Showing posts with label press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label press. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Startup Visa D.O.A., and Startup America Just a Giant Press Release?

President Obama seems to understand the role that startups play and the contribution that skilled immigrants make to U.S. economic growth. He has talked a lot about the importance of science and engineering, and expressed fears that, unless we improve our game, China and India will out-innovate us. He even visited Silicon Valley recently to talk to its elite. And he has had his Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, make several trips here to the Valley. I commend the President for putting a spotlight on entrepreneurship with his Startup America initiative; but I can’t help wondering whether this is just a giant press release. It needs more substance: a way for foreign-born entrepreneurs to start companies here and a leveling of the playing field for entrepreneurs wanting to solve government problems. I debated this with Aneesh Chopra, at the Economist Innovation Summit in Berkeley, last week.

Startup Visa D.O.A., and Startup America Just a Giant Press Release?


Backlink: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/VSVr8NjxgHY/

Friday, December 10, 2010

Wikileaks Is "A New Form Of The Press"

Here are some appearances I’ve been making regarding Wikileaks, transparency, and press freedom.

On CNN with John King Thursday night talking about the hacking of MasterCard et al, quoting this Guardian editorial arguing that the attacks are a form of civil (cyber) disobedience in defense of a free internet:

Here’s a link to BBC audio, on the same subject, discussing the shift from power-to-power to peer-to-peer architecture.

The Berliner Zeitung asked for a brief op-ed. Here’s the English text:

Should Wikileaks be stopped? The question is somewhat irrelevant. The movement it exemplifies – transparency – cannot be stopped.

I’m not saying that secrecy is dead. We still need secrets – about security, crime, privacy, diplomacy. But we have far too many secrets in government. One thing that Wikileaks reveals is the abuse of government secrecy.

But now governments will have to learn how to operate under the assumption that anything they do can be seen on the front page of this newspaper. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. I say that government must become transparent by default, secret by necessity.

Transparency breeds trust. Whether for government or journalism or business, operating in the open enables the opportunity to collaborate with constituents.

We in journalism must recognize that Wikileaks is an element of a new ecosystem of news. It is a new form of the press. So we must defend its rights as media. If we do not, we could find our own rights curtailed. Asking whether Wikileaks should be stopped is exactly like asking whether this newspaper should be stopped when it reveals what government does not want the public to know. We have been there before; let us never return.

This post originally appeared at BuzzMachine and is republished here with permission.

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Wikileaks Is "A New Form Of The Press"


Backlink: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/saVzI64k1is/wikileaks-is-a-new-form-of-the-press-2010-12