Understanding that people will be more apt to use technology they don’t see, a town-wide broadband infrastructure may do wonders for the local economy and quality of life.

Quality of life:  For urban dwellers, a fast network means one less reason to have a car, probably our least invisible technology.  It essentially means you can work at home, or at your local third place w/ free wireless broadband. This magazine focuses on achieving this quality of life.

Job creation:  I’m awaiting some

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CoolTowns are most definitely state of the art, and that means incorporating the latest, most useful technologies.  However, the more invisible the technology, the less afraid people will be to use them.

CoolTowns are first and foremost about building community and enabling face-face interaction.  That mindset just doesn’t seem as sincere when your friend across the table is talking through his cell phone headset while adding entries to his PDA, as both of you sit on a sidewalk flanked by

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While writing this column from my home town in Hilo, Hawaii is refreshing, the lack of broadband isn’t - it sometimes takes a few minutes just to download a single web page.  DSL isn’t even available.  Which leads me to fiber optics…

If being stuck with a 56K modem has already made me miss publishing a daily story, how many opportunities is a small town with a struggling economy missing each day?  Then again, how much is a big city missing by not having fiber optics?  That’s why we’re working

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Check out HP’s ‘cooltown rocks’ video, which coincidentally has a similar vision - albeit from a very, very technology-oriented point of view.

Technology is merely a tool toward a higher level of human interaction - and that’s what a CoolTown is all about.  In fact, the technology in a CoolTown is only as successful as how invisible it is.

In the vignette below, a tribute to a music teacher is broadcast live to her former students at home, on the go, and even allows a guest musician in

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