The value of professionals

Jakob Nielsen's article points to an important aspect of why, despite the easy availability of 16 year old volunteers around to build a campaign website, campaigns should use professionals to design their online communications tools. A volunteer may be free, but how many amateur designers know everything they need to know about designing an accessible website? For political campaigns, it is vital that all voter, of all ability levels, feel valued and heard by the campaign. A professional web developer (should) know how to build a website that makes it accessible for all users. The chance that a volunteer will do the same is quite slim.

Rural Electrification redux

The Economist article about mobile phones vs. internet access confirmed for me something I've noticed about American efforts to improve internet access, both in rural America and in the third world.

America is one of the most wired countries in the world. And when I say "wired", I mean literal wires--we all have several different kinds of wires going into our houses. Most have electric, telephone, and cable.

All of those wires are very expensive, especially the "last mile" to individual houses in low-density communities.

All these wires are a vestige of early 20th century public policy--FDR's Depression era rural electrification project, the Bell telephone monopolies, created as an incentive to lay telephone lines to every house, etc.

Because we already have wires leading to our houses (specifically, cable and telephone wires) that can carry digital signals to our computers, Americans assume that this is how all telecommunications happens--over wires. It's cheap for Comcast to add cable internet as a service, because the wires, the infrastructure, is already there.

This is not true for most of the world. Technology has reached a point that we do not need wires to carry digital information. Cellular, WiFi, and soon WiMax make wires obsolete. Sure, there are infrastructure requirements for each of those, but they don't require a physical connection between every computer and a wire in a wall. The "last mile" can now be reached with one cellular tower, rather than wires to each home.

As the Economist article demonstrates, the most useful telecommunications advances in the third world are going to be those that rely on modern patterns of infrastructure. We don't need another "rural electrification" scheme to wire up Africa. Africa can skip the wires all together and go straight for cell phones and wireless internet. First-world investment, while necessary, should not be focused on recreating American-style patterns of technology usage. Better to let Africa develop on its own path without wasting money on outdated infrastructure.

Blogging the Virginia races

The Post has an interesting article up on its website tonight about blogs focusing on the Virginia 2005 campaigns. These blogs function as "influentials" for the Virginia political community. Voters and activists go to them to find out what they should think about the campaigns in their own communities. One candidate, David Englin, credits the blogs with helping him win his primary, but has also been a victim of a smear campaign by one of the local blogs. The campaigns realize that getting the influentials of the blog world on board with their candidate is a key step towards winning the November election.