The polls tend to disagree with you…

and your logic of “F Obama” hardly makes your opinion more respected.

I don’t mean to get too partisan here, but a world leader who delegates knowledge of any vital aspect of the world – Iraq, the “intertubes” – is at the mercy of his advisors’ agendas and biases. Since administrations are (almost) always partisan, cabinets are too; and this means the advice a president gets is likely to be one-sided, according to the ideology of the cabinet.

Bush is known for letting his closest, insular bubble do his thinking for him, and look where that got us with Iraq, the economy, the deficit, the environment, world opinion, and a depressingly much longer list.

It’s not like the politics and the economics of the web are some minor issue (and I’m not necessarily trying to say you suggest as much, though honestly it does seem implied). Gutenberg and the printing press are small beans compared to this revolution, and it can be seriously derailed – like radio was when citizen radio was killed by legislation in the early 20th c. giving ownership of the airwaves to corporate media. Politicians who haven’t a) experienced, b) explored, and c) deeply reflected on this technological revolution are likely to see it as a minor issue, and sell its ownership to corporate interests – at the citizenry’s expense. You do follow Net Neutrality politics, don’t you? It’s an historically momentous struggle. What we take for granted online is at risk of going the same way as citizen radio.

Re: your analogy: do you think it’s a good one? Iraq is difficult to learn first-hand because any American walking its streets is a soon-to-be dead one. No such obstacles keep a person from simply making time to come to grips with the “book” of the third millennium (at least until it’s legislated into a mere advertisement or government-controlled reading space instead).

(Analogy: When a member of Congress goes to Iraq for a “fact finding” tour to see what the war is “really like”, are they really seeing what the war is like anyway, or do they form false perceptions?)

Barrys last blog post..Rigor as Cerebral Weight Lifting

@Arthus, thanks for dropping in. I noticed you posted about this too, and your points are more articulate than mine.

@Stephan: Word up.

This is not a time where the three R’s are all you need for education. I see people today that are crippled by not having any knowledge of the net. It’s becoming a necessity. Those who don’t learn might as well be Amish. And a President who doesn’t know anything about the net will set us backwards.

Stephan Millers last blog post..The Importance of Knowing What You Want to Write