Mark Watson's opinions on Java, Ruby, Lisp, AI, and the Semantic Web

Our comfortable middle class lifestyle in the U.S. depends on our being competitive with countries with much lower costs of living. If Congress and the current Bush administration do not bend over backwards too far catering to the whims of their constituents (Big Business), I believe that we can be competitive in the technology sector. A few things that must be done (or not done):

• U.S. companies and individuals must have access to a "full service" internet - no turning over control to a few large telcos
• No encumbering of open source software - any legislation that impedes the use of open source software in the U.S. will simply put us behind countries without restrictive laws
• By all means protect intellectual property, but do so in a fare and balanced way - in other words, don't bend over too far for big business
• Our elected officials must remember that while open competitive markets are a good thing, for capitalism to work over the long term governments must prevent multi-national corporations from breaking laws and must not pass laws very much against public good, but in favor of multi-national corporations

Keep track of what your elected representatives do and let them know when they screw up, but also let them know when you think that they are doing the right thing. No matter how high the level of corruption is with foreign governments (you know the ones) and multi-national corporations making huge "contributions" to our elected representatives in Congress, these people do want to be re-elected.