Techies Must Educate Governments

Rub3X writes "Those in the know about technology must spend more time reaching out to governments and helping them understand the Internet's role in society, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said Tuesday. 'The average person in government is not of the age of people who are using all this stuff,' Schmidt said at a public symposium here hosted by the National Academies' Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. 'There is a generational gap, and it's very, very real.'"

Educate the government by...

[__aaclcg7560]

Voting! Or, as V put it, "People should not be afraid of the government. The government should be afraid of the people."

Re:Obligatory "Tubes" joke omitted

[Daniel_Staal]

They are not dense. They are very intelegent, and work hard at doing their jobs.

Which is getting elected. That is what they are paid for, that is what counts.

The important part of a politician's job is gathering votes. Not ruling a country. We are supposed to only give votes to those who we think will do a good job of ruling, but the measured quantity in a politician's life is the number of votes they get.

It is not that they are not smart. It is that they have learned that applying smarts to ruling a country does not get them as many votes as applying smarts to getting votes does. I'm not sure how to change that, but that is the root problem.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[fyngyrz]

So form your own party, see how well you can do it.

My party is already formed. It is the libertarian party. The American people have determined that they are not interested in liberty, nor even particularly in the constitution; they want a mommy government that controls everything they do without thoughtful guiding principle, underlying legitimate constitutional authority, or any semblance of honor. And that is exactly what they have received. Unfortunately, that means I have received it as well. Hence my extreme dismay.

Good Luck!

[Noryungi]

I don't know about the USA, but in my (European) country, trying to approach the "government" goes like this:

• Are you someone famous? If not, government officials don't want to hear from you. [and by famous, I mean: "tabloid famous", the kind of pretty face politicians want to be seen with]
• Are you rich? If you are rich, have you given money to such-and-such politician campaign? If not, government officials don't want to hear from you.
• Are you supported by thousands of angry voters? If not, government officials don't want to hear from you.
• Are you supported by a massive media campaign? Or: is your media communication successful? If not, government officials don't want to hear from you.

In other words, unless you can mobilize media, public opinion or vast sums of money, government officials don't want to hear from you. And most geeks are not very good at presenting their ideas to the public, or being media darlings. Which explains why important legal battles have been lost [eucd.info] in the recent past... Most people/voters simply did not care enough to mobilize and most politicians are ready to sell their souls to The Almighty Buck (or Euro).

And, frankly, these are the only things politicians care about these days: money, media and votes. Rather than approaching governements that don't give a hoot about you , I believe it is much more important to crack these three things. And all of them go hand-in-hand: get enough money, and you can get media exposure, and you'll mobilize normally apathetic voters (for instance). It's a sad state of affairs, but it's true: politicians are not here to serve their fellow citizens, they are in this line of work to further their own private ambitions . And as long as we have a professional political class, this can only get worse. But I digress.

Of course, I am not Eric Schmidt, who, as the CEO of Google is able to mobilize enormous amount of money and media attention. YMMV.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[Salvance]

So what you're basically saying is: let's just give up on trying to make our existing politicians understand us and the things that are important to us, and stop trying to voice our opinion. I (possibly naively) believe that if there are enough people demanding technically smarter politicians then the politicians will be forced to take us seriously, and to make smarter decisions in the process. The 'education process' is critical for ensuring that America's technical know-how and innovation remain relevant and accessible going forward.

'Net neutrality' is a great example. It looks like politicians may let the anti-net neutrality bill die a slow death because of a combination of popular upswelling of resistance and convincing from the type of technical superstars Eric Schmidt is referring to. Without this resistance, telecom companies would already hold a greater power over your access to the web and your freedom to information.

While it is commendable that both you and your mother are/were so technically competent, I don't think the answer is to teach all of our Senators Perl scripting. The key is to educate politicians on the big issues, and let the experts worry about the details.

