COLUMN: High speed internet can create new jobs on the Iron Range

This is my column for the Sunday, Aug. 15, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

High speed internet would create new Range jobs
By Aaron J. Brown

I write this entire column, every word of it, while I am uploading a large but not unusually large piece of video to YouTube for a statewide media organization commissioning my thoughts on the Iron Range economy. In this video – stay with me, this gets hot – I talk about how the video, the one I am uploading right now, is a living example of what the future of northern Minnesota’s economy might hold.

If people can produce media in a wonderful place like northern Minnesota, edit and upload it from their homes or offices, our geographic location is no longer a hindrance, but a major help to our appeal for new entrepreneurs, creative types and young families. It doesn’t have to be a YouTube video. It could be a blueprint, schematics, graphics, a report or software used for any function. The work would be done where the worker wants to live, and “sold” to the employer where he or she needs it.

CRASH!

What was that sound? A sound so loud it was in ALL CAPS. Why, it was the crashing of my upload in a giant ball of e-flames, sending little bits of my video skittering across my computer’s innards, lost forever. Don’t cry for me, reader. If you’ve read this far you probably have an idea where I’m going with this. I’ve got another window open on my computer and I’m taking another stab over there while my brain is formulating this very sentence. Here goes.

I live in the woods about a half hour northwest of Hibbing in Itasca County. We subscribe to a satellite internet service for two reasons: 1) my day job and my sideline gigs both depend on fast, reliable internet access, and 2) dial up is so slow out here it’s a joke, even by 1998 standards. Satellite providers deliver fast download times (except when it’s raining). However, upload times are much slower – a lot more like dialup. For us, other methods of connecting to the internet are not an option, even though DSL hubs and other infrastructure lie just a few tantalizing miles away. Furthermore, our service is expensive, justified only by my specific vocation. Most families prioritize more basic needs ahead of this.

More and more work in our digitized, connected economy can be completed outside a traditional office, while other “real time, real place” work tends to follow wherever people live. If you have a community of 50 middle class creative workers – engineers, writers, software designers, etc., you’ll need a gas station, grocery store, school and clinic to support them, among other things. But even jobs with a hard location (mining for instance, no pun intended) increasingly depend on high speed communication between work sites and parent offices. Where 80 years ago a mine boss like John C. Greenway might have been summoned to New York for orders, today he could attend a video conference with all members of a global ownership team. The same is true for training, re-training and other basic work functions. That’s not to diminish the important of the physical world, just to say that routine matters no longer need to be conducted in person.

Whether public or private, having the fiber optic cable wired to everyone’s house and business is vital, but not the only part of the picture. Education about how the internet can be used to do work and provide for a family is the next, equally important step. Many of the young adults I know in our area are finding ways to start business or hold jobs based in far-away cities because of high speed internet. If those connections were universal and could be advertised as such, we might be able to attract new young families and some of the people who left. All of this is possible, and – for the impact – far less expensive than a billion dollar, publicly financed “jobs, jobs, jobs” project.

Well, I just took a break to eat dinner, go swimming with the kids and build a perpetual motion machine. I see that my upload is complete. I sure hope the next one goes faster. That sure would be a lot more productive and profitable for me, and others. The future of the Iron Range is only partly tied to its past. Today’s mining opportunities are great, but only a concerted effort to create a blended, globally connected economy will create the true prosperity and growth the Iron Range so desperately needs.

Aaron J. Brown is an Iron Range writer, blogger and an instructor at Hibbing Community College. Read more at MinnesotaBrown.com or in his book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range.”