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November 15, 2002

PC Promises

A PC on every desk and a chicken in every pot

by Joe Celko

Some days I just love getting press release emails. Every day I sort through a ton of them, but much like data mining, I often find real gems.

One email, "Austin Leaders Laud New Digital Divide Report," a July 11, 2002 PRNewswire release, told me that "Austin community technology leaders ... today praised a new report that challenges the Bush administration's belief that the digital divide has been bridged."

The Bush administration, according to the report, plans to eliminate two federal grant programs that fund computer purchases — the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) and the Community Technology Center (CTC).

Ana Sisnett, executive director of Austin Free-Net, said in the press release, "Fair and equal access to innovative information technologies, training, and policy-making are absolutely essential to preserving civil rights and truly democratic processes in this country."

Right to a PC?

If having a PC is "absolutely essential to preserving civil rights and truly democratic processes in this country," then what were we doing before cheap computing? I thought the Constitution was written on parchment, not a Web site. And what the heck does "fair and equal access" mean here? What is the unit of measurement? How much computer does a person deserve?

According to figures given on the www.digitalempowerment.org Web site, the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens already have computer access if they want it. In fact, 50 percent of American households have Internet access, which is more than those that subscribe to a local daily newspaper. Newspapers were supposed to be defenders of truth in a democracy, but nobody advocates a federally funded newspaper.

Since 1995, the federal government has invested more than $13 million in Texas through the TOP and CTC programs. The investment led to almost $16 million from other public and private sources, creating a $30 million fund for community technology in Texas. Nationally, even more federal cash is available. Training kids for entry-level, high-tech jobs makes no sense, given the present market. The problem in IT is quality, not quantity. We are grinding out tons of people who have a certificate of some kind from a vendor but can't program their way out of an infinite loop.

PC Saturation

What makes this situation so funny to me is that when the dot-coms and high-tech companies here in Austin folded, they often sold their almost new equipment for pennies on the dollar to salvage dealers or to their surviving or freshly fired employees.

I know of one company that offered HP Vectras for under $100 to its employees. Even then, this same company finally donated more than 200 machines that the employees didn't want to the Austin police department. To put this in perspective, a subscription to the Austin-American Statesman is $211.12 per year, so a used Vectra can actually cost less than a newspaper subscription.

In a scarier quote, Hannah Gourgey, managing director of the Community Technology Training Center at the Capital Area Training Foundation, stated, "The tremendous success of our programs in Texas shows how communities become stronger and families live better through the federal government's guidance, leadership, and funding."

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But the word "funding" is what's important here. A lot of geeks are out of work in Austin, and it's nice to have a federally funded job these days. This program was proposed under President Clinton's administration and was supposed to require more than $2 billion to solve the problem. The digital gap disappeared in Internet time, with cheaper and cheaper access. But if you play your cards right, the federal money stays forever.

Unfortunately, Digital Divide spending is back in the 2003 federal budget. Maybe I can get a federal grant to study this conundrum.

Joe Celko [71062.1056@compuserve.com] is an independent consultant in Austin, Texas and the author of Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming (Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1999).