Demographics

[Tisha_AH]

That's sort of funny, that the average age of internet users is poorly represented in government. If you did an 80/20 rule on the internet most of the active users would be in their teens to their mid 30's. Most people in government are in their 30's to 50's. In fact, for many elected offices there is a minimum age requirement.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[betterunixthanunix]

Except that liberatrians are against net neutrality, see nothing wrong with Microsoft's conduct, and generally seem to think that if left alone, corporations will benefit everybody else by profiting off of them. What we really need to do is educate the general public more -- for instance, explaining to people what DRM actually is, rather than just waiting for them to come crying when they discover that they cannot play iTunes music on their MP3 player. Again and again, people give me a funny look when I say that software and medicine should not be patentable, or that the RIAA has not been hurt by file sharing (which can be backed up by real statistics). If the general public was actually educated in these matters, politicians would actually listen.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[purpledinoz]

The problem is the average American doesn't care about what's going on in government, until it directly affects them. People don't attempt to understand the issues and how the party proposes to solve them. The government can only improve if the majority demands that they improve.

Unfortunately, both the democrats and republicans tend to shift their focus from the real issues (massive public deficit and the economy, the environment), to relatively trivial issues like violence in video games.

More than just a generational gap ...

[Woldry]

... there's a philosophical gap. In my experience, people who show a deep interest in techie things and people who show a deep interest in being politicians tend to have a fundamental difference in the way they approach the world.

For the politician: nothing exists, or has a particular quality, except as decided by popular belief; people are more real than things; opinions count for more than data; agreement matters more than knowledge; emotional perception is all-important; the many matter more than the one.

For the techie: things exist, and have immutable qualities; things are more real than people; data counts for more than opinions; knowledge matters more than agreement; emotional perception is irrelevant; the one matters more than the many.

These differences make meaningful "education" a very difficult task, because the techie's impulse is to say "Here is Tab A. Here is Slot B. See how they work?" The politician's reply is either "Not everyone agrees that that's how they work" or else "That's disgusting! Inserting tabs into slots. The very idea!"

So the techie tends to think that the politician's reactions are irrelevant, and gives up on further teaching; and the politician tends to think that the techie's facts are irrelevant, and gives up on further learning.

(As with all generalizations, of course, anyone -- myself included -- could point out glaring counter-examples, so maybe I should just be modded "Full of $#!+".)

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[Silver Sloth]

But, if you want to live in a democracy you have to accept that your minority viewpoint will not win enough votes at the polls to count. I've heard democracy described as the opression of the minority by the majority, and, yes, it does have major failings. However it is better than all the other options. Live with it or move on.

Our government does not need internet education

[Anonymous Coward]

It needs education on constitutional republics, enumerated powers, and federalism. If they are taught these forgotten truths, our internet will be just fine.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[yuna49]

As someone pushing 60 myself, I generally agree with your remarks, but I don't think it's all about the politicians. (If anything, we need older people to work in these areas because they're likely to have more influence with the political elites.)

From where I sit, most "techies," especially the younger generation, have aligned themselves of late with political forces that are opposed to policies advocated by extremely powerful and wealthy organizations. Educating government officials about the virtues of open source, the application of fair-use principles to digital copyright issues, the value of open file formats, and the like, won't matter if their supporters can't wield any political muscle. As someone whose career has spanned academia, consulting and nonprofits, I'd love to spend the next decade working on moving these issues up the political agenda. That won't happen without organization, and while volunteerism can play a role here, money does matter.

If Schmidt thinks this is so important, maybe he should set up a foundation.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So form your own party, see how well you can do it.

I don't think you understand the issue. When he said it is a two-party system, he meant laws have been passed to insure only members of those two parties are likely to be elected. Two registered presidential candidates with thousands of backers were forcibly ejected from the last presidential debates and not allowed to participate. The last time I voted it said right at the top of the ballot that if I voted for candidates from multiple parties, my ballot would be invalid and discarded. That means I could vote for the the better of two candidates for congress (democrat), or I could vote for the libertarian candidate for mayor, but not both.

