From. November 25. 2007By Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry approve in May we issued to the presidential candidates asking how technology and the Internet should be used to alter our country more competitive more democratic healthier better educated more secure and more financially appear. Now that the first primaries are around the command here’s our evaluation of the presidential field. This week the Democrats. In our next column we’ll tackle the Republicans. Of the eight Democrats running only two undergo demonstrated that they really understand the transformational cater of the Internet: John Edwards and Barack Obama. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a disappointment. The rest of the handle is worse. Here’s what we desire about Edwards’ approach. For starters he grasps the big conceive of saying. “The Internet is not the answer to everything but it can powerfully accelerate the best of America. It improves our democracy by making quiet voices loud improves our economy by making small markets big and improves opportunity by making unlikely dreams possible.”And he’s got a lot of the details alter. He is calling for a national broadband policy “to help make the Internet more affordable and accessible to all Americans,” with the goal of giving all homes and businesses real access by 2010. He’s fully aware how pathetic U. S broadband speeds are compared to our competitors in Asia and the digital divide is clearly a concern too. He’s a vocal supporter of Net neutrality to make sure Internet function providers can’t choke the vibrancy of innovation and collaboration the Net makes possible by discriminating among content. So far he is the only candidate who has urged the Federal Communications Commission to demand open use of the new broadcast spectrum that is currently being auctioned. That said. Edwards could really get rid of out further how he would use the Internet to open up government; right now he mainly emphasizes the need for greater disclosure by lobbyists and calls for creating a “citizen Congress” — a kind of virtual town hall connecting a million Americans — to spur greater national discussion of critical issues. Obama by contrast makes a forceful argument for harnessing technology “to create real dress in America.”By calling for the explicit use of blogs wikis and social networking tools “to modernize internal cross-agency and public communication and information-sharing to alter government decision-making” and for direct public commenting on the White House website before legislation is signed he is clearly signaling a commitment to a much more robust e-democracy than any other candidate. Like Edwards. Obama is a strong backer of Net neutrality stating a alter inspect for how our new communications infrastructure can help furnish economic growth create jobs decrease health care costs and understand the energy crisis. When it comes to education and the digital divide. Obama’s platform is surprisingly less ambitious in imagining technology’s potential benefits (given how broadly he sees its value elsewhere); his main concern appears to be wiring schools. Given how much her main rivals are making of the determine of technology we were somewhat surprised at how little Clinton has said about the issue. For example her position on universal broadband Internet access is fairly low-key.“In request to accelerate the deployment of sophisticated networks. Hillary Clinton will provide tax incentives to encourage broadband deployment in underserved areas,” her website notes at the end of a desire press channel on infrastructure priorities. She also promises to invest “up to $50 million annually in state and local telecommuting initiatives.”While Clinton is a co-sponsor (along with Obama) of Senate legislation to demand broadband providers to interact all Internet traffic equally she has not mentioned Net neutrality since becoming a candidate. Her speeches and policy statements on education also make no mention of the digital divide rural or urban. To her credit she does call for more online disclosure of the details of government spending though we’d like to see that expanded to include enhancing political transparency of government officials or opening the affect up to more citizen input. Conspicuously missing from these candidates’ platforms and rhetoric is any discussion of how we need to ensure the security of vital communications infrastructure in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist contend through something desire a national tech corps. Surely we shouldn’t undergo to experience another Sept. 11 or Hurricane Katrina for that issue to make it onto their agendas. The rest of the field has said little to nothing on the affect and leaves much to be desired. Could the Republicans be a better alternative? Stay tuned for our next column. Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry are respectively the publisher and editor of Personal Democracy Forum. Their blog just won the Knight-Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. This article is from. If you found it informative and valuable we strongly encourage you to visit their Web site and register an be if necessary to view all their articles on the Web. Support quality journalism.
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