Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Barack Obama to talk about technology and net neutrality today

Barack Obama will be giving a talk at Googleplex in Mountain View, CA today, in which he will lay out a comprehensive, 5-point technology policy:
  • Ensure the full and free exchange of information among Americans through an open Internet and diverse media outlets.
  • Create a transparent and connected democracy.
  • Encourage the deployment of a modern communications infrastructure.
  • Employ technology and innovation to solve our nation’s most pressing problems, including reducing the costs of health care, encouraging the development of new clean energy sources, and improving public safety.
  • Improve America’s competitiveness.
The full text of the handout to be used this evening is here.

The most important piece of this is the second point of creating a "transparent and connected democracy." Making government data and information available in standard, accessible formats is a simple solution to the problem of inaccessible information. The appointment of a US CTO is a good strategy because it would mandate someone with technical knowledge and experience actually make technology decisions [instead of people like Ted Stevens]

We hope that the other Democratic presidential candidates will propose their own thoughtful, progressive technology policy directions. It's one way our nominee can differentiate himself or herself from the Republican candidate.

Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home