The 463: Inside Tech

Um, This Is Kind of a Big Deal. That Other Thing? Not So Much.

Sure, it was a lot to pack into a single speech.

Yesterday, President Obama covered everything from the Swine Flu to math tests in a speech to the National Academy of Sciences about his administration's innovation policy. But, there was some very specific significant news that came out of it.

Hint: This wasn't it...

"Google’s CEO Gets an Official Seat at President Obama’s Table" (Mashable)

or this:

"Google’s Schmidt and Microsoft’s Mundie Appointed As Obama Tech Advisors" (TechCrunch)

Or many of the similar stories about the PCAST appointments.

Give up?

It was this, from the Financial Times:

Barack Obama on Monday promised to double public funding of scientific research to exceed the level Washington spent during the “space race” unleashed by Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy 50 years ago.

The US president’s pledge, made in a speech at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, included a promise to take ideology out of public research following what many scientists saw as the politicisation of science under George W. Bush – particularly in the field of climate change.

Under Mr Obama’s pledge, the US would increase to 3 per cent the proportion of gross domestic product it spends on scientific research and development – roughly the same level as under Kennedy.

Information Week further explains:

Obama in his budget has proposed doubling the budgets for the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

He also introduced a new arm of the Department of Energy, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, designed to replicate the research success of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

In addition, he said he planned to triple the number of NSF graduate research fellowships.

TechNet applauded the news.

Good for the FT and Information Week, but unfortunate that the Schmidt PCAST appointment, in particular, stepped on what should have been the headline of most of the coverage yesterday. Instead, we got analysis of Google's relationship with the Obama administration and paragraphs like this:

The role doesn't give Schmidt any decision making powers on the federal level. But it does place him in a seat of influence, potentially on issues that impact Google like network neutrality, privacy and copyright.

Actually, yes, no and no. Because, if this were the case, this fellow PCAST member would soon be deep in shaping the future of Internet policy...

Barbara Schaal is Professor of Biology at Washington University in St Louis. She is a renowned plant geneticist who has used molecular genetics to understand the evolution and ecology of plants, ranging from the US Midwest to the tropics.

The usually smart All Things D blog chimes in with:   "(The Schmidt appointment) is one more indication–and the biggest one yet–that Google has become firmly part of the Washington establishment."

Not really and absolutely not.

You see, PCAST is a well-respected body that has been employed by most presidents in the last fifty years or so. But, it is, to its core, a top-notch blue-ribbon panel made up of academics, researchers and select industry folk. Check out what the PCAST team in the Bush White House developed here. And, here is a link to the Clinton PCAST page.

Saying that this is the cherry on top of Google becoming part of the "Washington establishment" is paramount to saying that the "Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University now has the same access to the Obamas as the first puppy." (Daniel Schrag, the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology in said department is also a member)

Even with an exponential increase in prioritization from the Obama Administration, PCAST will remain a helpful body that focuses on big picture research issues and ensuring that the country remains competitive by providing balance of innovation incentives and tools for learning. But, it will not be deciding the future of net neutrality.

History's Lessons Forgotten (Again)

I've rewritten this post a few times. I've settled on being as dispassionate as possible and letting the content from others speak for itself (for better or much worse). I want to avoid my own rhetoric from going off the deep end. The folks that will be quoted below handle that nicely themselves.

As is apparent here, we followed the Aneesh Chopra national CTO appointment closely. The coverage and the commentary was universally highly positive on the choice. However, there were a few minor exceptions. Some felt that a true "technologist" should have been appointed and others gave the standard issue libertarian spiel about the ironies of a government employee preaching efficiency and innovation. Fine. I totally disagree on both points and there is plenty of content out there that backs me up, but, sure, points taken.

Much more troubling was the blatant (and almost proud) racism in the reaction to the appointment by a vocal minority of story commenters.

Somehow, the fact that Chopra has an Indian heritage means that he somehow is not a "real" American, is only going hire Indians, and is part of an international conspiracy of Indians to take over the business world. All this from an all-American guy who is a massive Pittsburgh Steeler fan.

Let's state the seemingly obvious upfront: Indians are just the latest in the series of many immigrant groups to the United States made scapegoats for the natural disruptive churn that is our chosen capitalistic economy. At various times, the Irish, Italians, Polish, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Mexicans and so on have felt the wrath for attempting to fulfill the promise of the American Dream by entering our cherished melting pot. But, what makes America America is that all have persevered and become an essential part of the fabric of our nation.

It feels strange to recite such basic elements of our country's heritage and promise, but, apparently, this is a lesson that needs to be re-learned by every generation.

Consider the comments to the Chopra appointment. (And, before you get there, it should be noted that many of the commentators cross-commented on the different stories and/or seemingly posted under different user names. I don't want to give the perception that there are more of these folks than there actually are)...

From a ZDNet story:

"Let's get off the "politically correct" bandwagon already -- there are plenty of good 'ole American boys (& girls), who are law-abiding and could do this job equally well as these imports. AMERICA FIRST."

Digg had insightful comments like this:

"Why hire an H1-B? Aren't any Americans available?"

ReadWriteWeb had these keepers:

"Before yu know it, we will all be forced to praise Allah! LOL"

"Can he PLEASE change his name to Apu, thank-you and come again!"

Wall Street Journal commentary includes:

"Aneesh will bring his 40 cousins to fill postions under him, they will bring their families from India to fill positions under them, who will bring the 40 people living in their apartment to fill positions under them and so on and so on. They will hire only Indians. They will be very good at making change and filling slushie cups, but you don’t have to be good to work in a government job."

"The invasion of the upper-caste Indians continues, and all Americans will soon be drinking out of clay cups."

"Can’t Obama find a suitable non-desi American. This is like a slap in the face for unemployed Information Technology and Engineering Americans. First their jobs were taken by Guest Workers and then outsourced to India. Now even the newly elected President does not believe in American engineers and programmers."

And, Tim O'Reilly' great post is followed by comments that include:

Tim O'Reilly: I hope someday your job is outsourced to India. Now this CTO will send all the jobs to India so what is good about that? You collaborator.

Articles like this make me want to vomit. What, everybody in I.T. has to be Hindu or of Indian decent? Americans invented the software industry, but suddenly we're an inferior race that needs to be purged out of I.T.?

That last comment came courtesy of "Kevin Flanagan" with a helpful link back to "his" blog. Here is an except of recent content there:

While the insurgency only advocates rhetorical violence and psychological cyber-warfare, here is some good news, out of all bad comes good -- four more Americans may get jobs in the I.T. industry. And there are four slots open to get a MS in I.T. from EIU...

"Four Indian students killed as drunk US cop crashes car..."

Sometimes innocents get hurt. But the alternatives are worse. So, for those of you Desis and collaborators pissed off at my cold, reckless, and tasteless disregard for the death of four Indian college students, I have one thing to say.

Shit happens.

It is called "collateral damage" in combat.

Like, what can be more tasteless than making an American I.T. professional train his semi-literate replacement? Killing a Dalit, perhaps? It happens every day. Often. And Hindus think of Americans like Dalits. They want us drinking out of Clay Cups. And if we bring up caste, they say it is none of our business. Fuck them.

I can't add anything to that.

And, P.S., I will delete any un-constructive comments.

What People Are Saying About the Aneesh Chopra Appointment

It's been less than six hours since the appointment of Aneesh Chopra as the first national CTO was officially made, but, already, the opinions on it are flying.

Bottom line: While some in Silicon Valley are lamenting that one of their own wasn't chosen, anyone who knows Aneesh is thrilled. Both sides are represented in this Slashdot conversation titled: "Obama Appoints Non-Tech Guy As CTO".

By far, the best summation of Chopra's potential comes from uber-geek Tim O'Reilly. I've excerpted his top-eight list of reasons on why the appointment was an excellent one, but please go to the source for all the fire power behind each point...

1. Chopra has been focused for the past three years on the specific technology challenges of government.

2. The role of the CTO is to provide visionary leadership, to help a company (or in this case, a government) explore the transformative potential of new technology.

3. Chopra demonstrates a deep understanding of the idea that the government is an enabler, not the ultimate solution provider.

4. Chopra understands that government technologists need to act more like their counterparts in Silicon Valley.

5. Chopra is a practical innovator.

6. Chopra has a real focus on measurement, and on figuring out what really works.

7. Chopra has specific expertise in Health Care IT.

8. Chopra is incredibly charismatic.

Amy Shatz of the WSJ says this about the reaction:

Silicon Valley execs and tech bloggers sounded genuinely excited about Obama’s choice Saturday morning and tech industry lobbying groups TechNet and the Business Software Alliance quickly released statements of support, as did several tech heavyweights

More specifically, here is what said heavyweights said...

