Ah, I finally have cable modem-supplied broadband working here in my home/retreat in the woods a few miles from Walden Pond. What would Henry David Thoreau have said? I just did the download bandwidth test, and got several results in the 1600 Kb/s range. Not great for cable, but not bad. Getting the cable took two months partnering with the Comcast organization. Comcast has many many nice and very capable people–I got to know several of them–but Comcast could use a better overall system. Because of all these good people, now there is about a quarter of a mile of new coax suspended between poles to my place in the woods–and as I sit here I finally feel connected.
Amazing how lack of broadband cripples a digital lifestyle that has become dependent on it. Thoreau, who prided himself on working with a pencil that his family had made, would perhaps be scornful. He might see the web as a pathway for digital intruders–threading their way relentlessly into the last peaceful spaces in the forest.
But his mentor and friend Ralph Waldon Emerson, who founded a magazine, held seminars and salons and sponsored public talks, would–I think–be quite interested in blogging and all the other good things that broadband makes easy. He might see these digital threads enabling intrusions in the other direction–that is, helping free spirits intrude into the “civilized” world of establishment journalism and thought. My little cable modem sitting on the floor is a deceptively harmless-looking entry point that leads into a channel through which I and other free thinkers can send out our messages, and create conversations and subversive collaborations with like spirits around the world.
