President Barak Obama was the main event speaker at the SXSW South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas this week. President Obama urged the attendants to use technology to make America a better place and to face America’s greatest challenges today.
Such challenges include online terrorism, cyber security and education. He told the 2,000 plus attendees he’s recruiting them to find new ways to solve our greatest challenges. The event was held at Palmer Events Center downtown. This is part of a week long White House initiative to build tech-government relations. Topics included citizen access to government tools, alliances with private tech companies, and other issues, even those not being dominated by headlines. The Apple vs FBI case was brought up…somewhat. President Obama didn’t go in the specifics of the case, but he encouraged middle ground in this debate. But he did talk about finding ways to crack encryption codes to expose terror plots and cyber sociopaths like child predators. ?Obama talked about his meeting with tech leaders and filmmakers to combat the lure of online radical extremism. ?In a Medium article, digital service administrator Mikey Dickerson challenged techies to do more than build apps for food sharing and socializing. He says each of them are needed in government.
If I didn’t know any better, I think there’s a love-hate relationship between tech companies and the US government. Back in 2013, it was thought they were in cahoots in the NSA surveillance scandals.But most tech leaders came out saying they were forced to hand over customer information to the NSA. Last year, elected officials and Silicon Valley execs met to fight terrorism. Now, Apple and the FBI are in an epic battle of safety vs privacy. President Obama wants to end his presidency his relationship with the tech industry on a good note. Depending on who wins the election, do you see tech-government relations getting better or worse in the future?