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Clinton's First Internet Address To The Nation
gumbo writes: "President Clinton gave his first
Internet Address to the Nation today, in RealVideo, RealAudio,
and Sun .au (!) formats. He also
announced
a government-wide search engine that should be up by fall, with
no funding from tax dollars.
Personally, I run several government Web sites and haven't heard of
this, so they must be planning on spidering *.gov without checking
with us first. :)" It may be a e-bucketful of hype, a content-impaired pandering gesture, but some president would make the first such address, so why not Bill? As Internet connections become ever more ubiquitous, though, just how ubiquitous do we want the promised e-government to be?
Actually, this isn't entirely new.
...)
The website http://www.fedworld.gov/ offers a single search site for hundreds of federal websites. Originally started as a central BBS that let you look at other government BBS systems, it expanded into offerings via FTP and gopher before there was really a web.
Somebody also mentioned http://www.google.com/unclesam [no trailing slash: bad server config!]. (and get a load of the old glory colors on the Google logo: bet you see something similar on the home page by next weekend
Also, http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Services/ has been around for a long time.
It sounds like http://www.firstgov.gov/ (which IS live, just a placeholder) will be much more citizen-oriented, that is, getting the services to the people (like Social Security or VA records), rather than being a spreadsheets and reports searching site. I just don't think it's a very good name. help.gov? helpdesk.gov? services.gov? something "nineties" like my.gov? (Somebody else said) first.gov? The repeated G-O-V is silly.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I think the internet is going to change the democratic process in the future, but after MANY reforms. As of this moment, senators and such make vital decisions based on e-mail. Email has become a gigantic part of the democratic process.
I think that some sort of ID authentication process must come up in the next few years if official business will be done online. If they currently made a website for people to vote it would be "wildly inacurate". We must realize that the anonimity of the internet also attributes against the society democracy was built for.
I also have this deep i'm-a-true-techie-this-hurts feeling when I see another lamer get a new Prefab. IBM clone and AOL. I dont feel bad because I'm jealous of their 1ghz Athlon, I feel bad that the market dictates what goes and what dies off... But I also feel good that tech. is taking off, because it used to be an un-recognized tool of a "talented-tenth" of our society.
This "talented-tenth" still exists, but "normal people" also have the opportunity to explore the web.
As for the president eventually making speeches online, I think that's a great idea. If Nixon hadn't started speeches with TV, where would we be now? As long as we can confirm it's the president (becoming increasingly difficult with complex technology),
The democratic process will definately change during the next 30 years.
http://siokaos.org/
President Clinton gave his first Internet Address to the Nation today
Clinton now has first presidential post! I bet this pisses off Al Gore immensely (him "inventing" the internet and all).
If they develop a search engine and don't use tax dollars, how do they fund it?