Who should be in charge when policy actually matters?

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

Take the title of this post and change it so it is about technology:

Who should be in charge when technology actually matters?

I am intrigued by a Paul Krugman post in which talks about policy mattering.

Change the word “policy” to “technology” and this gets at my complaint about many of the tech disasters I’ve seen in recent years, from the companies I worked for, to stuff I read about such as the roll out of the website for Obamacare.

So the savvy cultists were wrong even on their own terms. And notice why they were wrong: It never occurred to them that understanding the real issues might matter, and so they were caught completely off guard when Republican lies about policy matters produced a backlash.

So here’s a radical thought: Maybe the truly savvy thing is to take policy seriously, not to pretend that it’s all a game, and that only you understand the rules?

“It never occurred to them that understanding the real issues might matter” is something I have seen many times, regarding technology. I think is because I have mostly worked for dying old media companies in New York, who feel they are still in the publishing business, rather than thinking of themselves as tech companies. The management is confronted with a world that it hates: a world in which technology matters. They want a world where content matters, because that is their specialty. The New World Order enrages them, and they go on pretending they can ignore it.

Post external references

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    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/whos-savvy-now/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body
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