On Fri, 20 Sep 1996, Declan McCullagh wrote: (in quoting Reed Hundt)
"The investment to network our schools and libraries is so small and the payoff so large. Look at the math... Can it be that we have a 700 billion-dollar-a-year information technology industry and yet we can't afford to give every teacher the tools we give every shipping clerk at Wal Mart? Or that we could afford to network every classroom by the beginning of the next century, but somehow we just neglected to do it? At the FCC we will vote next year on a new universal service funding mechanism... The challenge I'm talking about is to provide bandwidth and access to all Americans, but especially in kids in classrooms...
[Note that the 'we" paying for the shipping clerk's network is a private corporation spending its own money. But the second "we" is the government spending netizens' money. Guess the FCC can't tell the difference. --Declan]
Correct. And if "we" fund universal service, then "we" don't want to see anything on the Net about non-GAK crypto, the right to bear arms, freedom of association, chemistry, non-clothed persons, taxes, etc. etc. "We" feel that many if not "all American, but especially kids in classrooms" would be injured by these thoughts.