Broadband: You'll Be Crippled Without It

[Commentary] Communications technologies have enormous consequences even though most of them go unrealized when those technologies are young. No one would have anticipated that Facebook or Twitter might one day figure in revolutions, just as no one could have anticipated that the telegraph would catalyze both the standardization of time keeping in the U.S. as well as the creation of national economic markets. We are now in the midst of a national debate — indeed, an international debate — around the impact of broadband networks. The current administration is intent on expanding access to broadband, especially in rural regions that have lacked fast access to the Internet. Critics ask exactly what broadband yields, and whether jolts of investment found in the stimulus are justified. What does it provide to rural regions that justify such large-scale investments? The simple answer is that rural communities will be economically crippled without broadband access. That’s the long and the short of it.