The “Break it Down” Blog

BusinessWeek had a piece recently discussing Barack Obama’s plan to develop an office of CTO for the United States if he wins in November.

Obama feels that the US is not making use of it’s inherent brain trust or resources to advance technology day-in and day-out to both improve our lives, education and existence but also help create jobs. The CTO’s job would be to develop and oversee government programs used to incent companies to first and foremost rollout broadband internet access into more areas of the US; namely rural areas (we are currently #15 of wired nations in the world).

The CTO would also oversee the use of a $50-billion fund used to motivate the development of green technologeis and spur more movement in the green-tech field.

Possible candidates for the position that are currently being considered are:

• Google’s Vint Cerf
• Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer
• Amazon’s Jeffrey Bezos
• Princeton’s Ed Felten (Professor of Computer Science)

I am really excited to see a president take such an interest in expanding the US technological capabilities (instead of killing it), funding efforts to motivate our move to a greener future as well as wanting to create jobs and opportunities for US citizens.