Political Agendas Have a High-Tech Ring

Now that we’ve passed election day 1999, we’re one year away from the presidential election of 2000. What does the campaign for president hold in store for high tech?

Not surprisingly, most of the candidates for president have high-tech agendas that sound very close to the priorities of the high-tech industry itself. None of the candidates, except possibly Pat Buchanan and Gary Bauer, want to risk jeopardizing their access to high-tech money, which in the last election cycle was well over $2 million. And as in most policy discussions about high tech these days, political leaders are turning to industry leaders almost exclusively for advice.

But the glaring void in all the campaigns is the lack of any democratic, public-interest vision for the future of the information revolution. The message is clear: The economy is on cruise control, the high-tech industry is in the driver’s seat and the only thing government should do is sit in the passenger’s seat and stay out of the way.

Vice President Al Gore is perhaps the candidate most closely associated with high tech. “He’s worked with the high-tech industry for over 20 years,” said a Gore campaign spokesman.

When Gore was in the Senate representing Tennessee, he served on the committee that oversees funding for research and development. There, he allegedly coined the term “information superhighway” in homage to his father, a former senator who shepherded the nation’s concrete superhighway system in the 1950s.

Gore took some heat earlier this year when he told TV talk-show host Larry King that he had “invented the Internet.”

Still, the vice president has staked out the Internet as one of his most significant public policy contributions to the nation.

It was largely Gore’s commitment to the potential of the Internet that led to many high-tech leaders jumping to the Democratic Party in 1992. In that year, it was President Bush who was portrayed as a representative of an older generation that didn’t “get it,” while the baby boomers Clinton and Gore “got” the significance of high technology to the economy. They were right--high tech has accounted for a third of national economic growth since 1995.

Gore’s campaign slogan for high tech this year is “to foster new technologies without sacrificing our oldest values.” This is an appeal to the go-go entrepreneurs of the “new economy” with a nod to suburban parents worried about online porn or privacy.

On the economic front, Gore has endorsed a permanent R&D; tax credit and expanded federal investment in R&D; for information technologies. He’s a big champion of Internet 2, a federally funded program for the “next generation” Internet.

On the social front, Gore has floated the idea of an “Electronic Bill of Rights” for privacy, beginning with children’s privacy online, and he publicly announced and endorsed the Web site GetNetWise (https://www.getnetwise.org), an industry-sponsored site that promotes Internet filtering and “safe surfing.”

He’s also turning his attention to the “digital divide,” the disparity in access and skills between affluent high-tech communities and poor neighborhoods. Secretary of Commerce William Daley has called a “Digital Divide Summit” in Washington on Dec. 9. Gore supports the Clinton administration’s programs funding community networks, community technology centers and the e-rate, which provides discounted Internet access to schools and libraries. The e-rate today is so closely tied to the vice president that it has been called the “Gore tax” by dissenting Republicans in Congress.

Meanwhile, Texas Gov. George W. Bush has essentially lifted his high-tech agenda from the top priorities of the industry. He favors tort reform to protect companies from lawsuits and has endorsed making the R&D; tax credit permanent. Bush has called for international agreements to make the Internet a duty- and tariff-free zone of commerce and to enforce U.S. intellectual property rights. He also backs the industry’s call for reform of immigration quotas to allow more high-tech professionals into the U.S. to fill engineering and software jobs.

When it comes to the “digital divide” issue, Bush has backed some dramatic proposals for reforming public education, such as closing poorly performing schools and holding students accountable through testing. In Texas, he implemented the state Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund in 1995, the nation’s largest public source of funding for wiring schools, libraries and nonprofit medical facilities--$1.5 billion over 10 years. That program has networked more than 90% of Texas’ public schools, most of them in rural areas.

Sen. John McCain has distinguished himself by introducing legislation in the Senate that would make the current three-year moratorium on new Internet taxes permanent, a controversial proposal and one unlikely to succeed. The Arizona Republican is also the only candidate who has publicly criticized the concentration in the telecommunications industry that has resulted from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was designed to open up the market to competition and bring lower prices for consumers and new options for phone and cable services. McCain has called for that legislation to be rewritten.

Former Sen. Bill Bradley has been silent on high-tech issues, so far. The Democrat is clearly aiming his campaign at people who are not yet benefiting from the bounty of the “new economy.”

“There’s an overwhelming double standard in Washington these days,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “Industry wants legislation to protect its interests, but when public interest or consumer groups propose legislation to protect citizens, we’re told, ‘No, we have to let the market handle these issues.’

“When industry comes to Washington, they get legislation,” Rotenberg said. “When public interest and consumer groups come to Washington, they get a T-shirt.”

There are immense issues that should be on the table, such as whether the Internet will turn into a commercial medium aimed chiefly at “infotainment,” or whether it can support open and democratic civic discourse. Jeff Chester, director of the Center for Media Education, says that all the candidates “through their silence, are endorsing a radically new model of the Internet that will transform it into something like cable TV.”

The staggering amount of money that high tech controls is pulling all the campaigns to an industry-sponsored agenda, said both Rotenberg and Chester. “No one wants to lose access to the digital piggy bank,” Chester said.

Thus, the “yuppiefication” of political discourse seems to be complete and asphyxiating. Thirty years ago, who would have predicted that politics at the end of the 20th century would be so narrow and boring?

Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.