Seeking a Tech-Savvy President

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: May 19, 2007
Seeking a Tech-Savvy President
By Katharine Q. Seelye

Is America ready for its first tech president? Tech-types here are calling for the presidential candidates to catch up with their global counterparts, both on the campaign trail and in their campaign platforms.

At the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York Friday, Andrew Rasiej, the founder, and Micah Sifry, the editor, issued a challenge to the presidential candidates to sign on to their tech-policy manifesto or propose a better one. Some of the things they are asking candidates to do:

* Declare the Internet a “public good,” in the way that public education, electricity and highways are perceived as vital public services.
* Vow to make wireless connectivity universal.
* Vow to provide online access to government hearings and data.
* Pledge to build a “national netguard” of technology experts who could be deployed in the event of a terrorist attack or a disaster like Katrina to rebuild communication networks and databases.

“We’re calling on the next inhabitant of the White House to articulate more clearly where they stand and what they will do to bring the United States into the 21st century,” Mr. Sifry said Friday at the conference. “The Internet is the dial tone of the 21st century. If you aren’t connected, it’s as if you don’t have a phone.”

The United States continues to fall behind the rest of the world in the number of per-capita broadband connections, according to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2001, the United States ranked 4th of 30 developed nations; six months ago it fell to 12th place and recently fell to 15th.

The study said that about 40 percent of American households subscribe to broadband services, compared with 67 percent of those in
Denmark, which ranks first.

Some of the campaigns have expressed interest in the group’s proposals, but no one has yet signed on....

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/19/seeking-a-tech-savvy-president/