Stony Brook University’s Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT) in partnership with the New York State Digital Equity Network (NYSDEN) hosted the second annual NYSDEN Conference, Advancing Access Through Collective Advocacy, dedicated to closing the digital divide through strategy, collaboration and innovation.
The August 5 event focused on digital inclusion and brought together more than 100 stakeholders from across New York State, including elected officials, nonprofit leaders, workforce and healthcare professionals, digital equity practitioners, funders and municipal agencies. It featured talks by subject matter experts as well as expert panels on funding, AI, accessibility, workforce integration, and coalition-building, and underscored the need for collective advocacy and policy support to bridge the digital divide.
“We have a lot going on in AI research at Stony Brook, but we’re actually pioneering the world in quantum internet, which is the next generation of internet,” said Stony Brook Chief Innovation Officer Michael Kinch. “Even though we are in difficult times, we’ve doubled down on our commitment to address these challenges.”
“Digital equity is not a technological challenge, it is a political one,” said keynote speaker Revati Prasad, executive director of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, high-performance broadband. “The communities most affected by the digital divide — Black, brown, indigenous, low-income, rural people with disabilities — are the same communities that have long been underrepresented in decision-making spaces. It’s not just that broadband hasn’t been built in these communities. It’s that the people who live there haven’t had a voice in how policy is made, or in how resources are allocated, or in what success looks like.”
Josh Breitbart, senior vice president of ConnectALL at Empire State Development, spoke of the importance of digital literacy and New York state’s commitment to it.
“We’ve already built thousands of miles of new fiberoptic infrastructure that reaches from the urban areas to the most rural areas, and we’re working to serve the remaining locations in the state that do not have a reliable connection,” said Breitbart. “There’s also an equally essential social component to the infrastructure so that everyone is engaged with and contributing to the internet, and benefiting from it for education, economic opportunity, health, access to government services, and civic engagement. That is digital equity.”
The ConnectALL initiative, mandated by the WIRED Act, will be the largest-ever investment in New York’s digital infrastructure. It oversees the statewide digital equity plan and administers more than $1 billion in public investments across the state, with a focus on underserved rural and urban areas.
“The work that you do to close the digital divide has never been more important as AI quantum technologies accelerate technological transformation,” Breitbart said. “ It is truly a mistake that digital equity is not a priority at the federal level, but digital equity is a priority for the state of New York.”
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