digital Reader. A very nice piece of digital wizardry indeed.

Bridging my private digital divide.

According to a "The Australian" article just out, incumbent Labor is beating the fiber-to-the-home drum.

The Labor government claims it is embracing a vital technology that will do everything from improving national productivity to transforming health and education services to reducing congestion on the roads to giving small businesses and households access to a bright economic future.

Says the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, "Without this technology, we will fall behind. It's the same as saying we will export jobs to Singapore, to Korea, to Japan. Without this technology, our schoolchildren will fall behind."

The price tag? Oh, $43 billion Australian. And that will cover 93 percent of all Australian households. The remaining seven percent will be connected through a combination of wireless and satellite services, at lower, but still much improved speeds over current telephone network dial-ups.

Utopia? Well, on paper anyway. But someone will have to pay the $43 billion, of course, and that's Mr. and Mrs. Australian tax payer. And for what. Critics argue that to only benefit of speeds like this over the foreseeable future would be to allow faster high-definition movie downloads and faster computer gaming with like-minded teenagers in Estonia or Brazil.

Point, I think, well taken.

Is There A Need?

Is there in fact a productivity and life-enhancing need for 100 mbps or a full 1 gbs running all the way to the house?

I can only speak for myself in this instance. I am not a hospital that has to download detailed MRI scans at 500 mb a pop in seconds. I am connected via Time Warner cable at a fairly constant 10 mbps, and, honestly, as a writer and online researcher, it works pretty well for me. The slowdowns I experience from day to day are usually due to remote server congestion.

Wireless

Add to this equation the constantly growing wireless network, which soon--at least in Australia--will deliver 42 mbps to mobile devises such as phones and pads. That's four times my current connection speed, and if it were available here today, I'd probably jump on the wireless bandwagon in a heartbeat.

Although, lest we forget, wireless will degrade (just like cable) to the degree that the number of users grow. If everybody (I mean the word literally) were to access wireless networks hoping for 42 mbps, none of them would get it, at least not today.

Entertainment

Also, the critics of monster bandwidth have a point. Most bandwidth today is used by gamers and digital downloaders/sharers. That spells entertainment which we can, quite easily, do without. Activities that enrich not the soul, but the peddler in gaming and entertainment wares.

But there's always Moore's Law in the wings. The rate of technological advancement means that the $43 billion Australian today will probably be half of that in five years' time. At perhaps twice the bandwidth.

What to do with it all?

Me, I'm primarily a reader of books. Though, I confess, I do use the Sony PRS-600 Digital Reader. A very nice piece of digital wizardry indeed.

Among other things he points out that the world now has 5 Billion mobile phone subscribers--yes, that's Billion with a bee. Considering that the world population hovers around 6.86 Billion, that would mean that on paper at least, 72.8% of the world population now has a cell phone! By the way, it is predicted that by 2013-2014 the total number of mobile subscribers will catch up with the world population, yes, at least on paper.

This, of course, does give a slightly skewed picture since many subscriptions are not "unique" subscribers, i.e., someone with one phone may subscribe to two lines, or may in fact have two or more phones, each with a different subscription.

Still, that only accounts for about 1.4 Billion or so, leaving us 3.6 Billion unique mobile phone subscribers with at least on active account and phone.

That is a staggering number.

More Staggering Numbers

Another amazing statistic is that one in seven of the mobile phone owners on this planet now walk around with two mobile phones!

Now, if we compare the Industrialized world--Europe and North America--with the Emerging World (which used to be called the Developing World and before that the Third World), we find that 1.2 Billion people live in the truly Digitized Zone, while 5.6 Billion live on the other side of the Divide--Africa, Latin America, and the less wealthy portion of Asia.

The mobile phone penetration in the Emerging World is 59%, which leaves us 3.3 Billion subscriptions in those parts of the world. And that, in turn, means that we have 1.7 Billion mobile subscribers in that part of the world which boasts 1.2 Billion people, i.e., on average 1.41 mobile phones per capita (men, women, children of all ages). Another amazing statistic.

