...that sentence pretty much sums up the candidates' attitude towards technology policy.
On one hand, we have a candidate who has made great use of social media to allow his message to spread, and another who, through surrogates, uses email to send out untraceable smears and pictures of his or her opponent in funny hats. They clearly understand that the Internet is more than a series of tubes.
But, when I looked at the witness list and live-blogging from yesterday's FCC hearing on Net Neutrality, I noticed that this is a niche issue when it should be affecting all Americans. We spend more time at the computer and less on TV. Those computers bring us more and more media using new and different formats. Audio, video, blogs, text, email, social networking. These require bandwidth.
So does the exchange of information in general. Why, then has not a single candidate made broadband penetration and competitiveness a part of their campaign? I mean a major part. Seriously, folks. If Obama is the candidate of the "Internet Generation" why isn't he making it a point to push for us to be competitive with Scandanavia and South Korea in terms of the quality of our 'net connections and usage?
Where is DARPA? Are we so invested in building toys to control the Middle East and spy on each other that we're no longer interested in our great universities collaborating and communicating? If we're doing such a bad job with the DTV transition, what do you think will happen with IPV6?
Instead of concern over the quality of connection, we get shock-value news stories about MySpace or gee-whiz non-stories about how great Google is even though many of their engineers aren't even U.S. Citizens, and as many execs said at last month's Tech Policy Summit, the dearth of H1-B Visas is killing our economy and we really are losing out to other countries. There is a brain drain.
We're not training enough engineers, either. At my Alma Mater,it actually costs MORE to get a degree in engineering, but sociology is a great bargain. Why aren't there incentives for more engineers, or computer scientists? What about all these Iraq vets? Bush has stalled on Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA)'s new GI Bill because it would "hurt retention rates in the military." What about retention of intelligence (I mean the real kind, not the CIA kind) in this country?
Tech policy is national security policy.
Just a morning rant.
On one hand, we have a candidate who has made great use of social media to allow his message to spread, and another who, through surrogates, uses email to send out untraceable smears and pictures of his or her opponent in funny hats. They clearly understand that the Internet is more than a series of tubes.
But, when I looked at the witness list and live-blogging from yesterday's FCC hearing on Net Neutrality, I noticed that this is a niche issue when it should be affecting all Americans. We spend more time at the computer and less on TV. Those computers bring us more and more media using new and different formats. Audio, video, blogs, text, email, social networking. These require bandwidth.
So does the exchange of information in general. Why, then has not a single candidate made broadband penetration and competitiveness a part of their campaign? I mean a major part. Seriously, folks. If Obama is the candidate of the "Internet Generation" why isn't he making it a point to push for us to be competitive with Scandanavia and South Korea in terms of the quality of our 'net connections and usage?
Where is DARPA? Are we so invested in building toys to control the Middle East and spy on each other that we're no longer interested in our great universities collaborating and communicating? If we're doing such a bad job with the DTV transition, what do you think will happen with IPV6?
Instead of concern over the quality of connection, we get shock-value news stories about MySpace or gee-whiz non-stories about how great Google is even though many of their engineers aren't even U.S. Citizens, and as many execs said at last month's Tech Policy Summit, the dearth of H1-B Visas is killing our economy and we really are losing out to other countries. There is a brain drain.
We're not training enough engineers, either. At my Alma Mater,it actually costs MORE to get a degree in engineering, but sociology is a great bargain. Why aren't there incentives for more engineers, or computer scientists? What about all these Iraq vets? Bush has stalled on Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA)'s new GI Bill because it would "hurt retention rates in the military." What about retention of intelligence (I mean the real kind, not the CIA kind) in this country?
Tech policy is national security policy.
Just a morning rant.
It's been well demonstrated that politicians can raise money around net neutrality and other core tech/telco policy issues (by those for and against). What has not be proven is that they can use these issues to create a measurable shift in votes.
It doesn't mean that broadband penetration (for example) shouldn't be more of an issue (especially when talking about how it can help solve The Big issues like health care). However, tens of millions of voters would be scratching their heads if Obama started dropping terms like "network shaping" on them.
Thanks for the comment, Sean.
Candidates don't have to get "technical" on voters, but they can let the average joe know that the issue exists in terms that are easy to understand. I've yet to see any of them try.