Why Can’t We Be Like South Korea?

[Commentary] Rural areas in New England are mostly -- with some shining exceptions  --  struggling to come up with a route to fiber-optic-plus-Wi-Fi access that will allow people to work from home and generally participate in the modern world. On the other hand, it is almost impossible to find a rural section of South Korea that doesn’t have fantastic high-capacity Internet access. It’s clear that Massachusetts is not South Korea. Just a handful of Massachusetts utilities have embraced the idea of fiber, and people in Western Massachusetts often travel far for a persistent (even if third-rate) data connection. South Korea invested heavily in communications infrastructure following its 1997 economic crisis, and is dedicated to ensuring world-class Internet access in every corner (high or low, wet or dry, urban or rural) of the country.

What’s brought this problem home for me, yet again, is the human experience of this difference. We’re not planning for the future and we’re not in the lead. We need high-powered leadership at every level of government as well as university-catalyzed collaboration in order to move things along. Our politicians don’t understand how important this is  --  and a citizenry desensitized to inferior service can’t envision a better situation. So it takes a teenaged visitor from halfway around the world to open our eyes.

[Susan Crawford is co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University]