

Choices Narrowed for First U.S. CTO - nikils
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2009/tc20090115_815265.htm

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numair
Padmasree Warrior is so obviously suited for this job. After all, she was one
of those incompetent, political executives who ruined Motorola, then exited
with golden parachutes into the arms of new companies (which, of course,
extended a warm and hearty "golden hello" to them). People like her are part
of what is utterly wrong with our economy - there's an entire group of people
running large portions of government and industry in America whose only talent
is in manipulating people and assets; they don't actually create ANYTHING.

And of course, we have the business press more than happy to engage in a round
of brown nosing, as they are always in need of "sources familiar with the
matter" and "unidentified executives" for their gossipy insider stories (how
do you think all of those articles come to fruition? Looking through
garbage?).

As thbe CTO of America is likely to continue the grand tradition of Corporate
America wherein people make lofty public statements, issue press releases, and
then hope someone else will take care of that oh-so-difficult task of actually
getting something done, I wholeheartedly support Padmasree Warrior for this
job.

If you Google for my name + Motorola, you will see where I am coming from on
this matter.

~~~
robg
Interesting stuff. But saying _one of_ isn't saying anything specific. As the
CTO of Motorola immediately prior to and during the launch and success of the
RAZR, you don't think she helped to make the product a success? Seems like she
left before the fallout but I guess it's possible to spin that as either
cowardice or wisdom.

Do you have anything specific to criticize her for? Lumping someone in with a
negative peer group, especially one who voluntary left for greener pastures,
isn't a strong knock against them.

~~~
numair
You just reminded me that, during her tenure, she was one of the people
responsible for cutting back on American engineering talent (or whatever there
was left after the 90s) and moving nearly everything to Chindia.

Yeah, AWESOME choice for the US CTO, Obama! That's change I can believe in!

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gaius
Karma Warrior, awesome name.

On a more serious note tho' you have to be real careful about giving
entrenched industry people political power by appointment. Here in the UK we
are still feeling the aftereffects of Beeching, a lifelong auto-industry man
appointed by the UK government to look after transport. His plan was to tear
up railway tracks, who needed them after all, when there were cars? Only now
public mass transit is "in" and it's too late, the tracks are gone, the land
has been sold off, what's left of the system is overloaded. You want to be
real careful she doesn't start tearing out bits of physical infrastructure,
it's hard to replace.

~~~
RK
Looks like it's actually Kar _n_ a Warrior.

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dcurtis
Wow, I did some quick research on Padmasree Warrior, and she's incredibly
smart. From the Mobilize '08 keynote:

"We have this question today, this question of where mobile devices will go in
the future. So the question at hand is, 'What is mobility, really?' And in my
view, mobility is not the device. It's not the network. It is the mobile
experience.

Mobility as a term has existed for quite some time, and for most of the time
it has been synonymous with 'cellular network' and 'device'. This is because
cellular networks were the first time we were truly free of wires. I think
this has changed though, mostly because of the massive, enormous scale of
adoption. More than three billion people on earth use a cellular device to
communicate. Every second, four babies are born. In that same second, thirty
mobile devices are sold. And we're just now starting to see the innovation
beyond mere two-way communication in mobility."

This is a really, really amazing talk:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5K-xXUKlec>

She gets mobile. And she understands the future of the internet.

~~~
jyothi
I was a fan of warrior till the day she made a blog post on her first day at
cisco, with her heart swaying the other way within hours. How can any
passionate individual swing their strong opinions in hours, ofcourse it is
just projected and fake. I lost the respect for her that day.

Her blog on motorola was extremely popular. Motorola took it down when she
quit. Why would any large company do that unless there was huge amount of
disconnect and disharmony with the leader who quit.

I was a fan but it all fell like a landslide, guess in reality she had
captured many in a charm. I feel she is an impressive self promoter, probably
a strong techie but weak at strategy. My cousin worked at Motorola and from
what I hear, she probably was one of the key reasons why motorala doomed in
the mobile run. She apparently predicted iPhone would be a massive failure
when moto let the popular Razr phones die.

~~~
nostrademons
"How can any passionate individual swing their strong opinions in hours"

Umm, most smart, passionate people can swing their strong opinions within
_minutes_ , when presented with the appropriate data. George Soros is
legendary for this; he's been known to back out of billion dollar investments
the next day. Most good managers are like this too.

The crucial part is _data_ , and how they evaluate that data. And not having
read the blog post, I can't say whether Warrior's thought process makes sense.
But I really hate the idea that "Passionate people cling to their ideas at all
costs" - that's responsible for most of the failures and wasted effort in the
world today.

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pragmatic
Why does the US need a CTO?

“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years
there'd be a shortage of sand” \- Milton Friedman

~~~
paddy_m
I'm surprised more people don't realize how short sighted it is to increase
the power of government

Even if you think that Obama's ideas will be absolutely brilliant, and think
he be able to increase the power of government to cause change which you want,
it is still short sighted to increase the power of government. The reason is,
your guy won't always be in charge, and when he isn't, someone you disagree
with will be able to use these newly expanded powers in ways you don't want.

Everytime someone says, well we need a CTO to do this, because otherwise, the
other party will do that, that person is setting themselves up for extreme
disappointment. When the other party comes into power, these new found powers
will be used against you, and you will be worse off than you were to begin
with.

~~~
Retric
I want a small effective government and I vote Democrat. From what I can tell
Democrats are more focused on actually reducing government spending than
Republicans. As to the effects of "large government" look at how many freedoms
each side wants to remove and Democrats win again. Limiting how old you need
to be to buy video games pales in comparison to the loss of due process etc.

National Heath care might seem like bad voodoo, but the government is already
pay for over 1/2 of all medical spending in the US yet medical bills are still
the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. Most countries with a national
heath care system spend less money per person and relative to their GDP than
we do now and we still have a crappy patchwork. When a hobo shows up at a
hospital he is going to get treatment and we are going to pay his bill but I
still need to buy expensive medical insurance.

PS: I am a consultant working for the DoD and I have saved the US taxpayer
millions. If you had any idea what games where being played you would probably
also vote Democrat because it saves you money.

~~~
niels_olson
Concur. Here's some evidence

<http://mibi.deviantart.com/art/Death-and-Taxes-9410862>

<http://www.wallstats.com/>

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cjoh
I've worked with Vivek Kundra a bit with his very revolutionary "Apps for
Democracy" contest. The guy really gets it. He's smart and understands the
power of openness and involving the outside for helping Government.

An interesting thing about him: when coming into power here in DC one of his
first mandates was "District Government will operate off of the same data we
make available to the public."

As such, remarkably, public data feeds coming out of the district got
significantly better, more organized and more available.

Sounds obvious, but it was a big step for even a municipal Government to take.

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robg
Title is misleading because a choice hasn't actually been made yet. But
Warrior (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmasree_Warrior>) is really
impressive as a possibility.

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sh1mmer
Some days I hate the Web.

Why does even business week get nailed with a bunch of jingoistic nonsense in
their comments. I was hoping to read some interesting and informed thoughts,
instead the comments read like Digg.

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omouse
Is the CTO of the US handling software patent stuff or is that someone else's
problem?

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jonursenbach
Last I heard, Lessig was at the top of the list. What happened there?

