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Health & Fitness

Is Anybody on the Line? Newark's Students Need WiFi Now...

A few months ago, while browsing through the web I came across an interesting postcard that depicted Newark’s famous, but now ailing “Four Corners,” or what its residents know as the intersection of Broad and Market Streets. In decades past it was regarded as the center of the center, the Times Square, a kind of commercial “holy of holies” of the Brick City, and really, the Garden State itself. It was our central crossroads and its nonstop rush and density testified to a city that firmly had its thumb on the pulse of the nation if not the world.

 

The image was from the late 1800’s, probably the 1890’s. Pictured were thousands of well-dressed people hustling by open, busy shops on a clear day. The activity of the sidewalks echoed mechanically in the streets as trolley car after trolley car ferried riders to all parts of the city. And above it all was a web of wires, orderly wires that efficiently kept the city in touch with places and markets both near and far. It was the late 19th century’s version of the Internet and prominently visible even on the city’s postcard. A commercially idyllic vision, of course, but after examining some photos taken just a decade later, a fairly accurate one.

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So if the “Four Corners” openly testify to the historical and current state of the city, if this area of the Newark’s downtown core is truly emblematic of what’s going on, at least in the sphere of communications, it’s not that good.

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My Arts High students are as worthy, as ambitious, as talented and promising as any high school students elsewhere in New Jersey. They deserve the best; they’re entitled to a first-class environment that doubles as a launch pad into a world of opportunity. In the long-vanished realm of that postcard I mentioned, that world, or at least the ability to communicate with it, was the reserve of the telegraph and the telephone shortly thereafter. And there was no shortage of pathways; again, the wired web was clearly visible.

 

As I’ve said in many past blogs, the present and future of opportunity is online. We can argue all we want about how that might not be the case in every example, but in most, it is. If you want to do just about anything that might make some money, the conduit to that benefit begins online. There was a time in its history when the Brick City understood this, and built approximately. But if you visit its heart today, you get an entirely different message.

 

This afternoon I was downtown taking care of some banking business during lunchtime. I was curious to see how connected, from a 21st century perspective, the Four Corners area was to the wider world. So I conducted an easy experiment. I simply got out my iPhone and used it to search for any open wireless connections available. By ‘open,’ I mean ones that were not private, or locked, or reserved for some elite, pre-paid group of users. I was in the center of the city and wanted to get online. Guess what? I couldn’t. My phone could not pick up a single open network for public use, not one. So there I was, in the Times Square of Newark, New Jersey, and I couldn’t email a solitary person. No texting anyone. Forget the idea of applying for a job or reading about the latest economic news coming out of Shanghai; I couldn’t even find out if it will rain tonight.

 

It was a sad moment, really, because my kids need the web. They need the city to do what cities are doing all over the United States, and the world. They need for some sort of consortium of public and/or private interests to get together and do something really simple and straightforward. They need, and Newark requires, universal, easily accessible and quality Internet access, or Wi-Fi, in its downtown core and along its major boulevards. Frankly, that’s really not enough for any city to do if it seeks to remain economically competitive…but what I suggested would certainly be a start.

 

But for such an unwired city, it is sending its residents a clear message about the present state of telecommunications in its urban heart. Want proof? Just check out the picture I snapped right at the city’s central crossroads. It speaks volumes…if it could speak at all…

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