IP Democracy: Let's Educate, Not Castigate, Legislators

I watched earlier this week as the blogosphere, including many observers I respect and admire, castigated Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) for his limited knowledge of technology. The 80-year old Senator betrayed his lack of understanding of high-tech matters over and over again during the Commerce Committee’s mark-up of his controversial telecom bill.

Senator Stevens made such laughable faux pas as describing the Internet as a “series of tubes,” which prompted critics of his legislation to brand him as a luddite and out-of-touch and worse. The real concern expressed by bloggers: how can someone who is rewriting the nation’s telecom laws be so ignorant of the technology?

I felt very uncomfortable reading all these attacks because in truth I thought they were completely unfair — the man is a legislator, a politician, a leader in the Senate and can’t be expected to be an expert on every subject matter we ask our lawmakers to handle. Moreover, it’s almost assured that Senator Stevens himself drafted not one word in his own bill; that’s what specialists, committee counsel, do.

I thought that the attacks on the Senator’s lack of a techno-vocubulary were cheap shots that could easily be aimed at so many otherwise valuable public servants.

But someone at the 463 blog (please guys, give us your names when you write posts) has picked up on my discomfort and improved on it. Instead of snickering at the statesman, why not take that ridicule and come up with a plan to educate members of Congress, Senators and other public officials on the new technological realities?

Still, the industry works in the real world. And, we collectively need to take the opportunity to step-back and do a much better job in clearly explaining why our industry is making the lives of average Americans better and better. Once that is done, than it’s a heck of a lot easier to drill down into specific issues.

We need to target up-and-coming state and federal policymakers and multiply efforts to educate the staff members of the already powerful (and extremely busy).

There’s no way, of course, to make public officials and lawmakers as conversant in technology as the industry is. But that’s not the point. The point is to enlighten them on the bigger picture issues and why they matter.

The goal is to get policymakers to understand why technology matters — not necessarily how it works. How many congress folks can explain clearly how oil is refined, what makes a spark plug spark, or what the perfect soil conditions are for corn?

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 7, 2006 11:58 AM to IP Democracy