The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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July 2, 2008

Our View: Gather ’round the campfire and google

Flush toilets, paved trails and now: the Internet. What are state parks in Minnesota coming to? What is happening to the outdoors culture where one could sit among the pines and sky blue waters and find their soul?

Now, they’ll be using Google to do all their finding.

Yes, wireless Internet is now available at certain points in Itasca State Park, the state’s third most traveled state park and of course famous for its location as the headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi. Apparently, the Mississippi Headwaters is no competition for Facebook, MySpace and by the way, catching up on your e-mail from the office. Aargh!

The Department of Natural Resources is making the wireless Internet available at certain points in the park, including at least one campground, for free as a way to lure time-constrained campers who have forgotten why one camps out in the first place.

The DNR says it is just trying to be competitive with other places that offer wireless and a survey last year said people didn’t visit state parks because they had no time. Free wireless, say park officials, would help people overcome those time constraints.

Well it won’t help them overcome the real problem: people who need wireless Internet in order to enjoy the outdoors and a state park.

The cultural phenomenon is bad enough, but to have the promoters of the great outdoors turn into pop-up ad marketers defies reason, logic and long held Minnesota credo to appreciate the natural beauty we’ve been blessed with in this state.

We agree with the sentiments of one park goer commenting on a survey about the Internet service: “The idea of dozens of ‘campers’ hunched over their laptops, infesting the commons areas of this nice state park with their antisocial, singularly-focused e-mailing etc. is enough to make me think this is a bad idea.”

Now, it seems, even in the North Woods, one cannot escape on vacation the presence of the Internet or technology that makes us prisoners the rest of the time.

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