The students who actually build Arizona's broadband story maps get the microphone — and they are not sentimental about it. Every quote below plays the exact moment from the broadcast — just tap it.
The portal, and the award
Kelly Mukherjee co-hosts, reintroducing AZ One (az-one.info) — the free public broadband mapping portal she leads under ASU CIO Lev Gonick — and recapping the second annual Arizona Digital Inclusion Network Super Meeting, which surprised Steve Peters with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
We want to make sure that we've got broadband internet connectivity across the whole state of Arizona, because really, if you're not connected, you're missing out and you don't really have a great quality of life.
The man who would have lost his community
Lakshay Dharwal, a biomedical engineering student from Rajasthan, tells the story of Greg Mossberger — a Parkinson's patient who lost in-person therapy overnight when COVID hit, and rebuilt both his care and his social world over Zoom through the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center. The line that stayed with him was not about therapy.
He told me that without broadband, he would not just lose his therapy classes, but he would also lose his community. And I think that was one moment that landed very hard in my experience with storytelling.
Lucy connects it to the kind of health impact that never shows up in a claims database.
But when mama is stressed because her junior in high school is timing out when she's trying to upload her homework assignment, and hubby is trying to finish an application to finally get a job and he keeps timing out — that anxiety and stress is real, and it manifests in a very physical way.
What surprised them
Shelby Cavanaugh Toft, the Digital Storytelling Lead, came in expecting a technology project.
It made me realize that a lot of connectivity, a lot of what makes everyone able to connect to the internet, is people.
Zaira Arganza, a former high-school journalist from the Philippines, wrote three E-rate stories and found a library patron who has relied on public Wi-Fi since the 1990s.
What I would like leaders to know is that digital equity is not just an abstract policy issue. It's not just like an either/or. It's more like a need, especially in this day and age right now.
A message to the people holding the money
Lucy asks each of them what they would tell a policymaker. Lakshay — who watched India's Jio rollout bring hundreds of millions online — gives the sharpest answer of the season.
People in charge should know that infrastructure is not the finish line. I think it's just the starting point.
We need to have those funds in order to support all of these people and to close the divide.
Lucy, ever the devil's advocate, pushes back that money is not the whole answer — and points at an asset already paid for.
You can actually go and borrow more than just books at your local library — even computers and laptops and hotspots. And it's a public asset. Our tax money is paying for that.