* This famous advice was from Horace Greeley, one of the greatest of America’s journalists, in the middle of the 19 century: “Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.” It remains at least as true today.
In what now seems like the distant past, Barack Obama swept into office on a wave of technological enthusiasm. His campaign the first to be powered by sophisticated use of social media,1 and his administration promised to bring into town the brightest and best from Silicon Valley.
Finally… Washington would be a capital fit for the world’s leading technology nation.
Top of the tree would be the appointment of the first-ever “Chief Technology Officer of the United States.” The talk was of a Cabinet appointment, and there was much speculation as to who would fill it. The tech press ranged far and wide in the rumours it reported.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt? He denied he was interested.
Maybe even Amazon’s Jeff Bezos?
Side-by-side with the names of these heavy-hitters was some anxiety as to how the whole thing would work, as the new guy would have responsibilities overlapping with federal agencies like the Patent and Trademark Office. But hopes of big change were high. Alan Davidson, head of Google’s Washington office, was quoted as saying: “There is no one place for unified technology leadership in our executive branch right now.”2 But the talk was of just such a place.
Well, as Americans like to say, how did that work out for you?
Four Strikes
First off, the reported idea of a Cabinet appointment with wide powers across government did not long survive. When the first federal CTO was appointed, he was a 27-year-old who had served for three years in a similar role in Virginia. Located in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, an advisory unit that despite its grand name and smart recommendations has no actual power. And while he, his successors, and the parallel appointment of a Chief Information Officer, made strenuous efforts, Washington has not been transformed.
Second, there was plainly an element of myth in the carefully managed branding of Barack Obama as a technology-savvy President. One of the most interesting and least reported stories of his first administration gave the game away. On Monday, May 10 of 2010 The Guardian carried an astonishing story, aptly subtitled: “’Internet’ president, who used social media in US election, admits he can’t operate an iPad, iPod or Xbox.” Obama was speaking at a graduation ceremony at historically-black Hampton University.3 In other words: the vaunted technology President was actually a technology klutz.
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