Now that Michael Phelps has won 17 dozen gold medals with chocolate chips and the world has been made safe for democracy for another Olympiad, we can turn to more trivial matters such as the technology policies of our presidential candidates. Friday McCain (the old white guy) released a tech policy statement that was very short and sweet. From this we can determine that his tech adviser is Mike Powell, a man who loves his TiVo and uses few words. Powell’s Four Freedoms to consume Internets are in McCain’s statement somewhere.
Predictably, supporters of Obama (the black John Edwards) rose up en masse and lambasted the McCain plan as insufficiently detailed and otherwise lacking in emotion. Obama’s tech policy fairly oozes romance, so they have a point.
At first cut, the contrast between the two policy statements is fairly severe. Obama’s is longer, more detailed, more hands-on, and more meddlesome, teeming with programs to support this, protect that, and maximize this other thing (such as girl and minority science degrees,) while McCain’s is more focused on cutting costs to business and getting the regulators out of the way. But if you read a little closer, you see that Obama’s statement is simply a mess of equivocation: he’s going to crack down on piracy, but loosen the rules that prevent the appropriation of IP (by Google, presumably) and that sort of thing.
Obama’s people claim McCain’s tech policy is like a Republican energy policy, all about profits instead of people. But I would submit that Obama’s is like farm policy, all about increasing the profits of a few large corporations without actually feeding anyone. It’s clear why the Obamatites want to attack McCain: god forbid anyone reads Obama’s policy statement, you might hurt yourself.
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Sorry, but Repubs have done irreparable damage to the US.
This is worse than late 70s without unions to keep wages going up to counter-balance price spirals (which are worse than they were in the late 70s, if you count them the same way).
Tech policy?
I hadn’t thought of applying until now, frankly.
But I cannot believe that Obama’s tech policy is all that bad, and in fact it probably starts out being reasonable on immigration.
McCain has Carly freakin’ Fiorina advising him.
And Phil Graham.
‘Nuff said.
“Irreparable damage?” I guess it’s time for me to move to England and for you to move to China then, although Brazil is looking pretty good at the moment.
Obama’s tech policy is pretty much all net roots buzz-causes and political equivocation, not much to get excited about. It’s pretty much the usual mix of identity politics and special interest pandering we’ve come to expect from the emotion-driven party.
McCain’s advice comes from Michael Powell and some unemployed ladies of Silicon Valley, so it’s not that much better. That’s why he needs to hire a first-rate advocate, you see.
“Irreparable damage?â€
Yeah. New Orleans & surrounding area.
Tech policy includes these days energy policy.
It’s frankly suicidal and stupid not to have a policy that gets us off carbon, with as little nuclear as possible.
It secures America as a wealthy place if we can execute that policy.
McCain’s wrong on this, Obama’s right..
Anyway, this is getting interesting…
China survived the Great Leap Backward and the Cultural Revolution, so I’m sure the USA can survive Bush’s adventures in spending. I don’t blame him for the weather, but I do acknowledge he shouldn’t have allowed that Federalism thing to keep him from imposing martial law on Louisiana.
I separate energy policy from tech for the simple reason that it’s implemented by a separate apparatus, and I like nukes for the same reason the French do: they don’t give off greenhouse gasses and they’re more reliable than wind and solar. The safety issues have been dealt with, so what’s the problem?
“It’s frankly suicidal and stupid not to have a policy that gets us off carbon, with as little nuclear as possible.”
That’s very naive and Patrick Moore the founder of Green Peace and many other environmental leaders will tell you that. Nuclear is the only large-scale technology that can supply us with our base loads while emitting zero polution.
Nuclear waste is 96% good fuel which can be reprocessed. The remaining 4% waste is only slightly dangerous for a little more than a 100 years and 96% can be converted to pure fuel again.