Digital Divide

Do these portable marvels help us cross the Digital Divide?

Yes and no.

Only 4% of the Emerging World's subscribers are on a 3G network providing high Internet bandwidth. The rest are on the 2G General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) grid, where surfing the Net is at best basic and over the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).

World's Largest Camera Manufacturer?

Answer: Nokia.

Nokia--this incidental camera manufacturer--now boasts over 1 Billion active camera users. That is more cameras than the entire camera industry (both film and digital) has shipped since its inception 150 years ago.

Also, Nokia is getting serious about pics, including Carl Zeiss optics in its new N8 line and providing 12 megapixels technology--blurring the line between the dedicated "stand-alone" camera and the multi-function camera/phone instrument.

The Bridge

While the Emerging World (the other side of the Digital Divide) is still living on 2G and hand-me-downs (300 Million of all cell phones in use there are second hand sets), as 3G service spreads, so will the ability to properly access the Internet, and with every such access, the bridge across the gulf gains in size and distance.

Stay tuned.

The IBM 360 mainframe used a ferrite core memory, which in this case consisted of 256K x 8 = roughly 2 Million little magnetic rings (one for each bit, and 8 bits to a byte) each with three strands of wire threaded through it, one to supply a positive charge ( = 1) and one to supply a negative charge ( = 0) and a third strand to detect the charge of the ring, i.e., to read it as 1 or 0. Two Million of these little guys (oh, yes, they were definitely large enough to see and hold and handle, hence a small city block).

The other day I bought a small SD card (small enough to swallow, actually) which can store 8 GB of data. That is 32,000 times more storage capacity than the RAM of the 1960s. And that is a scary thought--and a good example of Moore's law in practice (i.e., the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years--while the cost has roughly halved).

The above is just to put things in perspective.

Today, I came across an article by Amy Gahran discussing a just released $150 tablet, and its potential impact on bridging the digital divide. And she makes a good point, at these prices for basic net access and computing functionality, even those portions of society that has so far refused to look in the digital direction might be tempted to give it a spin.

The problem, of course, is that Wi-Fi access is not ubiquitous, and if you're in the middle of nowhere (i.e., not in a Starbucks, airport, or work environment) all you have now is a non-inexpensive digital note-book, and perhaps e-reader. But given that Wi-Fi is spreading by leaps and bounds--the City of Portland, OR, for one, has implemented free Wi-Fi downtown, and other cities are sure to follow suite--the inexpensive table might very well be the hardware that will allow the digital divide to be bridged.

The tablet Ms. Gahran talks about is not as fancy as an iPad, but it's far more affordable: Kmart's July 25 circular advertised a 7-inch tablet by Augen running the Android operating system; the GenTouch78 is on sale through July 31 for $149.99.

Fact is, K-Mart took so many orders they had to start giving out rain checks.

Other tablets in the same category include a China made HiVision, a company not exactly known around the world. That, however, could change since these little (7-inch) tablets look to be selling for around $100 each.

They are running Android of course, and have an 800×480 7 inch touch screen. The processor is a Samsung 800MHz ARM11, and it has 2GB of storage, along with 256MB of RAM for processing needs--that 1,000 times more than my old IBM 360. Wi-Fi comes standard, and you can also add GPS and other USB peripherals. Battery life is estimated at around 6 hours.

It is not certain whether these little guys will make it to our shores yet.

Then there's the 8 GB zenPad, another Android 1.6 toting 5″ screen tablet. The best part about this device is that it is available in this country, today, for $155 (with the fully spec'd 3G and GPS for $210) with $25 shipping. At that price it seems that a device like this could almost classify itself as an impulse buy.

