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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
the average techie, is lazy, speaking as an average techie myself.
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."
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.
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