broadband

Overheard: Who will be the first cabinet-level CTO?

A month or so ago the question of whether the next president should have a CTO came up in a work conversation among a diverse group of tech policy folks. We all agreed that the title is nice, but you would need to establish and delineate real power for it. Of course, the best way to do this would be to create a cabinet position for technology and innovation. People rolled their eyes at this until it was reminded to them that we do have a Secretary of Agriculture. Sean Garrett, The Case for a National CTO

It’s about time the White House acknowledged that we’ve moved from the agrarian age to the information age.  Having a national CTO is a great idea — I bet that we could learn a lot about pitfalls from going back and learning how the position of Secretary of Agriculture came about. First, we’ll need to define what a CTO’s responsibilities are. (At some companies right now, the CTO reports to the CIO — at others, the CIO reports to the CTO.) Then we’ll need to decide whether the CTO should actually have experience in technology or whether he/she should come from business.

From Wikipedia:

On May 15, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln established the independent Department of Agriculture to be headed by a Commissioner without cabinet status.  Lincoln called it the “people’s department”. In the 1880s, varied special interest groups were lobbying for Cabinet representation. Business interests sought a Department of Commerce and Industry. Farmers tried to raise the Department of Agriculture to Cabinet rank. In 1887, the House and Senate passed bills giving cabinet status to the Department of Agriculture and Labor, but farm interests objected to the addition of labor, and the bill was killed in conference. Finally, on February 9, 1889, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill into law elevating the Department of Agriculture to Cabinet level.

Overheard: WiMAX gets a marketing makeover

It turns out the announcement isn’t a new vaporware wireless technology, it’s my favorite old vaporware wireless technology, WiMax. Sprint finally figured out what to do with it. The unbelievably frustrating part is that Sprint has pretty much slipped the deployment plan for WiMax by another two years. It’s hard to get excited about a new technology, no matter how great the investors, when I have zero confidence in the companies’ ability to deliver. Michael Mace, WiMax gets closer and further away at the same time

The involvement of Google means we’re very likely to get a pretty much open ecosystem on a major wireless network, which Silicon Valley has been collectively screaming about for years. The size of the investments mean there is a lot of money available to build out the network. People ought to be dancing in the streets here, but instead most of them appear to be either yawning or throwing spitwads.

I’d be out there dancing myself if it weren’t for the slip in the schedule.

Hat’s off to Michael Mace for explaining the real buzz around WiMAX.