White House In The Dark Ages

January 23. 2009

Joe Biden (left) Barack Obama (right)

According to a Washington Post article, the new administration led by Barack Obama found the White House to be technologically archaic.

What did they expect? Bush was calling the World Wide Web “The Internets” and one of the most famous search engines in the world “The Google.”

I’m surprised Bush wasn’t sending faxes via pigeons.

Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs”…

http://www.washingtonpost.com