Headline, April16, 2014

"" GEEKS AND POLITICS "" ::

 !WOW! -!WOW!- !WOW!

It was billed as a Congressional fundraiser,  but with rapper MC Hammer and a Grateful Dead Lyricist mingling in the crowd_

The room buzzed more like it was a product launch. Except this product wasn't designed for consumers, at least not directly:

The world thought it was meant to disrupt American politics. Wrong through and through.

It was meant to elevate American politics.

So, with that, let's work and readup and get to the baseline on :  ! politics !.

Sean Parker,  the  33 year old former Facebook President  who  is  worth  about $2 billion, stood before dozens of donors to lay out the idea:

"We feel for a long time Silicon Valley  hasn't  been properly represented at a federal level,"  he explained in comments that were promptly posted on YouTube.

"To a certain extent, we are starting to come into a realization of our own power and our own capability,  not just as innovators and technology pioneers but also in a political sense."

And with that he introduced a Silicon Valley lawyer,  Ro Khanna,  a dashing 36-year old upstart who was trying to unseat Representative Mike Honda, a fellow Democrat in good standing who has represented the South Bay for 12 years without ever facing a serious challenge.

"The premise of this campaign is quiet simple," Khanna said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's time that we actually change politics,  and Silicon Valley has the potential to do this."

Just what kind of change the wealthy mavericks in the U.S's fastest growing industry have planned for American democracy is subject to much debate.

Ask Khanna and his backers, and they will talk about their idealism, their can do spirit and the  do-or-die   meritocracy of their industry-  attributes that are undeniably in short supply at the U.S. Capitol.

Why not put college courses  online?  they ask. Reform the tax code to spark a wave of innovation? Use  smartphones to end human-rights abuses?

"What has been missing has been  Silicon Valley   being a thought leader," Khanna stated. But there is another side to the push as well,  one less cutting edge and more selfish.

For decades,  Silicon Valley  got along just fine by mostly ignoring government. The chips and computers it made didn't need any federal favours and rarely ran up against regulatory hurdles.

But as tech companies have expanded into all corners of the economy, they have found themselves beset by barriers.

Uber, for example, an  app  for ordering cars and taxis, has been going to war over taxi regulations in cities all around. Airbnb, a start-up that allows people to rent out their rooms to travellers, has been embroiled in fights over hotel taxes.

And those are the small stakes; in Washington, many of the biggest fights are now centered on technology. The industry is battling antitrust investigators, Hollywood studios that want a new piracy fighting tools-

And labour unions that want to restrict visas for foreign born workers.

A Senate report found that many of the biggest names in tech, from Apple and Oracle to Cisco and eBay, hold majority of their cash in overseas tax shelters, making them clear targets.

And then there are the future products   -driverless cars, video-recording eyeglasses, and the ubiquitous tools for  tracking Americans' behaviour   online  -that raise entirely new set of concerns!!!??

In short  Silicon Valley  needs to broaden its influence in Washington to get its way. And it needs to do so fast. 

Just a year ago, at a Developers conference in San Francisco, Google founder Larry Page, 40, net worth $23 billion, spoke for the industry when he described:

[ !WOW! ] :  Government as a major obstacle to the future. "There's many, many exciting and important things you could do that you just can't do because they are illegal or they're not allowed by regulation," he told the crowd.

"Maybe some of our old institutions, like the law and so on, aren't keeping up with the rate of change," he also said.

"" Law Can't be right if it's  50  years old. ""

To update the law and culture of government, tech leaders are laying siege to federal, state and local offices, opening their sizable corporate and personal accounts to fund ads-

Candidates and whole armies of lobbyists, consultants and advocates.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg,  30, net worth  $13billion, and some friends founded a dark money advocacy group this year called   Fwd.us  with the goal of spending millions,  largely on television ads in:

Support of immigration reform,  which would allow  more foreign engineering talent to work in the U.S.

Another group, Engine Advocacy, has been organizing online campaigns around immigration and lawmaker-lobbying sessions for about  500  small tech start-ups.

Meanwhile, established tech companies have been buying up platoons of Washington's influence peddlers.

Silicon Valley's  -young guns-  changed the world, and with billons and billions and billions in the bank, they are looking to do the same to politics.

"" !WOW! -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless wishes them God speed.""

The honour and serving of the post and this  subject   will continue ever so regularly in the future.

With respectful dedication to every Student of the world. See Ya  all on !WOW!- the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

"' The Young Guns : !WOW! "'

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless