Bill Joy For New National CTO Post? 393
jddeluxe writes "In an article in today's NY Times, John Doerr of Kleiner-Perkins proffered up Bill Joy's name when queried by Barack Obama for a recommendation for the position of Chief Technology Officer of the Unites States which Obama has promised to create and that the country is overdue to have.
I think that's a brilliant idea, and while you're at it, have the FCC report to him as well, why don't you?" If Bill is unavailable, I'll throw my hat in the ring, although I'm holding out for Secretary of Tubes.
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Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Joy's terrorist connection (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Republicans went crazy over Obama's friendship with Bill Ayers, just wait until they find out what Bill Joy said about Ted Kaczynski (the unibomber) in Wired.
About time (Score:5, Insightful)
No need (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need a national CTO. We can make our own technology decisions without the government telling us what to do.
Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar (Score:5, Insightful)
This thread points out the problem of anointing one person as CTO. Hate to say it but this is one of those things that might do better with a board, not a leader. That is to say that while there may be a judge, it's the jury that counts. Using one man is not enough, even the SCOTUS has nine. When it's important enough to do something, it's important enough to do it right. RMS should probably be on the jury, along with other notable technology evangelists.
Re:No need (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:About time (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, a lot of the younger politicos would probably struggle with VCRs, since all they ever knew was iPod or TIVO. Makes them smart rather than dumb, in my opinion, (VCRs used to be a bitch to program).
Do we really need people who know how things work 'under the hood' to make smart tech decisions? Or do we need smart people with vision, who then consult with or employ the right people? Not sure that Kennedy knew how the rockets worked, but he got people to the moon just the same.
Now get off my lawn.
Re:No need (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because that approach has worked so well with the financial industry.
Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't see RMS doing that, he's too much of a man of principle.
It goes beyond that. Certain people define themselves as opposition, as being not-the-man, and as such are uncomfortable in any position of authority, even if their principles were in no way being challenged.
These people serve a valuable role in society, but it is not within the corridors of power.
Re:Bill Joy's terrorist connection (Score:4, Insightful)
You're assuming that the context will be presented, or matter. Clearly, you've not paid attention the last few years.
Re:vi (Score:3, Insightful)
Last I heard, Bill prefers ed to his own vi.
REVIEW: You don't even try to use vi?
JOY: I'm used to having a 24-line terminal with no ability to scroll back. The reason I use ed is that I don't want to lose what's on the screen.
Of course, that was a long time ago, when vi was only 10 years old. Here's the interview from Unix Review [pdx.edu]. In the interview, he likens vi to a piñata.
On a more serious note, he does — gasp — criticize vi and say that it needs features and is a little complicated. It's an interesting historical read.
Obama is not (Score:2, Insightful)
The president can obviously not be 100% knowledgeable on each and every issue that is to be dealt with. Choosing the right people for the jobs, instead of a crony you owe favors to, is what makes or breaks a good administration. This is one of the reasons I'm so hopeful after 8 years of morons heading up our highest offices...
Re:No need (Score:5, Insightful)
You dolt.
The government has millions of computers, and you don't want someone to set policy? Look at what the mindless, out of control, dead in a ditch projects have cost us.
They're not setting policy FOR YOU, nitwit-- for the government. DO what you want. Let someone put reason into executive branch decision making in government IT!!
Re:This is a huge opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
Open source software didn't drive the economy of the 90's, or the economy of the last few years. Forcing your ideological views on others through government is both stupid, and dangerous.
Re:About time (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who can't program a VCR probably can't program much else, nor follows instructions very well. I agree with the OP.
Re:About time (Score:4, Insightful)
The simple answer is BOTH. We've got 300 million people, surely we can find a few who have a reasonable amount of both technical competency and vision. One without the other to balance it is worse than useless.
Re:Isn't this like having... (Score:3, Insightful)
"The office should have had a 20 minute meeting deciding what their needs were, and pass that onto the technology department, who would simply deliver those needs."
