A NYTimes Story says Bill Gates acknowledged that “the road ahead” was full of blind curves, when he said the Internet would help rural people stay put, in part because they would have the same advantages as city slickers in the virtual world.
There is scant evidence, for example, that the wiring of rural America has done anything to make Mr. Gates’s prediction about population flight come true. The new computers may even be aiding the exodus from rural America, as people go online to find jobs far away.
“You know, Carnegie was a pretty hard-core guy,” he said, leaving Main Street here, where the biggest digital sign displays the price for wheat: $4.80 a bushel. “I’d be happy if I could think that the role of the library was sustained and even enhanced in the age of the computer.”
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