All 4 are countries with pretty homogineous population.
Poland has higher average IQ than US and Czech Repubs has the same. Unless they are extremely poor, these countries are supposed to have a higher computer literacy than US.
US has significant minority population groups with significantly lower IQ than those 4 countries. That also lowers average IQ of US and makes comparisons with homogineous countries meaningless.

Is it really that important for low performing kids use computer? Isn’t it better at least to learn read and write?

This is absolutely true and key to the nature of the problem. What’s their incentive to improve the connection? None, as far as I can tell, unless they can start charging for bandwidth by the megabyte…which consumers HATE HATE HATE and is functionally identical to a repeal on net neutrality (only the incentive to moderate usage are on the consumer end so it’s even worse).

past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

it seems really odd professor that you deride the fact that broadband connectivity in the US is so poor, yet support an agenda (NN) that focuses on applications (like google).

YouTube, and any similar bandwitdh hungry application, is barely tolerable on dial-up, and completely useless if you don’t have a connection to begin with. or are we missing something?

blaming the telcos for not throwing good money after bad… comcast should invest in building out its cable network just so google (and the next google) can make more money whilst undermining comcast’s media business. under what rules of business does this make sense?

It’s funny, I hadn’t realized I was a Google tool.

saying it is a battle between the extremely wealthy and merely wealthy is a (poor) way of placing himself on the side of the underdog, but Mr. Kennard is absolutely correct is saying this is a battle of competing and powerful commercial interests. no one is pure and innocent here. shilling for NN does quite make you a tool of google as we might be said to be tools for the ISPs.

Even if America’s broadband strategy doesn’t make sense for America, it makes lots of sense for certain companies. Kennard knows this well, because he sits on the board of many of those who benefit most from this deregulation.

ad hominen claptrap and quite unbecoming of you professor.

Just going by “used a computer” includes all kinds of awful “educational” software and office application training — you might as well count people who can work the order terminal at McDonald’s as “computer literate”.

Alan Kay: “Now you’ve got millions and millions of people who think that doing even the most trivial things on a computer is a sign of computer literacy. This includes parents, teachers and the kids themselves. But most of what is done is about as worthwhile as playing an air guitar.”

Better metrics might be whether or not the person sends and receives email, or has contributed content to some kind of web forum or collaborative site.