Tom Moon:
If you think American rock bands face long odds chasing success, consider the improbable tale of Sigur Ros. The five-piece band from Iceland makes spacey progressive music, with often-indecipherable lyrics. Despite those apparent handicaps, the band has gone from playing small clubs to headlining large international rock festivals. The band’s fourth studio CD is called Takk…, which means “Thanks.”
We won’t stop until every San Franciscan has broadband access,” says Chris Vein, the senior technology advisor to San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom. It’s not only rhetoric. His boss is one of the nation’s most visible proponents of so-called muni Wi-Fi. Because he runs San Francisco, Newsom probably gets more than his fair share of ink. Some think that he also harbors ambitions to one day run for U.S. president–and nothing would look better on his resume than a line about how the city extended affordable broadband access to all its residents.
But Newsom is only picking up on a theme increasingly sounded by politicians elsewhere. The city of Philadelphia has also announced a high-profile plan to provide Internet access to its citizens. From its point of view, broadband is a necessity, not a luxury. With the United States’ ranking for broadband penetration plummeting from third place to 16th in just four years, this is more than an academic concern. The fear is this will translate into massive job losses to other nations.