{"id":2261,"date":"2011-03-28T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/the-internet-backwoods-thats-south-georgia.html"},"modified":"2011-03-28T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-28T19:00:00","slug":"the-internet-backwoods-thats-south-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/the-internet-backwoods-thats-south-georgia.html","title":{"rendered":"The Internet backwoods: that&#8217;s south Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"Saturday I heard somebody bragging about how fast the Internet is in Atlanta.\nThat would be maybe a tenth of the speed it is in Tokyo.\nBut still blazing fast compared to the broke-down wagon in a muddy ditch\nspeeds we get in south Georgia:\n<p align=\"center\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.peerflow.net\/2009\/08\/usa-dead-last-in-internet-speeds-and-not-trying-very-hard-to-catch-up.html\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none;\"  src=\"http:\/\/www.quarterman.com\/images\/gaspeedtest.png\"><\/a>\n<p>\nI wrote that article more than a year ago, and Internet speeds in rural\nGeorgia have not improved much if at all.\nThis isn&#8217;t just about playing Farmville.\nIt&#8217;s about communicating with your relatives,\nabout competing in business,\n\n<!--more-->\nabout knowing what&#8217;s going on in the world.\nIf you&#8217;re limited to TV and the local newspaper for your &#8220;news&#8221;\nyou won&#8217;t know diddly about what&#8217;s going on in Wisconsin or Egypt\nor Libya, all of which affects you.\nYou won&#8217;t even be able to look up how your local, state, or national\nelected officials voted, or what their position is on issues that\nconcern you.\nLike what are they doing to get you real fast Internet access!\n<p>\nYou probably won&#8217;t even know that\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.peerflow.net\/2011\/03\/eyes-on-their-lobbyists-bank-accounts.html\">\nthe plutocrats are working right now\nto slow, stifle, and censor the slow Internet we&#8217;ve got.<\/a>\n<p>\nWithout the Internet, local activism such as this blog would be hobbled.\nSure, we could still video local government meetings and demonstrations,\nbut what would we do with that video?\nBeg for a local access cable TV channel?\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s something an Industrial Authority interested in the public good\nand the general welfare might want to promote: fast Internet access\nfor rural Georgia.\nFree speech, free press, free Internet trade!\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday I heard somebody bragging about how fast the Internet is in Atlanta. That would be maybe a tenth of the speed it is in Tokyo. But still blazing fast compared to the broke-down wagon in a muddy ditch speeds we get in south Georgia: I wrote that article more than a year ago, and [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,2,733,21,22,734,3,178,121],"tags":[803,4815,4494,28,2160,3532,4818,1877,507,4817,427,4816,215,590,2138],"class_list":["post-2261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-government","category-media","category-planning","category-politics","category-television","category-transparency","category-vlcia","category-webtech","tag-access","tag-backwoods","tag-common-good","tag-cost","tag-free-press","tag-free-speech","tag-free-trade","tag-general-welfare","tag-internet","tag-internet-freedom","tag-japan","tag-plutocrats","tag-south-georgia","tag-speed","tag-tokyo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-At","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}