Who will be first “tech president?”

So the President will get the CIA's PDB (President's Daily Brief) via RSS feeds? I wonder if the President will Twitter out his exact locations...'Yo, chilling, catching up on the blogs, during this boring Cabinet meeting. Anyone wanta catch some lunch?'

No president will be overly technical beyond what their daily needs require. The job will become more technical as time progresses, but much of their work is done for them by aides. The current possibles are not overly tech friendly or don't show it in an overt manner.

What needs to happen first is for America to quit sending jobs to India, Vietnam, and other places. There are plenty of Americans who are far more qualified than anyone offshore. American companies that do offshoring are in it for the savings and this is bad for the economy in the long run. IBM has actually recalled much of its offshore work back into the US as it should be.

If foreigners want American jobs, let them come here and compete on the same level we do, pay taxes to help te economy, and not be allowed here on special visas that basically guarantee them jobs that undercut Americans.

If I were a hiring manager, I would only hire Americans, ethnicity or sex not mattering. There are not enough girls in geek jobs to begin with, so we need to show young girls who are coming up in chool how much fun tech can be.

The next president needs to be tech-friendly, but keep the jobs in the US. We are already graduating far less engineers and CS degrees than China, India, and the EU.

Who will be the First Tech president?

Robo-Politician 9000 - Mark VI
(when the machines take over... of course)

Sometime before Web 5.0 I'll wager.

Who will be marketed as the first tech president regardless of their technical abilities?

That is more of the question.

The answer is simple. Presidents and politicians in general are always marketed as "everyday people" with every day skills that just happen to represent their constituency in govt.

You know, those "good" hard working people that can really relate to the masses.

Until their constancy becomes overly "tech", they will never be marketed that way.
Campaign marketers and public relations people will never market people in a way that is inconsistent with Joe-Dennys-I-Ate-too-much-but-i-aint-payin-too-much

The last real US President that tried to get ahead of himself with tech and the space program was JFK, and just look what happened to him.

Even if a politician was the most tech savvy person in the world, they would go out of their way to dumb themselves down to the public. The marketing will probably never spin that way.

In Canada we have another system, and a different way of looking at things. So here it is quite different.

That should read:
"Until their constituency becomes overly “tech”, they will never be marketed that way."
I am using Konqueror here and the spell checker sucks.

@2

"No president will be overly technical beyond what their daily needs require"

The article is more about when a US president will put technology first, connecting people to the internet instead of giving them a quality education and food.

Like I said JFK was the last real president that had an ambitious tech agenda and he was assassinated. It seems like something Americans usually leave to the private sector.

I can imagine the laments amongst corporations if the govt tried to regulate mass internet service ect...

1. #5 could be a way to get citizens more involved in the nation, insuring political activism. Why does it sound like the Nets in "Ender's Game"?
2. #4: "Every Child Connected". This sounds sort of like the stuff in One Laptop Per Child. Maybe some of its ideas could be borrowed?
3. The first "tech" President could be a long way off, though.

First modern tech president was George Washington and each one since has been progressively more reliant upon technology to carry out their duties. What's that saying about technology being like magic...?

@paco - we're graduating far fewer in number in the areas you mention only because we're a SMALLER COUNTRY! Think about that!

We graduate FAR FAR fewer Doctor's too. Far fewer Geologists. Far fewer of everything. It's just the way the numbers work out.

As for offshoring. I've offshored a good bit of editorial work for my science journals. Know why? The work gets done just as well. The work ethic is just as good. The cost is moderately less and worth every penny of the savings. I'm a not-for-profit and plow that back into other US based programs. When US companies call me to compete for the business I tell them point blank who I'm using and what my charges are (fax them the itemized invoices). The next question I ask is, "I know you can't match it. But, how close can you come to that and still hold quality?" Answer is normally something like, "Give me a week and I'll get back with you." and they don't do it. They don't even follow up! THAT is what we're up against! LAZY stinkers!

