Obama Wants Broadband, Computers Part of Stimulus

damn_registrars writes "President-elect Barack Obama announced in his radio address that his administration's economic stimulus package will include investing in computers and broadband for education. 'To help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.' He also said it is 'unacceptable' that the US ranks 15th in broadband adoption." No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids.

No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering.

Was that really necessary to get the story across?

Re:No doubt with free spyware and internet filteri

Well, despite being an Obama supporter (as am I), Taco is being pragmatic. Eric Holden could be his Attorney General, and he's all for net censorship. Plus this is the Democrats we're talking about; the old guard is salivating at the prospect of getting all their old nanny state legislation back on the plate.

No.

It is a fallacy that you need computers in schools. Teach the kids reading, writing and math skills, the rest can come later. Computers are a drain on schools with already tight budgets. We went to moon with engineers and scientists who did not have computers.

Re:No.

That's not a problem with computers in schools, that's a problem with the teaching syllabus. All too often, the computer classes are just passed off onto general teachers who have, at most, some worthless Microsoft Certificate in Word 97.

If we taught them more about proper usage of computers, such as basic maintenance (defrag, virus scan, etc.), emails (And the dangers of random attachments), etc. we'd probably save billions on tech support costs just a few short years down the line. I dread to think how much money is wasted on trivial calls to the Tech support line that could have been avoided with some simple, basic knowledge such as this.

that's the last thing I need

"To help our children compete in a 21st century economy"

It's bad enough that I have to compete with cheap "offshore" labor, now I gotta compete against someone willing to work for pokemon cards??

Re:that's the last thing I need

I'd work for Pokemon cards. Apparently you haven't seen the exchange rate lately.

Great

It would be great if the local cable or phone company could run their lines just 1 block further from my nearest neighbor so I could get broadband.

Maybe Obama can make it happen!

Re:Great

It would be great if the local cable or phone company could run their lines just 1 block further from my nearest neighbor so I could get broadband.

Maybe Obama can make it happen!

Or Obama can help find where that 200 billion dollars went.

http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm [newnetworks.com]

According to the article...

He also wants to use broadband for health care facilities.

Since I know that most of you don't RTFA and the summary is lacking that point, I figured I'd point it out.

Eh?

No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids.

Slashdot: News For Nerds (That Can Never Be Happy About Anything)

Are filters in schools that bad?

How many people here are truly opposed to some sort of filtering in computers in school? While the idea of some sort of imposed filter on my internet connection at home is very bothersome to me, I don't have a problem with attempts to keep inappropriate material off of computers in schools.

My biggest concern about it would be that generally the filtering systems aren't that hard to work around, so hopefully the school systems won't waste money buying into a really expensive product that ends up not working any better than a cheaper alternative.

Re:Are filters in schools that bad?

Kids aren't that dumb. They understand that school is a different environment from home.

It doesn't work that way

I work with lots of good Chinese and Indian software engineers. Most never saw a computer before University. They did have a rigorous and old-fashioned education, with lots of math and logic.

I also know talented hackers who got into programming as kids/teenagers, and benefited from the fast dev cycle of Apples, TRS-80s, etc.

But giving kids the latest and greatest computers is not going to help anything. The important stuff can be learned on a 486.

Chinese and Indian schools value the academic achievers, while American schools value the funny, the athletic and the socially gifted. That is why those countries are beating us.

Interstate High Speed Rail Network

When Obama announced that he was going to start the largest public works program since the Interstate system, I thought he might be talking about an interstate high speed rail network.

Though, after looking through his proposal, I don't see anything about high speed trains. I think a train network would kill many birds with one stone:

- it would provide a fast alternative to flying, which I hate.
- it would cut down on carbon emissions since trains are much more efficient than cars or planes.
- it could do for the country what the interstate system did in the last half of the last century.
- it would create lots of jobs spread out across the country

Defending Obama...

Oh my Gosh. Here I am the most right wing guy on slashdot and I'm about to go and defend Obama's proposals for infrastructure spending in general, and national broadband and school computing in particular.

a. ubiquity creates new industries. If broadband is something nearly everyone has in the USA, then, you have a much easier time making a business case for a new kind of service. The USA has built railroads with federal help before, knowing that putting railroads would pump the economy, and it did. Then, roads did the same thing. Broadband won't be any different.

b. computers in schools works. Yes, a lot of kids play games on school computers but there will be those kids who are not as well off but interested in learning to program that will use them. I know I'm grateful to all the computer stores and schools back in the 1980s that let me learn programming in the lab and I think that there's other kids like me out there.

Note that I wouldn't restrict this to just computers. I would like to see schools have shop classes with real presses, CNC machines, and other tools of the art so that kids can get some hands on real things prior to joining the real world.

c. My stock retort to other conservatives that would oppose this government spending would be, you had no problem spending 2.5T on building schools and broadband in Iraq, but why can't you support that in the USA?

d. Hands on experience in computing and manufacturing is a national security issue. The USA needs to know how to manufacture its own goods. I would offer as exhibit A, World War II. It's handy for national security when you have a ton of manufacturing centers that can be quickly converted to produce for wartime needs. Indeed, has the USA had a better manufacturing base, maybe we wouldn't have had to wait for five years and four thousand dead to get decent armoured vehicles into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By extension, those who pine for the old cold war days with Russian and for a stronger NATO should also be reminded that a part of our military obligation to our alliance partners is to have an economy capable of sustaining manufacturing in the event our allied economies are destroyed. It benefits Europe if the USA is capable of manufacturing its own products as that know-how can be shared with the continent.

So yeah, I think Obama's on the right track with a big infrastructure stimulus. I think Republicans would be better suited to argue what to build, rather than not to build at all, given that they already blew several times Obama's figure on rebuilding Iraq.

Public transport

This is the same argument folks in the US use to justify the lack of public transport.

The fact is that the US is 80% urban and suburban, so getting decent services to those folks (in both broadband and public transport) shouldn't be a problem. What is the problem, with internet connectivity anyway, is the deeply entrenched telecoms companies with their local monopolies.

Re:Public transport

I would take it a step further and allow local governments to lay the lines. We have public highways and roads. Why can't we have public fiber? I'm sure they could have some type of usage tax structure where the ISPs rent the public fiber and re-sell it.

Re:Public transport

Why can't we have public fiber? I'm sure they could have some type of usage tax structure where the ISPs rent the public fiber and re-sell it.

So the public would be taxed to pay for the city to lay the fiber, and then the increased tax on ISPs would be passed on to the same public to pay for service? This is your plan?

I have a better plan. If a company comes along and wants to lay parallel lines. Let them. Don't stop them in any way. Don't fine them. Remove all possible hindrances, anything that could turn them away. It'll start out small and slowly expand at the same time that the demand for cheaper service drives prices down. More and more people will have better and better service.

Re:China

You can't pay money to Intel, AMD, ATI, Dell or Microsoft without buying some hardware to Asian manufacturers because this is their business model to have manufactures in Asia. In today's world, it is hard to stimulate one country's economy without stimulating another one. There are some fields where it is possible (construction, restaurants...) but most are tied to foreign manufacturers.

Note that if giving job to China is an issue, one could prefer Taiwanese makers. I believe the difference is more important than it seems : one is a democracy, the other is not.

China Ohio

Did you miss the (rather conspicuous) use of the word "broadband"? Our network infrastructure sucks quite badly, and if he's talking about upgrading it, that's a lot of domestic blue-collar jobs.

If POBE is really serious, he'll look at giving us real broadband, like the premises fibre that Korean consumers enjoy. If he does that, Corning will have to de-mothball a factory or two, and a lot of people will be needed to dig ditches and pull cable. Sounds pretty stimulating to me.

Re:The .com plan to fix the economy.

1. Take money out of the top of the economy where it just curculates around buying luxury yahts, private jets, etc.
2. Put money in to the bottom of the economy where it buys things like houses, cars, TVs, and flows back up to the top
3. Economic Recovery

As much as people like to bash "tax and spend liberals" the economy and stock market historically does better when one is in office.

why? so humans can move forward.

Instead of teaching math, should they just give out calculators and provide training for how to press the buttons on a McRegister?

No offense, but if you think that you can do Math on a calculator, your arguements for better education are kinda weakened. Calculators (yes even graphing ones) are a way to get around the tedium of simple arithmetic, a way to skip past the dark ages and get to the meat of critical, logical thinking.

I analyze water flow patterns as it relates to insurance risk for a living... a mathematical job to be sure. When calculating the trajectory of a projected river overflow, I grab my scientific calculator, and I think back in sympathy for my 4th grade self, who was tortured by moronic ciriculum focused on creating mindless times table memorization, which I could not do...

The main advantage humans have over other animals is that our history and our technology make it possible to learn in one lifetime what could not otherwise be possible in a hundred lifetimes. "Back to basics" is how humanity self-destructs. Give them a pile of computers, have them teach the teacher.

Re:why? so humans can move forward.

Instead of teaching math, should they just give out calculators and provide training for how to press the buttons on a McRegister?

No offense, but if you think that you can do Math on a calculator, your arguements for better education are kinda weakened. Calculators (yes even graphing ones) are a way to get around the tedium of simple arithmetic, a way to skip past the dark ages and get to the meat of critical, logical thinking.

I think that was his point. Teaching them to hit buttons on a calculator isn't math. Giving them a computer isn't learning.

Re:School is a great way to waste time and money.

To be honest, *private* school didn't help me. (I don't think I'm qualified to speak for everyone else who attended my school. I'm not that familiar with how the rest of their lives worked out for them.)

I attended a private school between 7th. grade and sophmore year of high school. Today, looking back, I can safely say those were 4 of the worst years of my life. The combination of faculty who insisted on running things in a fascist military style, while often doing a questionable job of teaching the material, plus the abundance of "spoiled, rich kids" did nothing for me. Switching to a public school, after MUCH begging and pleading to my parents, was the BEST move I made.

The school systems DO waste a lot of people's time and money. I just don't think it's always fair to single out "public schools" as the only problems. Private schools currently have the ability to make themselves look good "on paper" by refusing or kicking out anyone who doesn't help them keep an artificially good image. They also tend to hide behind their religious affiliations. (EG. "Come on now, Johnny. Your school can't be THAT bad! You're being taught by Catholic brothers!")

Re:School is a great way to waste time and money.

Public school never helped anybody.

Growing up, I was greatly helped by the teachers in my public school. My third grade teacher for noticing how I aced the reading test and decided to give me the advanced reading test. I aced that one also. I credit her for putting me on a track where I enjoyed learning instead of being frustrated in school. It is quite possible that all of my success in life could be traced back to her in some form.

Since public school helped me, I guess your "never helped anybody" claim is false.