Dow Jones reports that McCain will release his Tech Plan in the coming week. The Obama Tech Plan came out in November 2007. The failure of the McCain camp to address technology until nine months later and only at this end-stage of the campaign signals how little understanding McCain has about the relevance of technology.
Former FCC Chairman and McCain advisor Michael Powell says: "We're talking about the policy of the U.S. president, not the FCC chairman." The outdated notion that "Tech = FCC" is hardly surprising from a public figure who proudly tells the world that he doesn't use email. The fact that McCain does not want FCC regulation doesn't tell us much about what he does want or how he will use the power of the Internet to improve American education, create jobs, grow the economy, or strengthen our democracy.
Clearly, McCain wants an opportunity to reiterate to his big donors and their lobbyists that he opposes "net neutrality" and government efforts to ensure an open and free internet. The idea, however, that innovative companies like Google sprung up in the absence of any government regulation (as the article suggests) is ludicrous. The government created the Internet in the first place. Without an open telecom regime, Google never would have been able to provision its services to us.
Without efforts to reduce media concentration and prevent monopoly, we would not have a competitive hi-tech environment in which innovative companies flourish. The notion that government has no role to play abdicates responsibility for ensuring an Internet that promotes commerce and respects free speech.
In addition, without the right technology and broadband policy we don't have wired schools and literate children. We end up without a job-ready workforce that can compete in the 21st century and we disadvantage low-income communities by forestalling access to the Internet. No doubt, the telecom bloggers and their readers will have a ball critiquing the McCain regulatory proposals when they publish.
Most important to point out is that without the Internet, we cannot have a transparent, open, legitimate democracy. As Craig Newmark (of Craigslist) aptly put it last week in the HuffingtonPost, the President has to care about technology because: "It has to do with staying in touch with your community and constituency....A president is the leader of the American community, a lot of people, many of which don't yet have Internet access or comfort. That's being addressed, too slowly, but we do have the critical mass online that a president needs to listen to, to be in touch."
This report of the McCain plan suggests that he would continue the Bush policy of closed and secretive back-room dealings. He is obviously not focused on how to use new tools to ensure that government information is published online or that government does its business in the open.
He is not talking about how to use the Internet to solicit information back from the American people so that when an agency makes an important public decision it is on the basis of the best possible information. He is not thinking about the cyber-security threats that face us in an era of information warfare. He is also not focusing on how to strengthen the critical technological infrastructure upon which our nuclear and electric power grids run. He clearly doesn't care about how the Web could play a role in coordinating relief in the event of another natural disaster. The fact that government depends squarely on technology to deliver its services efficiently is also not on the radar screen.
For someone who claims to be opposed to big government and government regulation, such a blinkered view of technology condemns us to a large, inefficient, centralized institutions. For the only way to realize a smaller, leaner, more efficient and yet more trustworthy government is to begin to connect institutions to public networks. If you want the private sector to do more, then government needs to be able to use new technologies to communicate its priorities to citizens, obtain information from them, interact seamlessly among government institutions, and coordinate action.
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