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The "Techie" Vote?
Ironica writes "This Los Angeles Times article discusses a compelling trend: techies are making their collective voice heard in politics. Quote from the article: "After years as political agnostics, the programmers and engineers who orchestrated the technological revolution of the 1990s are trying to reboot government...They have money, earned during the boom. They have time, found since the bust. And they are using their technological savvy to recruit even casual Internet users to their causes." Perhaps instead of "boxers or briefs," our next presidential candidate will have to answer "POP3 or IMAP?""
This reminds me of a recent article about an internet millionaire who is sueing the government regarding privacy issues while flying. I think it is great that we techies are finally getting a voice in the government. Hopefully some of the issues we have been worried about, (patents, trademark, copyright, privacy, etc.) will begin to change.
Visualize the world of wine
Its good being apart of a group of people who can get in contact with each other alot faster than the non computer user. Allows us to rally, colaberate and plan things quicker better and more effectively.
/. or FARK and the names just roll in. :P
As well if we ever need to get names for a petition we just post in on
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
the average techie, is lazy, speaking as an average techie myself.
Regarding the pointing out that the next president would need to answer "POP3 or IMAP?" --
I hope that these "requirements" will span out to the judicial and legislative branches as well. It's great to have tech knowledge in the executive area; however, with all the (sorry for the cliche) checks and balances in place, this knowledge is moot without the knowledge in the judicial and legislative branches. For example, we're seeing many IP-related trials right now; while this knowledge could help bring about some of the changes we're hoping for in the TM/patent/IP fields, it will not help unless the knowledge is spanned out into ALL areas. We, as constituents, should not ONLY be lobbying the executive branch. We should be lobbying the others as well.
Without the good of the others, there's really no point in the good of one.
www.sitetronics.com/wordpress
There is a school of thought that recognises corporatism as a means of influencing public policy (be careful when googling, this is _NOT_ about the role of corporations but the role of interest groups in public policy) by giving interest groups a role to play in the determination of public policy. An alternative view is the pluralist view that takes interest groups as combatants with the public policy makers trying to "win" concessions to their particular interest.
It is clear that the techie vote will rise as the status quo proceeds to piss us off more and more (the size of the electorate in question is really pretty vast). But whilst that is interesting, it is reactionary, and by that very nature limited in what it can really achieve.
What is interesting is the idea that bodies made up from within the technically educated will form and be _consulted_ about the formulation of public policy. In the US this is made more problematic by the nature of your "democracy" but in places like Europe, more and more more input from more and more credible tech groups (EFF, FSF for example) will only increase the likelihood that when it comes time to look at the next idiot DMCA debacle, these groups will be sounded out _before_ the policy is drafted.
A good day indeed. Probably 5 - 10 years away unless some event occurs to precipitate the problem.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
At least that's what our Australian Federal Government is doing.
And our tech minister (Richard Alston) is about as technically advanced as stoneage man. His idea of a reboot, is to kick his press secretary. His latest faux-pas is to deny responsibility for his own official website which cost megabucks.
At least some techie is making money out of him somewhere but chances are, it isn't an Aussie. Dammit.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
This makes me think that maybe the techies/geeks SHOULD band together (with groups like the EFF) to shape tech legislation and stop this government from taking away our personal freedoms, like routers, NAT, firewalls, and encryption.
Just a thought I've had for a while now.
But more importantly, techies need to be more aware of politics than they are as well. Politics are about more than just the RIAA.
US slashdotters: Show of hands for everyone who saw the Democratic debate last night. Watch the upcoming forums, and be sure you register to vote.
One other point I wanted to bring out is that the "geek" voting block is largely young men between the ages of 18 and (wild guess) 30. Historically, this has been a rather weak age group when it comes to voting, and that's why politicians generally pay less attention to them and their issues versus seniors.
And as much as that may be changing, and younger people are taking more interest in politics, politicians may still shy away from them because of the nature of the activist IT movement.
