WE GET LETTERS: In my first Free Times column a couple of weeks back, I poked fun at Cleveland's much-hyped "Digital Community" and "Intelligent Community" awards by way of getting to a serious concern -- the low rate of Internet access among city residents, and some concrete ways to improve it.

This morning's FT has a letter from Scot Rourke of OneCleveland, responding to the column's main point as well as to my snarkiness about the awards. Read it here (you have to scroll down a bit from the link.)

It's a serious comment from Scot, and I appreciate it. Let me repeat what I said in the column: OneCleveland is "a world class Good Thing", we're really lucky to have it, and Scot and his colleagues are entitled to all the recognition they can get. No way do I think that OneCleveland itself is "more concerned about winning awards than addressing community needs".

But I do think that Cleveland as a whole has no business posturing itself as a "world-class digital community" unless we do what's necessary to get the large majority of our citizens online. That's a long row to hoe, and we're just barely getting started. We're not investing enough in community IT training and support, we're behind many other cities in public commitment to affordable residential broadband, and we're mostly nowhere when it comes to taking advantage of open source software (though RealNEO's initiative -- in cooperation with OneCleveland! -- to develop drupal-based web resources for nonprofits is a major exception).

No one expects OneCleveland, or any other organization, to drive all these issues single-handedly. But Cleveland has to deal with them -- from the bottom up as well as the top down -- or we won't get to be the "world-class intelligent digital community" that we're all seeking.

So Scot, let's all work together on it. That's all I'm saying.

As for the snarkiness... well, you know, it's just that blogger thing. I'll try to keep it under control.