Author: KCAW

The recent 16-day internet outage in Sitka revealed a lot about the humanity of its residents, most of whom stepped up in one way or another during the event. But it also revealed a startling dependence on a cable made of glass fibers, together no thicker than a garden hose, which runs for hundreds of miles along the seafloor.

As Sitka’s internet outage extends into a second week, plenty of people have felt the frustration of being unable to communicate, whether it’s a postponed surgical procedure that required telemedicine, or just setting up a carpool for their child. But something else is going on, too, and it’s not simply nostalgia for the days when the entire world wasn’t a click away. KCAW’s Robert Woolsey spoke with a clinical mental health counselor to learn more about the unexpected upside of being out of touch.

Sitka’s internet outage is inconvenient for residents, and affecting commerce in some businesses that were not able to make the  jump to Starlink. Students, however, are really going old school – literally. While Sitka’s school buildings have connectivity, there’s not the bandwidth needed to run classes as usual. As student school board member Francis Myers […]