Both Barack Obama and John McCain are Far From High Tech Concerns
Posted by Bob Warfield on October 15, 2008
Sam Diaz suggests over on his ZDNet blog that we shouldn’t expect Obama and McCain to spar over net neutrality and other matters that interest the high tech world. These are just not issues that feature prominently on the national agenda, particularly not in these economic times.
Likewise, when the Technosphere (Techcrunch at least) gets all up in arms about George Bush and the Pro-IP Act, we have to get a little perspective. We’ve lost the plot first in that the Senate voted unanimously to pass this monstrosity. It wasn’t just W that doesn’t get IP in the digital age, it was apparently every member of the Senate. And guess what, that means Senators Obama and McCain also didn’t lift a finger to head this thing off.
The reality is that nobody in a particularly strong position of power in our national government understands what we do in High Tech. We lack the lobbyists and the voting homogeneity to get their attention. Same on them? No, shame on us. At best the politicians throw the occasional tidbit our way, but it’s more about their desire to appear trendy, young, or innovative than it is any deep-seated acknowledgement that the technology matters.
The digerati care deeply about many political issues, and love to debate our political biases, but in the end, we’re not a particularly effective part of the conversation.
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