You can get the entire spec rundown on Enso's site, but here are some of the important ones:

·         5-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen touchscreen display (no word on capacitive or resistive)

·         Google Android 1.6 w/ Android Market

·         Samsung ARM based 533/667MHz processor

·         1GB ROM, 8GB MicrosSD, dedicated 256MB RAM

·         Standard headphone jack, microSD card slot, and on/off, sleep/wake hardware buttons

·         Estimated 6 hour battery life with straight audio, video, or back-light on

These specs are pretty standard, but the price is not. It's a lot of computing for the buck.

The real story is probably that these are but a few examples of what some expect to be a flood of inexpensive tablet announcement, which could indeed work to bridge the digital gap in a way we hadn't really foreseen.

Stay tuned.

Traditionally, the Digital Divide is fostered by the inability--both financially and ethnically--of minority communities to keep up with digital inroads, such as Facebook, Twitter, and other widely accepted applications.

Today, in an interview with Craig Watkins, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who has spent over 10 years studying young people's digital behavior, we learn that the traditional assumption may be premature.

The traditional divide, says Mr. Watkins, stems from the fact that "black and Latino youth are more likely to live in households where broadband Internet is not available."

This of course prevents these minority kids to do, online, what they would like to do; things like watching videos, playing games, and interact with friends.

Enter mobile devices, such as iPhones and other digital phones, which then become, as Mr. Watkins puts it, an "alternative gateway to those kinds of activities." Also, he adds, "Mobile device gives them more privacy, gives them more control over what they like to do with their Internet lives."

This, according to Mr. Watkins, is not necessarily a good thing. "There are certain consequences that we certainly need to be aware of and able to address. And so one of the negative things that has to be considered is, you know, how are young black and Latinos using their mobile devices? Are they using them primarily and much of the data suggests that they are using them primarily to interact with their friends, to listen to music, to play games."

Bottom line, according the Mr. Watkins' studies, seems to be that minority mobile users only use their digital devices for games, entertainment, and socializing--not for educational or civic activities.

Not that the more affluent and digitally connected sections of the population behave much better over their mobile networks, but, Mr. Watkins points out, these youth also have broadband connections at home, where they can access educational and other sites easily, and often do. The mobile minority has no such broadband avenue to travel, and so never really employ their digital connections for educational purposes.

"Given that the mobile device is something that's considered more personal, something more social, something more entertainment driven, when you don't have access to other means of the Internet, other means of a sort of digital media environment, I think it does create limited opportunities for black and Latino youth who are going online primarily via their mobile device."

"And," he adds, "I could maybe make one other point. I think what's also happening is that black and Latino youth are going online at a time where if they're living in households without laptops, without computers, that oftentimes means that maybe their parents or their guardians aren't as active online as they possibly could be."

This, Mr. Watkins suggests, drives another digital wedge between parents and children in minority households, where the kids spend many unsupervised hours online over their mobiles engaged in activities such as Facebook that their parents have not even heard about.

Food for thought.

Among a plethora of praises for these devices, only one cautionary voice is raised, that of poet and critic Dana Giola, a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. "Reading well," he says, "is like playing the piano or the violin. It is a high-level cognitive ability that requires long-term practice. I worry that those mechanisms in our culture that used to take a child and have him or her learn more words and more complex syntax are breaking down."

I, for one, wholly agree.

While surveying a non-fiction topic on an electronic device that offers video illustrations, online links--at times including links to the author, community access, and other associated paths of exploration can be fruitful and educational; however, when it comes to fiction, I do not agree with the views forwarded by among others Anne Rice who said, "For me, this is a way to communicate with my readers, establish a connection with them and build a community around them."

The Author-Reader connection is not a social event.

Fictional Dream

Fiction in general, and the novel in particular, opens for the skilled reader a fictional dream, co-dreamed by the writer and reader, that provides some of the deepest emotional experiences available in any art form. This dream grows more profound as it remains uninterrupted and is permitted to flow undisturbed from writer to reader. Anything that pulls the reader out of this dream is a detriment to the fiction (and its mission): bad writing does it; amazingly good writing does it, too, since the reader pulls back to admire; obvious mistakes in plot or setting pulls the reader out of the dream; and, of course, clickable links or video side bars will kill the dream dead in an instant.

