President Tech-Savvy?

Remember the 2008-2009 Barack Obama? The one who praised Facebook, online fundraising and online organizing for his victory and forced the National Security Agency to build a super-deluxe secret security system for the official POTUS BlackBerry?

Either the 2010 Obama has done a 360 on his tech-love, or the most transparent administration evah was lying about its integration of technology and social media. Per The Guardian:

Yesterday however, the president admitted he could not operate an iPod or iPad, as he warned the students against becoming distracted by technology when they are already graduating “at a time of great difficulty for America, and for the world”.

“With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.

“All of this is not only putting new pressures on you. It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”

Ironically, David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, was in Richmond to discuss the integration of the 2008 campaign with technology. The very same weekend Obama revealed his Luddite side, Plouffe told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “…the use of technology to communicate through online and social media was ‘the heartbeat and engine’ of Obama’s groundbreaking and historic 2008 run for the White House.”

Which was it? Does Obama suddenly have technology amnesia or did the campaign cleverly hide Obama’s ignorance by feeding him the right talking points through the help of his BFFs–the Teleprompter and CrackBerry? The campaign did nimbly use Facebook and online fundraising (their use of Twitter frankly sucked), but time is proving that these areas were further down the campaign totem pole than previously believed.

If the 2008 Obama campaign viewed technology as a lower-tier activity, that’s fine. Plenty of campaigns, particularly on the right, have used digital media from the candidate on down. We’re no longer arguing the legitimacy of engaging online. However, if Obama is a techno-phobe, and evidence points that way, he is most definitely not the first Tech President.

As soon as I heard Obama’s comments, I remembered his 2009 admission that he had never used Twitter before. While answering a student’s question in China, he said:

“I have never used Twitter but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access.”

In order to be the true first Tech President, the candidate should personally employ technology to spread his or her message and connect with supporters. Given that there are a number of candidates in 2010 races running their own Facebook profiles and tweeting, this should be expected from a presidential contender. It is absolute hypocrisy to award Obama this designation when he clearly has an axe to grind with the technology that got him to the White House.

While the Obama campaign obviously misled the American people about the importance of technology, Plouffe’s statements he made in Richmond are accurate:

Plouffe said the campaign was built using the Internet to engage voters in volunteering, contributing money and “sharing the message” amongst themselves. Connecting these people — not only to the campaign but to each other — helped them build trust with prospective voters they engaged both online and face-to-face.

“There is a lack of trust — in government, in business leaders, in academic leaders, even in faith leaders,” Plouffe said. But, he said, “People trust each other.”

Now, in the future, those grass-roots campaigners will be equipped with interactive mobile devices that allow them to pull down voter lists, videos and the latest campaign information to help make the case for their candidates.

The keys to success will be making campaigns more accessible, providing fast responses and striving to not appear slick.

It is possible to have technology as a focal point without the candidate being directly involved. However, they appear to have blatantly lied about being authentic. Either Obama was involved with the use of technology or he wasn’t. It’s time to put the “Obama is so tech-savvy!” myth to rest and admit to the sleight of hand. Perhaps Plouffe should remember his own advice:

“You’ve got to be authentic. People are looking for authenticity,” Plouffe said. “They are hungering for it.”

H/T TechRepublican

Today, I got a pitch that shows what happens when a Google search for certain keywords is done without looking at the context of those keywords. Given my recent comments on climate change, I’m not the best candidate to approach about this. I hope the language barrier was an issue, but Christin uses perfect English in her pitch. Also, generic blog pitches are never the best way to go.

How does a blog have CO2 emission of 8 lbs per year? A blog doesn’t exist outside of cyberspace. There are no physical properties to a blog. I’m all for planting trees. As a conservationist and nature lover, please plant more of them, but do it to simply plant a tree. Don’t approach me about planting a tree to eliminate virtual carbon footprints.

While Worst Decade Ever sounds like a VH1 special with Michael Ian Black, I don’t think it was that terrible. America faced a number of challenges, and only time will tell if we made the right decisions.

This decade, which I never quite figured out what to call, had a lot of terrible things happen, but positives did emerge. I think that historians will define the Industrial Revolution ending and the Technological/Information Revolution beginning at some point.

The 2000s were the decade in which I became an adult and went through all of the proverbial twentysomething experiences. In 2000, I graduated from high school, moved away to college and voted in my first presidential election. 2000 could be seen as an omen for a decade of divisive politics. I’ll always remember the cheer that erupted at the Knox County GOP party when Al Gore lost his home state. I’m still proud of that vote.

Technology and terrorism are the two takeaways of this decade. In 2000, I was shocked to fill up my 1 gig Gateway computer with songs downloaded from Napster. Those were the days when file-sharing was still murky. I would sit in class, writing playlists in the margin of my notes, and go back to the T1 line in my dorm room to download anything I wanted. Now, I have a $10 USB drive that has twice the memory of that computer and is the size of a band aid. It also cost a fraction of the Gateway desktop. Are Gateways even around anymore?

I never thought that I’d buy my last CD in 2005 with Coldplay’s XY? Who anticipated that we’d need iPods with hundreds of gigs in order to carry around every song ever recorded? I wonder if 20 years from now the Surgeon General will release a report detailing how headphones are causing generations to prematurely lose their hearing. It can’t be healthy.

When I got my first cell phone in 1999, I never thought that it could one day double as a computer. My Sprint Quaalcom was only analog and had a battery life of 3 hours. I kept it off and only used it for emergencies since I had about 1 hour of minutes per month. It was huge and would never die. Since it could also double as a self-defense weapon, I named it Mr. Clunky.

Social media wasn’t even a concept, and only a few nerds were blogging. Crazy to think that the technologies that have changed our society weren’t around ten years ago. My career field didn’t even exist when I graduated from college in 2004 and was just emerging when I got my master’s in 2007. When I wrote my thesis on social media there weren’t any academic texts to use. My adviser looked at me and said, “You’re on your own here.”

It’s been 10 years of huge changes in culture, society, economic and technology. A new generation entered the workforce, and 9/11 forever changed our way of life. Yes, it was a decade of challenges, but I’m hopeful that we can face those as a nation and be better for it.

It appears, he is also not as transparent with his digital media prowess as the administration claimed:

Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. I noticed that young people — they’re very busy with all these electronics. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone.

Is this a major deal? Kind of. When you run your campaign on the premise that you’re the most amazing thing to happen to the Internet since Al Gore, you open yourself to criticism in the future, especially when your campaign was lauded for being an early adopter of the technology in question.

Sarah Granger at TechPresident opines:

Meanwhile, I expect we’ll see more hoopla about Barack Obama not using Twitter, even though his campaign never asserted that he did himself. So far about half of the follow-up tweets on the #obamacn hashtag are RT’s about the admission and the other half is people responding that they never thought he was tweeting. Are 50% of Twitter users really that surprised?

Yep, actually Sarah we are surprised. For a number of reasons.

First, remember all of the media attention about Obama refusing to give up his BlackBerry and the NSA having to build a super-deluxe-ultimately-secure version of software? That kind of negates Obama’s comment about thumbs and makes you question if he fully understand exactly what Twitter is. If you are addicted to a BlackBerry, how do you not have the skills to tweet? Same device and skill set. It’s also possible to use Twitter on a computer. Tweetdeck anyone?

Secondly, as James Richardson at RedState recalls, the Obama team released an add attacking McCain for not using technology. While the McCain camp deserved to be flogged for their lack of enagaging the interwebs, John McCain actually tweets every day. As Top of the Ticket points out, he has nearly 1.6 million followers. RedState notes:

President Obama’s admission of his unfamiliarity of the internet tool de jour would have been an altogether innocuous acknowledgment that the President is, well, old, were it not for the dogged efforts of his campaign apparatus in portraying the young then-Senator Obama as hip and tech savvy opposite the old and inaccessible Senator John McCain.

Had the campaign not made such a big deal out of this, Obama’s statements would not be news. After all, I would prefer a president to do actual work (like decide on an Afghanistan policy) rather than tweeting the awesomeness of his lunch or deets from the last basketball game. In the end, it is ironic that John McCain is the more techno-saavy person here. I’m hardly surprised. This is just further proof of the dog-and-pony show that makes up the entire administration. How many times have there been claims that Obama had the talent and ability to handle something, and then we discovered otherwise?

This does touch on an emerging social media issue. How transparent should you be with tweets?

Some politicans take to Twitter. In addition to McCain, TweetCongress tracts what our Congressmen and Sentators are capturing in 140 characters or less. However, I’ve had numerous strategists and Hill staffers tell me that very few members actually tweet for themselves. In one case that surprised me, the scheduler sends out tweets for the member based on the schedule for the day.

Since most Congressional members use Twitter as a mini-press release vehicle, this isn’t a big deal. However, when tweets are about events in your home district, and your scheduler back in DC is sending them, that’s a transparency issue. As social media becomes more standard, I hope that elected and wannabe-electeds opt for more honesty. I find tweets from a staffer just as interesting as the candidate/member. It’s not a bad thing to attribute who’s tweeting. As someone who is addicted to Twitter and has tweeted professionally for a couple of jobs, be transparent. It’s appreciated.