Slashdot Mirror
How Will Governments Keep Up With Technology?
Andy Updegrove writes "Governments are beginning to realize that perhaps the Internet really has changed everything, at least for them, and that they are going to have to deal with new responsibilities in this area. How will they deal with financial and medical data breaches? What can they do to ensure that first responders will be able to communicate the next time that terrorists strike in the Homeland, and how will the refugees of the next Katrina be able to access their electronic medical records? And what must governments do to ensure that public records will be available in fifty years, if they no longer maintain paper archives? Whether government should incline towards leading, following or simply getting out of the way is a matter upon which there are likely to be strongly held differences of opinion. It's also likely, though, that government will not have the luxury of opting for the third choice in some of the areas just mentioned. How well government chooses among those roles, and how well it executes when it chooses to lead, will likely have a profound impact on our lives in the years ahead."
You have to be current to keep up. Last I checked, we weren't current.
A funny addendum; our military is - from a technology standpoint - the best in the world...and that technology mostly ranges from the early 70s until about 2002. The recently retired F-15, which was developed in the 70s and 80s, hardly had a match in the world and I believe was never shot down (at least by enemy aircraft)...and would still punch everything else out of the sky except other American aircraft and maybe a modern MIG with a really good pilot.
Well in the US, it would be helpful to have legislators at least somewhat familiar with the underlying technology of the things they are legislating. That may not happen until some younger blood gets elected. Old men in suits may have plenty of gravitas, but have their assistants print off their e-mails every day. It's another example of what gets you elected is often at odds with what is required to govern.
Government can hardly deliver my mail intact (USPS), competently educate my children (public schools), take care of my grandparent's health (Medicare), or ensure my retirement (the ridiculous failure that is Social Security).
Truckin like the Doo-Dah man...
They should just stay the hell out of it. Every time a government gets involved in anything they just end up screwing it up and making it an expensive, bloated mess. Lets face it governments are made up of people who'd probably be completely unemployable anywhere else, so why should anyone listen to their "ideas" about the 'net. The 'net has grown nicely without government meddling; why not leave it that way?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Hell, why not worry how the CURRENT victims of Katrina will access their medical records. I pretty much have none. Not a problem in my case, but, those that needed meds and all still have a hell of a time...
I think it will be interesting in the next catastrophy, to see what the US's reaction will be...especially if it is in another part of the US. If the next big hurricane hits NYC (which IS overdue for a major storm), or San Fran. gets creamed by an earthquake...will the gov response be any better? Will any of the money pledged actually get to the state? Very little of it has actually made it to LA even yet. And what little has, is held up by the state having to deal with the severe red tape attached to the funds by the Feds.
A recent report on the radio here said that out of about $840M donated by foreign countries to help the victims of Katrina...only about $40M of it was sent to the gulf south region. The rest...was funneled to other govt. programs or lost I guess.
I think it will be interesting to see if the next city that gets f*cked by mother nature, gets the same sub-par treatment from the govt as NOLA did. 2 years past and the neighborhoods that were decimated, not by a hurricane, but, by the US govt.'s levee system's failure due to poor worksmanship, poor engineering and it appears now, downright criminal negligance.....they still look like a bomb went off, and we hear daily the the Corps of Engineers is still cutting corners and fscking up the rebuild of the pumps and levees.
Ok...*sigh* [/soapbox mode]
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'd probably use a blimp or some such. The government can afford to put together a handful of them for just this sort of emergency, and you could get more by offering companies that manage blimps for advertising, etc, tax incentives to make their blimps capable of supporting the mobile tower infrastructure...Talk about some people who'd be happy to see the Goodyear blimp.
Building emergency towers on the ground is hugely foolish. You would never be able to guarantee power, never be able to guarantee that your switching infrastructure is not going to be submerged, and never be able to guarantee that some rich bastards yacht isn't going to get storm surged 12 miles inland, and knock over your "secure" tower.
Anyway, it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper to build a few mobile ones, if only because you'd only need a handful, and they could be anywhere. Otherwise, you'd have to put 'em up everywhere, because you'd never know in advance where you were going to need 'em.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Agreed. The whole 'Homeland' thing is really unnerving. From my viewpoint, the last thing this country needs is more nationalistic fervor. We already have too much of it being relabeled as "patriotism" (though that's been going on for a couple of centuries, but still).
Boy are you ever wrong.
Both of you, really. Or, at least, you are talking about different things, and your comments about each other's topics are incorrect because you are not talking about the same things.
Military systems are often decades behind commercial products.
There is a reason for this. Logistics. Supply. Lifecycle support. The military buys systems and uses them for 20, 30, or more years. The US Air Force is flying B-52 bombers built in the 1950s, and plans to keep flying them into the 2030s. Well, the airframes, at least. Most of the guts, plus engines, will be replaced several times over that time frame, but the point is still valid.
The F-22 that the Air Force is starting to have delivery of, started its R&D cycle in the mid 1980s. It is now the most advanced military aircraft in the world. (And the most expensive.) The US Air Force will probably still be flying the F-22 in the 2040s.
The military buys for the long term. You don't go from the lab straight to 30-year-useful-life product.
The reason you see new concepts moving from government labs to commercial exploitation is because that's easier than military exploitation.
That's not the job of government. The government is not supposed to compete with the private sector in making and selling products. The government funds/performs basic research, until it gets to the development stage. Then it transfers that development effort to the private sector, and possibly partially funds the development effort. (A lot of drug research works this way. Basic research by the government, product development by Big Pharma.) This is actually good (much as I complain about Big Pharma), because in general the government is not efficient or responsive at making products.
funding of short term research
Oxymoron. Short term research is not research, it is development. More specifically, it is called product development. Research is basic and long term. See my above paragraph.
by commercial interests is many times that of the military domain
which is as it is supposed to be. The military funds product development of products directly of interest to the military. That is a small subset of the economy, and so is a small subset of total product development efforts and funding.
What used to be better was long term research
Agreed, government funding of basic research as a percentage of total government budget used to be higher, but it isn't gone, and it really isn't shrinking that fast. The major problem is that politicians are becoming a lot more like CEOs, and want to see something come out of the research efforts. Now. (Or, more specifically, during their term in office.) Not 30 years from now. They are trying to run research projects like they are development efforts, and are frustrating a lot of scientists and screwing up a lot of research efforts.
to fund the wars we've been having
Off topic rant.
The war in Afghanistan took a few months, and cost $25 billion dollars. It was a military victory. The war in Iraq took 3 weeks and cost less than $60 billion dollars. It was a military victory. (Warning, both dollar values pulled out of my a$$.) Past the first few months in Afghanistan, and the first month in Iraq, we've had police actions. Stupid. Costly. Unwinnable. Install a puppet dictator, and get the hell out. Dammit, I used to be a good Republican.
But even so, they haven't cost that much in terms of the entire government budget. All of DOD including the fake "emergency" funding is less that is spent on entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, etc). Though it is getting close to crossing that line. Scary. (After 4 years there, it is not an emergency any more. It is planned spending.)
Wow, I'm getting cynical lately.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?