5 ms·

Tubes for the Sticks: Internet for Rural America

15 points by Silentio 18y ago

iigs 18y ago
Some [...] might say that people who choose to live in the country have by definition chosen to live a technologically backwards (and, importantly, increasingly unsustainable) existence. That the responsible and ethical choice for any modern human is to live somewhere easily and affordably accessible by wires and roads and mass transit (and food and water) I find this attitude galling. I grew up in the rural American midwest. We bought our beef, a half-cow at a time, from families within a long walking range (maybe a five minute drive). My next door neighbor and childhood best friend lived on a 40 cow dairy operation -- I drank milk that hadn't been out of a cow ten minutes. My water came out of a hole in the ground maybe 250 feet away from our house. Food doesn't come from big glass boxes and isn't grown on trucks. Water doesn't come from pipes or big processing plants. My daily commute in Seattle is longer than any normal commute I would make into the city as a child. In fact, small town America looks a lot like the mixed-use urban utopias that all of the enlightened people are trying desperately to recreate -- small groups of people each near the resources they consume, banding together to collectively look out for each other and improve their world. End rant. What’s more, I really don’t think people who lack access to technology have any idea about the user experience they are missing. My largest gripe with living in the midwest (until ~2000 when I left) was that, as a geek, I wasn't able to find a lot of other people who shared my hobbies -- kind of a recreational version of the advice to live in SFO if you want to start a business. Threeish years after I left my parents were able to get broadband internet, via 12 mile (!) 802.11b shot from a hilltop to a tall building in the nearby city. I certainly knew what I was missing, and I think easy access to internet in a lot of the smaller communities (say, less than 25,000 people) could have a transforming effect on the USA in both directions -- culture in to and culture out of rural America.
- askrom 18y ago
  Hi there... I am the article's author, and I hope I was clear that with regards to the first quote I was not talking about myself, necessarily -- although I sympathize with the urban-centric point of view, I also know that we have to have a diverse culture and country life will always be a part of it. But more importantly, regarding the second comment: This statement is in response to real-world polls that show that a huge number of people lacking broadband specifically say they don't want it. Your experience proves my point that these polls simply cannot be correct. If anyone actually says they don't want broadband, they can't possibly know what they're even talking about. I can only suppose that they think there's a hidden cost to it (money, or maybe learning something new) and that the pollster is asking a trick question.
  - iigs 18y ago
    I recognize that and assign none of the original attitude or my frustration to you. Furthermore, I recognize that you said "blah may say..." essentially making my rant a (response to a) straw man. me->eat(bait); :) I contend that life in rural America (from in the country to 10,000 person towns) probably contributes less carbon per person than suburban life (say the outer 1/3rd of any city over 500k people). Furthermore, while there are always exceptions, people who live in towns where everyone knows their name have a great incentive to maintain order and not ruin resources (wells, sewer/septic, grade the land or irrigate irresponsibly). As for the polls, I agree. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. For better or worse, there's a southern and midwest stereotype that regards curmudgeonly behavior very highly. These are the people that claim to not want anti-lock brakes or fuel injection but sure don't whine too much about their cars starting better for the last 20 years. Maybe those people won't ever want internet, but their children certainly will.
- gravitycop 18y ago
  I grew up in the rural American midwest. Your roads, electricity, and communications were subsidized by urban/suburban America. http://www.google.com/search?q=rural+electricity+subsidies http://www.google.com/search?q=rural+electricity+subsidies What did urban/suburban America get in return for its investment? My next door neighbor and childhood best friend lived on a 40 cow dairy operation That dairy farm was subsidized (apart from the previously-mentioned rural subsidies) by urban/suburban America. http://www.google.com/search?q=farm+subsidies+billion http://www.google.com/search?q=farm+subsidies+billion Grain/hay/straw-fed cows can be raised in urban areas. They don't need to be raised in rural areas. Food doesn't come from big glass boxes and isn't grown on trucks. That is correct. Food comes from automated factories. http://www.google.com/search?q=dairy+operations+automated http://www.google.com/search?q=dairy+operations+automated End rant. Why were you ranting?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago
    What urban America got for its subsidy was the food you claim can be raised in urban areas and the transportation infrastructure to move materials where needed. Yeah, we'll just level midtown Manhattan to raise 100 acres of corn. It'd be cheaper to just eat dollar bills. What's literally possible and what's economically and logistically feasible are not necessarily the same.
    - gravitycop 18y ago
      What urban America got for its subsidy was the food you claim can be raised in urban areas It is not just me making the claim: http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR06.txt http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR0... At the current efficiency of PhytoFarm, the entire present population of the world can be supplied from a square area about 140 miles on a side - about the area of Massachusetts and Vermont combined, and less than a tenth of Texas. This represents only about a thousandth as much land as is needed for agriculture at present (give or take a factor of four; for illustrative purposes greater exactitude is unnecessary). And if for some reason that seems like too much space, you can immediately cut the land space by a factor of ten: just build food factories ten stories high, which should present no more problems that a ten-story office building. You could economize even more and build a hundred stories high, like the Empire State Building or the Sears Tower. Then the surface area needed would be no more than the space within the corporate limits of Austin, Texas, to pick the first alphabetically among the many U.S. cities large enough. PhytyoFarm techniques could feed a hundred times the world's present population - say 500 billion people - with factory buildings a hundred stories high, on one percent of present farmland. To put it differently, if you raise your bed to triple bunk-bed height, you can grow enough food on the two levels between the floor and your bed to supply your nutritional needs.
mdasen 18y ago
It's a wonderfully well-written and calm piece. Kudos to the author for choosing to let their piece rest on its argument rather than shock and awe to rile up a group of people. However, there is one thing lacking: how we should pay for it. Should urbanites subsidize internet for the rural? Should rural folk subsidize rent for urbanites? More importantly, what is broadband? Does 768k DSL count? It's definitely way above dial-up. Part of it isn't even a last mile issue. Part of it is that many people don't live within 100 miles of an internet backbone. It's physically impossible to get that far from a backbone in places like South Korea or Japan and a lot of Western Eruope. It means that you have to draw fiber a lot further in terms of distance and that costs a lot more. That's partly why I think wireless will be the savior here. It isn't as fast as hard lines, but it can cover big distances (especially fixed wireless where you have a stable antenna on your roof which is what you can install for homes) and current technology could probably provide 1.5Mbps to rural areas today with increases coming at a decent clip. It's no 20Mbps cable modem, but it will allow them to use VoIP, video, etc. And it would be a lot cheaper than running so much fiber to rural areas. I have a love/hate relationship with "great projects" and I think the internet is a wonderful thing and would love to see more have access to it, but I don't think rural areas can see parity. Likewise, I think we can work to close the gap. If we moved the USF (http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/ http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/) to focus on broadband we could get the ball rolling and it's something that already exists for a similar purpose. Give the telecoms a little incentive to push 3G into more rural areas and offer fixed wireless (basically, the same as a data card only with a nice antenna since it's fixed). Verizon Wireless is already pushing into areas unserved by DSL and the like with EV-DO. It's tough, but I think that wireless, especially with LTE, HSPA+, and WiMAX in the very near future (Verizon has said they're going to have LTE in a few cities within a year and AT&T is going to be aggressive about HSPA+) is going to allow us to light up the rural areas in a way that allows them to participate in the online community nicely.

