I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The state of Maine gives out about $1 million about every 10 months to help its residents get high-speed Internet connections, reports stateline.org today.
The media outlet notes that states across the country have pursued similar efforts in recent years. But their scale will pale in comparison to the $7.2 billion in stimulus money the federal government has committed over the next two years to improve high-speed Internet connections around the country.
New Mexico, like every other state, stands to benefit greatly from the federal largess. As with other rural states, the Land of Enchantment can use some help closing the digital divide (between those who have high-speed Internet and those who don’t) in which rural areas often are forgotten redoubts of slow Internet connections.
Former Gov. Toney Anaya, who is heading up Gov. Bill Richardson’s federal stimulus team, gave the Independent in May a vision of what New Mexico might look like with a more connected population.
The former governor specifically saw special value in upgrading the health system’s information technology system.
“It’s one thing … to have the electronic software and hardware inside the hospital,” Anaya said. It’s another, he added, to have a system that will allow physicians, say in Albuquerque, to look on and even help physicians in another part of the state during a medical procedure. Such video teleconferencing would be made easier by increasing of the system’s bandwidth, Anaya said.
“We’re encouraging anyone — educational facilities, hospitals charter schools, utilities, local governments, any and everybody” to apply, Anaya said.
It sounds fantastic, a world where everyone is connected and where gigabtyes of information are available at your fingertips. The benefits are gargantuan, provided you’re a savvy surfer, if you’re an information geek like me.
But there are down sides, too, including mistaking time online as a suitable replacement for actual interaction with real, live people.
The other — a potential boon to online news sites like the Independent — is the deleterious effect increasing the number of people with high-speed Internet may have on newspapers, an industry in which I labored for 18 years. That explosion of access will hasten the migration from newspapers to online news sources, I suspect — a development that I’m sure to greet with ambivalence.