Be honest folks. As well-intentioned as many of our views are, a lot of them reek of communism. Now I'm not saying that's necessarily the case (though for a sizeable portion, I would say it is) but some of the extremist ideas that are frequently explored on sites such as Slashdot are based on ideas that got people tossed into jail during McCarthyism.
And a lot of people who vote still remember that. Although many of our politicians seem to be leaning leftwards towards socialism, I don't think many of them want to yet be associated with some of the ideals expressed by the IT community.
Take it as it is. If you disagree, explain your side of the story.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
While it is true that the tech community could never agree on taxes and religion I don't think it is that important. We can demand that politicans address issues that we think are important just like they do for the Christian right and big labor. There is never going to be a big Slashdot party to run against the republicans, but we can make them take our position seriously.
The one big thing I can see a large technie presence in the government doing is updating processes. Everything is still based on oration and a verbose written process. A lot of fairly trivial things require an enormous amount of paperwork, and where that paperwork has been replaced by electronic versions, that's literally all it is: a scanned or Word version of the same written document.
An intelligent and powerful technical presence in the government could allow more technical processes to find their way into government processes. On the technical and scientific side, we're already using better voting techniques to allow systems to handle their own little elections autonomously. We have markup languages that could make legislation sensical to machines. We have technologies that could allow representatives to represent their constituents from places other than the congress.
Technology has the potential to streamline processes significantly, and there are fewer processes less streamlined than these fundamental processes within our governments.
My thoughts at least.
There are a couple myths about this stuff that we need to dispel.
The first myth is that the troubles we're having organizing are not the sole province of engineers, who supposedly don't understand people or politics all that well. It's a problem with any group of people you're trying to organize. Even lawyers, who you would think are really excellent at that sort of thing, bicker forever trying to get anything organized.
The second myth is that you have to have complete unanimity of opinion for an activist group to work. No organized group of humans in the world is a monolith. There are factions within everything. Saying that techies could never get their acts together because there are the BSD vs. Linux factions, the vi vs. emacs factions, or the debian vs. suse factions makes about as much sense as saying that the Sierra Club could never exist because there are the back-to-the-land, vegetarian, vegan, organic food, naturalist, and activist anti-corporate factions within it. The thing to remember that all an organization needs to do is capture enough overlap between all the factions in a given area.
The third myth is that we can't make a difference because we're all just average folks without the ear of the government. If we're not billionaires, the thinking goes, then how could we possibly get officials and representatives to listen to us? The answer is, numbers and time and a little effort more than make up for lack of billions of dollars. Do you think that the folks involved in the Civil Rights movement were wealthy? How about all the poor and untouchables marching with Gandhi? Did they have oodles of coin? The truth is, the Civil Rights movement, Feminist Movement, anti-Vietnam War movement, and all the others most of us have been weaned to think were incredibly huge and amazing and all-encompassing were tiny compared to the internet-organized and inspired protests and movements that have sprung up in the past year alone. And we made those happen.
Yes, some might say, but what difference have those really made? Bush is still in office, we're mired in the quagmire of Iraq anyway, the economy still sucks, and the *AA's are still stripping us of civil liberties with impugnity. But under the media pastiche the powers that be are running scared. Why do you think they're doing what they're doing to take away our rights and shackle our minds? Because we are the ones who really have the power, and they know it. They know they're on the brink of being swept aside, and that's why they're fighting like hell to keep us, the rabble, down.
We already forced them to back down over the Total Information Awareness program. We've also started to be heard in congress over what the RIAA's doing. That senator who upbraided them about their scorched earth campaign against internet users spoke up because he got enough heat from you and me.
The conclusion is that we techies can and are making a difference. So don't give up, pitch in!
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Why do you think the 2nd amendment exists?
I'll tell you.
Its so that technology is in the hands of the people and not the state. That's the whole point. Its doesn't matter how powerful the technology gets, it must be in the hands of the public. Taking it away from the people is taking away their ability to secure their freedom. Certainly you must understand this.
