Statewide Illinois Broadband Research

This proposal seeks add-on funding for a two-year Ford Foundation study begun in fall 2010: SIBR, or Statewide Illinois Broadband Research. The research uses the theory and methods of community informatics to ask: How will high-speed internet, specifically the federal broadband projects funded by the 2009 Recovery Act, impact society? We aim to find out: Is this public policy working? How? At the highest level of abstraction, the study asks: How is society transforming into an information society? What are the successes, and what problems remain?