Craig Barrett, Chairman, Intel Corporation:

“Aneesh Chopra is one of technology’s leading lights and we are lucky to have him as our nation’s Chief Technology Officer. Aneesh demonstrated outstanding leadership as Virginia’s Secretary of Technology and believes to his core that innovation and technology are the backbone of our economy. We applaud President Barack Obama for this choice of a proven, results-driven and experienced executive that will harness the power of innovation and cutting-edge discovery to help to make government work better for all of our citizens.”

Vinod Khosla, Founder of Khosla Ventures:

“President Obama has made a stellar choice in the appointment of Aneesh Chopra as America’s CTO. This man is a ‘do-er,’ plain and simple. He is a visionary leader and executive who can bring people together around a vision to get the job done.Aneesh is a passionate advocate of how technology and innovation can positively impact the lives of millions of our citizens through improved education, health-care, helping better protect our environment and so much more.”

Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and founding Chair, Mozilla Foundation:   

“President Obama has made an outstanding choice in naming Aneesh Chopra as the nation's first CTO. I got to know Aneesh during the 2008 Presidential campaign and transition, where I worked with him and experienced first-hand his great drive, broad skills and inspirational approach to to how technology can be used to spur innovation, help create good jobs, grow the economy, and improve the delivery of services by the government to its citizens. Aneesh's experience as Virginia's Secretary of Technology and that state's CTO has provided highly relevant preparation for this new role, and I am confident he will be a major asset to the Administration.”

Scott McNealy, founder and Chairman of Sun Microsystems and Chairman of Sun Federal, Inc.:

“Aneesh Chopra is the type of results-focused and open-minded technology leader that our country needs. Aneesh has the abilities and experience to harness innovation for the greater public good, whether that is to reduce health care costs or increase access to government services through open source, make our country's systems more secure, foster job creation, or better prepare our future workforce. We have the utmost confidence that Aneesh will succeed in driving more efficiency and innovation into the government and get the most for the U.S. tax payer's investments.”

John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and TecNet Co-founder:

“If you want innovation, change and high performance – in any organization – the CTO role is crucial. Aneesh is an inspired appointment. His smarts and experience in technology, health care and investing will serve us well.”

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association:

“Chopra is an excellent selection as he served proficiently in Virginia as Secretary of Technology and also has a strong background in the private sector advising the health care industry on technology management issues. He will bring to the position real world technology and public policy experience. The creation of the CTO position – and the excellent appointment of Aneesh Chopra – demonstrate the high priority the Obama administration places on the technology industry. CEA views this position as critical as it allows one individual responsibility across government agencies on key technology issues. It also ensures our industry a strong voice at the Cabinet level as issues of intellectual property, immigration, trade and taxes are discussed.”

Jim Hawley, TechNet Acting CEO:

“Aneesh is a true visionary who keenly understands the power of innovation to create jobs, help our environment, improve health care delivery and better educate our kids. His work and track record in Virginia will serve as the model for this newly created office of Chief Technology Officer. In Virginia, his office set the standard of how technology and cutting-edge discovery can improve the lives of our citizens and this will serve as a model of how IT can help make government work better for all of us. We look forward to working with him to ensure that America remains the epicenter of global innovation."

Leslie Harris, CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology:

“I know Aneesh to be an amazingly dynamic and results-oriented innovation leader. His leadership as Virginia’s Secretary of Technology was outstanding and this background and experience will serve him well in the new Administration. He knows that technology helps drive our economic recovery and is critically important to improving government service for all of our people. CDT looks forward to working with him."

Aneesh Chopra: National CTO

Now that the puppy has been picked, it's OUR turn to get some love from the Obama Administration. At last, the geek parlor game of guessing the national CTO has ended.

And, no, the new, much anticipated national CTO is not going to be an emissary from Silicon Valley like Eric Schmidt (though, saying that Obama "spurned the Valley" is going too far). The role is going to be Aneesh Chopra -- a guy who has been, effectively and to much praise, been doing close to the same job at the state level for the Commonwealth of Virginia. In his weekly radio address Saturday morning, President Obama said:

Aneesh Chopra, who is currently the Secretary of Technology for Governor Kaine of Virginia, has agreed to serve as America’s Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities – from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure.

