If Elected, Barack Obama Would Name a Chief Technology Officer | Hacker News Reader

If Elected, Barack Obama Would Name a Chief Technology Officer

venturebeat.com

20 pointsjkush14 comments

The government tends to...mess things up like this...

Just saying.

mkay... and Darpa and ARPAnet came from what again? ah, right goverment.

So, did the first computers (used in WW!!), etc. Nuclear power. Etc.

A good Goverment can do a good job and seeding and incubating technologies that might be intersting in the future (for the humankind), but they are not profitable or interesting to Companies, as they don't have a clear Roi.

Same with shutles and space. Goverement started space exploration, few decades from now, private companies will build on the knowledge amased thru all these years and create a space toursism industry (and make profits, and create thousands of jobs).

Why am I being downmoded?

A good Goverment brings prosperity and new technologies into market. Look at Japan and Korea. They have fricking 100mbs connections at homes for only $19/mo, and we are stuck with "private" enterprise, eg. ATT and Comcast paying $55+ a month for 6mbs.

Saying the goverment should not do anything about technology, because it can mess things up is not a real solution. Maybe the solution is to stop electing shitty officials and presidents that want to replace science with creationism in clasrooms.

Look at Singapore. A tiny country, and it is become a hot center for BioTech and Stem cell research, while the US is actually behind.

Yeah, I'm as free market as anybody and have been witness to the despicable waste of tax money in the defense industry. Face it, the beast is going to eat it's share. Better to go to research than Halliburton.

You're right, of course. What I DO like about this is the fact that Obama (seems to) know enough to say that he needs someone to help his administration understand technology. I can't fault that at all.

For what it's worth, there's already a bunch of guys who are supposed to be doing that. I believe there is a national CIO and a national organization of federal CIOs. I guess it couldn't hurt to have one more, though.

If there is a national CIO then the fact that I've never heard of him/her is evidence that he/she is doing a shitty job.

I use myself as an example of someone who should have heard of that position because I'm in the tech industry. How did you hear about that, btw?

That position needs to be much more front and center. Technology is only going to become more important. That should be recognized now.

I work with big organizations doing big software development (one of the reasons I hang out here is that not only am I a startup junkie, there's something really weird that happens when you scale software development past 6 or 7 guys)

As part of that, I try to keep part of my head in government software development, which is like a world unto itself. I have worked with a couple of agency CIOs, so I've heard of the larger CIO structure that they are part of. There is a lot of CIO-type stuff that was started, ironically, by the Bush administration when they came in. Stuff like balanced scorecards and a national Enterprise Architecture group. As you can imagine, there's a huge push for security, but there are also some really wild System-of-Systems stuff going on. Drop me an email and I can hook you up with more resources if you are interested.

I disagree. if you haven't heard of him, and he exists, it's probably because he's doing a good job and hasn't broken anything big enough to make the nightly news.

Technology should be seamless and transparent.

Technology, yes. Leadership, no.

Why would they need help? Our current president is an expert on The Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90DKubFKwVo

My head just exploded. I can't decide if I like the infamous Ballmer video or the infamous "The Google" video better.

Always a good laugh.

I have referred to Google as "The Google" for a long time now.

What a great idea. After all, we can look to the state of education in this country, which has been greatly improved by the presence of the Chief Education Officer (Secretary of Education in the Cabinet).

Yes, I like sarcasm.

I guess I don't understand which important problem this is trying to solve.

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