Science & Tech Quote by Kent Conrad

Calling computers and the Internet a "basic need" is a deliberate political upgrade: it drags connectivity out of the nice-to-have column and plants it alongside textbooks, transportation, and heat. Kent Conrad, speaking as a policymaker rather than a tech evangelist, frames the issue in the moral language of public provision. The phrasing matters. "Access" doesn’t sound like a gadget wish list; it sounds like a right you can be denied. And "has become" signals historical inevitability, a quiet way of saying: this debate is over, catch up.

The subtext is the digital divide, but also the political argument about what counts as a public obligation. Conrad isn’t praising the Internet; he’s warning what happens without it. In a school system increasingly built around online research, learning platforms, email communication, and digital assignments, lack of connectivity doesn’t just slow a student down. It marks them absent from the classroom even when they’re physically there. The quote presses on a modern anxiety: education now contains hidden tolls, and the toll booth is broadband.

Contextually, this line belongs to an era when schools were shifting from computer labs to laptop carts to one-to-one devices, and when homework quietly migrated online. By naming connectivity as infrastructure for education, Conrad positions investment in networks and devices as economic policy in disguise: educate better now, compete later. It’s a pragmatic appeal dressed as an ethical one, designed to make denying access feel as indefensible as cutting libraries.