Communications technologists should be afraid of a McCain Palin government

It's been hard back into the swing of things, being distracted as I am by the Klondike Annie Oakley and her remake of the 1957 classic movie A Face in the Crowd.*

But as entertaining as the electoral circus is, those of us in Internet communications have serious reason to worry about a McCain Palin administration, given federal government's power over communications technology.

Look at the way these candidates use technology. Barack Obama has conducted a 21st century digital campaign. John McCain, on the other hand, has to have Cindy turn on the computer for him – something the average American two year-old can do.
Fact is, you can't possibly make intelligent policy about a subject you know nothing about. Think about George Bush and the Iraq war.

So let's look ahead to the communications policy of a McCain Palin administration.

Take Open Internet, an issue that means a lot to the VoIP universe. McCain: "Cindy, open the internet." Palin: "I told the government thanks, but no thanks. If we want to open internets we'll do it ourselves."

Or frequency auction policy. McCain will just get a prescription for Enablex. Palin will consult the Book of Revelation: "But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished."

I'm not just being cynical or mean here. We're dealing with fundamental differences in worldview. Barack Obama and Joe Biden live in the modern world – the post-enlightenment world.

McCain, of course, is living in the Nixonian world of people who want to be President for Halloween – and the other 364 days of the year. All worldviews are equal, as long as he's Decider-in-Chief.  The campaign's intellectual magisterium, Sarah Palin subscribes to a pre-enlightenment worldview that has been trying to claw its way back to power ever since Galileo reported that the earth revolves around the sun.

The Inquisition didn't arrest the great astronomer because they thought he was wrong. That was secondary. They arrested him because he attacked the authority of their entire worldview: an intellectual context where facts were discernable through the prism of beliefs. Galileo said that facts were discerned by observing the evidence -- the scientific method.

If you think I'm over the top, you haven't spent time among the Assemblies of God. George Bush is Charles Darwin compared to these dead enders.

These are people who not only take the first chapter of Genesis literally, they also take literally the word "foolishness" in St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." (3:19 ). Paul was speaking specifically about the "foolishness" of a messiah who came, not as a king, but as a one of the world's poor and oppressed.

But extreme fundamentalists use this justification for willful ignorance on any and all subjects – biology, climatology, sex education, levees in New Orleans, you name it. Point out that carbon dating shows that fossils are millions of years old and they will tell you that carbon dating is a fraud. It isn’t mere irrationality. It's quite logical. Using their intellectual model, carbon dating has to be false – otherwise the 5,000-year-old-world model is wrong.

Like the Inquisition? You're gonna love the McCain Palin administration.

OK, I had my rant. Back to reality. I'll be at CTIA tomorrow and IT Expo next week. I'm moderating sessions on VoIP security and FMC. Come and say hi. I don't bite in person -- only in writing;)

*A Face in the Crowd tells the story of Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith, pre-Mayberry) and his meteoric rise from a guitar-picking Ozark hustler cooling his heels in a rural jail to a demagogue, TV star and political king-maker. Rhodes' undoing comes when, off-camera, a live mic broadcasts him mocking his audience as "idiots," "morons" and "guinea pigs."

Election Pollsters Making the Wrong Phone Call

A long time ago, I had a teacher who sometimes asked us to compose newspaper headlines for logic problems. His point was that one way to solve problems is by looking at them through the lens of a different paradigm.

The professor and his headlines exercise came back to me this morning as I pondered the 2008 election polls showing a close race between McCain and Obama -- so contrary to everything I see around me. (Admittedly, I live in California. But despite the notion that California exists in an alternate universe, it's also the state that elected Ronald Reagan to his first political office.)

These days I don't hear anybody -- even people I know will probably vote for him -- expressing any positive interest in McCain. But everybody is talking about Obama, including people who've probably never pulled the lever for a Democrat but are Obama supporters. 

Yet poll numbers show voters almost evenly divided between the McCain and Obama. But let's turn the problem on its head and, instead of the end point -- the answers to polling questions -- look at the process for getting to that end point. Then another explanation for the result percolates up.

Election polls reflect the pre-Internet -- or, rather  pre-Internets -- communication perspective of middle-aged political pundits and pollsters. One that assumes that everybody has a wired "home phone" on the PSTN. That's the Aha! here: Pollsters are only calling people who answer listed phone numbers supplied by the "phone company."

Do any of these pollsters and pundits have children? Or friends under 35? 

A lot of people aren't reachable on "home phones" anymore. Like my 17 year-old, they use cell phones almost exclusively. Many don't have wired phones at all. For a growing number, the "home phone" is an VoIP phone service. None of these services are listed in the "white pages."

I'm betting on lots of egg-on-pundit-faces in November.