Science & Tech Quote by Michael K. Powell

A confession of dependency disguised as a policy-friendly sound bite, Michael K. Powell frames broadband not as infrastructure but as appetite. The line’s charm is its casual math: “40 percent to 50 percent more” isn’t a statistic so much as a shrug in numerical form, the kind of precision that signals credibility while admitting it’s basically a feeling. That’s the rhetorical trick. Powell isn’t selling a product; he’s normalizing a new baseline of behavior: once connectivity becomes effortless, use doesn’t rise a little, it leaps.

The intent is clear: make the case that “always-on” access changes citizens into constant users, and that the technologies enabling that shift deserve regulatory attention, investment, and legitimacy. By starting with “I love my DSL,” he nods to the then-established wired world. “But I love my WiFi more” turns mobility into the upgrade that actually matters. WiFi isn’t just faster; it’s frictionless. It erases the small moments when you might choose not to log on.

The subtext is where the politics lives. A politician talking like a consumer positions himself as an everyman while subtly arguing that demand is natural and inevitable, not manufactured. If usage explodes because of “the combination of those technologies,” then connectivity becomes a public expectation, and policy debates about spectrum, competition, and access stop looking like niche telecom issues and start looking like quality-of-life governance. It’s an early articulation of the attention economy before we had that phrase: convenience doesn’t just meet needs; it creates them.