An Email to John McCain December 2
The computer revolution has been raging for quite a while now. My 84-year old father surfs the Internet and kids use computers to keep from becoming No Child Left Behind victims. The global economy is almost totally dependent on computers and the military acknowledges that cyberwars aren’t 1939 World’s Fair notions about the future, but already exist. Even our Commander-in-Luddite can’t strip our Constitutional protections without using sophisticated computer systems.
Although most First World populations are at least noddingly familiar with computers, there remains one segment that is woefully under-prepared for navigating the revolution - the commercial and governmental leaders that regulate them. Most CEOs depend on staff to print anything electronic before they’ll read it. Many of them don’t have computers on their rain forest-depleting mahogany desks, relying instead on a nearly extinct office task - dictation. Ted Stevens - the senior Republican on the committee responsible for cyber-legislation - could only muster the goofiest of descriptions of the Internet as a series tubes and trucks. I’m not sure whether to laugh at his Chutes and Ladders notion or be shocked at how little a 21st century man knows about the infrastructure he legislates.
The Washington Post reports on a John McCain debate response in which he says he’d, “rely on a vice president” for help on less important issues such as “information technology, which is the future of this nation’s economy.”
Less important? Rely on his vice president? McCain acknowledges in one breath that IT is uber-important, but in the next says - in the unlikely event he becomes President - that he’d rely on someone like say…Duncan Hunter to sort it out for him. We’ve already seen what happens when a goof ball CEO president abandons major policy management to his vice president. The sight - as they say - ain’t pretty.
The computer revolution has mowed down entire career fields. When was the last time you dealt with a human bank teller instead of paying usurious fees to wrangle an ATM? We’ve moved from a world-leading role in computer technology to a nation overly dependent on Third World countries to invent and operate our vital infrastructure. That’s due, in large part, to a ruling class as oblivious to the importance and necessity of computers as their robber baron forerunners were of child labor or wage-slave conditions.
Instead of arguing about the electibility of a Mormon or whether pantsuits make Hillary a “bitch“, we need some assurance that the leader of a free world run by computers can at least get his or her email without the help of a 10-member staff. It’s high time that candidates start talking about their pitiful knowledge of the real world and lay out exactly how they would get the US back to a world leading cyber role. If they don’t, we’ll go the route of the dodo, Ted Stevens, and bank tellers.
Now, if only we could get those electronic voting machines to work.
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kathryn findlay Aug 27
Please dear Sen. Mc Cain….have the foresight to name Sarah Palin as your VP because everything people are concerned with re: the future of this country is riding on your pick. She will catapult you over the top. She is real and you must surround yourself with those who are real and that program is the future for our party. Start now and do it the maverick that you are…..