Monday, January 10, 2005

Broadband == democracy?

I just read an article that claims the US isn't so far behind the rest of the world on broadband roll out. I beg to differ with McCullagh's argument about geographic size, just check where Canada is on the list, however the interesting part is his map of broadband access by Zip code in the USA.

Boy that looks awfully familar to me, wasn't it only a couple of months ago we were all staring dumbfounded at this map of Presidential Election 2004 voting by county?

Okay the maps aren't identical, but it does show a high correlation between broadband access and blue voting... One explanation is obvious - cities have the best broadband access and those danged metropolitan and diverse cities are most likely to vote blue. However another explanation might be that those with broadband get the most diverse news about the country and the world (and of course get the most porn on their screens) and generally appreciate freedom of information and freedom speech the most. So much so that they are willing to vote blue to protect it.

Thank the lord for broadband!

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