The competition is now global for a LOT of services (it's not just a goods economy). Haliburton's moving their HQ to Dubai. Two reasons. 1) That's where the new Houston is. 2) That's where all the affordable laborers will gather to train and gear up for the search for new hydrocarbon resources.

Read or listen to Thomas Friedmans "The World is Flat" and see if you see things from a different perspective.

@7

You don't know what those people are doing. They could be plagiarizing the work for all you know.

I worked with IBM India, and their work had errors. IBM in the USA was perfect.

I don't think the article or even Scoble's comment about it really has anything to do with outsourcing, but while we're there...

The rates Indians charge is becoming almost as bad as Europe, Canada and the US.
The average rate for a software developer with only limited skills is now well over $22/hour in India. That's not too far off from the rates here. There are benefits too.

The 2nd point I would like to make regarding that is the infrastructure it takes to babysit those people. IBM MS and others have poured millions into setting up shop in those countries and to train those people to do the work. Any corp smaller than that would have a nightmare of a time doing so and would have to completely rely on the word of some agent or rep for a company in a country with very shady international business laws.

What if something goes wrong?
How are you going to salvage anything? What if they take your IP and sell it on the black market? Call center fraud is rampant in India. Who would have known that people who are dirt poor would want to steal personal information and credit card numbers at a higher rate than those in the US or Europe?

There's a reason why labour costs more here. It's because it's earned. Period.

I would never, ever let foreigners do work for me. I want someone who I can go after should they do me wrong. This is difficult to impossible sometimes with offshore interests. I want accountability in my own backyard.

I could care less about giving foroeigners my money. My money belongs right here in the US.

I've lived all over the world and I can tell you that while we charge more more stuff, the wuality is generally higher here. You get what you pay for and it keeps our economy going.

We are letting the Chinese and everyone else walk all over us economically and it sucks.

As I said, if I were a hiring manager or business owner, I would only hire Americans. No green cards, no visas. American citizenship only. I want to know you have a vested interest in THIS economy. I would make it a point to let HR know that all jobs REQUIRE American citizenship -- no exceptions. Let's keep our own economy going strong.

What other posters are essentially saying is that a cheap $3 watch you buy at the airport that breaks a few hours after you purchased it is the same as a Rolex.

Not quite. Or that fake Chinese Rolexes sold out of the backs of trucks and on ebay are the same as the real one.

You get what you pay for. As for the Indian work ethic:

http://fe22.news.re3.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070430/od...

This Indian guy knew he was going to be *beheaded* and he STILL didn't show up for work. Top that.

The link you gave and the proposed "positions" should scare the heck out of any thinking techie. Just take a look at the first one:
"Declare the Internet a public good in the same way we think of water, electricity, highways, or public education."

That way the government could regulate the content, the access, the way it's created, the way it's used, who runs it, all those wonderful things! The guy you link to is an idiot socialist, who believes the only way things can possibly work is through the feds dictating it to us. 'Cus were just too stoopid to understand what's good for us.

Sorry for the rancor, but come on! The best thing the government can do for the net is to leave it the hell alone.

Al Gore came close!!!!!

I am just looking for a president who will support technological advancement. He doesn't have to be a techie himself as long as we are given the freedom to move froward. I am looking at Fred Thompson so far. I like the guy and he likes technology.

I think Al Gore is as good as it gets tech wise. We know for sure he can use a slide projector and a computer. I think the recent Time article shows us that the terrible nature of the 2000 defeat has created a better Al that is probably the best candidate out there now. Too bad he's too smart to put himself into the fray. I think it's going to take a few more presidents before we start having tech-savvy ones.
As for the comments above about outsourcing. I have friends who work at Microsoft and every story about work from India is a disaster story of entire projects being rebuilt from scratch by Redmond employees under ugly deadlines. I also have a friend who worked for a company in Silicon Valley and they outsourced their work to an eastern European nation and he said it was amazing how quickly the work came back and good quality too. Too much of his time was spent trying to mollycoddle the local developers away from watching the stock market to do work and always with mistakes.
So my anecdotal sampling would seem to cross each other out except that msft is far larger than the smallish SV company.