Like electricity in the 20th century, broadband access is now an economic necessity

Today’s defining technology is the internet, along with the interlocking digital tools that contributed to and resulted from its inception. Artificial intelligence may well usher in its own technology epoch, but even this branch of computer science is as beholden to the internet — as the internet is to electricity. How and whether high-speed internet access is like the electrification of homes can teach us something. Getting online and knowing what to do once you’re there matters. The New Deal-era Rural Electrification Administration added programs in the 1930s to familiarize Americans with how to harness electricity. That’s why so many policymakers, researchers and civic organizations today, including Technical.ly, care so much about who has access to the internet and how. People who learn about emerging technologies today tend to be the entrepreneurs and tech workers of tomorrow. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a series of discussions on broadband infrastructure and its economic impact. Attendees traveled from Washington DC, Baltimore, and New York, joining locals to dissect the Philadelphia case study: A poor big city that has steadily grown internet access amid experiments to do so faster and to boost economic gains in the hometown of one of the country’s largest internet service providers. The Fed meeting wasn’t open to the public, but the discussion was rich. I was teased by one of the meeting’s 50 stakeholders for overusing the “essential utility” metaphor, but what can we learn by comparing access to electricity and access to high-speed internet?