Gawker: valleywag, america's cto

Wikipedia Cofounder's Wiki Bailout Plan

Owen Thomas — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:32:08 EST

Jimmy Wales, the scandal-prone cofounder of Wikipedia, thinks Barack Obama's first priority should be creating government websites anyone can edit. Translation: A bailout for makers of wikis.

It's worked out well for Wikipedia, after all, having amateurs post Kennedy-killer hoaxes and fake celebrity death reports. And many who have tried to get falsehoods corrected on Wikipedia have run afoul of its tyrannical volunteer editors, who wield rulebooks as skillfully as any government bureaucrat.

Wales thinks that using software that lets anyone edit a webpage will lead to better governance. Except it won't really, he explains:

Don't just throw up a wiki and hope that something miraculous will happen. A successful wiki requires a clear vision, a clear and achievable goal. I think there are great possibilities for the use of wikis to help citizens help each other. I recommend to try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, but to never give up on the objective of the political process becoming more rational and less prone to hidden pressure group agendas.

And he practices what he preaches! Wikia, a for-profit Wikipedia spinoff, is littered with wiki projects Wales has started and abandoned.

Americans prove they don't deserve the Internet

Paul Boutin — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:00:00 EST

I don't hate people. I love people. But people kind of suck. Take a look at the anonymously voted priorities for America's still-unnamed chief technologist at Obama CTO: "Ensure the Internet is widely accessible & network neutral" beats "repeal the Patriot Act" by a much bigger margin than Obama pulled over McCain. Repealing the Patriot Act isn't something Obama's CTO could do, but everyone knows "net neutrality" is code for "stop Comcast from slowing my BitTorrent porn." Here's a better idea: Government jobs for Owen and me.

Has Obama already picked his CTO?

Paul Boutin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:20:00 EST

Eric Schmidt said he won't be heading to Washington as President Obama's chief technologist. A tipster who claims inside info tells us that America's CTO of Change has already been chosen. Not surprising, but who? Who who who?

Please don’t attribute anything to me (not that I’m giving you that much), but the person for the CTO job was decided at least a week ago. Not surprising, but you guys are right again … though you doubted yourself!!

Does that mean it's Internet godfather Vint Cerf?

(Photo by eralon)

Eric Schmidt rejects Obama's lame CTO job

Paul Boutin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST

"I love working at Google and I'm very happy to stay at Google, so the answer is no," Google baldfaced-liar-in-chief Eric Schmidt told Jim Cramer on CNBC Friday, when asked if he'd take a job with the incoming administration. "Google is its own exciting opportunity." I know what you're thinking: Obama turned him down already, how cold is that? More likely, Schmidt truly doesn't want the job. He just wanted Obama to ask.

Because, come on, why manage a bunch of government IT when you already run Google and park your jets next door at Nasa? The city of Washington, D.C. uses Google Docs. Schmidt doesn't need to become America's CTO, because he already is America's CTO. (Photo by Reuters/Carlos Barria)

Change.gov spells out Obama's spendy vision for American technology

Paul Boutin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST

Change.gov is the Internet President's official, government-funded transition website. You can kick back and read his 2,625-word technology vision. I'm serious: It's amazing how many planks they've shoved into one platform. I was going to 100-word it, then I realized I was being unfair to the 30,000 registered Democrats with journalism jobs who are already fighting over who can do the best rewrite. Go for it, HuffPo! I'll spend the rest of the night poring over the much shorter healthcare section to see if President Change is going to subsidize psychiatric services for those of us who reblog Twitter for a living.

Obama confuses Harvard lawyer for tech guy

Paul Boutin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST

I'm from MIT, so I'm hardwired to hate on Harvard Law grad Julius Genachowski, the so-called technology guy newly named to our Internet President's transition team. His company, LaunchBox, helps Web and mobile entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to get seed funding. That makes him a Paul Graham wannabe to me. He spent eight years working for Barry Diller at IAC as general counsel. Is that a plus or a minus?

To be fair, Genachowski is said to be a clear thinker, and he hasn't yet locked up Barry O's slot for America's CTO. Insider gossip says he's eyeing the FCC instead, where he previously served under Reed Hundt. Fine with me — Genachowski is a lawyer who I'm sure can grasp net neutrality. But if this turns out to be Obama's idea of a technologist, I'm going home to cling bitterly to my guns and religion.

Doerr pushes Bill Joy on Obama

Paul Boutin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:07:44 EST

At yesterday's Web 2.0 Summit, Kleiner Perkins whiz John Doerr — a man so successful he can get away with wearing the same three ties for ten years — told attendees that Barack Obama should skip over Googlers Eric Schmidt and Vint Cerf, and instead hire Kleiner Perkins partner and Sun co-founder Bill Joy as his national chief technology officer. Obama's job description was focused more on counter-terrorism intelligence and IT supremacy. Doerr thinks that's misguided: “The most important thing he's got to do is kick-start a huge amount of research and innovation in energy." Energy tech is Doerr's current focus at Kleiner, of course. But it's unclear to me whether Joy is now a leader or a dilettante on the topic. Doerr also suggested the U.S. "staple a green card to the diploma" to keep foreign-born engineering students from going back home after graduation. Throw in a fixed-rate mortgage for gossip bloggers, and I'll endorse the whole package.

Google waffling ahead on monster office building

Paul Boutin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:00:00 EDT

"A space-age structure that could be the greenest office building of all time." "A living building that has no carbon footprint." That's the spin. So is this: Google spokespeople are telling reporters that plans are on hold. Charleston East, site of Google's planned superplex, used to be a parking lot for Mountain View's Shoreline Amphitheater, just up the road from Google's main campus Now the lot is idle, pending a bunch of paperwork by the city. But here's the truth: The building was planned when Google was growing by more than 100 employees per week worldwide. Last quarter, it added 500 Googlers to its ranks — about 40 a week. That's why Google has shuttered a café. There's green, and then there's green. Eric Schmidt, America's CTO, is not thinking about the tree-hugging kind right now.

Desperate tech industry applies media formulas to itself

Paul Boutin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:40:00 EDT

Normally I don't screengrab reader mail and publish it. Paul Ogle at Tippit summarized the current zeitgeist so well, though, that he deserves a hit. "How can I save my job?" That's the only question on any Google engineer's mind right now. I'm starting to get why two Stanford grad-school dropouts hired an army of Ph.D. degree holders. Right now, you Googlers are saving your jobs like there's no tomorrow. And in academia, as I learned as an MIT sysadmin, there is no tomorrow. Publish or perish, people. Thank God you have America's CTO to handle the big issues, like which of you gets fired.