\nI just got done watching the Celtic match from the weekend, where the highlight was Celtic’s 3-goal outburst in 5 minutes. Among them was another sterling free-kick from Shunsuke Nakamura, who is just incredible – Beckham wishes he could bend it like #25. And it’s amazing to think that 40 years ago, Celtic won the Champions League with a team composed entirely of players who lived within 30 miles of the stadium. Now, their most electrifying player is a 150-lb Japanese midfielder, and I’m watching them on satellite from California.\n<\/p>\n
\nAnd now I’m watching a Premiership match. It’s Everton and Spurs, two teams in the second tier of my interest, but think about it – I’m watching the Premier League, from England, live from my recliner in my house in California – which I live in because I met and married a girl from Silicon Valley, who I met as the result of a group of Internet friends who led me to live in Washington DC at the time…\n<\/p>\n
\nHow different is it now? Twenty years ago, there was no public access to the Internet, no cheap mobile phones, no digital satellite TV, and long-distance telephony was expensive, not something given away as a free spiff to encourage you to get the service. Twenty years ago, if you chanced to meet a girl who lived a few states over, you were limited to cards and letters and hoping your parents wouldn’t notice the phone bill. Now we live in a world where long-distance relationships are practically routine, and living in DC and carrying on with a girl in California is hardly more difficult than carrying on with a girl in Baltimore.\n<\/p>\n
\nSo at some level, I am wildly envious of the kids these days, especially any who were in my situation in their youth – sure, maybe you’re stuck in some semi-rural exurban backwater a forty-mile drive from your friends, but as long as there’s a computer, a broadband connection and a $20 prepaid mobile phone, you don’t have to be alone. That right there should be all the justification we need to make sure there’s broadband everywhere in this country. Not the normal policy prescription, I know – but it’s stunning to imagine how profoundly different my life would have been in my teens and 20s with the application of 2007 technology.\n<\/p>\n
\nOf course, as soon as I say that, the wireless router hangs. It’s not all cloudcuckooland here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just got done watching the Celtic match from the weekend, where the highlight was Celtic’s 3-goal outburst in 5 minutes. Among them was another sterling free-kick from Shunsuke Nakamura, who is just incredible – Beckham wishes he could bend it like #25. And it’s amazing to think that 40 years ago, Celtic won the … <\/p>\n