About the Rural Electrification Agency that the American president FDR set up during the Great Depression to connect the remaining 90% of rural America to the electric grid:
The REA didn’t just barge into rural towns, install electricity and leave. Instead, the REA took two critical steps to make it a truly transformative agency: (1) it employed and empowered community members and (2) it taught people how to make the most of their newfound light. On step one, the REA relied on local partners to organize cooperatives that would supply the labor to build their community’s own electricity system…
America needs Universal Basic Internet. Achieving UBI requires a coordinated federal effort that, like the REA, (1) involves local stakeholders as a way to increase employment and civic pride and (2) creates an “internet circus” of trainers to increase digital literacy around the nation. This approach to closing the digital divide will go a long way in helping the nation recover from the COVID collapse.
– COVID-19 shows we need Universal Basic Internet now
This is the best way to not let a crisis go to waste. Also the best time to undertake transformational social programmes. Regulatory reforms. Hard national conversations about issues.