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This being an election year, it was hardly surprising to see the lieutenant governor in town.
Every so often, we get to be part of Colorado. It works like one of my Grandfather Wollen's observations. The county roads near his homestead--17 miles northeast of Bill, Wyo.--generally rattled out teeth if you weren't high-centered or mudded up to the axles.
They do maintain these roads on a regular basis,
he explained once. Every four years, regular as
clockwork.
So every four years, regular as clockwork, we too
receive some attention. This was a joint production of the
Chaffee County Computer Club (I edit SCUM, Salida
Computer Users' Monthly,
its newsletter) and the Heart
of the Rockies Chamber of Commerce.
Given the chamber involvement, I should have expected that the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry would appear with several presentations about various ballot amendments and how, if we'd just vote properly, Colorado would be a safer place for millionaires.
But it did catch me by surprise. It was one of those days. The event was supposed to start at 6 p.m., which meant that my 6:08 p.m. arrival was rather prompt by the traditional horology of Central Colorado Standard Time.
Alas, I was so late that I got stuck in the front row. Around here, public meetings are like church. Everybody wants to sit in back, and latecomers get punished by being forced to sit where they can't easily sneak out for a beer or a smoke.
Anyway, the lieutenant governor finally spoke. Since he plans to return to private life in Durango come January, Sam Cassidy is about as lame as a duck can get and still quack.
But before he leaves Denver, he wants to put together a plan for improved rural telecommunications in Colorado.
Our problem is fairly simple. USWest will not invest in improved service here because its capital will go to the cities, where it has to remain competitive. Since state regulators give USWest its monopoly so that it costs more to call Westcliffe than Los Angeles from here, it seems that our state government might be able to improve the situation.
Cassidy's proposal is the first time anybody in state government has gone even that far.
Granted, Gov. Roy Romer thinks this is important. He waxed eloquent about communications infrastructure and how vital it is to a thriving rural economy when I heard him in Salida in 1990.
Friends in other towns tell me the same thing, that Romer makes a great stump speech about the horrors of party lines and the bright future of fiber-optics. Then he gets back to Denver, where, if he talks about communication, it's about one-bounce satellite links to Munich and Tokyo.
So why does he forget us when he crosses Wadsworth? Does he suffer from adult attention-deficit disorder? Is there a 12-step support group somewhere for our governor?
Back to Cassidy, who's got a method, and one of the first steps is to come up with a list of uses for improved communication capability.
With the list of uses, he said he can sell the legislature and the public-utilities commission on some changes.
After the presentation, I argued with him. It seems
like a real waste of time to be collecting possible uses
for improved technology, especially in communications. We
don't use anything the way that the inventor intended. The
telephone was supposed to broadcast concerts; the radio was
for point-to-point communication. Just get us some more
bandwidth, and we'll figure out how to use it.
Cassidy patiently explained that our legislature doesn't
work that way. He's got to be able to say something like
if we put in a state-wide fiber-optics system, and if
the chairman of the joint budget committee got in an auto
accident on a rural road when it was snowing too hard for
the helicopters to fly, then the local doctor could get
state-of-the-art information from the big-city specialist
and save the committee chairman's life.
So, attention legislature. Arrange for some more bandwidth (a channel that can handle more information in a given amount of time has greater bandwidth), and here's what we can do with it:
·Make quicker wire transfers when we're donating to the Republican party.
·Access remote and scattered data so that we can easily check the backgrounds of potential employees and, if the applicant has a history of union agitation or calling in safety inspectors, turn him down.
·With a phone call, anyone in the world could enjoy a panoramic display of lascivious full-color pictures of local real-estate developments. The transaction could even be completed via remote connection, thereby rapidly putting money into the deserving hands of realty agents, brokers and developers. More of them will be able to afford campaign contributions, and the important job of subdividing Colorado into 35-acre ranchettes will get done in time for this generation to enjoy the full proceeds.
Now, if Sam Cassidy will just take my list to the legislature in January, rural telecommunications improvement will be the first bill to hit the governor's desk.
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