Obama-Tech: Staying the course

While an unstable economy looms over the nation as we begin a new year, President-Elect Obama and his administration must follow through on his promise to support science and technology.

After a campaign that made unprecedented use of technology—text-messaging, YouTube videos, FaceBook accounts, and even ads embedded in Xbox 360 video games, President-elect Barack Obama has been dubbed by some as “The Tech President.” While novel and apparently effective, the tech-based vote-gathering techniques Obama used are child’s play compared to the next administration’s plans to use and support science and technology.

One of the more impressive pieces in Obama’s technology plan is his vow to create up to 5 million new jobs with a 10-year, $150 billion investment to spark research and development in wind, solar, and advanced biodiesel power. He has also been adamant about the creation of five “first-of-their-kind” coal-fired demonstration plants that feature carbon capture and sequestration technology to reduce global warming.

In line with these initiatives, the new administration has also promised to update the nation’s communications infrastructure to ensure broadband Internet access; help domestic car manufacturers get 1 million 150-mpg plug-in hybrids on the roads by 2014; advance stem-cell research with more focus on embryonic stem cells; and appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer, a position that will ensure governmental infrastructure is as safe and up to date as possible. There’s much more on which Obama is focused, like boosting math and science education, improving science tests in schools, and making permanent the research-and-development tax credit to encourage domestic innovation.

It all sounds great. Obama is giving the scientific community reason to hope, especially after a Bush administration that sometimes took an antagonistic tone with that sector.

It’s a tall order, though. As the nation’s economy continues to tumble down the hill more quickly than Jack, there is the threat that these initiatives will be placed on the back burner.

But the message to the new administration should be to stay the course. Science and technology initiatives need to be supported because I believe they can lift this nation from its current economic state.

In one of his speeches during the campaign, Obama stated, “A green, renewable-energy economy isn’t some pie-in-the-sky, far-off future — it is now; it’s creating jobs-now; it is providing cheap alternatives to $140 a barrel oil-now; and it can create millions of additional jobs and entire new industries-if we act now.”

I agree. The time for all these things is now. This is not to advocate a frivolous spending program that will get us deeper in debt with no relief. But we must not let the current economic pressures derail the train of innovation that has — for so many decades — moved this country forward.

Ralph Raiola