15 points by Silentio 18y ago

iigs 18y ago

Some [...] might say that people who choose to live in the country have by definition chosen to live a technologically backwards (and, importantly, increasingly unsustainable) existence. That the responsible and ethical choice for any modern human is to live somewhere easily and affordably accessible by wires and roads and mass transit (and food and water) I find this attitude galling. I grew up in the rural American midwest. We bought our beef, a half-cow at a time, from families within a long walking range (maybe a five minute drive). My next door neighbor and childhood best friend lived on a 40 cow dairy operation -- I drank milk that hadn't been out of a cow ten minutes. My water came out of a hole in the ground maybe 250 feet away from our house. Food doesn't come from big glass boxes and isn't grown on trucks. Water doesn't come from pipes or big processing plants. My daily commute in Seattle is longer than any normal commute I would make into the city as a child. In fact, small town America looks a lot like the mixed-use urban utopias that all of the enlightened people are trying desperately to recreate -- small groups of people each near the resources they consume, banding together to collectively look out for each other and improve their world. End rant. What’s more, I really don’t think people who lack access to technology have any idea about the user experience they are missing. My largest gripe with living in the midwest (until ~2000 when I left) was that, as a geek, I wasn't able to find a lot of other people who shared my hobbies -- kind of a recreational version of the advice to live in SFO if you want to start a business. Threeish years after I left my parents were able to get broadband internet, via 12 mile (!) 802.11b shot from a hilltop to a tall building in the nearby city. I certainly knew what I was missing, and I think easy access to internet in a lot of the smaller communities (say, less than 25,000 people) could have a transforming effect on the USA in both directions -- culture in to and culture out of rural America.

