FastCompany magazine recently were a bit taken aback by a very unscientific survey that rated the “Digital IQ” of the United States Senators. It was a completely nonsense survey, but it did allow the magazine the opportunity to poke fun at some top politicians who clearly have not fully come to terms with technology.
You can read an extract below. If you’d like to see some of the pictures, and links to videos of the actual events, then read the original at the FastCompany website.
Top 10 Politico Tech Blunders, From the Internets to the Google
BY AUSTIN CARR
Aug 20, 2010, FastCompany
… Politicians are notorious for their blunders and ignorance of all things tech-related, and this study–while not exactly using the most scientific metrics to determine tech-savviness–may just be a blunder in itself. Here we present our top 10 politico gaffes that show just how low our elected officials’ Digital IQs actually are.
10. Ted Stevens. In 2006, during a committee meeting on net neutrality, the late Alaskan senator Ted Stevens became a Web sensation for his description of the Internet. “The Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck,” he said. “It’s a series of tubes.” The Internet is “a series of tubes”? And this from the guy in charge of regulating the Net? Stevens quickly became viral fodder for his comments, and gave Jon Stewart material for weeks.9. Jacques Chirac. We’re mostly focusing on U.S. politicians on this list, but we did want to point out at least one blunder overseas to show how non-American candidates are plagued by this problem too. In 1997, then-president of France Jacques Chirac attended the opening of the country’s new national library. There, as The New York Times reported, “Mr. Chirac discovered the computer ‘mouse’ for the first time and gazed at it in wonder.” Yes, in 1997, when computers and mice were damn-near ubiquitous. If that’s not bad enough, Chirac also dismissed the Internet as “an Anglo-Saxon network.”
8. George H.W. Bush. Along the 1992 presidential campaign trail, Bush 41 was blown away by a barcode scanner during a grocery store photo-op. The one-term president stared in awe at the machine. “You cross this, this open space?” Bush asked, curiously passing a milk carton through the barcode scanner, as if it were from the future. He said later in the day that he was “amazed by some of the technology” he had seen.
7. Sarah Palin. As more politicians jump on the Twitter bandwagon, it’s getting harder for candidates to maintain polish. Sarah Palin certainly knows this. She recently tweeted, “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.” Grammar aside, what the heck does “refudiate” mean? The invented word went viral, especially once discovered she used it again in a television interview. Quickly, Palin deleted the tweet, but followed up with: “English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!” Soon @ShakesPalin–an account devoted to Shakespearian Palinisms–started trending on Twitter.
6. John McCain. During his recent bout with Obama for the highest office in the land, a McCain advisor claimed the senator invented the BlackBerry. “He did this,” said McCain’s top economic advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, holding up his BlackBerry to reporters. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years…so you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create, and that’s what he did.” The McCain campaign was quickly lambasted for the Gore-like claim, and soon issued a correction that called the statement a “boneheaded joke.”
5. Al Gore. The robotic VP got hammered for his perhaps taken-out-of-context claim that he “invented the Internet.” Wolf Blitzer, who stumbled on the flub during an unrelated interview question, said “it wound up being a devastating setback to him” along the 2000 presidential campaign.
4. George W. Bush. During his 2004 race against John Kerry, Bush 43 responded to a question about a possible military draft. “I hear there’s rumors on the, uh, Internets,” he said. The Bushism became an instant meme, with parodies showing up on SNL and The Colbert Report. Bush used the word two other times, once in 2000, and again in 2007: “Information is moving–you know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it’s also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets.”
4a. Barack Obama. In all fairness, Bush isn’t the only politico out there adding S’s inappropriately. President Obama has made the same mistake, and it’s perhaps more surprising given his reputation for tech-know-how and social media savvy. Speaking with Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, Obama said: “And during his visit to Silicon Valley this week, he visited the headquarters of Twitters, where he opened his own account. I have one as well, so we may be able to finally throw away those ‘red phones’ that have been sitting around for so long.” The Twitters and the Internets. Aw shucks, don’t we find these mistakes endearing?
3. Joe Biden. In launching the government’s online stimulus spending tracker, the Obama administration was attempting to prove its commitment to transparency. There was just one problem: Joe Biden didn’t know the address, er, whatever you call it. During an interview with CBS, Biden leaned toward an aide, and asked, “Do you know the Web site number?” If only he knew how to dial up the Internets.
2. George W. Bush. Technology Bushisms are the best–he deserves this second spot on our list. In an interview with CNBC, Bush was asked whether he ever uses Google. His response was astoundingly awesome. “Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see–I’ve forgot the name of the program–but you get the satellite, and you can–like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.” Honestly, I wish the search engine’s logo actually read “The Google.”
1. John McCain. Mac or PC? That was the question posed to Republican candidates Mike Huckabee (PC), Ron Paul (PC), and Mitt Romney (Mac). But when the question came to McCain, his response was rather blunt. “Neither,” he said. “I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife.”
And this politician has the highest Digital IQ in the Senate?
Source: FastCompany