In a few weeks, we'll be voting in Jackson County for a renewal of a special purpose local option sales tax, most of which will go toward road and water infrastructure. Those are two basic community needs that cut across all social, economic and political lines. We all drink water and we all drive on roads. But there's another type of infrastructure that isn't on the ballot that someday may become vitally important to the economic future of the county - electronic interstates for telecommunications. The growth of the internet and the continuing boom in e-commerce sites virtually assures that a major shift in our economy is happening.
Email is now a standard way of communicating in virtually every business.
Shopping on the internet is becoming more and more common. The delivery of news is geared more and more toward multiple outlets, including electronic output. In just about every way possible, the vast world wide web is affecting how we live, work and play. The knot in the web, however, is in the speed of the network. Sending email is no problem because the file size is tiny.