The laws have been written to prevent the people from electing anyone not republican or democrat and they have been written by the incumbent social groups to maintain their dominance. We will never have electoral reform because no one in favor of it can get elected.

Remember that democracy is the worst posible political system, except for all the others.

Ahh, but we don't quite have a democracy anymore, since the laws are written to make sure the will of the people is not enacted, but rather the will of those who are supposedly representative of the people.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[Lord Pillage]

"Live with it or move on."

I thought America was the place where people believed "live free or die", not "live under oppression or move on". America today sure isn't what it used to be.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[Volante3192]

Problem is, in my HS Government/Civics class, I was taught democracy was "Majority Rule, Minority Rights." I used to be so idealistic and naive...

Anyway, it falls apart where we don't live in a democracy. We live in a democratic republic. Very important distinction. The people do not make the laws in the US (outside of the rare ballot initiative), the people elect representatives to make the laws.

Maybe what we need is to get people to stop throwing around the word "democracy" like a placebo.

Missing the real problem

[kogus]

Focusing on the politicians' ignorance of technology misses the point. The real problem is that those politicians feel such a need to regulate something they don't understand.

Generational gap, generational CHANGE

[tygerstripes]

This problem applies across the board - not just government.

Basically, it's not a problem of "not understanding technology" - though that's a basic issue that needs adressing. The trouble is, trying to educate people who aren't interested. Politicians rarely need to know how it works, and almost never need to know why it works (and why it matters), because they don't get voted in for understanding issues, but for being popular.

You can educate someone who doesn't care about how to use a mouse, a PC, how to browse the internets, how to make a web-page, how the interets tubes work, what hacking is, how encryption works, what the hell DRM is about, etc etc etc, but you can't make him care. "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think". Until it makes a difference to their chances of staying in power, technological understanding will not penetrate the body politick. Not directly, anyway.

I've had this conversation with other people. Things will change, but not by changing those who are in power - it comes from changing who is in power. In big corporations and such, this has happened much more quickly. If your board doesn't understand the implications of technology, the company goes under - the board gets replaced with people who do understand. Not so in government. All you need to be successful in government is... to be popular. And you can set your own agenda, if you publicise enough. So technology doesn't get a look in.

Maybe, over time, we'll see the "generational shift" where everyone's grown up with technology and understand its implications, to the point where they can make (more) informed decisions, so even politicians have a clue what the debate is about. Trouble is, that always leaves politicians ten steps behind the times.

Solutions, anyone?

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[hcob$]

People don't attempt to understand the issues and how the party proposes to solve them. This is doubly difficult since trying to get the party's/incumbent's ACTUAL position and ACTUAL plan are damn near impossible since they won't specify it and reporters try not to ask it.

This also leads to another reason no on KNOWS what goes on in government is becuase we don't have a truly effective reporting apparatus. I'm sure you can watch C-Span if you'd like, but all you ever see there is more people just going on and on about how someone else did it wrong; how they are better; and never a plan on what they are going to do. Reporters, especially the political ones, need to get some back bone and ditch their bias. By that I mean:

Backbone: When a politician dodges your question... hound him for the answer...

Ditch the Bias: This goes for both left and right. Reports now editorialize more than they report on what is going on. Basically, when a reporter disagrees with the politician, they say how they dodged questions, and we couldn't pin him down to an aswer. When a reporter agrees with the politician, they laud him as a visionary, a man of the people, someone you can trust, etc. etc. etc.... And you still wind up with no real answer to the Question that should be asked of all politicians:

"What, in detail, is your plan to solve/fix/create X?"

If the politician won't answer that question in a direct and truthful, (And yes, "I don't know, I need to think about that." or "I'm not sure, I'll need to conferr with some experts before forming a plan" are answers) they don't deserver to be in that seat.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[triskaidekaphile]

You seem to be under the impression that an elected representative could be swayed by knowledgeable authorities more than well-funded like-minded lobbyists and cronies.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[Reality Master 101]

My mother knew more than any representative I am aware of when she died recently, and she was almost 90.

Surely you're not arguing that, based on your single sample, all 90 year olds are writing Perl scripts and are totally up-to-date on technology. I mean, come on.

So the Internet is a series of tubes, you can't say words on television that are common in every schoolyard, and the human body is a matter for shame. And those are the small problems. Worse, we've invaded a country under false pretenses, with no valid reason beyond those already exposed as nonsense, the bill of rights has been forsaken, and the congress and the senate have seen fit to make the entire judicial process one that the executive can control from start to finish.

Most of those aren't problems. One senator was wrong. You can't say words on PUBLIC television where public standards apply. The human body is a matter for PRIVACY, where public standards apply. We invaded a country based on a poor (but totally believable) information. Yes, the bill of rights has been forsaken to a great extent, and the Judicial process is corrupt to an extent. You're right about those, but apparently for the wrong reasons.

In the US, the problem is that the parties keep putting incompetent (and worse) people up for election. Consequently the American people, having no effective way of dealing with the two-party monopoly upon government seats of power, keeps voting these incompetents into congress and the senate.

Again, you're right but for the wrong reasons. We keep putting incomptents into congress because the alternate parties are such extreme idiots that we have no alternative. Say what you like about the Democrats and Republicans, but at least they're not worse than the alternative parties.

I'd tell you to vote libertarian, but most of you are just going to put another democrat or republican into office anyway. Literally, a crying shame.

There's an extremely high probability that you know nothing about the Libertarian party, except that they're for "less government and more rights.". I'm sympathetic with certain Libertarian views, but they're ideas are extreme and simplistic. They will never achieve power -- and *shouldn't*. Sorry, but I don't support a party that wants to sell off all national parks and all local parks. I don't support private ownership of nuclear bombs. I don't support totally private fire departments. Those are just STUPID ideas, but the Libertarians have a crazy obsession with everything being private.

What we need is a combination party that takes the best elements of both parties (privacy, non-religiousness, small government, low taxes, low spending, pro-commerce, welfare at the local level, not federal level, etc). Like the Libertarians, except with common sense.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[nine-times]

Yes, throwing the word "democracy" around doesn't help things, but the problem isn't that the US is a republic. Republics certainly don't do a worse job at preserving minority rights, since they're in fact less bound to follow "the tyranny of the masses". Not that it provides a lot of extra protection from mob mentality, but it does a little.

The real problem is that we just don't preserve individual rights anymore. We don't behave like a democratic republic. It's more like we're run by two warring aristocracies, except that an "aristocracy" is supposedly run by the "best" people, whereas the heads of the two major political parties are generally just the greedy and well-connected.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[ZakuSage]

MR. PRESIDENT: No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do, opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely, and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfil the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offence, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves, and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with these war-like preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of t

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[nomadic]

America today sure isn't what it used to be.

It's generally better. For the first hundred years or so of this country's existence we had slavery, and for the next hundred institutionalized racism, and women didn't get the right to vote until the 20th century. Does anyone think that the period before the modern era was "more free"? If you're a white male with money, maybe, but on the whole it's a hell of a lot better now than it used to be for a majority of this country's population.

Re:Oh, no, that's not the problem.

[tcc3]

The problem is the Libertarians are just as much extremists as the Democrats and Republicans. They are just the extreme of a third axis.

Like any party their platform has some good planks, but is ruined by extremist philisophy. An example: I'm all for small, hands off government. But all government regulation is not bad. I like that the FDA makes sure snake oil salesmen cant swindle at best and kill at worst. Its good that the FCC makes sure that the spectrum is organized and licenced, facilitating communication.

Democrats, rebublicans, Libertarians, you name it, arent bad. Its when blind ideology flies in the face of good sense is when we have a problem.