Communion

A well-written novel (that has something of value to impart--which almost all literary fiction does) is an almost holy communion between writer and reader. The writer dreams a universe and events in that universe. The reader re-dreams the same universe and the same events, seeing it all with "the minds eye" as he or she reads. This is the dream. This is true fiction.

Technology

Ending the Los Angeles Time article Dr. Gary Small, director of the Center on Aging at UCLA is quoted as saying, "People tend to ask whether this [digital technology and its many links and paths] is good or bad. My response is that the tech train is out of the station, and it's impossible to stop."

To that I would l would like to add that there is no moral or other obligation to invoke technology into every facet of life and art just because it is there and because you can. Digital pigments--pixels--will never replace the canvas and oil (or water colors) of the painter. Pixels will perhaps become its own art form, but they will never take the place of the "real" thing. Neither will the multimedia readers replace the magic of the novel. They will try (at the hands of misguided entrepreneurs), but they will not succeed.

My only fear is that in the attempt they might kill the traditional (magical) novel, but I consider that quite unlikely--at least in my lifetime.

I pray that the magic of reading will survive any and all digital onslaught.

Some people then referred to it as a Global Village. That was long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Today, Internet growth as exploded beyond what is easily comprehensible.

According to Internet World Stats, in December of 1995, there were approximately 16 Million Internet users. In December of 2009, there were approximately 1,802 Million users. That's close to Two Billion. Some village.

Today, according to whois, there are 120,888,557 active domains; an additional 384,238,620 domains have been registered. A domain can have hundreds if not thousands of pages. The math soon becomes boggling.

Numbers like these are like stars in the galaxy, impossible to actually get your wits around. The bottom line, however, is that the digital world that we all (to various extents) now occupy, has grown beyond comprehension, and in many ways, use.

Countries

From this galactic multitude form countries, cities, villages. Countries such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, LinkedIn. Countries such as gaming sites, blog sites, forums--each more and more specialized--form that part (and the borders) of what different sections of the online population sees as "home."

I have friends who do nothing but play games (yes, and emails). That's it. I have other friends who only visit Facebook. They live there. Facebook, for all its members, is still of fathomable size, and can be viewed and lived in as a country.

News sites, such as bbc.co.uk, and msnbc.com, form another region, with its individual countries. All home to some part of the online population.

This, of course, happens by necessity; no one has the time (literally) to explore the Internet as a whole. More pages are added per second than you can view in a month, no matter how fast you scan.

Citizens

The savvy citizen has "gotten over" being awed by the Internet (the same way he or she has "gotten over" being awed by the number of water molecules in an ocean) and now sees the digital universe as something to be lived, and--more importantly--something to assist living.

He or she will have found the news sites that provide the best information for his or her needs; the best social sites for his or her tastes; the best email applications, the best blog sites, etc.; and now, as a rule, the Internet day consists of daily visits to these countries, these cities, while the Internet Galaxy as a whole, keep expanding somewhere beyond our grasp.

A recent article by Jamshid Ghazi Askar in the Online Desert News calls attention to a new, and quite revelatory, study by the National Bureau of Economic Research in a new paper titled "Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement," which tends to turn the prevailing popular wisdom on its head:

By exhaustively studying end-of-year test scores for North Carolina students in grades five through eight, and cross-referencing a student's scores against his/her level of computer access at home and the ZIP code where he/she lived, two Duke University professors concluded that lower-income students will see a decline in their reading and math test scores if/when they gain access to a personal computer at their primary residence.

In other words: Students who gain access to a home computer between 5th and 8th grade tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math test scores.

As the study states, "We find support for the hypothesis that [computer and Internet] access is in practice more detrimental for some students than others. The evidence is consistent with the view that internet service, and technology more broadly, is put to more productive use in households with more effective parental monitoring of child behavior."

