iPalau ... and by that I mean "Ay, Palau."

With the coming of this iLibrary, I thought we could talk about the internet in Palau for a minute.

The internet on-island is all satellite internet. There’s a cable that goes through most of Micronesia, providing high-speed internet to some pretty small islands. But, when it made it’s way toward Palau, they sent the cable north to Guam and then did a few quick calculations to decide that it was more cost effective to lay the next segment of cable between Guam and the Philippines, skipping Palau. Basically, the population of Palau isn’t large enough to justify the cost, because a telecom company would never recoup the cost of the installation.

Ay, Palau.

The story we heard is that there IS actually a way that Palau could tap into that cable. And when they figured out which section of the cable they’d have to purchase to make that happen, AT&T bought that section of the cable. This might be fact and it might be fiction. I cannot say. But, essentially, the moral of the story is that if Palau wants to improve its Internet speed, the Palauan government will have to negotiate with the big telecom companies. If this is in fact the case, I think that in the interim period, it’s the students who are paying the price with a glass technology ceiling on their education.

To paint a picture … We only have one dial-up Internet connection here on campus. We all have to share that connection, and that’s why I get one hour of Internet everyday. Each teacher gets one hour, there’s one hour reserved for software updates, and the students get one hour – which is to say, three students per day get one hour. (Now try imagining how one would get into college with, more or less, one hour of Internet per month.)

Ay, Palau.

It’s hard for everyone in the States to remember that we are living in The Age of the Internet circa 1997. We use the Internet by the hour. We listen to that little singsong dial-up ditty every time we log on. We have to be very careful about which links we choose to click on, because it might be a minute and a half (I’ve timed it) to load the page and if you realize a ½ second later that there was a better choice, now you’re talking about two and a half minutes. We DREAD rich media on web pages. Every time we connect, we play the kbps lottery – you see how fast the connection is and then have to decide if it’s worth disconnecting and reconnecting again to get a faster connection. The BEST we can get is 50.6 kbps. Some of you might remember those days … back in the AOL era.

So, we’re living in 1997, trying to connect to 2011. We are constantly looking for the site map pages of websites or the mobile versions because they load with fewer errors. Friends and family keep sending us YouTube links or uploading videos that require flash or saying things like “just google it.” (Bee tee dubs, NOTHING makes us laugh harder than reading the phrase “just google it” in an e-mail from home.) It sounds so simple: Oh, hold on, ima pull out my white iPhone and google ‘iLibrary’ to see what comes up. Should be just one sec.

Seriously though, I can’t even open PDFs on the school computer. In our world, Google Earth and Adobe are coveted applications in their "test run" phase or on the cusp of becoming popularized, while words like "podcast" and "app" haven't even been invented yet.

Even the cell phone situation here is a la 1997. We buy airtime and load it onto our phones. Then you have to find reception. After that you can make your call – but you better be prepared for the conversation because you have to talk as fast as possible and cut straight to the chase. Those minutes are EXPENSIVE. Remember when you had to do that? Yeah, that was 1997. And you can forget about using the Internet from your phone. That’s like some kind of futuristic Star Trek pipe dream, that’s what that is.

Basically what I'm trying to say is: It's a miracle that this blog exists.
I'm doing some cutting-edge technology work, right here.
Ay, Palau.

But ........ I’m well aware that complaining about it is a waste of time, so I’ve been working on a plan for making lemonade out of these iLibrary lemons. In the meantime, construction has begun and seems to be moving along pretty quickly – I’m a little surprised at how it’s all gone according to plan. That rarely seems to happen. But, it does in fact look like we might really have an iLibrary (whatever that means) by the time school starts.

Outdoor Construction

Screens, weather-sealed sliding windows, tinted glass, and security bars PLUS new doors.

Indoor Construction

Look! A book WALL!!! And two book shelves! And tables and desks! Hooray!!!

It’s coming along. I’ll keep updating as the project moves forward.