In the early years of the new millennium, Canadians enjoyed easy access to high speed internet. While most Americans still heard the ubiquitous screech of a 56k modem, many Canadians just needed to click on their web browser to automatically open an Internet session which telecom giants at the time touted as ‘always on’.
It’s now 2010, and with increasing bandwidth demands from more connected users and increased streaming multimedia, Canadians are being left in the dark, with what Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society calls some of “the slowest and most expensive internet in the world.”
In a recent interview with CBC news, University of Waterloo President David Johnston states, “Without being unduly critical of this government, there has not been a lot of attention paid to broadband, to the digital economy and digital media in the last five or six years.”
Perhaps the problem lies with internet service providers and refraining from upgrading existing infrastructure to better support the increasing demand, or with our own government not having a clear direction on broadband, but overall, the country’s productivity may be at risk.
In the CBC interview, Johnston likened the adoption of digital technologies to the printing press. Western European society adopted the printing press several hundred years ago and saw massive prosperity and growth, whereas other societies, such as those in central and east Asia did not see the same amount of prosperity in the same time period.
Thus, if Canada can’t adopt increased digital technologies quicker, we may be compromising our way of life and how the country does business with the rest of the world. Canada needs to innovate faster and keep up with the growing pace of the industry of the world.
On digital media, the interview with Johnston mentions an interesting excerpt from another article. The article discussed how Google’s CFO spoke at a recent Toronto conference about how Canadian businesses have been slow to adopt marketing on the internet.
The University of Waterloo has recently begun using social networking to promote the University using such websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. In fact, if anyone caught a glimpse of the first mock-up of the uwaterloo.ca redesign, you would have seen buttons linking to these social networking websites. However, if anyone has seen some of the YouTube videos the university has released, you may be wondering whether some of these videos were produced 15 years ago with their tacky music and design cues seemingly from the mid 90’s.
The University should have realized by now prospective students could view these videos, and likely they should be very high quality and extremely professional. It’s important to show these potential candidates that the University is in the 21st century and to make sure we keep the CBC calling us “the country’s most influential technology school.”
Yes, Canada does need to improve its digital technology and media strategy to increase the country’s presence and to ensure the country can keep up with the rest of the world. However, the University definitely needs to take a look at its own digital media strategy and bring it into the 21st century as well.
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