As Mr. Askar concludes, not only has the obscene amount of money spent by school districts in an attempt to bridge the digital divide by getting laptops into the hands of poor kids been unnecessary, but it has actually been detrimental to student learning by negatively affecting the math and reading test scores of poorer students.

The NBER study also notes that the misleading/wrong conclusions of previous studies on this very topic are largely the result of having "not employed reliable research designs."

It would seem, then, that the true divide is between those who know how to--or are shown how to--utilize the Internet and those who simply indulge in it.

Food for thought.

And we have grown increasingly dependent. If you don't believe this, consider Estonia, which in 2007--as a country--was brought to its knees for two weeks by a sustained attack on its network infrastructure. Or consider Expedia--the way you actually book flights today. Or eMusic, the way you shop for music. Or Skype, the way you talk with relatives in Australia. Or Google, the way you find things. Or Amazon, the way you buy books and a host of other stuff. Or, or, or, or.

I know that I, for one, could not do my job without the Internet. Not even close. It has become one of the large cogs in the machinery of society. Remove it today and you will probably see instant collapse of large portions of not only the economy but of the day-to-day world of the citizenry. Digital indeed.

But as with plumbing, which we now take for granted--much as we take trees for granted--we don't give the Internet much thought nowadays. It's there (and for many young people, has always been there) and always will be. You open the tap: there's water; you power up your PC: there's the Internet.

Still, when it comes to knowing what we're dealing with here, we've stopped reflecting. Not due to lack of information, quite the contrary, we're drowning in the stuff. When it comes to the Internet, we find ourselves in what Manuel Castell so aptly calls "informed bewilderment."

A recent John Naughton Guardian/Observer article--which you can find here sheds some much needed light on the Internet and how we should (or can) relate to it. I strongly recommend you read it, but I'll mention some of the points.

The Long View

When it comes to estimating the current or long-term impact of the Internet on our society as a whole, we'll just have to wait and see. It was not really clear what impact the printing press would have on the world until centuries after its invention--hindsight being a great thing.

The Internet is changing the way we do things, and drastically, but where is it all heading: while we can guess, and educatedly so, we just don't know.

Tracks vs. Trains

In most minds over the last several years, the Internet and the World Wide Web have grown increasingly synonymous. Still, they are not the same, not at all.

See the Internet as a railway, tracks, infrastructure, switching posts, stations, ticket sales; the WWW is just one type of train, just one portion of the traffic that runs on it.

And just like the railways tracks don't care what kind of trains they carry, neither does the Internet care what type of information packages are sent and (at the speed of light, literally) delivered: whether email, army intelligence, music, Google answers, GPS information, stock quotes, surveillance video or, indeed, the World Wide Web.

The Net Computer

One well-educated guess where the Internet is heading is that it will eventually become the computer we all use.

In the 1960s and 1970s we talked about centralized processing, the IBM mainframes serving bunch of "dumb" terminals. This changed in the 1980s and 1990s to distributed processing, intelligent terminals that did some, or most, of the processing themselves.

Now--with increasingly higher bandwidth connections to the Internet--the path seems headed for a return to "centralized" processing--or, rather, to a marriage of the centralized and the distributed models--where the Internet will do most of not only the crunching, but the storage, correlation, intelligence, and distribution of what we want the computer to do.

Many back up their computers to Internet servers that are so secure that one wonders why even bother with local (on your own PC) copies.

The Long View: Redux

These and other considerations are touched upon by John Naughton in his analysis of where this is all heading. Still, and rightly so, he ends with the only possible conclusion: "It's too early to say."

Read the article.

My personal take on--and solution to--this is an article I wrote a few weeks ago, below:

Genuine Online Escrow: A Litmus Test for Honesty

The Internet is the largest garage sale ever, and getting larger every day.

eBay, Craigslist, uBid, eBid, ePier, the list goes on, and on; each a huge pile of goods on the front lawn of someone who had lots of stuff in the garage or in the basement and now wants to get rid of it all; each item clearly marked, "for highest bidder," or "best offer."

