From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Dec 20 2000 - 08:01:20 MST
Jeff Davis <jdavis@socketscience.com> writes:
> I want to thank Harvey Newstrom for clarifying Al Gore's role in the
> creation of the internet. I had heard that he had "invented" it, and had
> wondered quite skeptically at this overblown attribution. Now I find that
> he in fact did have a substantial role. That, combined with his interest
> in nanotech as evidenced by his interview of Drexler--Senate committee
> thing, as I recall--tends to confirm the impression I had of him as a
> forward-thinking tech-savvy kind of guy.
Sometimes it is better not to have tech-savvy leaders.
Here in Sweden, when Carl Bildt (moderate) was prime minister in the
early 90's he was quite pro information technology, and in fact one of
the early adopters. When he lost to Ingvar Carlsson (social democrat)
the social democrats deliberately ignored information technology
questions for quite some time - they were apparently a right-wing
issue, and hence not worth spending time on. This happens a lot in
Swedish politics.
Imagine what would have happened if a tech-savvy person like Bildt had
been in power during the initial "discovery" of the Internet in
93-95. Most likely he would have been very much for extending it - but
under government control or at least influence (less control than the
social democrats, of course, but still plenty of control). Had Ingvar
Carlsson been aware of it, he would likely have instituted even more
control. Instead we got far too little government interference far too
late, which I consider a very good thing. Now it has a much harder
time regulating it or influencing its structure.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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