Remember the “digital divide”. The bloviating over the “right” of access to the internet and how the “poor” were being left out and that was hurting their chances of advancement?
Remember how government decided it would fix that and take your money and provide hardware and connectivity to the poor?
Well it did, with predictable results:
As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show.
This growing time-wasting gap, policy makers and researchers say, is more a reflection of the ability of parents to monitor and limit how children use technology than of access to it.
Is it? So if it is a parent problem, what’s the solution?
Ha, ha, ha … you already know the answer, don’t you?
The new divide is such a cause of concern for the Federal Communications Commission that it is considering a proposal to spend $200 million to create a digital literacy corps. This group of hundreds, even thousands, of trainers would fan out to schools and libraries to teach productive uses of computers for parents, students and job seekers.
Yes, friends, the solution is just as predictable as the problem.
More government, of course.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Like other researchers and policy makers, Ms. Boyd said the initial push to close the digital divide did not anticipate how computers would be used for entertainment.
“We failed to account for this ahead of the curve,” she said.
Ya think? Name another government policy or program that ever has accounted for consequences ahead of the curve. Back to our most recent Quote of the Day. How in the world do we continue to let this sort of inept, wasteful, ill-thought-out nonsense continue?
Who knew, when free access was provided to the internet, that most would use it to entertain themselves? Nothing like free YouTube and porn, right?
Thanks, taxpayers.
Forward!
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO