Barack Obama had a lot going for him already in this year’s election, but his creative use of the Internet played a huge role in making him president-elect, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said Friday.

"It couldn’t have happened without the Web..What happened in the election opens up a whole new range of possibilities," he said. "Now’s the time to really move swiftly to exploit these new possibilities."" Gore said. - Computer World

 

When I began my career in the high tech industry in the mid 1990s, politics was the last thing on my mind. In fact, I found the atmosphere to be decidedly apolitical and that quality was something that attracted me to the industry. We were living in the wild wild west of the technological revolution and the only limits we had were our own imaginations. Building cool software and having people buy and use it was the ultimate goal. In fact, where I worked, many people shared that viewpoint. Software had to do with making life easier for people and business. If we had anything at all to do with politics it was only in virtue of creating software that the government, as a consumer, would purchase for its own usage.

But things have  changed and they changed fast. Software companies, especially the big ones and in particular Microsoft, must deal with lawsuit after lawsuit and a constant fear that government will attack and make worthless the work they have spent so much time and money to achieve.  At some point it becomes clear to any company that, in order to survive and thrive in a society where government micro-manages everything that is accomplished, and even that which it knows nothing about, it must either die or must join hands with the government in question by complying with its orders and regulations.

But then enter Obama, the savior of us all. Gore, who spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, had this to say about the Obama campaign:

"A reason why the political system hasn’t been operating very well until this election is the deadening influence of the TV medium as it has been operating," he said.

Asked by conference chair John Battelle if he is worried that this Web-powered social involvement among citizens will lose steam, Gore said: "No, I’m not. It’s very much in its infancy, barely beginning. We aren’t many years away from TV sinking into the digital world and becoming a part of it."

"The social activism that’s made possible by these new tools is just beginning to take off," he added. Computer World

 

The Obama Revolution has given new spirit to the relationship between government and technology. Not only will government and technology get along, they will work together towards the same purpose and goals.  I wrote a piece about the possible appointment of a Chief Technology Officer in Obama and Google: Yes, the State Can! , and the dangerous precedent that will be set if the technological-governmental complex is created.  Unfortunately, most people are too busy complaining about the state of Hollywood  and the media, and how it has become so saturated with bias and ignorance that it is almost laughable to take it seriously on any level. Now, I would be the first one to point out that the media is biased and apparently so is Gore, but I also want to be one of the few who point out the more dangerous cousin in the corner; you know, the geeky one, the one that isn’t quite as cool as his Hollywood relative, but who is way more clever and way more powerful in the end.

The technology world and those who inhabit it are decidedly liberal in their mindset. Most of them have received their degrees in either software engineering, science or math or all of the above. Very rarely are you going to find a software engineer with a degree in philosophy or English literature. So, while techie guys are extremely intelligent and some even genius, they — and I speak generally, as I can’t speak for each one— know nothing about politics or the human condition. Coupled with their extreme arrogance, they are unable to see their own weaknesses and tend to believe that the principles of mathematics and logic easily applies to political situations. Yes, some may believe that "object oriented programming" can be easily applied to community organizing.

Collectivism appeals to geeks, because collectivism is a form of control and order. Speaking as a geek myself, I know how much control and order is valued in our community. A program is always a structure of order where the programmer plays a god of creation, like in those computer games. If something happens that is unexpected, it is called a "bug" and is promptly swatted without a second thought.  On the marketing end, every software company needs advertising and it needs to control the people in that way, so that the people buy its products.  The technology industry tends,  as a result, to  like collectivist political theories, because these theories give the technician something to do and act upon, something to organize and something to control. A more conservative, objectivist point of view is not conceptually appealing or desirable to a geek, mostly because they love rules and laws and solutions. A world of too many exceptions and few answers is hard to program, let alone sell a product to.

So Obama’s embracing of technology is a computer geek’s wet dream. Truly, Chris Matthews definitely has competition with Dan Tynan of Computer World, in the leg tingling department:

I’m sorry, but I have to say this: It’s nice to finally have folks in the White House that embrace technology instead of being terrified of it. Hallelujah.

I don’t know about Obama personally, but the team he assembled "gets" tech better than any political operation in our history, hands down.

I’ve written before about YouTube and its effect on the elections. Obama’s camp not only kicked the Elephant’s rump on viral video, they also had a big presence on all the major social networks and some I’ve never heard of. (MyBatanga? Glee? Faithbase? Obviously, I need to get out more.)

….

My point: Outside big high-tech areas like San Francisco and Boston, many people still aren’t getting all the benefits tech can bring. It would be wonderful to see the next administration actually lead us into the Web 2.0 century — setting national goals and creating a true (and secure) e-government.

I believe we finally have an executive branch that’s willing and able to do it.

Okay, this guy is not evil(I don’t think). He is not a globalist (I don’t think). I don’t even know if he is liberal. What he is however is a geek and that makes him even more dangerous politically, because first and foremost he is in love with the fact that the White House is now hip enough to adapt cool social networking software and other cool technologies.  The morality of coolness, by the way, is the only morality worth talking about in the tech world. If it is cool, you want to do it and be a part of it. If it is not, you don’t .  Cool stuff is popular. Non-cool stuff is not so popular. Obama is popular, therefore Obama is cool. In the world of social networking and FaceBook, the number of friends you have determines your net worth. Simple, huh? So why wouldn’t geeks be excited about an Obama administration that values cool technologies and digital community organizing?  After all, geeks see Obama as embracing their own genius. You see, not only does Obama look like a rock star, a male Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama and Jesus combined. He also looks like some divine cross between Bill Gates and Al Gore! Now, to a geek, THAT is power and Obama’s power is that he EMPOWERS all forms of life, except for my dog perhaps.

Putting all jokes aside, it is clear to me that computer and Internet technology is going to become a tool of the socialist, ultra left wing left. Again, the geeks are going to build the socialist propaganda bomb and drop it upon innocent civilians unawares.

"When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about
what to do about it only after you have had your technical success.
That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Father of the Atomic Bomb

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