

Should computing habits have any bearing on fitness to be commander in chief? - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/weekinreview/03leibovich.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

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DanielBMarkham
Up-voted for tecno-geek factor, with the caution that the discussion doesn't
devolve into election year politics. The article seemed to ask the question
"does the use of technology matter in your presidential candidate" and then
spent the rest of the space discussing McCain in a negative light.

To rephrase the question, does technology significantly change the principles
on which a country or political party is founded? I'd guess mostly no -- but
10% of the time it does. The most recent example is the issue of anonymity in
daily life, which wasn't even an issue on the radar 50 years ago. Privacy of
medical data is a close second.

A second question may also be asked: is a president a better manager when he
uses technology more fully? I think yes, but there are a lot of considerations
and it gets murky quickly. Especially in our age it's easy to observe a lot of
people plugged into email, twitter, blogging, WoW, and all sorts of other
technology and not being very effective at much of anything.

This leads to the most interesting implied question: to what degree do we use
computers that make us better, and to what degree are we simply wasting time?

Gee. Seems like I had some programming I was supposed to be doing this
morning.