Many items are just that, garage sale items, and if you win the bidding at $11.53 (including shipping), only to discover that you've been scammed, well, you're out $11.53, and in some bruised feelings. It's not the end of the world, and you're most likely wiser for the experience.

High-Ticket Items

But there are auctions, and online listings for things a lot more valuable than trinkets and used CDs; things like cars, jewelry, antiques, and collectibles that run in the thousands of dollars. Fraud and scams in this market take on a more sinister tone, they can ruin lives.

People in general--and bless them all--are trusting souls. They are good at heart and want to believe good of others. This goodness, however--in truth a strength--is viewed as a weakness by those to seek to profit by betraying such trust.

Criminal Success

And the scammers and fraudsters succeed far too often. Hardly a days goes by that you don't run across a news story about someone losing $5,000 on a car that never arrived, $12,500 on a collectible that turned out to be fake; or the reverse, someone shipped $8,000 worth of jewelry, but payment never arrived, or the promised cashier's check turned out to be personal, and bounced.

Faceless

The nice thing about the regular, grassy and noisy, garage sale is that you can see the person you're dealing with; and you can tell a lot from a face, from bearing, and voice--is he or she honorable or not? Also, you can touch, inspect, and judge the authenticity of what you're buying. And you can bargain openly. Things, in other words, are aboveboard, as they say.

Not so online. You don't know who you're dealing with. He or she (and there's no telling which, is there?) may show a 100% buyer satisfaction status (all perhaps variously--and underhandedly--generated by him- or herself), but you don't know for sure whether this person is trustworthy or not. There is actually is no way of telling.

Or is there?

The Litmus Test

Having nothing to hide, the honest--and honorable--person will never, ever, object to dealing aboveboard.

And when it comes to Internet Commerce, or Online Auctions, aboveboard means only one thing: Online Escrow.

Online Escrow

The principle and process of Online Escrow parallels buying and selling real property--where, as you know, escrow companies are deemed indispensible due to the amounts involved.

·         Either Buyer or Seller opens an account with the Online Escrow;

·         Once price is agreed, Buyer remits payment to the escrow company--normally by credit card, but wire transfer and check also works;

·         The Online Escrow verifies arrival of funds--or authenticates the credit card used;

·         Once satisfied that payment is secure, the Online Escrow informs Seller and asks him or her to send Buyer the merchandise;

·         Seller ships merchandise and submits tracking information to both Buyer and escrow company;

·         Once the shipper's tracking site shows the merchandise as delivered, the Online Escrow verifies with Buyer that the item(s) arrived in good condition;

·         Once well received, Buyer has an agreed-upon period to either accept the goods or, if not satisfied, return it to the Seller;

·         Once accepted by Buyer, he or she informs the Online Escrow, which then releases the payment to Seller--less any processing fees and commissions.

As straightforward and aboveboard as things come.

The Test

It's the model of simplicity: if the seller (or buyer, for that matter) balks at using an Online Escrow, he or she has something to hide. Invariably.

This bears repeating: if the seller (or buyer, for that matter) balks at using an Online Escrow, he or she has something to hide. No exceptions.

Most sellers (or buyers), when you suggest using an Online Escrow, will see the wisdom in that and readily agree. In fact, any sign of balking at using such a service, any hesitation, any suggestion not to "bother" with such "complexities," or any attempt to talk you out of this is a gigantic red flag: he or she is hiding something.

End the email conversation right there and then. Send no money anywhere. Look for what you need elsewhere. Sleep well at night.

Naturally, you would not consider using Online Escrow for trinkets and other inexpensive items, but for anything of value, it's not even remotely optional.

Just one word of warning: all Online Escrows are not necessarily genuine.

Internet Escrow Fraud

Handling, as genuine Online Escrows do, substantial amounts of money, they are themselves often a target of fraud--where look-alike phishing sites try to con you into using them rather than the bona fide site.

Also, the escrow company concept itself is flagrantly abused by criminals who set up fraudulent escrow sites where money will only travel one-way: you guessed it, away from you.

