The Gazette Telegraph (print edition) reported on the front page that the City's Telecommunications Policy Advisory Committee (TPAC) is looking at pushing for the Wi-Max wireless technology instead of Wi-Fi for networking the region.

Nothing wrong with that technological choice, BUT the City Council, the County Commissioners and TPAC itself should be looking much further at the policy implications in connecting up Colorado Springs citizens to the Internet more completely than they are now.

For over 25 years I have publicly advocated that the City and County encourage, develop, and lead by example connecting up every resident, every worker, every student, every government and business facility to each other across town, and the world at large with advanced telecommunications.And leave their cars at home as I and others am able to do. This city can rely on digital, even unlicensed, wireless to complete the connecting-up task that has been, and will be, only partially provided by telephone or cable company tear-up-the-streets-efforts and rural outreach, wired solutions.

Today global connectivity can be done by the Internet, which didn't even exist when I saw the future of personal computers plus personal, affordable, digital telecom, in 1977. And connected remote places from rural Montana to Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia! And more recently, the Sherpas at 15,000 feet up Mount Everest.

Why should the city and country governments get involved, rather than just 'leave it to the marketplace?'

There are several huge public policy reasons.

First, it is already becoming a myth that the only way for the Pikes Peak Region to grow ECONOMICALLY is to grow PHYSICALLY.

With the educational and technical level of current and future residents of this region, people can deliver their brainpower over these Highways of the Mind, deriving an income from delivering intellectual goods and services while bringing in dollars from afar. But the city and the Chamber of Commerce are still stuck on endlessly soliciting and subsidizing more large physical manufacturing businesses. Such enterprises require evermore real estate developments, more roads, more traffic and evermore costly government 'infrastructure.' And in spite of their claims that such 'growth' will 'pay for itself' in taxes, that is becoming ever less true.Endless physical growth is becoming foolish, costly,and unnecessary public policy in the Information and Communications Age.

The second reason should be even more obvious. The city and county are facing ever mounting tax costs for building and maintaining roads and traffic systems based on the obsolete assumptions that there will be the same amount of automobile traffic PER RESIDENCE driving to and from work , schools, and government offices in 2050, that occurs now. That is whenwe have a million residents in the metro area - twice what we have now- we just naturally will need twice the highway and city traffic capacity. Not so!

And CDOT, based on local questionable PPACG traffic projections has called for $250 million to expand just the 4 mile US24 expressway between I-25 and Manitou. That is just for projected increases in traffic for just going to and from work in 2032!!

I could network virtually the entire city for that!

The city, county, business and academic leaders need to disenthrall themselves from the automobile and economic assumptions of the past. (if not for any better reason than the price of oil and global warming, and the not insignificant fact that the Pikes Peak region is running out of water for bigger populations)

Those governments need to do some serious research on the government cost savings potential of a 'networked' city. No local government has a clue now. Neither does TPAC.

4% of ALL US workers work from home now, by telecom. Telecommuters. And the same Gazette reported last week that academic surveys of companies found that work-from-home employees were MORE loyal and supportive of their employeers than those who went there face to face. Swallow that research, you who are ready to think the worst of telecommuters.

And Education. K-12 as WELL as college. Students AND teachers and professors should wake up too.Why should every high schooler drive every school-day to and from School, filling up school parking lost, AND sitting on a hot seat that is ONLY used and paid for by the School Taxpayers maybe 6 hours a day. and not on any weekend or holiday? You have a clue how much a 'new high school' on the Banning Lewis Ranch development is going to cost if it is designed the way schools were 100 years ago?

Does a high school senior learn written English composition better by sitting in a classroom with 40 other students and one teacher, than he would by WRITING on a word processor, running a spell checker, and sending it to his teacher for corrections, comments, and grading ONLINE? Does it really matter whether he does it 'in class' or on his home computer? Like my youngest son did on my early Radio Shack Model I computer and a300 baud modem, 25 years ago?

I taught ENTIRE 'Electronic English' Classes, to Adults as well as Students - 10 years ago entirely online!

And where and when will school and highschool students LEARN how to 'work' collaboratively, the way most work is being done today. Or to do research. Only sitting on their fannies in a classroom without 1 computer per student (or in smaller school districts 1 to 5 or six 'shared during school hours only' computers?

Or do we rely on parents ONLY to give their kid a computer and a network account IF they can afford it? And forget the rest?

No,. I think high school stundents should only have to physically drive to and sit in a classroom, 3 out of every 5 school days a week! How about it Pikes Peak Region School Boards?

For another area of research, City and County governents should be asking our larger companies to permit all possible knowledge workers - from engineers to file clerks to work from home over the net, and build neighborhood 'work centers' all over the city connected to itself. Why should half of Manitou drive 25 miles across Colorado Springs to work and back every day? Where do you think the traffic jams at 8th Street and US 24 comes from?

Finally local governments should, BY EXAMPLE, let all their knowledge workers work connected from home, and NOT prohibit such way to work, as several, including County government have.

Only a 25% reduction in car traffic would be huge. For traffic, for tax cost of maintainance (and snow plowing!), and new constriction.

Wake up El Paso County. It's the 21st Century. Start acting like it.