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Under the guise of reaching out to businesses, President Obama lifts a glass to the mutual success of technology and the advances they will achieve in harnessing wiring the world.
“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” – George Orwell, 1984
Obama holds Silicon Valley summit with tech tycoons
WOODSIDE, Calif. — President Obama traveled Thursday night to northern California for an evening meeting with a group of Silicon Valley chief executives, among them Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and Steve Jobs, the ailing head of Apple.
The closed-door session with 12 technology leaders was held at the home of John Doerr, a partner at the major Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Others in the room include Oracle founder and chief executive Larry Ellison, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.
Although some in the business world have had an often-tense relationship with Obama, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the president has been popular in Silicon Valley.
Obama attended a major fundraiser last October at the home of Google executive Marissa Mayer, and he met with Jobs on that same swing. Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, campaigned for Obama in 2008 and has served as an informal adviser on economic issues since then. And Doerr, a longtime Democratic donor, has served on the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board for the last two years.
White House officials said Thursday night’s meeting was mainly to discuss Obama’s innovation initiatives. He has promised to fund tax credits for research and development; to reform the bogged-down patent system; and to blanket the country with high-speed wireless-Internet connections.
Others attending the session were John Hennessy, the president of Stanford University; Carol Bartz, president and CEO, Yahoo!; John Chambers, CEO and chairman, Cisco Systems; Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO, Genentech; and Steve Westly, managing partner and founder, The Westly Group.
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George Orwell wrote that almost 20 years before the invention of night-vision scopes…
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Those “tech tycoons” have a lot to celebrate. Business will be booming for them in a total-surveillance society.
Tom, you commented the other day that you live (lived?) 80 miles from Corning, NY. I live in Painted Post, which is 2 miles from Corning. (It’s one school district.) Can I ask where you live/lived?
Kitty added:
Andrea, I just read your latest post. While Corning’s CEO, Wendell Weeks was not part of the group this time, he was last January:
Corning CEOs to join Michelle Obama at State of Union
Last January, Weeks appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box, and signaled hope that the economic stimulus will help bring jobs back to Corning, the Twin Tiers’ largest employer. He was one of 13 business executives who took part in a roundtable discussion with Obama to discuss the economy.
This video is neat: A Day Made of Glass… Made possible by Corning. Yet when I see those wall screens, I think of Big Brother in 1984. Every home had one – it was mandatory – and Big Brother invaded the homes at will. If they can delete public library books from your e-reader, think of what can be done now with those 1984-like TVs.
And to tie-in with all this…
$12.2 milllion broadband project unveiled; Corning Inc. to split cost with counties
The project will be funded with $10 million from Corning Inc., with the other $2.2 million coming from the three local counties.
Local officials say the project – in the works for more than a decade – will greatly enhance high-speed Internet access, especially in rural areas.
I used to live in Broome County.
At various times, I lived in all three of the Triple Cities — Binghamton, Johnson City, and Endicott.
In 1994, I ran for Congress there against Maurice Hinchey. One of the key points of my campaign was the “MAGLEV high-speed rail corridor” between the defense contractors in Broome County, the research at Corning for the room-temperature superconductor, and the train-car manufacturing at ABB there in Painted Post. That 100-mile corridor happened to be THE BEST PLACE IN THE COUNTRY to build the first experimental MAGLEV passenger train system, because everything needed to make it work was already being produced (or in research) somewhere along that corridor.
But, after political compromises and back-room deals finished dividing up the “spoils” of the ISTEA money, then all that is left is a ten-mile wimpy version to take people from the Orlando airport to the hotel at Disneyworld. There is no way to get a train up to 300mph and back down again in a ten-mile stretch. The entire MAGLEV concept was taken from a highly-efficient mass-transit system (they’re riding one in Germany) to a “gee-whiz” attraction at an expensive kiddie park. The only people to benefit are Democratic politicians and their wealthy cronies.
Of course, that’s no surprise….
I grew up in Morris, NY. I then Oneonta for 9 years.
Radio talk show host, Bill Nojay (upstate NY), talked about the high-speed rail project and why it won’t work. He said it works well in France where there are far fewer at grade crossings than here in NYS. Like NY needs one more thing to waste our tax dollars on.
From a conservative viewpoint, I mostly agree with you.
However, the technology had already been developed (at Brookhaven National Labs near the end of Long Island). And, the money had already been appropriated. (Federal money, although I’m sure that NY State would’ve been involved at some point.)
If the US government had done their jobs correctly, then they could’ve been MAKING money by getting patent royalties from Germany for using our technology. That, in turn, could’ve helped with building it here. (It should’ve been built here FIRST, but that is a separate argument.)
By the way, the problem of at-grade crossings could’ve been solved by using an elevated MAGLEV guideway. Some designers proposed using the median of Interstate highways to locate the support pillars — thus making double use of the same amount of land.
Bottom line: greedy, self-serving politicians managed to mess up a great idea.
With respect to your point. I noticed an old article how the germans panzar tanks actually had night vision long before it was claimed to be a new thing here in the states. There are documents which show a night vision scoop on top of the german tanks.