119 million without internet

NBC recently wasted three whole minutes of airtime interviewing a privileged white man about how difficult it was to give up part of his privilege.

How brave of Paul Miller, who writes for a tech blog, to give up the Internet for a whole year!

An entire year spent not checking Facebook, not tweeting bad jokes, not Instagramming breakfast! Paul Miller had to read books and actually go to the bank.

Miller reports that the experience was eye-opening — he used the loneliness to get in touch with his creative side and be productive.

Unfortunately, Paul Miller’s experience was tainted by the fact that everyone is on the Internet now. It’s like that time Tyra Banks put on a fat suit to try to get the “fat experience,” or that one Vice reporter wore a hijab for a day to really understand what being a Muslim woman was like.

“But Paul Miller,” you might ask if you were NBC or some other, more responsible news source, “what about all the people who aren’t on the Internet?” 

As of the 2010 U.S. Census, 20 percent of Americans lacked Internet access. The FCC reported that 119 million Americans, over a third of the nation’s citizens, were
without broadband Internet by 2012.  If you were a real news source, you might actually interview those people instead of Paul Miller. 

Paul Miller made a choice to do a dumb, unscientific social experiment on himself. He was bored and wanted to see what it was like. I have a suspicion that he maybe wasn’t that good at the Internet in the first place — a great impetus for the experiment was that he felt overwhelmed by his connection.

The 119 million Americans without a broadband connection? They’re not doing it on a whim. These people are excluded from one of the greatest information resources and equalizers in history because of race and class status.

Americans without Internet access are predominantly poor and often live in rural areas, which have been culturally alienated ever since the US moved from an agrarian to a city-centric society. 

Native Americans living on reservations are even more likely to be without access. One less medium in which Native American voices can be ignored by mainstream society.

The Internet has the power to assuage inequalities among Americans, but is actually exacerbating existing discrepancies. Of course, those of us who have the resources to effect change, to start a conversation, are instead sitting across from Paul Miller, asking how this upper-middle class white guy could possibly tolerate losing his Foursquare governorship of the local Starbucks.

This story shows both mainstream media’s bias toward the white and middle class and its unwavering allegiance to puff pieces that fail to fulfill the media’s obligation to the public. 

Yes, the segment appeared on Today, but harder news shows aren’t doing much better. Our news outlets are failing us, bringing us Paul Miller instead of having meaningful conversations that could prompt our country to do more — like figure out how to give 119 million people access to the Internet.

Miller pretending to live in the late 1980s may be good for a laugh, but it should not be filling airtime.

But I guess it doesn’t really matter because no one watches NBC anyway.

­— casefarr@indiana.edu