Video Transcript: Bridging the Digital Divide

I was born in 1960 and if you can't tell by that image, I grew up in the analog  world. I used rotary telephones and I solved complex math problems with a  pencil and a piece of paper. What I what I knew of the world I got from watching  black and white television and reading an encyclopedia and no dinosaurs were  not roaming the earth. Then, look being born in 1960 offered me a rather unique  opportunity to witness the dawn of the digital world. I was in my late 20s, and  since that time, I have spent nearly my entire adult life in the technology  industry. I've seen some amazing things. I have seen mainframe computers the  size of this stage reduced in size to fit into my back pocket. I witnessed the birth  of the internet and web browsers and social media. Right now from this stage,  using this device, I can control no less than six internet connected devices in my home. Even more incredible. Doctors today can remotely diagnose and  administer medication to patients anywhere there's digital broadband  connectivity. Yeah, the digital world is pretty amazing, and it has really been a  profound it has a profound impact on the direction of my life, but it's come at a  cost millions of people throughout the world, many right here in South Carolina  are being excluded from the digital world. They call this exclusion the digital  divide. And I am here today to talk to you and introduce that topic to you, and to  show you the plan that we have for making it a thing of the past. Now I want to  use this image of the London Underground to help us visualize the digital divide. The London Underground is made up of several elements, the train that takes  us back and forth between our destinations, the platform where you stand to  access the train, and the gap, and that's the space in between the platform and  the train. Mind the Gap. There's actually a life lesson there. Now, for the purpose of this discussion, what I'd like us to do is to imagine, for the moment, that the  train is the digital world, and the platform is how we access it. Now there are two types of people standing on that platform, those who can get on the train and  those who cannot. Those people that can get on the train, they have the  necessary skill and knowledge and economic ability to do so. For them, it's just  a simple matter of walking over the gap and getting on the train. For those  people who cannot get on the train, they don't have the skill or knowledge or  economic ability to do so. For them, the gap is already way too wide to try to  cross, and so they're left standing on the platform. This is the digital divide in  1995 William Kennard, then Chairman of the FCC, stated in a society where we  are increasingly defined by our access to information and what we earn is what  we learn. If you do not have access to technology, you're going to be left in the  digital Dark Ages. Let's fast forward to today. You might be interested to learn  that the digital divide, that space, that gap between the platform and the train,  has continued to grow wider. Let me put this into perspective, in the US, there  are over 34 million people who do not have access to the digital world simply  because it's not offered to them, and when it is offered to them, in many cases, it is far too expensive for them To afford. Additionally, one out of every four US 

adults are either illiterate or they have a very limited literacy skill set, and I'm not  even talking about the people that don't have the technical skills in order to do  something with that connection. These statistics define the primary factors  attributing to the growth in the digital divide, access, having the ability to actually obtain a digital connection and understanding, having the necessary knowledge  and skills to be able to do something with it. Today, we have global, federal and  locally funded projects that are actually addressing access to the digital world.  We can actually visualize the day when digital broadband connectivity will be  both ubiquitous and affordable. Understanding. Having the required literacy  levels and technical acumen to do something with that connection, those  problems have proven to be significantly harder to solve. Now, I mentioned  earlier that I was been in the technology industry for most of my adult life, and  that's over 30 years really old guy, and even for me, at times, I have difficulty  accessing and Understanding the digital world. What hope do we have abridging the digital divide when people with my level of knowledge and experience have  difficulties, maybe everyone just wasn't meant to ride the train, at least that's  how it felt to me. And then one day, something extraordinary happened. I read a  book. I guess I read two books. Daniel Suarez's novels are an interesting blend  of action thriller meets the Geek Squad. Think Jason Bourne teaming up with Bill Nye, the Science Guy, to save the world. Got the image. Now, my apologies to  Daniel. His books are way cooler than that. All right. In his books, the  protagonist creates a way to access the digital world that's comprehendible to all people on the planet, regardless of their language, literacy or technical skill  levels. He calls it a shamanic interface. And yes, I am referring to a shaman, as  in a diviner of spiritual intent. Shaman. This shamanic digital interface uses  somatic gestures to invoke access to the digital world, similar in many respects,  to the somatic rituals that shamans use to access the spirit world. In short, the  characters in the book use motion and sound to gain access and control  elements connected to the digital world, and then the lights came on for me. The problem with the digital divide isn't literacy or technical acumen. The problem  with the digital divide is that we've created an interface that requires them. What  if, instead of trying to make everyone on the planet literate or technically astute,  why don't we create a shamanic interface that gives everyone standing on the  platform the ability to step over the gap and ride the train. This is my idea. We're  sharing. Okay, let's do the math. To overcome the digital divide, we're going to  need to overcome literacy and technology skill gaps, and to do that, we're going  to need to create a shamanic interface, and then that is going to need to  understand somatic gestures. All right, let's start with somatic gestures. The  good news there is we already know them. We've seen them in movies since  Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I guess, celebrated its 30 year  anniversary some time ago. Really old guy, Minority Report with Tom Cruise,  he's using a haptic glove to actually control objects in the digital world, we use 

somatic gestures to communicate to the hearing impaired. There are a very  small set, but a growing set of globally understood somatic gestures as an  example. All right. Next thing we got somatic gestures. All right. Next thing we  need our digital. Devices to understand these gestures and motions that we're  putting in front of them. Good news. Guess what? We already got that too, a  digitally connected camera that measures movement in the physical world and  then translates that into actions in the digital world, Microsoft Connect, I guess  what I'm saying is this, we have all the elements we need to create a shamanic  interface, save one ground swell. And this is where you guys come in. Welcome  to the party. Today, we have activity already underway that is developing.  They're developing a standard set of somatic digital gestures, and we expect  device manufacturers to include motion recognition technologies into the more  into the devices that we use each day. We already have somatic gesture  recognition to a very small degree in our smart devices. I can actually wave my  hand over my phone and it'll turn a page, or I can put my hand over my phone  and shut it down. Our part in this plan is actually pretty simple, continue the  support of global, federal and locally funded projects that target the affordable  access to the digital world. We can't We can't miss this. We can't drop the ball. I  said before. We can visualize the day when it's going to really be here, but we  have to realize the day, and it's our job to do that. Let's build the shamanic  interface, and let's use it to bridge the digital divide, and let's give everyone an  equal opportunity to step over the gap and ride the digital train to wherever it  can take them. Thank you.