I’ve watched a lot of the two political conventions. I’ve heard a few words about support for technology and science — quickly are forgotten in the noise about McCain’s vice presidential pick — but I’ve heard nary a word about how we’re going to ensure that the United States continues to be a place where innovation happens. Increasingly I’m hearing from industry leaders that our innovation leadership is under major attack for a whole lot of reasons. Immigration policy. Education system quality. Taxation and regulation. And on and on.
Yet we don’t openly discuss it. We’d rather talk about some 17-year-old’s sex life or download the latest shiny object from Google. Question: how did that shiny object get here?
Scoble, Scoble, Scoble, you are SO politically naive. The shiny object is there because our party, the [insert name of wonderful, patriotic party of your choice] put it there but the [insert name of the hideously corrupt and extremist opposition party] wants to take it away. So please send us millions to finance attack ads that slime the opposition and have nothing to do with anything, including reality. See, that’s how the shiny object got there.
So now we will have eight weeks of attack ad from both parties that have nothing to do with issues. I do not care about a 17 yo pregnant girl or whether Obama once said hello to Bill Ayers. Both are irrelevant.
Yes, the US internet infrastructure is slow and getting worse, compared to Europe and Japan. Smart people often can’t come here because of increasingly onerous immigration restrictions. Our schools are less than stellar. There are real problems. No one is talking much about them. We need to.