Aneesh ... will work closely with our Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, who is responsible for setting technology policy across the government, and using technology to improve security, ensure transparency, and lower costs. The goal is to give all Americans a voice in their government and ensure that they know exactly how we’re spending their money – and can hold us accountable for the results.

Chopra had been recommended for the job by two Virginia congressmen who said:

Chopra's public and private experience in the technology field made him the right candidate. They also noted his focus on healthcare IT "is ideal for a position that will have responsibilities dealing both with stimulus spending on healthcare and environmental programs."

And, really, if Health IT can't be raised the forefront with Chopra in the White House, it never will.

The 36-year-old Chopra has also been very active in finding innovative ways to use technology to benefit education -- as MacWorld reported this week.

I highly recommend watching a good portion of the video below. It's from this year's Congressional Internet Caucus conference in January. One relevant aside on it is that a Congressman was supposed to be speaking the same morning but was unable to make it because of a family issue. This gave Chopra much more time than he had expected. You'll see that he used it wisely in his very interesting talk on open government, health IT and broadband...

Some speech highlights:

3:50: Open government
11:10: Discovering/searching for govt data
16:00: Open stem education
19:50: A very cool "open textbook" program
22:30: "The iPhone is my life"
24:00: Health care IT
35.15: Broadband policy
44:00: Open education (Q&A)

Chopra may not be a Valley guy, but Silicon Valley is going to like him a lot. He's energetic, insightful and can speak the language (again, watch the video). He's no bureaucrat.

And, just because you didn't previously work for a chip company or an Internet start-up doesn't mean that you "are not a tech guy" as I just read on another blog. Chopra spent a bulk of his career seeing technology in action (for better or worse) in his work in the health care industry and knew that it could and should do better to bring change to the massive sector.

So far, Micah Sifry at TechPresident has the best wrap up on Chopra's relevant experience:

A few quick observations about this choice. First, it looks like very good news for the transparency movement, as well as those of us looking for an open-minded leader willing to experiment with new forms of collaborative governance. For example, back in early 2007, under Chopra's leadership, Virginia was one of the first states to move, with Google's help, to make its state websites more searchable and thus more accessible to ordinary citizens. The state has also been in the forefront of efforts to create robust web services tracking the giant government stimulus spending package enacted by Obama, and as fed-watcher Christopher Dorobek points out, Chopra is well aware of and supportive of citizen-led watchdog efforts like Jerry Brito's StimulusWatch.org.

Under Chopra (and it must be mentioned, his boss Governor Tim Kaine), the state also launched a highly interactive website that collected more than 9000 suggestions from residents on how the stimulus monies might be spent. "Relative to calls and letters, it's fairly safe to say this is probably a tenfold increase in civic participation by allowing people to click on a button, submit their ideas and engage with their governor," Chopra told a local paper back in March.

Finally, like his soon-to-again-be-colleague Vivek Kundra, Obama's Chief Information Officer, who also came out of Virginia before serving as DC's CTO, Chopra is willing to try new ways to innovate government processes, inspired by the open and lateral networking development culture of the internet. Governing Magazine calls him a "Venture Governmentalist," specifically citing "a small but intriguing experiment in Virginia that aims to bring the high-risk, high-reward ethic of venture investing to state government." Last year, Chopra invested $2 million in about a dozen small internal agency tech projects with potential to pay big returns in terms of productivity. "More important, and more unusual for the bureaucrats," says Governing, "he gives them permission to fail. You can't innovate, Chopra tells them, without taking a gamble every now and then." He adds, "We need to fundamentally change the culture of government in which change is measured in budget cycles to one in which change is measured in weeks or months." Who can argue with that?

UN Commissioned "Algotrithm Inspectors?"

All it takes is one "ham fisted" error these days to call out regulators -- and even the UN(!) -- to oversee how powerful Web companies do their business. Here's on British journalist on the well-reported #amazonfail issue. One hopes is using subtle hyperbole, but I can't be sure....

There's a lot of speculation about what actually happened, with some putting forward a view that this was a carefully planned move by US fundamentalists who were gaming Amazon to cause just this sort of public upset and one or two people claiming they were behind it all.