Verifying the Online Escrow

Should you have any doubts about the Online Escrow company itself, go to escrow-fraud.com, a site dedicated to tracking and exposing fraudulent escrow companies. They maintain an ever-growing database of fake sites, as well as a much shorter list of legitimate Online Escrows.

Make that sure you're dealing with the real thing.

Peace of Mind

Knowing that you're dealing with a bona fide escrow company, and knowing that your deal is moving aboveboard, you also know that you will not be ripped off or defrauded. And that makes for peace of mind.

Enjoy your safe online purchases.

PS. The best way to guard against being ripped off by online sales or auctions of any kind, Craigslist and eBay included--and whether buyer or seller--is to use a genuine Online Escrow company; especially for pricier items like autos, jewelry, antiques, and collectibles. Although it does add some cost, it takes the uncertainty out of the transaction, and that's a small price to pay for peace of mind.

For my money, the best genuine Online Escrow today is Escrow.com (http://escrow.com). In fact, it is the only one eBay recommends, and it is the only Online Escrow licensed to provide escrow services all across the United States.

When, for example, the iPads are selling one every three or so seconds, and new social application users mushroom to create the "new order" of things, those who do not have Internet access--as in not even email, or basic browsing capabilities--are inexorably falling deeper and deeper into this ravine we've euphemized the Digital Divide.

The questions Mr. Silberberg raises, and it is well worth raising, is whether government has a civic duty to truly bridge the divide. And if so, how far should they go?

Free Choice

There is, of course, always that portion of society that can join the Internet Order, but chooses not to, much like they opt out of owning (and being enslaved to) a television, or even a telephone. This faction of society may never (and happily at that) log in anywhere. Also, these folks will not suffer the least from not joining up; they most likely lead full, albeit unconventional, lives just fine.

But, no doubt, as the Digital Divide goes, this faction does in no way constitute a majority of those left behind.

Stranded

The truly stranded are those who would jump at the chance of joining the Internet world, given the opportunity--be it economical, educational, or both.

With mobile networks growing in size, quality and speed almost daily, the foundation is there, or will soon be, to build that bridge, leaving the true ravine as an economical and/or educational one.

Mr. Silberberg suggests that, "Here in the U.S. no Government 2.0 program should be funded without addressing the Digital Divide access issues, or at least examining alternative information distribution methods."

I second that view, and would add that as the Internet becomes a more and more integral part of our social fabric, providing affordable entry into the Internet world should be a government obligation on par with schooling and indigent health care.

In fact, "access" is fast approaching the status of a basic human right (at least in the west), without which survival might be impaired or threatened.

Trouble is, the Internet, especially as it gets Flashier and Flashier (pun intended) is really not made for the reader: it's made for the browser (another pun intended), the shopper, the scanner, the lover of pictures and things that move and tell you that you have just won a trip to Hawaii since you just happened to be the 1,000,000^th viewer: click HERE to collect your price--and while you're at it, I have a few bridges I'd like to sell you.

And today, even more "toned down," conservative sites still have a lot of what I can find no better word for than clutter: pics, uninvited video clips that set off as soon as you enter the site, ads, ads, and more ads. The article or view or blog may hold serious interest, but who's to find out, distracted to tears by the clutter?

Apparently, I'm not alone harboring this view. For here comes a white knight called arc90.com that has not only taken exception to all this clutter, but has also devised a brilliant (and I mean just that) way to remove it.

Seeing is Believing

Or, to rephrase, seeing is reading. Go to the "Readability" site  and follow the very simple instructions. It'll end up with you having a "Readability" shortcut in your favorites.

Then, access a page you'd like to read (as opposed to be overwhelmed by), open your favorites, and click on "Readability." Wait a second or two and: Eureka!

You have to do this to believe it; the result is nothing short of wonderful.

A new day for us readers of words.

Also, in a relevant press release, the ITU calls for broadband Internet access for half the world's population by 2015: