Broadband plays an enormous role in improving the quality of life for anyone with access. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies led a discussion on how the potential of broadband relates to the African American community.
This is why the Joint Center is launching the Media and Technology Institute. Its goal will be to explore issues relating to the digital divide and to identify opportunities for media and technology to help transform communities across America.
Broadband opens doors to Americans that may otherwise remain shut. Whether it’s increased access to education via distance learning, or higher quality health care thanks to telemedicine, broadband changes lives. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the convenience of broadband, and forget about what life would be like without it. The Joint Center’s Media and Technology Institute will help ensure that broadband, along with other technologies, are not taken for granted, and help guarantee that America continues to search for ways that technology can help solve the most vexing issues in our society.
During the event, Larry Irving, Senior Fellow for the Joint Center’s Media and Technology Institute, discussed America as we are, and America as we hope to be. Broadband, Irving claimed, is crucial to the aspirations of where America hopes to go. Discussions about broadband do not just encompass technology policy. Rather, broadband must play a central role in the ongoing development of health care, education, energy and economic policy.
In a recent edition of Focus Magazine (put out by the Joint Center), Link Hoewing of Verizon wrote that for the U.S. to remain competitive and for America’s technology companies to sustain their unprecedented investment in state-of-the-art broadband networks, we must engage America’s youth. “First,” Hoewing wrote, “all of our students need to have access to and be able to use broadband technologies, computers and advanced mobile devices such as PDAs and web-enabled cell phones.”
This fits perfectly with what the Joint Center’s new Institute (and NextGenWeb) hopes to accomplish — using technology to enhance people’s lives.
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