Robert Scoble wrote a blog posting a few weeks week back entitled Who should be USA’s CTO? In it he discussed the proposition that America needs a CTO, an idea proposed by Barack Obama (see his Technology Issues page here), and also who could be up up for the job.
These are the names he posted:
- Mark Andreessen
- Dave Winer
- Joel Spolsky
- Tantek Celik
- Molly Holzschlag
- Meg Whitman
- Bill Gates
- Steve Wozniak
- Caterina Fake
Some of these I had never heard of (Dave Winer, Tantek Celik, Molly Holzchalg, and Caterina Fake), some of these are ridiculous (Joel Spolsky, Meg Whitman, and Steve Wozniak) and some are feasible but still not the right person in my opinion (Marc Andreesen and Bill Gates).
Robert obviously picked some of the most popular technology people out there, but they’re all technology people that run technology companies and that’s not what America needs in a CTO. In my opinion we need a CTO from a non-technology company; a CTO from a company like GE or Bank of America or Toyota; someone who helps further their company through the use of technology.
