What Does Barrack Obama’s USA Win Mean For Technology?

This image summed it up the best. The whole world was watching as the United States threw out their old regime and mandated Barack Obama into office as their 44th president. Never before have we seen so many countries interested in the outcome of one election, and so jubilant at that outcome.

We just can't stress it enough. Here's the list at Wikipedia, of countries whose leaders have expressed their warm feelings and hope towards the new American government. Check the list; your country's probably there, too!

But before we get to partying in the streets, we still have the same problems we had last week. Obama doesn't go into office for another two months, and in the meantime they will have a lot of shoveling to do if they want to dig their way out of the hole we're all in. The global market is in chaos, though some countries are feeling it worse than others. US foreign policy... well, let's be nice and say it's time for some fresh thinking?

And then there's technology. Because a high concentration of computer companies, both hardware and software, are based in the United States, what President Obama thinks about technology is pretty much what's going to go for most of the world's technology companies. And at last, Barack Obama is the first president we've seen in a long time who's really got his finger on the pulse of the tech market.

There are positive signs all over: Wired magazine brings up five reasons to qualify him as a geek. Two of those are important to consider: He has spoken of his plans to appoint a Chief Technology Officer for the first time, to oversee the nation's broadband Internet access. Welcome to the 21st century, America!

And the other point is that he's enthusiastic about "using the Internet to make the White House more open and accessible to the public once he's President". We can't see how that would be going wrong; a more transparent government for the United States would naturally lead to fewer confused voters. We might never have to hear about the United States "hanging chads" again!

Now, here's some other points we'd like to speculate upon. We're just coming up with ideas, here, nobody's saying anything's going to happen.

- Microsoft and their anti-trust charges. They were dropped in 2000 when George W. Bush assumed office, and Microsoft ended up with a cash settlement where originally they were going to be split up, much in the same way AT&T were. Since then, the European Union's own anti-trust law has found plenty of further reasons why Microsoft should be held at fault. And now their "time-out" in the United States may be over.

- Related to that point, note that Obama attended Google talks with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. This shows how seriously Google is taken, and how much this affects their market dominance.

- A Chief Technology Officer might regulate some of that rampant patent abuse that's been going around in the USA's legal system. TechDirt recently examined the problem of technology patents gone wrong.

- So then there's the world economy. Relieving patent pressure and opening up new paths to technology innovation might be just the medicine a stagnant market needs. We're ready to see some new thinking and new start-ups, and with it some new ways to do business again.

- Finally, United States citizens have long complained about the state of their education system. Getting more Internet access and more citizens involved with the Internet perhaps will stimulate results in the classroom, and hopefully do something about that lack of degree-holding engineers we hear them complain about.

These are issues which affect all industrialized, Internet-using countries. We've all heard reports recently, not just from Australia but from Europe and Canada as well,of citizens who are concerned for the relationship between technology and their government, and how it is used. So, it's something to keep in mind, as we head into what many believe will be a more progressive period. The rest of the world has done OK without looking to the United States as an example for these past eight years, but won't it be ever so much nicer to be able to invite them to our table again?

Filed Under: Jobs in Technology • News in Technology