There's been a lot written about human rights, beautiful in sentiment and often beautiful in prose too. A particular favourite of mine is the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The fourth article of the UN Declaration of Human Rights:

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

This always conjures up this image for me. Used extensively as an anti-slavery icon, and referenced in the simple yet powerful 'I am a man' placards worn during the civil rights movement in the US. When you think of these struggles then idea that a high-speed internet connection could possibly be a human right seems laughable. Thomas Jefferson admirably covers all bases when he describes the unalienable rights as including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but I think anyone would struggle to convincingly tack on to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and a high speed internet connection. What would be next- a flat screen TV?

Cast against these 'true' human rights the idea of broadband being a human right seems a fanicful notion, yet France, Greece, Estonia, Spain and Finland believe it is. These countries may have moral reasons for taking this standpoint, but the most compelling argument for the importance of a dependable high-speed internet connection is that it, as Dr Hamadoun Toure (secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union ) states "the internet [is] basic infrastructure - just like roads, waste and water." I think that as we move to knowledge based economy our digital infrastructure and access to it will become even more important.

Having an internet connection means that I can participate in digital life, possibly that I can work from home, certainly that I can spend unpalatable chunks of my salary at Amazon. This connection means that I can scrutinise what politicians say to me, I can get my news from just about anywhere, I can even write the news that you read. I, or my business, can participate and thrive in the knowledge economy. I can shrug the restrictions that come with just having a local paper or no access to a supermarket. It means I can file my tax return online, I can book a flight with the click of a mouse; I can even compare meerkats quickly and effectively.

The hardware I use is unimportant. The method I use to connect a little more so: if the government enshrined my right to the internet as a human right, would companies currently unwilling to invest in the rural network change their attitude? These issues aside what is most important is ensuring my access to the information out there, as Tom Watson MP says:

Human rights develop; I don't think you make a decision to create them one day. But people should have a right to access to knowledge. The internet facilitates that, so if you restrict people's access to the internet you restrict their access to knowledge.

There is another aspect to this question and that is the principle of fairness. Jefferson's statement that we were all created equal is perhaps true, but that equality doesn't last for too long. Hiding behind most of the statements you read about human rights is the idea of a meritocracy, of people getting a shot at success regardless of their background. This is one of the things people love most about public libraries.

Now I'm not going to get all dewy eyed and rant on about equality and justice for all, but I want you to think for a moment about what you do online that you did on paper or in person 5 or 10 years ago. Book a flight, order your groceries, renew your passport, even find out what's going on in your local area? Some of these you can still do in person, but have you ever tried calling Ryanair? A Canadian colleague of mine in the public sector recently told me that just about all Canadian government services now have to be accessed online, the library service there regularly assists older people, the unemployed, people without computer skills or a machine at home to access key services. I read only this week about listings and comment for local arts groups moving from the local press and freesheets to the blogosphere. That's a lot to be excluded from, and we haven't even touched on the healing power of LOLcats yet.

Extra Credit:

Highly recommended: the stimulus for this post:
Offline: The invisible underclass - Features, Gadgets & Tech - The Independent http://bit.ly/dAof15

Broadband and human rights | AlphaGalileo | http://bit.ly/9P0Vhd

BBC News - Internet access is 'a fundamental right' http://bit.ly/d3uTEm

Case study: Me!

I live this strange double life where during the day I have a constant online presence: I tweet, I FB, I blog; I browse, mostly for political and technical news stories. When I go home I slip into another world, a world that is not unlike 1998. In 1998 if I wanted to surf, which I did a lot, I had to pick a quiet time when no one wanted to use the phone and then dangle my extension cord downstairs to the telephone point so I could hook-up to my dial up connection. Most sites were predominantly text based, with the exception of marching red ants and revolving New! ovals, so my little blue bar loaded up reasonably quickly. Downloading sound clips or video took too long to be attractive. I ran Windows 98 on a decent machine, had an AOL browser and my email address was a string of numbers @compuserve.com. Is this sounding like the digital Jurassic to anyone?

Back to 2010. I live in a rural area out of the reach of normal broadband, we have an imaginative solution to pick up the signal from a nearby village via a system of hubs. It's alright, and much better than any commercial company would offer us, but the speed for downloading isn't great, especially at busy times, when I'm reluctant to use it for online purchases. Websites frequently time out and it takes from an hour and a half upwards to down load a one hour programme on iPlayer, we were once quoted an expected download time of 20 hours.

The telephone line down the stairs wasn't so much of a handicap back in my digital dinosaur period: most sites I visited were text based and downloaded at an acceptable speed. Web design today, with its emphasis on multimedia, means that for people like us browsing is often not worth the bother. Sure I can check email and draft blog posts from home, but often that's just about it. The internet is a key part of my infrastructure and important to everyone in rural areas like East Anglia, it was mentioned as an crucial infrastructure improvement, along with road and rail in the Look East election candidates' debate 2010. It's very important to all of us- hell, my village doesn't have gas either, but I've never been moved to blog about it!