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When this reporter ran for Mayor of the San Fernando Valley in the Great (and failed) Valley Secession Election of 2002, he proposed a program of "universal, ubiquitous Internet broadband connectivity for EVERYONE" because he thought that would improve the economy, create jobs, reduce pollution (through massive telecommuting), improve public safely, lower taxes, improve family, neighborhood, and community life, spur creativity, reduce traffic congestion and accidents, decentralize political decision-making, facilitate e-government and Internet voting, enhance public, private, higher, technical and arts education, provide a platform for VoIP to supplement or supplant telephone networks, enable massive multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), jump-start tele-medicine, empower professional and amateur artists, accelerate economic globalization, enhance the free flow of ideas and personal relationships world-wide, reduce wait times at the airport, supplement or supplant broadcast television, cable, and satellite program delivery, attract high-tech contributors to his campaign, and provide the basis for getting him elected Mayor.

He wasn't elected Mayor, which didn't matter, since the Valley secession measure to create the new Valley City he would have headed went down to defeat citywide, although it did pass by the slimmest of margins in the SFV itself.

More than a year-and-a-half after this reporter first put forward such a plan in his own campaign for Mayor of the San Fernando Valley, putative Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and putative Republican presidential nominee George Bush have gotten on the "universal Internet access" bandwagon as well, although without the enthusiasm and understanding of its potential implications that were central to this proposal in the reporter's San Fernando Valley campaign.

You can read about Johnny- and George-come-lately in the June 22, 2004, article in PC World entitled Broadband Becomes a Campaign Issue.

To see and hear this reporter making his ground-breaking, now commonplace, proposal for universal Internet connectivity back in November, 2002, in a TechTV segment, click here.