Rural Broadband

As someone who went to W&L in the 1970’s I was taught and appreciated computers and how they can improve someone’s life.  The internet started in the 1970’s and was called ARPANET, since it was created by our Department of Defense to help keep us safe.  Then in the 1980’s it blossomed into a way to get information quickly and cheaply.  In the 1990’s we started to use it for commerce.  In the early 2000’s we started to use it for entertainment, video games and became networked organizations.  In the 2010’s it began to be measure our blood pressure, sugar level, help us exercise and learn more about every subject we did not pass in either high school or college, and with ease. 

Since then computers have begun to think like humans and help us in ways we never expected. Recently the first antibiotic in thirty years was created using artificial intelligence by a female professor at Yale who was hired to do research and teach artificial intelligence at Yale.  In 2013 she got breast cancer and now works on using artificial intelligence to find and create a cure for breast cancer and a great stop on the way was her using AI to create this new antibiotic.

But in our rural Rockbridge County many families do not have access to any internet, any broadband, any computer connection to the world. That is worse that not having a phone in the 1950’s or a TV in the 1960’s as the internet opens up doors and minds in a way the phone and TV never dreamed of doing.  But, here in 2024, progress is really taking off.  BARC received a multi-million dollar grant from the federal government matched by local taxpayer dollars to expand broadband to many in our area who have not been able to get it at a price they can afford.  Let us look forward to the time when anyone can use the internet in their home and can turn it off whenever they want.  It will make life better for many people and improve our region tremendously.

—Herb Rubenstein