Digital Future Becoming Today’s Reality

May 22, 2009 written by John Watson

The prospect of a digital future is becoming the reality of today. High speed internet access is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for so many facets of everyday life. This BroadbandCensus article  explains how broadband is a priority of the Obama Administration. In the piece, National Economic Council official Susan Crawford called broadband “the new essential infrastructure” and continued that “lack of access to broadband will guarantee economic decline.”

Universal high-speed internet access is only the beginning. It is what we do with the access that has the power to positively transform our communities. By truly integrating the innovative uses of broadband and digital technologies, we can improve our day to day lives. The Intelligent Community Forum named Stockholm, Sweden the 2009 Intelligent Community of the Year at an annual gathering of global best-practices communities that emphasizes a “culture of use,” not just access to broadband technology or “households passed” availability. Click here  to read more about the conference that focused on “Building the Broadband Economy: Local Growth in a Global Economic Crisis.”

Creating the technologies of tomorrow is already in the works today. For example, AT&T is working on a telehealth device that could help to reduce the numbers of falls in the home of elderly people. According to this article , the shoe insoles “with built-in sensors that take gait, stride, and pace measurements as patients walk. The measurements are beamed wirelessly to a modem-like gateway box that’s connected to a health-care network via the Internet.” The hope is that by monitoring any change in their walking, doctors will be made aware of any problems before a fall would occur.

Companies and organizations of all kinds are coming to understand how they can use the internet to their advantage. Even the Vatican is taking advantage of the internet as a method of communication by launching iPhone and Facebook applications, as well as creating a new Vatican Website, www.pope2you.net. Archbishop Claudio Celli said the purpose of the website is to help attract young people and “present the message to the young generation through technologies that they know how to use.”