Democrats take lead on technology

WIRED:If the president-elect's tech ambitions come to fruition, it might mean bad news for Europe, writes Danny O'Brien

NOW WE know the results of the election, what will Barack Obama's technology policy look like? And how will it affect the rest of the world?

Curiously, for a candidate whose web campaign was such a model of efficiency and organisation, his tech policies were not heavily advertised during the campaign. There was very little Al Gore-like enthusiasm for the white heat of technology in his populist campaign.

But a few clues lay around for those who sought them out.

One of the few company names Obama mentioned in his debates was Google, calling one of his initiatives in the US Senate a "Google for government". The law, which he drafted with conservative Republican Tom Coburn, represented a key thrust in Obama's previous legislative uses of technology - to open up previously closed processes.

The law created a database and search engine tracking the €1 trillion the US pays to individual companies in the form of earmarks, grants, contracts and loans. In the Illinois senate, Obama worked to mandate the electronic recording of homicide investigations, intended to reduce the number of false or forced confessions.

And it was at Google last year that Obama spelled out in some (but not great) detail how he would approach the wider world of technology.

His primary concern - which he shares with the electricity-guzzling search engine - is clean and efficient new energy. Silicon Valley certainly has an interest in that, and has already been bubbling with new start-ups that intend to use computing technology to optimise existing and novel energy approaches.

But he also spoke on the challenges the US faces as it drops lower and lower in the broadband stakes. In a shift from the current administration, Obama has stated: "Market forces will drive the deployment of broadband in many parts of the country, but not all," marking his intent to use government funds to promote the roll-out of fast internet in the US.

That may not have much effect on the rest of the world, which is already outpacing the US in that regard. But another shift may well have a knock-on effect - and has already begun. On the day of the election, the Federal Communications Commission agreed to allow the production of "white space devices" - digital transceivers that will send and receive in the spaces on the same frequencies as old analog TV signals.

While the frequencies in the US differ from those in other countries, the same approach will almost certainly now be pursued by other countries, allowing local wireless services to compete with cable and DSL for fast internet.

Obama has signalled that he wants to investigate far more innovative uses of wireless. That will require American companies to produce new equipment, and that equipment (such as Wi-fi before it) will undoubtedly be adopted elsewhere in the world.

One of the biggest fights in the US tech world recently has been over "network neutrality", a somewhat vague term that nonetheless captures many net users' concerns about big telecommunication companies filtering, blocking or capping the speed of other companies' content on the internet.

Obama has said he will "take a backseat to no one in [his] commitment to network neutrality", although it's not entirely clear what that will mean in practice. Once again, it almost certainly spells a more interventionist attitude to the evolution of the internet and other new communication technologies.

However, it's almost certain that the level of intrusion will still be far lower than we've seen in Europe or the Far East.

Currently the EU is wrangling over hundreds of pages of telco regulation in its "telecom package".

By contrast, what we can expect from an Obama administration is less likely to be direct regulation and more likely to be couched as "policy leadership".

The Bush administration was notable less in its kowtowing to special interests in the technology space, as many critics have accused it, and more for a simple lack of foresight into what it wanted to see from new communications technology.

Obama has promised an office of "America's CTO ", and that's what we can expect from this role: not picking favourites between the many affluent and competing lobbyists in the high-tech space, but attempting to give them a direction to follow.

Will that direction clash with the direction Europe might want to take?

Despite the current honeymoon period, it may well. A directed US technology sector may well become a keener competitor to the European telecommunications sector. We might want to start hoping that Obama does have quite as much success in the tech sector as some have wished on his election.