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Roderick O'Dorisio's avatar

An obvious first step to stimulate "rural genius" is to bring in reliable Gigabit Internet to these places. Comparing the Chisholm graph showing low enrollment rates to this county-by-county map of broadband speed (https://www.theverge.com/22418074/broadband-gap-america-map-county-microsoft-data) shows a direct correlation between Internet speed and "genius." The difference between 10-15mbps and 1Gb is significant and usually ignored ("well at least they have Internet!"). But before the Internet, people in rural areas--like the Apollo 11 team and Marc Andreesen--had more or less the same access to the same books and media as others in big cities. With the Internet, however, a person with 1Gb speed can access more knowledge, download media, and collaborate with others, all of which is nearly impossible with a <25 mbps Internet speed. Slower download speeds = slower learning.

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Twil's avatar

the "rural communities are dying' talking point is actually misleading. when rural towns or communities grow, after a while they are reassigned to "urban" by the census takers whether or not they lose their rural character or not. that is why statistics show that rural america is dying-for instance, my hometown of sumter, south carolina, a cotton and soybean farming community whose richest residents are farmers-is considered urban on the census. not exactly fair i'd say. and i don't think its germane to say that the lack of rural workers in tech is down to the social beliefs of the places they come from. america is just a huge place, and the tech industry is located in like three places. why spend money and resources recruiting rural talent that's a thousand miles away when you could hire the son of a programmer who lives in san francisco for far less hassle? combine that with a not so warm attitude that tech people stereotypically have towards southerners and midwesterners, and there is a bit of a chilling effect that goes on.

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