Slashdot Mirror
Capitol Hill Quiet On Tech
An anonymous reader writes "This year's Democratic-controlled Congress largely ignored technological issues in favor of social problems, CNet notes in another 2007 retrospective. Issues important to the tech industry (such as net neutrality) received short shrift, while the political body spent a considerable amount of time decrying the evils of the Internet. 'Hot topics this time around included foreign cybersecurity threats to U.S. government systems, terrorist cells flourishing on the Web, inadvertent file sharing through peer-to-peer networks, and sexual predators ensnaring unsuspecting youth through online social sites. And for a third time, the House passed not just one, but two, different bills aimed at deterring spyware.'"
Funding for (computer) science research also got the shaft this year, in the budget for FY 2008, despite a prior commitment to double the budget over the next 10 years.
USACM has a nice perspective: http://usacm.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=558 and so does the Computing Research Association: http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/archives/000646.html
Unfortunately, pork $$$ in the near-term wins over long-term benefits for the entire country...
happy holidays,alex