Rep Lujan: Public Libraries Can Boost American Innovation

President-elect Donald Trump's technology agenda is largely opaque, but at least one member of Congress has a message for his administration: ideas for cutting-edge technology often comes from the grassroots. “Innovation may have a national or even global impact but like politics, the process of innovation is inherently local,” Rep Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) said during an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event on Capitol Hill. The government needs to think of creative ways to “provide resources to the innovators ... across the country," he added. Rep Lujan advocated for establishing maker-spaces in public libraries, potentially outfitting them with small-scale manufacturing equipment such as 3-D printers, that are accessible to businesses, researchers and the nearby community. Because public libraries already exist across America, "including the rural parts, where we still don’t have bandwidth capacity," they could become hubs for technological development outside Silicon Valley, he said.