Rayne does TED

[marsden_online]

Last week the Least I Could Do webcomic (N always SFW) ran a series of strips which had one of their main characters (Rayne) doing a TED talk. (TED.com - Ideas worth sharing)

It starts with a premise that "the world we live in is driven by a sense of fear and a sense of entitlement"

5 strips, starting here
Follow-up blog post by the author of the strip

~~~
As a tangent, last week in the NZHerald Anthony* Doesburg asked Faster, wider bandwidth - but what will we do with it? He didn't answer the question directly, but I'd like to suggest that even getting the majority of the country on the same sort of speed I'm accustomed to (4Mb/s) would open up access to things like the TED talks. (OK, also need much cheaper data rates because y'know, streaming video glug glug glug).

*the fact that no-one at the herald has bothered correcting the blatant typo in his name in the headline irritates me.

Gosh, do I have a sense of entitlement about fast, cheap broadband? Probably, but I believe the benefits are so great that it need to be designated a public good* like electricity and in earlier years the telephone.

*I know I'm not using the proper economic definition here, but I can't recall the correct term. Nationalised good?

Comments

[marsden-online.livejournal.com]

I never really participated in the conversations - but I found them a lot more interesting to listen to :)

You don't need fast *broadband* to get along in today's world, but as you say dial-up isn't very helpful and no access to the internet can be a serious handicap.

And most people don't even have 'our' current broadband. We are spoilt living here in Christchurch, with some of the best internet access in the country (which is still pretty shitty (http://www.connectivityscorecard.org/countries/new_zealand) compared to the rest of the developed world).

Recent numbers indicate that 57% of households (http://www.tuanz.org.nz/blog/e379f711-b2b6-4423-9e32-4a8bf9f301db/ed7a5696-a076-494a-8903-758eeb2ea92e.html) have broadband, or (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/netw/3CC35EFE80CD3F3DCC2574EB007E047C) which doesn't sound too bad until you realise that's just portions of our major cities, and heavily weighted towards smaller families, flatting students/young professionals and so on. By another measure we only have a bit more than 20 connections per 100 people (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/netw/3CC35EFE80CD3F3DCC2574EB007E047C) (and that includes business connections).

[jomas-45.livejournal.com]

There's also the thing of a good percentage of our population think they don't need the internet, especially the older generation. They phone the friends they're not around all the time, and see their other friends on a regular enough basis that other connections aren't required. They get all their forms and paperwork on paper, and use snail mail or couriers for sending it. They watch television, and buy dvds from shops that exist on the street. If you never had it in the first place, why would you miss it?