But I'm pretty sure that the error was in the algorithm, in the set of rules that Amazon's systems apply when selecting books to display, coupled perhaps with some unfortunate choices about how certain books should be tagged in the metadata Amazon holds.

This is not, however, a source of comfort. When a book is misfiled in my local Borders it may result in a few lost sales, but for the whole of Amazon to 'misplace' my book may mean nobody in the world buys it. If the filtering had affected people writing about how to keep sheep as domestic pets instead of gay fiction we might not have noticed the error.

The consequences of living by the algorithm do not just affect Amazon, they affect all of us as we increasingly rely on recommendation systems to suggest books to buy, friends to add on social networks, emails to take notice of and places to visit. We have put our faith in Google PageRank and 'Amazon recommends', and found them wanting, yet we do not have an alternative.

The only real solution is the one that fixes so many other problems. We need transparency for the algorithms just as we need transparency about MPs expenses, police behaviour, programme interfaces and how the deep packet inspection that will deliver targeted adverts to our web pages actually works.

Of course we then have to trust the companies, agencies and government departments involved to implement the systems in accordance with the published specifications, and it's unlikely that Amazon or any other e-commerce service will willingly publish its source code for inspection. Perhaps the UN should commission internationally recognised 'algorithm inspectors' just as it has 'weapons inspectors'.

Three Dot Lounge

Random thoughts and bon mots...

According to a DailyKos poll, New Yorkers and San Franciscans are more popular to Southerners than the French. But not by a lot.... Wired writes about how the National Federation of American Hungarians -- which has spent the last few decades working for the "liberation of communist and oppressed countries" suddenly took opposing patent reform as a cause.... There is something very strange about the whole "#amazonfail" issue that makes me wonder if we've heard the last of it... Stacey Higgobotham at GigaOm contends that European Commission actions against the company Phorm are, "in the case of privacy on the web, ...a welcome interference in the business of targeted advertising."...

Man stabbed at Dodger Stadium. Why not change the Dodger colors to Silver and Black and get over with it?... Without getting into a debate about metered broadband, consider the value proposition of buying an old-school disc (or Blu-ray) versus downloading a movie if it is implemented at your house. GigOm did (Higgobotham again).... The person who works to solve Google's immigration "problems.".... Lots us said about Twitter and even more is said on the service. But, little is said by it. Here's a sit-down with the two founders.

Obama Administration to Sell Internet to China for $350 Billion

By Tom Galvin

The White House today announced it has reached an accord with China to sell the Internet and its critical infrastructure to China for $350 billion. By 2010, the Internet’s root servers and .com and .net will be transferred to China, said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Under the agreement, responsibility for oversight of ICANN, the technical coordinating body set up by the Commerce Department in 1998, will be transferred to the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information. ICANN, which is based in Marina Del Ray, California, will relocate to Beijing in 2010 as well.

“This was a complicated negotiation but we feel comfortable that it will result in a win-win,” said Gibbs. “The United States gets an immediate windfall that will help us address our near-term budget shortfall, and going forward we are confident China will act as a responsible steward of the Internet.”

A Chinese MII official declined to comment on the negotiations, but referred reporters to a MII website that detailed the “harmonious changes that will be made to world Internet.” Among the changes proposed were the elimination of pornographic sites such as “PornoTube” and "TMZ", the website for "The Economist" and any reference to Rick Astley or "rickrolling."

Immediate reaction from the technology industry was cautious, but few were willing to comment on the record for fear of antagonizing the Chinese. “I, for one, welcome them,” said one technology CEO.

EU official Lenora Postameure said that while there was widespread resentment of U.S. control over the Internet, EU countries would be comfortable with China. “China has a better understanding of the role of business with Information and Communications Technologies, and will ensure that all multi-lateral stakeholders in government rightfully drive its future together,” said Postameure.

A Chinese official did hint at a deal with CNN personality Lou Dobbs to be a spokesperson for the new Internet order. This would seem to run contrary to his strong American protectionist stance taken nightly on his television show. However, a Dobbs' confidant who preferred not to be quoted said, "Who would you rather be a fake populist for? Three hundred million people? Or, 1.3 billion people who run the freakin' Internet?"

Former Sen. Ted Stevens has been appointed to serve as the liaison between the U.S. and Chinese government to facilitate the transfer of the Internet infrastructure. For more information on this story, go to remembertodayisapril1st.org.

With additional reporting by Sean Garrett