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Wed, 05 Nov 2008 President Obama is "tech savvy"

Barack Obama may be the most tech aware president of all time. We look at what this means for the future

Grant Gross & Mark Hattersley

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Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, has been elected the first African-American president of the U.S., news organizations declared late Tuesday night.

Obama is also a big fan of technology. He's been photographed sending messages on a PDA, and his campaign used text messaging to announce his choice of a vice presidential running mate. His campaign solicited for donations through e-mail, and it set fund-raising records for a U.S. presidential campaign, raising more than US $639 million as of mid-October. A large percentage of donations came over the Internet.

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The campaign set up Obama pages at Facebook and MySpace and set up a Twitter feed. Obama even purchased advertisements in online video games, including Madden NFL 09 and Burnout Paradise.

The Obama campaign also created a bespoke iPhone application and distributed it through the iTunes App Store. The application enabled Obama supporters to call friends, see nationwide statistics and receive updates and facts from the Obama team.

Obama hasn't talked a lot about tech issues during the 2008 presidential campaign, but he did put out a lengthy tech policy paper a year ago. During a debate with rival candidate John McCain in September, Obama called for the U.S. government to focus on rolling out broadband to the parts of the country that don't yet have it.

Obama was talking about priorities that shouldn't be cut even though the U.S. economy is lagging. "I also think that we're going to have to rebuild our infrastructure, which is falling behind, our roads, our bridges, but also broadband lines that reach into rural communities," Obama said.

Obama's broadband goal is to help people connect with each other and to resources, Reed Hundt, a former chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and an Obama tech adviser, said last week. Obama promises a new kind of governing, where ideas can come from the "bottom up," not just the top down, Hundt said.

"The real commitment is to have our entire democracy include absolutely everyone," he said. "When we say universal broadband, what we mean is universal community."

NEXT: President Obama's tech policy

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Comments received


GraemeP said on Wed, 05 Nov 2008

The Clintons used to stay at Steve Jobs' house, who also supported Democrat nominee John Kerry. So, does Barack Obama use a Mac?

HeartyBeard said on Thu, 06 Nov 2008

Sanity regarding IT ...how unusual from a politician.

Korla Pundit said on Thu, 06 Nov 2008

If he's so damn tech-savvy, that shoots to heck his excuses for the disabled security on his website that allowed hundreds of millions of dollars to come in from illegal sources. Too clever by half.

AdamAnt said on Thu, 06 Nov 2008

Political allegiances aside. It's good to see a politician using technology in this manner. I'd love to see a UK political party show this kind of use and interest in modern technology - all we get are massive, and slightly creepy, databases from our government.

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