Global Knowledge, Local Change

After introductions from Rogers Weed, Director of the Washington State Department of Commerce, and Sharon Anderson-Morris, SNS Programs Director, Mark Anderson laid out the intellectural frame for FiReGlobal. Namely, that our economic scene is not as bad as many conservative news outlets might have us think, and that we need broadband everywhere to progress.

Mark: “Ask yourself, How bad is it? It’s not that bad. . . If you watch Fox News, stop. It aint news.”

Why not just put the glass in the ground? The US needs to stop talking about broadband and start doing it. Every premise needs to have it.

“Bandwidth is going to make it happen. It’s going to make it happen twice as fast and twice as good. ”

“These things are all very straightforward. The trouble is we’re all kind of waiting for Daddy to do it. Daddy isn’t going to do it.”

Hospitals, schools, homes ALL need broadband. They aren’t happening top-down, it’s happening bottom-up.

There is nothing stopping us from doing it, but our own failure to go out and get broadband for ourselves.