John McCain helped to create the BlackBerry? Really?
John McCain and Sarah Palin after his acceptance speech at the Republican convention.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET News)John McCain doesn't use e-mail. So it was downright odd to see one of his aides hold up a BlackBerry on Tuesday and claim that the Arizona senator somehow deserves credit for its existence.
"He did this," economic policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters, referring to a BlackBerry, according to a report on Politico.com. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."
This may join the ranks of the-Internet-is-too-hard-to-use statements personally made by the Republican candidate, including this remarkable admission from July: "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don't expect to be a great communicator, I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need--including going to my daughter's blog first, before anything else."
And then there was the rather sad claim, captured on video, from a campaign representative that "John McCain is aware of the Internet." Plus McCain's statement early this year that: "I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife" for the Internet, presumably meaning such taxing matters as visiting a Web site.
Holtz-Eakin's unfortunate improvisation is likely to add to the narrative of a presidential candidate out of touch with technology, just as Al Gore's improvident boast about "creating" the Internet reinforced suspicions that the vice president liked to exaggerate his accomplishments.
I wrote a Wired article in 1999 poking fun at Gore's claim (which I'm sure endeared me to a generation of Democrats). According to a transcript, he boasted to CNN that: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Of course, Republicans seized on the quotation by misquoting Gore; Trent Lott sent out a press release claiming to have invented the paper clip, and Dan Quayle joked that he "invented spell-check." And Democrats, meanwhile, offered narrowly correct rebuttals that Gore never claimed to have "invented" the Internet--while largely glossing over a worldview that implies no technological development can be legitimate until Congress enacts the appropriate legislation.
The McCain campaign fell into that trap this week. If Gore could take credit for "creating" the Internet, then why can't ex-Senate Commerce Committee Chairman McCain claim credit for "creating" the BlackBerry, never mind that it was developed by a Canadian company? Or Wi-Fi, which the McCain campaign also seemed to do this week? Or, for that matter, every computer and technological gadget used today? McCain, the father of the iPhone, anyone?
To be fair to both politicians, neither made a claim of particular technical expertise. Gore was not saying he was involved in the early days of the ARPANET (he was a law student at Vanderbilt at the time), and McCain's aide was not saying his boss was in Waterloo, Ontario working for Research in Motion. They're both clumsily trying to point to legislation that--they believe--has helped to create the environment for innovation.
Reason magazine's Virginia Postrel got it right when noting in 1999 that: "Government is so pervasive that almost every development, positive or negative, can be tied in some way to government--to subsidies, to tax-code distortions, to regulations. Politicians can claim credit for innovations they did little to create; people who want an even more activist government can point to those same inventions as evidence that government is just dandy; and pork-seeking industries can claim that subsidies and tax credits will make America rich."
This pervasiveness is problematic in two ways. First, it steals credit from the engineers and programmers (and, yes, executives) whose hard work is directly responsible for giving us useful gadgets like the BlackBerry or iPhone. I was in the San Francisco auditorium last year when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and asked that every Apple employee involved in the project stand up to be recognized; to tremendous applause, hundreds did.
Second, if politicians say their policies caused advances made by the private sector, they should be willing to take the blame for missed economic opportunities also caused by their policies. McCain has a mixed record on taxes, for instance; he should share the blame for gadgets we don't have today because resources were diverted from productive Silicon Valley firms to far less productive uses inside the federal government. (This is what onetime New York Times writer Henry Hazlitt called "the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.")
Back to Gore and McCain for a moment. Their claim, in essence, is that through their hard work they have personally contributed to the general environmental conditions that let the Internet and BlackBerry come into existence.
Even if those claims are true, though, they're tissue-thin. By lending money, banks arguably create the general environmental conditions that let technology companies innovate. For better or for worse, lawyers also help to create those general environmental conditions. Presumably pizza delivery places, the makers of Jolt cola, and the late-night cleaning staff at tech firms should share the credit while we're at it.
The last would be closer to the mark. But it sure doesn't sound as good as "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" or "the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
Several Senators were spearheading this mobile device initiative, including Senators McCain and Robert Byrd. The device usage feedback and feature requests from these early government pilots of mobile messaging DID shape into what the business / consumer market uses today, so do give credit where credit is due!
All right, so Congress worked to create "a secure emergency messaging system". What exactly did they do--provide specs, provide funding, provide demands? I'll give credit where credit is due! After all, almost anyone could get credit following 9/11, beltway sniper, and interest rates below 1%.
Whom he associates with(Carly Fiorina, Phil Gramm, Sarah Palin, tons of lobbists) tells you all you need to know.
What is depressing is that he is polling competitively. That shows how lost America is, and how stupid Americans are.
My first response to this article is to say that you should know better since you are knowledgeable about technology issues and write about them professionally. That, of course, misses the point that this is not about technology and you are being used in a distracting, petty, slapfest that is masquerading as a political campaign.
By writing this snickering article, you are contributing to the problem instead of using your area of expertise to help others understand. I would expect that you already know that Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn (two people who were into the engineering up to their elbows) give appropriate credit to Gore and don't fall into the infantile trap that has snared you.
(from Cerf's Sept 2000 response...)
"There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid growth
since the later 1980s, not the least of which has been political support
for its privatization and continued support for research in advanced
networking technology. No one in public life has been more intellectually
engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the
Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort, both in the
councils of government and with the public at large."
"The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value
of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and
consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American
citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world."
You could have written about the sustained vision that led Al Gore to make his statement (and Cerf to support him) in contrast with the accidental support of RIM that yielded the Blackberry. You could have written about the economic landscape of RIM versus the Internet in general. You could have written about some specific action or policy of McCain that would justify or damage the claim.
Instead, you decided to sink into the slap fight and snicker.
I've known and admired your writing in a number of contexts and I understand it must be difficult to keep up that high level of quality, but if you are tired or can't think of something to write, take a day off. Don't damage your own reputation and damage the conversation by just contributing noise.
I also agree that the statement made by Holtz-Eakin was boneheaded, but stop saying that he meant McCain created the Blackberry! I'm sure that was the device he happened to have on him, so he brandished it. Yes, if he had happened to use an iPhone or other smart phone device, I'm sure he would have brandished it. But his statement was referring to the *function* of the device.
Whom he associates with(Carly Fiorina, Phil Gramm, Sarah Palin, tons of lobbists) tells you all you need to know.
What is depressing is that he is polling competitively. That shows how lost America is, and how stupid Americans are.
As a case in point; during the testimony of Gen. Patreus before the Armed Services Committee, he was asked this question, "You have testified about many great advances and much progress that has been done in Iraq. Why haven't we heard any of this from our media here?" His answer was, "Senator Clinton, we give a press briefing every morning and the major US news media is there for almost all of them. We have told them the same things I have said here. As to why you haven't seen any of it here, for that, you'll have to ask them."
Revealing - most facts are.
One major news media has stated that they use the news selectively to fashion a public opinion they want to create. That media giant - Gannett News (publishers of USA Today).
So, again why ar the average voters so stupid when it comes to politics?
:-)))
- by GEBERWEIN September 17, 2008 6:39 AM PDT
- It took an article this size to say what Sen. McCain did with one word; "boneheaded."
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (42 Comments)Aware and able to operate are two wholly different categories. Many are aware of Planes; few fly them.
Pleeze don't compare the Maverick to All Bore.