Knock Knock,
Hey, guess who's in charge of that dept? When you want to create such a department guess who you appoint first?
Re:No need (Score:4, Insightful)
Paying attention? The unregulated market brought us the Great Depression 70 years ago and until Bush the markets stayed regulated. The _recent_ deregulation is why we're in the mess we're in now.
There's no way you don't already realize this, I'm not sure why you posted what you did.
Re:While we're at it (Score:3, Insightful)
Bruce Schneier [wikipedia.org] perhaps?
Nah, put him in charge of Homeland Security... then in 6 months when he dissolves it as "redundant and ineffectual" transfer him to the NSA working on crypto and shoring up our technology infrastructure. Could also put him in charge of the TSA for a bit to help streamline that down to something sane like it used to be and eliminate all the security theater.
Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how to break this to you but the position of National CTO isn't quite as important as the role of SCOTUS. Upholding the laws and constitutional freedoms of the citizenry is much more important than what IM client government employees wil be allowed to use.
Re:What the CTO needs... (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the first things that should be done is to mandate equal consideration for .NET and LAMP because Java has way too much of a fanboi following in the federal government.
Of course the fact that the federal government has done research that finds that reducing the number of languages reduces costs has nothing to do with them preferring to pick a single standards based, multi-vendor approach. Nope its because they are "Fanboys" and that stuff in the military drones would be better done in LAMP than in Java...
Federal Government uses LOADS of different technologies most of them are in the heavy lifting space rather than being about LAMP type areas (LAMP for Air Traffic Control?).
Ah but you are just talking about websites, which is a single part of the estate and are of course not thinking at all about support and maintenance across thousands of sites and the advantage of having a limited set of technologies would bring in enabling more cross government sharing.
Nope you just want to see your favourite technology being used.
Personally I'd like to see the CTO take a machete to the costs of IT in federal government, OSS would be part of that but consistency would be the major element.
Re:No need (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. The people making these qualified loans knew full well that they were likely to default, they didn't care because they also knew the loans would be bundled and sold.
NO ONE and NO LAW forced these people to make those loans.
Re:Bill Joy's terrorist connection (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it has much to do with any particular frenzy, I think it has a lot more to do with a lack of interest in nuance, and the us-vs-them mentality that flows so easily from our genes.
Re:No need (Score:2, Insightful)
That's our job. Ballot box, soapbox, ammo box.
Re:Bill Joy's terrorist connection (Score:3, Insightful)
Clearly you have no hope for the next few.
Re:About time (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a CTO, not a CIO.
The scope of the position needs to go well beyond information technology; it needs to span all the technology that NASA is developing, all the spyware and remote killing machines the NSA is constructing, the research and findings of the NIH, etc. A strong technology background is not particularly necessary. Skills in matrix management, in extracting comprehensible models of complex technologies from experts, and in providing leadership in situations where goals and visions are clouded by the very nature of the work are what is going to be important.
Colin Powell would be good at it.
Re:vi (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes it's funny but it's funny because of the hint of truth. Which is exactly why you do not want a CTO at a government level. How easy is it to corrupt government officials? How many of them are idiots (ever heard Nancy Pelosi speak, wow... just, wow...)? Sure Bill Joy would be great but what if next election you get Bill Gates? Or Steve F'in Balmer? How about MS Windows being mandated for all government work because of ? How about letting the free market (no, not an MS monopoly that is, despite stories to the contrary, slowly slipping away...) decide what works best rather than some government appointee with an agenda (or a greedy streak).
At worst deal with it at the state level so you can at least move if you don't like the way things are going.
Don't laugh. Be afraid. Be very afraid...
"Just clinging to my guns and religion..."
Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar (Score:3, Insightful)
i don't think a "group" of 7 people would be that susceptible to groupthink. generally, when it comes to group behaviors, the larger the group, the more pronounced the effects of group psychology are.
groupthink/group mentality isn't a blanket argument against synergetic bodies or group collaboration, nor is it a very good argument for autocratic decision-making. deliberative assemblies, or committees, are so popular because when you invite more than one perspective on a particular issue you encourage discussion and debate, which facilitates better decision-making. you're more likely to make the wrong decision when you don't have to argue your position to opposing committee members. discussion forces people to give more careful thought to their actions/choices.
the issue of accountability also isn't much of a problem with a committee of this size. it's not like the military chain of command where the ones giving the orders are distanced from the resultant consequences, and "following orders" introduces ambiguity of responsibility.
as long as records are kept of each committee member's votes & statements, they can be held directly accountable for their actions. that is, assuming there's some sort of government or public oversight. but the same problem would arise with an autocratic system.
Re:Bruce Perens (Score:1, Insightful)
Bruce Perens? Bruce PERENS? What good, exactly, can be said about Bruce Perens? He's started a couple of projects - important ones - and then left them again within short amounts of time; other than that, the only thing he's been doing is writing on everything left and right in an attempt to make a name for himself.
This puts him squarely at odds with people like RMS (who actually coded a lot and has a ton of technical competence), Linus (who's even more competent than RMS, and also less political), Theo deRaadt (an asshole, but a competent asshole) and so on.
If anything, Bruce Perens fits in with ESR, although he admittedly does operate on a somewhat higher level - whereas ESR is the laughing stock of geeks left and right, Bruce Perens is just... unimportant.
If you want a Bruce, go for Bruce Schneier.
Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar (Score:3, Insightful)
These people serve a valuable role in society, but it is not within the corridors of power.
I was thinking about this exact subject this morning with regard to Ralph Nader. Smart guy, definitely has the interests of the people at heart, and he's worked in previous administrations under the Secretary of Labor. Unfortunately, he is literally his own undoing. His mere presence would polarize people to the point where nothing could get done, despite the fact that he'd probably have some pretty good ideas.
Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe being uncomfortable in a position of authority isn't such a bad thing.
Re:Isn't he the pessimist? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah he wrote that article called Why the future doesn't need us. [wired.com] which basically says we're all doomed to be exterminated by nanotech machines if the singularity happens.
Not really someone I'd refer to as 'hopeful'.
Re:Isn't he the pessimist? (Score:1, Insightful)
He's paranoid about all technology, really: nanotech, pharmacology, biotech, computer/network security (read: pro DRM), etc.
In general, he wants the rate of almost all technological advancement slowed down and controlled due solely his fear that technology allows lone individuals to cause exponentially larger problems.
You know the old chestnut: one crazy isn't as big a problem as one with a gun, with a bomb, a plane, a hook into infrastucture systems, a plague, a grey goo nanoswarm, a fleet of von Neumann Berserker probes ...
Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:vi (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is exactly why you do not want a CTO at a government level
Disagree.
The national CTO will need to be a leader, not a manager. This is all technology not just IT. And it's not too far a stretch to presume this administration will demand a certain amount of transparency in the role, including an insistence on divestiture of share holdings in case of conflict of interest, but that's no matter -- what matters is not whether there's another Halliburton effect (there won't be) but whether or not the USA invests in technology at the appropriate scale.
There's a huge amount of infrastructure rebuild required, and far better than the three-man-and-a-shovel New Deal jobs are going to be out there to do. It's not going to be enough to repair or replace civil engineered structures such as bridges with old technology, ways will need to be found to do the job better, cheaper, more reliably, and smarter. You won't get that without leadership at the national level.
Think of the highway infrastructure projects of the Eisenhower era and what it did to help growth -- yes, it caused it's own set of problems but it also relieved communications choke-points that would have put a major dampener on the economic health of the nation. You can't see a national CTO as a limited position, at all -- that would be too small a picture. This is of Cabinet level importance.