For purely selfish reasons (as well as normal ones) I welcome the latest AOA blogger: Dana Wigdor. Her blog, eVillage is tackling an issue dear to my heart and aggravating as hell, but which I as a photographer, could not find a way to work with artistically!
She's coming to grips with broadband accessibility in Vermont. Right now thinking about how it can have a tiny footprint. Or at least I hope she is--our projects are still in the germination stages.
As a photographer, among other activities, I contribute to a stock agency that requires the size of submitted images to be at least 48MB. This translates to a file size of anywhere between 8MB and 14MB that has to be uploaded. The pain of this on slow satellite (which is not even working in rain and snow) is excruciating. And, for this privilege I pay $50 per month!! This is the lowest service tier of three; I can't afford the higher ones. (And, I paid $200 to get it installed!)
I'm living with the windy promises of our governor, and various official folks who are quite pleased to be able to announce that 2010 or 2012 will see all of Vermont with broadband-- and this from an administration that also says it wants to bring clean industry to the State. Telecommuting is growing and clean, and we're definitely missing the boat--in fact we've already missed it and are simply hanging onto the gunwales.
I'm rooting for Dana, even against my own AOA self-interest. You go girl!
I'm lucky to have highspeed connection through "Cloud Alliance", a local company that has been hampered by a lack of state aid (even though I'm so close to Montpelier, verizon and fairpoint stop near me, and won't come any farther to connect people on my hill). This problem is why we need a new governor, among other reasons: if there was will and direction from the head of our state, we would all be connected by now. "Affordability" means nothing if people can't make a living in rural areas because of no access to new and vital technology.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Clair, for your words of encouragement. Your regular and well-written blogs have been an inspiration to me, and a huge reason I decided to get "on board"! As I do research, I have not found many anti-internet people. (People who have reservations about the internet coming to their rural areas.) Im especially interested in this perspective, because they are the folks that truly need to be reached. As I go forward, my primary questions are on the subject of preserving community character. And yes, this is a very difficult subject to visualize in 2-D work!! I can see why you decided to not take it on!
ReplyDeleteThanks again Clair and I hope to be in touch! Best, Dana