DATELINE–The Electronic Ghetto

In an unprecedented showing of co-operation between public and private sector interests, a new public works consortium based in San Jose, Calif., will address the lack of technology access within America’s poorest communities.

“Wired In,” the nation’s first non-profit organization to be funded by both high tech corporations and the U.S. government, will concentrate its initial efforts on housing and urban redevelopment. According to WI’s spokesperson, Mr. Corey Bussier, the consortium will target “the infrastructure needs of tomorrow’s communities” by providing access to the Internet as well as other emerging information markets.

At a black-tie gala held last weekend in celebration of WI’s first announced public works project, Silicon Valley CEOs hobnobbed with such Washington luminaries as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Vice President and top-level Justice Department officials. The networking opportunities were a big draw,” said the CEO of a well-known microchip manufacturer, “but the feeling that we are improving the future of America’s poor is the real reason we’re all here.”

A scale model of WI’s first initiative greeted the gala’s attendees, among whom were invited members of the national press corp. Code-named “Small Big House,” the urban housing project will integrate high tech gadgetry with modern architectural design in order to connect low-income residents to the same public venues and opportunities currently available to the middle class.

“We need to insure that the next generation of Americans, regardless of their financial standing, will be prepared to live in a high-tech world,” said Bussier. “On the level playing field of technology, the small can become the big, and differences can be turned into advantages.”

For years, advocates of the poor have pointed to the increasing disparity in technological know-how between middle- and low-income families as the makings of a potential national crisis. The “Wired In” consortium promises to put an end to that trend by placing cutting edge audio-visual components and computer terminals in every nook and cranny of future public housing units.

“The kitchen will be smart, the living room will be even smarter, and nowhere will there be an absence of information gathering and processing devices,” bragged one of the middleware engineers responsible for the “Small Big House” design. “Basically, these families are going to be networked like no one else on earth.”

Networking is nothing new to the project’s main contractor DiPannopti & Co. The centuries old family-owned business has built such revolutionary housing structures as the still controversial Petaluma State Penitentiary.

“Wired In” is scheduled to complete the first 120 “Small Big House” units by the end of 1998.