askrom 18y ago
Hi there... I am the article's author, and I hope I was clear that with regards to the first quote I was not talking about myself, necessarily -- although I sympathize with the urban-centric point of view, I also know that we have to have a diverse culture and country life will always be a part of it. But more importantly, regarding the second comment: This statement is in response to real-world polls that show that a huge number of people lacking broadband specifically say they don't want it. Your experience proves my point that these polls simply cannot be correct. If anyone actually says they don't want broadband, they can't possibly know what they're even talking about. I can only suppose that they think there's a hidden cost to it (money, or maybe learning something new) and that the pollster is asking a trick question.
- iigs 18y ago
  I recognize that and assign none of the original attitude or my frustration to you. Furthermore, I recognize that you said "blah may say..." essentially making my rant a (response to a) straw man. me->eat(bait); :) I contend that life in rural America (from in the country to 10,000 person towns) probably contributes less carbon per person than suburban life (say the outer 1/3rd of any city over 500k people). Furthermore, while there are always exceptions, people who live in towns where everyone knows their name have a great incentive to maintain order and not ruin resources (wells, sewer/septic, grade the land or irrigate irresponsibly). As for the polls, I agree. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. For better or worse, there's a southern and midwest stereotype that regards curmudgeonly behavior very highly. These are the people that claim to not want anti-lock brakes or fuel injection but sure don't whine too much about their cars starting better for the last 20 years. Maybe those people won't ever want internet, but their children certainly will.
gravitycop 18y ago
I grew up in the rural American midwest. Your roads, electricity, and communications were subsidized by urban/suburban America. http://www.google.com/search?q=rural+electricity+subsidies http://www.google.com/search?q=rural+electricity+subsidies What did urban/suburban America get in return for its investment? My next door neighbor and childhood best friend lived on a 40 cow dairy operation That dairy farm was subsidized (apart from the previously-mentioned rural subsidies) by urban/suburban America. http://www.google.com/search?q=farm+subsidies+billion http://www.google.com/search?q=farm+subsidies+billion Grain/hay/straw-fed cows can be raised in urban areas. They don't need to be raised in rural areas. Food doesn't come from big glass boxes and isn't grown on trucks. That is correct. Food comes from automated factories. http://www.google.com/search?q=dairy+operations+automated http://www.google.com/search?q=dairy+operations+automated End rant. Why were you ranting?
- HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago
  What urban America got for its subsidy was the food you claim can be raised in urban areas and the transportation infrastructure to move materials where needed. Yeah, we'll just level midtown Manhattan to raise 100 acres of corn. It'd be cheaper to just eat dollar bills. What's literally possible and what's economically and logistically feasible are not necessarily the same.
  - gravitycop 18y ago
    What urban America got for its subsidy was the food you claim can be raised in urban areas It is not just me making the claim: http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR06.txt http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR0... At the current efficiency of PhytoFarm, the entire present population of the world can be supplied from a square area about 140 miles on a side - about the area of Massachusetts and Vermont combined, and less than a tenth of Texas. This represents only about a thousandth as much land as is needed for agriculture at present (give or take a factor of four; for illustrative purposes greater exactitude is unnecessary). And if for some reason that seems like too much space, you can immediately cut the land space by a factor of ten: just build food factories ten stories high, which should present no more problems that a ten-story office building. You could economize even more and build a hundred stories high, like the Empire State Building or the Sears Tower. Then the surface area needed would be no more than the space within the corporate limits of Austin, Texas, to pick the first alphabetically among the many U.S. cities large enough. PhytyoFarm techniques could feed a hundred times the world's present population - say 500 billion people - with factory buildings a hundred stories high, on one percent of present farmland. To put it differently, if you raise your bed to triple bunk-bed height, you can grow enough food on the two levels between the floor and your bed to supply your nutritional needs.

mdasen 18y ago

It's a wonderfully well-written and calm piece. Kudos to the author for choosing to let their piece rest on its argument rather than shock and awe to rile up a group of people. However, there is one thing lacking: how we should pay for it. Should urbanites subsidize internet for the rural? Should rural folk subsidize rent for urbanites? More importantly, what is broadband? Does 768k DSL count? It's definitely way above dial-up. Part of it isn't even a last mile issue. Part of it is that many people don't live within 100 miles of an internet backbone. It's physically impossible to get that far from a backbone in places like South Korea or Japan and a lot of Western Eruope. It means that you have to draw fiber a lot further in terms of distance and that costs a lot more. That's partly why I think wireless will be the savior here. It isn't as fast as hard lines, but it can cover big distances (especially fixed wireless where you have a stable antenna on your roof which is what you can install for homes) and current technology could probably provide 1.5Mbps to rural areas today with increases coming at a decent clip. It's no 20Mbps cable modem, but it will allow them to use VoIP, video, etc. And it would be a lot cheaper than running so much fiber to rural areas. I have a love/hate relationship with "great projects" and I think the internet is a wonderful thing and would love to see more have access to it, but I don't think rural areas can see parity. Likewise, I think we can work to close the gap. If we moved the USF (http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/ http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/) to focus on broadband we could get the ball rolling and it's something that already exists for a similar purpose. Give the telecoms a little incentive to push 3G into more rural areas and offer fixed wireless (basically, the same as a data card only with a nice antenna since it's fixed). Verizon Wireless is already pushing into areas unserved by DSL and the like with EV-DO. It's tough, but I think that wireless, especially with LTE, HSPA+, and WiMAX in the very near future (Verizon has said they're going to have LTE in a few cities within a year and AT&T is going to be aggressive about HSPA+) is going to allow us to light up the rural areas in a way that allows them to participate in the online community nicely.