John McCain and the Mystery of the Interwebs

At the risk of pointing out something completely obvious, you’re reading this on a computer, or some other computerized device (PDA, cell phone, wherever you might find an RSS reader or a web browser). While you’re reading this, hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people across the world are also on their computers, or using their various gadgets to access the Internet. It’s become a staple of our civilization, and a vital part of this country’s economy and culture.

And John McCain has no idea how to use it.

Over half a year after admitting that he doesn’t know how to use a computer, McCain has learned very little about the device that’s become an absolute necessity in America. He says he “understands the importance of the computer,” and that he’s “learning more and more every day.” He reads his email… when his staff shows it to him. He now uses a computer “almost every day,” and goes to “various web sites,” including his own (he didn’t specify his Senate web site or his campaign web site) and “the various media.”

I apologize for the constant use of quotes, but I feel the need to be specific when talking about his claims. It’s like describing my grandfather learning to go online.

That’s a start, and I’ll give him a little credit for it. Unfortunately, he has a long, long way to go. He still doesn’t email, he’s the only individual among his Senate staff and his wife that doesn’t have a Blackberry (which, at this point, has become a vital gadget for any job that requires a lot of management and communication), and he “isn’t a tech freak,” a status that apparantly comes with text messaging people. He says he prefers to use the telephone, and part of me is vaguely sure he uses either a rotary phone or has his own operator with an old-timey switchboard.

His latest anti-tech offense is a slap in the face of bloggers and online journalists of all stripes. When discussing online campaign coverage, McCain’s campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb denigrated the New York Times. He compared the newspaper’s editors to bloggers “sitting at home in his mother’s basement and ranting into the ether between games of Dungeons & Dragons.”

The New York Times, along with every other major print publication currently on the market, has some form of blog, whether it’s a network of freelancers or a scratch pad for editors to post content between print issues. If you don’t have a blog, you’re missing out on a massive audience of readers who spend a great deal of time in front of the computer, and rely on the Internet to get their news.

According to a recent study from Pew Research, 55% of all Americans have broadband Internet access. Of those, 47% regularly read their news online, and 15% regularly read personal blogs. If you’re a media outlet and you don’t have a blog, you’re missing out on an obvious and relatively cheap way to expand your audience.

I didn’t take offense at the Dungeons & Dragons jab, mostly because I play regularly. However, it’s pretty easy to be insulted by the implication of the statement, an implication that’s been obselete for several years. According to another Pew Research study (from 2006, so the numbers have probably gone up since it was written), 12 million Americans keep a blog. Of those, 38% are students, 37% have a college degree, and 38% are “knowledge-based professional workers” (white collar) . They’re no longer a minority of geeks and social misfits, tinkering away on their mysterious computer systems, typing in strange and complex digital languages that only computer science majors understand. Anybody can blog and read blogs.

This anti-tech, blog-hating shit might have flown 20 years ago. It might even have been tolerated a decade ago. But the Internet is now a vital part of American life, and computers are in nearly every home. We work on computers, we play on computers, and we get our information from computers. I really don’t like the whole “elitist” insult that has been thrown around, but what else do you call a man who refuses to learn how to adequately use a tool that nearly everyone in the country works with every day in some way, shape, or form?

I don’t expect John McCain to build his own computer. I don’t expect him to learn Linux, or code his own web page, or even make his own blog. I do, however, expect him to get some understanding of computers and the Internet. Stop treating it like some mysterious force of technology that only the learned can use, and really get wrists-deep into e-mail and web browsing. My grandparents know how to use computers that much, and they’re older than McCain is. It’s not hard anymore, and treating it like a complicated enigma is not something I want to see in someone who aspires to be the leader of the most technologically advanced nation on the planet.

- Will