While the world awaits the presidential race, a character debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, many of us in the online world wonder, "Who will treat us best?"
The race has some profound implications on how the Internet and the U.S. economy will develop. There are the issues of national broadband and Net neutrality, among others. Our new president will set the tone for U.S. technology policy for decades to come.
"The U.S. badly needs a president who understands how far the country must go in shifting from an industrial economy to an information-driven economy," said Garrett M. Graff, editor of Washingtonian Magazine in his blog. "This must be a campaign focused on the challenges of the future. During a speech last fall at Google, Barack Obama promised that, as president, he'd appoint the nation's first [chief technology officer] to oversee tech development. That'd certainly be a step in the right direction."
Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers told Graff that objectives need to be put in place in order for the United States to succeed in technology and advance with the Internet.
"What is possible? Broadband to every house, every state in the country? In what? Four years, six years or 10 years?" he told Graff. "I'd argue [that] when that occurs is largely an issue of what objective we set and how hard we go after it to make it happen."
Graff has spent the past two years studying the intersection of technology, globalization and politics. In his book The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web and the Race for the White House, he argues that America is in the middle of the first campaign of the information age, the first campaign in which technology as a tool and policy issue will shape the race.
"So far, though, we haven't seen anywhere near the debate we need over what the U.S. information economy and tech infrastructure will look like in the coming years," he added.
Throughout history, Graff wrote, the U.S. has committed to the advancement of technology. However, he added, the country now is falling short, as there is no national effort to equip the country for broadband or wireless Internet.
"The nation can ill afford to let the opportunity of 2008 pass by without action," he warned. "If, a decade or two from now, the U.S. has lost its edge on competitiveness, it will be because the president elected in 2008 failed to understand the pressing, global, interconnected climate and failed to take action while the U.S. could do so easily."
