From ars technica: Two-thirds of Americans without broadband don’t want it:

But when we look at the overall reasons why Americans don’t have broadband, availability isn’t the biggest barrier. Neither is price. Those two, combined, only account for one-third of Americans without broadband. Two-thirds simply don’t want it.

…The bigger issue is a lack of perceived value. 19 percent of dial-up users, for example, say that “nothing” would get them to upgrade, not even lower prices. Of the 25 percent of Americans that don’t regularly use the Internet at all (Hi, Mom!), a third said that they were “not interested in going online,” almost ten percent thought it was too “difficult,” and seven percent simply don’t “have time.”

Two-thirds. Of all Americans. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 million people.

Think about that, next time you’re reading your blogroll and believing there’s no life outside of Facebook. Think about that, next time your mom or uncle says something hopelessly ignorant about the Internet. You think they’re behind the times? Perhaps. But they’re not alone.

If you’re reading this blog, I’m guessing you’re a Web convert. You wouldn’t have gotten here if you were just a drive-by connector. And so, like me, you perhaps have a hard time conceiving of life without a computer; like me, you may chafe with frustration if your access is cut off even briefly; like me, you may wonder how you got by without, and what could those people who don’t want broadband possibly be thinking?

Do you know what that makes us? Converts. Evangelists. Kool-Aid drinkers. We realize — or at least, we think we realize — that our lives are vastly better thanks to our connectivity. And we think everyone else’s lives will be better, if only they’d wake up to the possibility of what’s out there.

Ars also points out (thank goodness, or we might as well all give up and go home) that “(t)hose who have broadband tend to want more of it”, and that’s certainly been my experience. Living in a country that’s even more accessibility-challenged than the U.S., I have noticed that the ones who don’t complain about the broadband here (or the ones who complain about the people who complain about broadband) are the ones who haven’t experienced the joy of unrestricted bandwidth.

So what is our societal obligation? What is the best thing to do for a city, a state, a nation, an economy?

To me, tummy full of Kool-Aid, the answer is simple: if you build it, they will come.

Full connectivity will soon be table stakes in a flat world. Full connectivity is the best hope we’ve ever had of offering a level playing field in terms of education and trade. Full connectivity is what will allow small, remote countries to compete on a global scale.

If people don’t want to take advantage of it, you can’t make them. But if you’re not even giving them the opportunity, then they don’t stand a chance.

What do you think?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 11:05 pm and is filed under General technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.