Don’t mix politics and technology

The prime minister will be arriving at Google’s third annual conference (Zeitgeist event) which is being held today at The Grove hotel complex in Hertfordshire. He will be hoping to up his profile as a tech savvy politician, or so he assumes.

Politics and technology don’t go together; Gordon Brown is attending Google’s conference after David Cameron has twice before, although many may see David Cameron as in touch with technology, we believe his media stunts are somewhat transparent.

What’s worrying is Cameron seems to be turning the Conservatives as a whole into a web-hip party. Entering the Conservatives home page you will be greeted with a web 2.0 design, logos of websites like Facebook, twitter, myspace, bebo and flickr. However, it gets worse, a look at the menu bar and the third link across states, “Webcameron”, whoever thought up that name should be extremely proud (please note sarcasm). A little while ago Cameron poked Brown by exclaiming, “Mr Brown is an analogue politician in a digital age”. I think Cameron is missing the point, I don’t think anyone wants to see Brown on YouTube or playing the latest Playstation console, Politicians should stick to what their best at (whatever that is) and leave the technical stuff to the experts. Nevertheless, I would expect our prime minster to know that a Brit didn’t invent the iPod, which he claimed on ITV’s “This Morning” earlier this month.

An obvious example of politician who shouldn’t be allowed near technological issues is dear Jaqui Smith (the home secretary), in early April she claimed that the ID card system will be un-hackable because “none of the databases will be online”. A few days later she wanted to set up an email address register for paedophiles. Pardon? Essentially politicians have no understanding of how the internet works and its structure, “Where there is illegal material on the net, I want it removed”, is another example of an endless list of ignorant quotes.

Politicians make bold statements about removing illegal, hateful and terrorist content from the internet. As techies we can pick up on this pretty easily and know when their claims are simply political bravado, but it makes us wonder if they ever know what they are talking about when the subject in matter is not one of core politics.