Ask HN: Will a Hacker ever be electerd President?

2 points·VaedaStrike··5 comments

Discuss and debate.

I think the word "ever" denotes too much absolution. Sure, never say never (arrgh! Beiber); Obama definitely isn't a hacker in software, but he definitely hacked the ways presidential campaign are done for a long time. Now that I think about it, most elected officials ARE Hacker in some way as they have:

1) build a product (their image) 2) build a product (themselves) 3) deal with competitors 4) innovate with new messages 5) change the ways certain things are done etc.

Also, might be elected, but probably never "electerd" :)

Obama isn't a hacker, but he appointed people who made our government more transparent by using technology. Opening government data up a little for hackers to play with - data.gov, usaspending.gov

Much of that is more token transparency. A better description IMO would be technology enhanced disemination facilitation seeing as much of the data was available previously only in a less readily available format or simply in a different location rather than a centralized repository. Obama isn't substantively more transparent overall

yes, once enough of the country buys in to electronic voting machines with wifi. i dunno, does that already exist?

Would a hacker win be immediately suspect? Or would an openly hacker friendly president's win be suspect?

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