Do you think a gun was less deadly in the 1800s? They still killed with lethal force.
I think they were very clear about what they meant. I just think you either never understood it to begin with or don't care. And you're probably affraid of guns.
Guns are tools. Nothing to be affraid of, but people..
Now Americans, on the other hand, on average, are unstable people who don't love eachother. So handing them WMDs might be a bad thing. But if we had educated them properly and not lied to them every step of the way, manipulating them to be good workers, then perhaps we wouldn't have to be so scared of our neighbor.
Its not my fault you're all dumb and like to shoot eachother. But it is your fault we're losing the freedoms this country was founded on.
What do you think is more important? Your life or the freedom hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, have died for?
- Weblogs and blog software are making it easier for both geeks and non-geeks to post online
- Social networks like Friendster, Tribes.net, Ryze, etc... are making it easier to link to thousands of people very quickly. Look at how quickly flashmobs are getting organized
- A number of policies (PATRIOT Act, The Bono Act, etc...) are starting to affect us negatively
I think all those are contributing to geeks thinking a little more about the impact of politics on the net. Now that more people are aware, it's only a matter of time before they start acting.I suspect that we are going to see more and more action from geeks over the 2004 campaign.
Check out http://www.tnl.net/blog
This is the most ambiguous amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights, and one more subject to interpretation than almost any other section in the U.S. Constitution. Many might agree with your revolutionary interpretation. Including some of the Founding Fathers. But an equally valid (and I believe more socially reasonable) interpretation is this:
The 2nd amendment was designed primarily to ensure the national security of the United States of America. In order to ensure national security, the states must maintain a well-regulated militia. Any such militia must be well-armed. In the citizen-militias most common in the early U.S., militia members will likely keep their arms with them at home, for use whenever needed to ensure the national security of the U.S. (for instance during the British invasion in the War of 1812).
By this interpretation, the following conclusion can be drawn:
I am concerned about any program, any piece of hardware, any treaty, any law that treats me as a consumer, not a citizen
...band together. I have to say I was a little bit shocked to find out that the EFF only had 8500 members. Is that the best we could do? Are there only 8500 people who care about the fate of the 'Net? And the story for free software is even more sad. How many people here run Linux or Apache or Mozilla or OpenOffice or other free software? I'd bet Slashdot is coming close to having over 50,000 comments on the SCO debacle. And yet the FSF has only ~1,000 associate members. It's almost depressing.
I'm involved with the Draft Clark 2004 group, which is largely organized off the Internet in the form of websites, blogs, email lists, etc. It's related with moveon.org, meetup.com, etc. in that it's another grassroots organization using technology to benefit progressive causes.
What this article is talking about really has nothing to do with techies. It has to do with technies using their knowledge of the Internet to help bring people together who have a common interest. This isn't about bringing technology to government, nor is it really about pushing techie politic issues. It simply is an organized reaction to the overwhelming influence of special interest groups in politics.
What is interesting about this, is it's grassroots citizenry pushing for change from below. This is different from the Republican strategy of years past which involved big donors and big corporations running issue ads and subverting the media to push issues down onto the people.
So it is a change, I believe it's a change for the positive. I just don't see that it has much to do with techies other than as a tool to aid the collaboration.
Our Draft Clark meetings have had a wide range of people attending, a large number of military vets, women, people of foreign birth or with extensive world travel experience. There have been some techies, certainly. But a common sentiment has been the concern of the deterioration of Americans civil rights under the Bush administration. This has more to do with the Patriot Act than it does with the DMCA, however.
Actually, I think that deep down this is what everyone believes. We (`the good guys') should have everything we want, while people we don't like (`the bad guys') should not have anything. It's a result of the tribe mentality which causes the human brain to divide people into the categories `us' and `them'. Political ideologies are just ways of wrapping this up in civilised terminology.
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