The Back Page A Digital Gift to the Nation Page 1 | 2

We’ve just spent more than a year talking to the presidents and to the boards and the patrons of the nation’s libraries, museums, performing arts centers, universities, colleges and school systems, and all of them—up to and including the vast New York Public Library, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution—are concerned with being able to digitize their collections, their courses and all their other materials, such as audio and video recordings of live performances. They want to be able to break out beyond the walls of their institutions and take advantage of the new technologies to reach into homes and into workplaces and into all kinds of educational settings in order to enrich and promote lifelong learning. But they can’t do that on their own: they need a commitment from government and from society to support their efforts and endorse their goals.

As an example of how that can work, let’s focus on what happened in the realm of television. When television was first becoming available, there was very little debate in the country about how this great new resource should be handled. There wasn’t even a change in the Communications Act to replace the world “radio” with the word “television”: we simply adopted the system of regulating radio, transferred it to television with no debate, and left out the public spirit entirely. But then along came Freida Hennock, the first woman appointed to the FCC, who was also the first FCC member to be concerned about the noncommercial use of television: it was through her intervention, in 1952, that the first two hundred and forty-two television channels were set aside solely for educational use. Her pioneering efforts were given a dramatic boost in 1967, with the release of a landmark report by the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television entitled, Public Television: A Program for Action, that called for a federally funded system of public broadcasting (and, incidentally, changed the terminology from “educational television” to “public television”). It also became the blueprint for the Public Broadcasting Act, which broke new ground because, for the first time, Congress voted to fund television programming. In other words, it accepted that part of government’s responsibility was to provide support for television’s content. It was also a shift over to the idea that the free market could not supply all the nation’s cultural needs, and that government had a civic responsibility to act.

Still, public television has ended up passing the hat. In 1981, Walter Annenberg personally gave $150 million to support public broadcasting; through the years, other philanthropists and foundations have also provided support—and, as viewers of public television know—pledge drives are a constant necessity. What we want to do, with the Digital Trust, is ensure that funding is available for the development of digital educational content and model projects. The reason we’ve singled out the spectrum as a source of funding is that it’s going to be auctioned off one way or another, and the money is going to go into the government’s coffers—we’re just suggesting that at least a portion of the proceeds be earmarked for the purposes we’ve outlined. We’re suggesting that money generated by a public resource be put back into the public sector to serve an essential purpose: helping this nation’s public institutions fully participate in the digital age.

Let’s go back to our own American history for inspiration. During the darkest days of the Civil War, when you would think that all the priorities of the government would be devoted to organizing an army and supplying that army and recruiting more men and paying for the war, Congress passed the Morrill Act to make higher education available to the public. When Abraham Lincoln signed it, he was recognizing that education was a national priority, no matter what. If, as a nation, we were able to understand that fact in the midst of some of the greatest turmoil the country has ever known, we certainly ought to be able to do the same thing now when we’re living in a time of greater resources and opportunities. If we don’t, we’ll have nobody to blame but ourselves.

And since we’ve come to Carnegie Corporation of New York to discuss this initiative, let’s invoke the name of the Corporation’s founder, Andrew Carnegie, who started life as a poor boy and felt he owed his later success to the public resources that were available to him here in America. We both believe that if Carnegie were alive today, he’d be cheering us on, because this is exactly the kind of thing he’d do: he would invest in the new age, the new technologies, in order to make it possible for everyone to get the best possible education available. And isn’t that what we all want—for our children, and their children, and all the children who follow? Making a digital gift to the nation through the creation of a Digital Opportunity Investment Trust will ensure that legacy and it will ensure that the public institutions we value so much and that have such a vital impact on all our lives will not only survive into the 21st century but will also flourish and grow. It’s as simple as that.

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