The Tech Tasks of St Barack

If Barack Obama can live up to a tenth of the hopes, prayers, special interests and agendas that others have foisted on his shoulders, he deserves to be canonised while still alive. Typical of the Tasks of St Barack is now to live up to the over-egged beliefs the techgeek industry had vested in him ( What - Tech overhyping something - nevah! ) - from the BBC:

Now some in the industry think it could be "pay-back time" as they looks to the country's first tech savvy President to do his bit to push technology into a new era.

"He is the first real president who seems to understand technology and the needs of the industry," said Tim O'Reilly, the man credited with coining the term 'web 2.0' and who is generally regarded as one of the industry's visionaries.

"The guy's my age," said commentator and founder of Wired magazine John Battelle

" This guy grew up knowing what an apple is besides the thing you eat, and using e-mail and Twitter. He understands what Facebook is and he has young kids that are completely digital.

"I think there is a general sense that he and the people he will employ totally get the web."

This would of course be why the Barack Obama Twitter address, active in those heady days when they wanted your spare change to create change, is now dormant. It's last post (trumpeted voluntarily) was:

We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks

Or translated - "so long, and thanks for all the cash"

He "gets it" only too well - let the chatterati go on babbling to themselves now - they got the Conversation, he got the Loot

Its morbidly fascinating to watch all the diverse special interests being lobbied for under the general heading of the "US CTO's" role, and a worrying but quite widespread general lack of concern about what is actually strategically critical rather than tactically profitable to this or that lobby.

Well, here's a big one that does matter - broadband pipes.

We are in the process of finishing a major piece of research on the future of online video, and one of the fascinating things you will find is that the countries pulling way ahead (Japan, South Korea, France, Nordics) - on both size of pipes ( with 16 Mb/sec+ speeds ), and low cost of access - have strong government involvement.

And the US actually has quite low mean speeds and mean broadband penetration, and pricing above that of the frontrunners - and that means low competitiveness in the critical future area of digital logistics. If St Barack did just One Big Thing in the techworld in his first term of office, just getting the US to France or Finland's level of performance (never mind Japan or Korea) would be a major achievement - and like the highway and dam building programs of the New Deal, a large amount of good would flow.