July 17th, 2007
Attention you politics-hating coders, geeks: Ron Paul is NOT a friend of the Internet
Because I am involved with social media, I had come to believe that Internet coders, geeks, open source cultists, etc., have finally realized it is time to drop their legacy disdain for politics and get involved.
Recent developments, though, render me unconvinced that there’s been a significant change of the type I’ve just referred to.
Last year I went to an Internet geek conference where Sen. John Edwards was a featured speaker.
The listserv for this year’s conference has been asking registered attendees if a political keynoter- including Libertarian-leaning Republican Presidential nominee hopeful Ron Paul- might be a good idea.
I’ve seen a lot of replies along the lines of “I hate politics.”
I think we are seeing just a bit of the reflexive legacy libertarian techie streak here. Just want to code and innovate. government and politics is clunky, bureaucratic, process-driven. I know that many of you feel you don’t live in that political world.
And of those of you who do, Internet traffic patterns document a sentiment toward Rep. Paul far out of proportion to the poll numbers he has been pulling.
I interpret this view of Rep. Paul as a widespread meme that “I hate politics, and it doesn’t have anything to do with my world, but if I have to care, might as well back the Libertarian.”
But let me tell you about Libertarians.
Because they reflexively disdain regulations, they aren’t going to be on the side of legislation restoring fair royalty scales for Internet Webcasters.
Because they reflexively disdain regulations, they aren’t going to be on the side of net neutrality legislation.
And it is not even that Ron Paul knows anything about tech. He’s a self-professed “pen and paper” guy.
How does that sit with you, code jocks?
I could go on and on…
My own view: let’s look for candidates who will defend an open Internet.
Loading ...Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
