I went to the meeting yesterday about TechConnect (a/k/a the city’s efforts to bridge the Digital Divide). There were about 20 people there, mostly representatives of community organizations.

It turns out that the city’s plan to “close the digital divide”, which Gavin has dubbed TechConnect (complete with interCaps, for that late 90s flavor), consists of four pillars, of which citywide wireless is only the first. They are:

• Access - this is citywide wireless. Note that this is intended to be “affordable”, not necessarily free
• Equipment - things like low-cost computers for low-income folks
• Focused Content - online city services in a variety of languages, as well as content (city and otherwise) targeted for folks who don’t read well or are very new to computers
• Traininig and Support - giving people the training they need to accomplish stuff with their new computers as well as helping them out when something goes wrong

All this sounds pretty good, and is, in fact, probably the right list of things to focus on.

I think there’s a serious danger, however. The first component of this plan, affordable citywide wireless, is by far the easiest politically. I’d guess that support for it is highest among the professional-type folks that the politicians love. It would be easy for the city to push ahead with this part of the plan, and then lose momentum when it came to doing the hard stuff like providing training and content for low-income folks and people who don’t read high-school english.

So the key is to keep the pressure on the city to follow through with all four parts of this, rather than only the sexy one.