July 31, 2008 11:19 AM
Inspiring Awareness About the Importance of Broadband
Just had a great moment. While interviewing Kevin Nalty, one of the top producers of funny videos on YouTube, we got to talking about my passion for broadband and all its wonders.
He shared that in a past life he worked for Qwest, but that he hadn't thought seriously about the importance of broadband for the last seven years.
In talking with him, though, I could sense the dawning realization of just how significant the broadband revolution has already been to his life.
As he put it: without it, he wouldn't be sharing his videos with a global audience of millions, he'd be left showing them to his neighbors.
It was interesting to hear him come to grips with this as I could tell that before our conversation he hadn't thought about broadband specifically as that enabling force.
Yet it's not that he's unaware of what broadband is with his history working for Qwest. And he's obviously someone for whom it has already had a transformative impact in his life.
To some degree, I found this lack of awareness exciting. It shows how broadband can be utilized without someone thinking all that much about the specifics of the technology. When you turn on your TV you're not thinking about the TV, you're interested in the content it delivers. That's a telltale sign of a maturing medium.
And that's where we need to get with broadband and the Internet. It's not that you're using broadband or going online, it's about what you're doing once you get there.
But at the same time, this is another sign that our ongoing battle to raise awareness about issues related to the needed for bigger, better broadband still has a big hill to climb.
It's not just the people for whom broadband is foreign we must convince; we also need to open the eyes of people like Kevin Nalty as to the vitally important role sufficient connectivity plays in empowering all the wondering things the Internet makes possible.
