Dr. Roberto Gallardo (pictured right) of the Mississippi State University Extension Intelligent Community Institute has published a 50-state Digital Divide Index using data provided by the FCC.

The DDI is a county-level index score (from 0 to 100) measuring the digital divide. The higher the number, the larger the digital divide. The objective of the DDI is to serve as a descriptive and pragmatic tool for policymakers, community leaders, and residents. The DDI consists of two components: infrastructure/adoption and socioeconomic characteristics.

I trekked more than 1,000 miles across Mississippi with Mic's video team to talk to people about the digital divide in the state.

During the trip, I visited the Stone Elementary School in Wiggins, Mississippi, where Dr. Roberto Gallardo, a grassroots organizer and scholar from Mississippi State University, helped implement a robotics program. Gallardo is working to ensure that the most marginalized communities in the state can access and adopt fixed, high-speed internet. He crisscrosses the state educating elected officials and the broader public about technology with the intent of bridging the digital divide.

Your personal or professional reputation is important. Today, that reputation exists mostly online – shaped by your pictures, posts and tweets as well as by what others post and tweet about you.

Last year, the ICF Institute at the Mississippi State University Extension Service issued a competitive call for research papers focusing on the impact of broadband on small rural communities. Three papers were recently chosen for publication on the Institute’s Web site.

Roberto Gallardo, founder of the ICF Institute of the Mississippi State University Extension Service, was profiled in a November 2015 article in WIRED magazine by W. Ralph Eubanks. The article digs into the work of the Extension Service and Roberto's personal passion for helping the countryside become connected, so that rural citizens enjoy the same economic opportunities and quality of life as their urban brethren. Writes Eubanks:

Institute founder Dr. Roberto Gallardo is hard at work on a book that explains the Intelligent Community movement to the small rural communities that he serves through Mississippi State University Extension Service. Ideas like the innovation economy and smart city technology can seem pretty remote to mayors and council members of small municipalities. Roberto is putting these ideas into context that makes sense to places with one or two thousand residents and explaining why every community everywhere needs a strategy to survive and prosper in the broadband economy. ICF’s Robert Bell reviewed a couple of chapters for him and thinks it make a very valuable contribution.

The Intelligent Community Institute of the Mississippi State University Extension Service (ICIM) has had an active summer season. Led by Professor Roberto Gallardo, a faculty member at the Center for Technology Outreach, the Institute has led digital literacy classes in the small city of Quitman, where a public-private venture with C-Spire has developed a fiber-to-the-premise network.