During the Great Depression, the government tried to revive the economy with the New Deal's public work projects, and ended up paying people to dig unneeded ditches.
In today's deep recession, digital age advocates are trying to persuade President-elect Barack Obama to put billions into a nationwide broadband build-out as part of his planned economic stimulus package.
Given that the internet has grown into an indispensable tool for the economy, for people's personal lives and for the nation's political discourse, spending billions to keep it stable and expand its reach is simply common sense.
But how do we make sure that the billions aren't spent creating the 21st century equivalent of ditches to nowhere?
The question of how to spend that money most effectively is largely unanswerable, since almost no one knows anything about the internet's infrastructure and those that do know aren't sharing that information with policymakers or regulators.
In a radio address earlier this month, Obama already signaled that the stimulus package will earmark billions to spur broadband deployment in order to keep the U.S. from sinking even lower than 15th on the list of well-wired countries.
There are many urging that the $800 billion or so economic stimulus plan include money for broader broadband. Higher education IT consortium EDUCAUSE suggests $100 billion (.pdf) be spent on fat fiber optic links to homes, while FreePress, a net neutrality advocacy group, has a $44 billion plan. For its part, the FCC has a pending proposal to open a swath of the airwaves dedicated to free, but filtered, wireless internet.
But the problem is that no one knows the best way to make the internet more resilient, accessible and secure, since there's no just no public data. The ISP and backbone internet providers don't tell anyone anything.
For instance, the government doesn't know how many people actually have broadband or what they pay for it.
In short, how can anyone decide what's the best way to build a bigger information super-highway when the toll operators won't say anything about the current use of the road?
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