I am a drinker with writing problems - Brendan Behan
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Broadband is the landmark achievement of the 21st Century
BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS has been hailed as the innovation of the decade by Britons. However, while this and other technological advancements were seen as enriching, others, like social networking, were not.
People were asked by The Foundation, which describes itself as a growth and innovation firm, to rank a selection of products and services that they thought had contributed the most and least to their lives. These responses were then crunched to derive positive and negative indices.
Broadband, the rollout of which has been handled by two successive British Governments badly, topped the positive list, and was awarded a score of 192 out of 300.
Online shopping was the second most life-enriching contribution to mankind, making us wonder what sort of people were polled, while Google was ranked in third place, making us wonder even more about what sorts of people the pollsters were surveying.
Anyway, Google, broadband and online shopping did more to improve the quality of life in the UK than digital cameras, chip and PIN technology, low cost air travel, food labelling systems and satellite navigation. Which suggests that no one got fat by getting lost in a car while having their bank account cloned and their privacy invaded. Or something like that.
In-house lawyers do not like us to speculate, but if we were forced to we might suggest that it was trendy urbanites that handpick quail eggs from online farm collectives that responded to the poll, and not people that live in areas where the magic wand of broadband investment has stayed firmly in the Government's umbrella stand.
People living in those areas might suggest that dial-up is still the best thing since sliced bread and we would ask them ourselves, if we thought we could get a question over to them and a response before the end of February.
However, it might not only have been scooter riding Nathan Barleys that were polled by the scary sounding Foundation, as there were some signs of sensibility in the responses.
The majority of respondents would rather, we assume, run around a swimming pool with their shoelaces undone and scissors in their hands than watch reality television or 'poke' or 'friend' anyone on a social notworking website. So there were some indications of good sense, after all. µ
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You're thinking of inventions, not achievements. Just because high-bandwidth communications existed prior doesn't mean that "broadband" as a concept was really in play. The ability for the average consumer to access high-bandwidth Internet connections is an achievement. It means that connection providers, consumers, and content providers have marched in step to create a desirable product known as "broadband." Similar "great" technologies have failed simply because not all the gears were in motion to make it a viable product.
In many ways, selecting "broadband" as an achievement is to also honor the Internet itself in a century where its full potential will be realized, and where its achievement may be dwarfed by other notable achievements in the previous century.
It's like the Moon Shot except this time the whole world made it except the USA.
Hardware developed prior to 1980 at PARC and this is to be considered the crowning achievement of this century. How low do you guys have your sights aimed??? Venuses Colonization using Project Hell would be an achievement this is closer to how delay development.