Its not funny.
It should be as shameful and troubling as getting up and saying "I'm no 'student' and I don't know how to do this 'reading' thing, but here's what I think about books."
The Internet
Farm policy
Arms control
Abortion and medicine in general
Debt, finance and sustainable economic growth
...
Thats kind of exaggerating the parent post's position, the congresspeople were flat out admitting they have no knowledge on the subject. He didn't say they had to be domain experts.
They _should_ have good domain knowledge on everything relevant to the proposed legislation. Its their full time job to legislate. We pay them so they can have time to focus on understanding the issues instead of treating it as secondary to their real job.
As an IT director I dont have to be an expert in python, ruby, networking, exchange admin, etc... That's why I hire staff who are experts in their areas. They inform me as the best direction to take.
I set the policy, understand to a certain level (rather technical, but not for example CCIE level - thats why I hire CCIEs) what each person does.
But I would never stand up at a company meeting and say "I have no clue how our firewall is configured - but I think we should block all traffic to ports 22, 80 and 25 because that seems to be where all our attacks come to. (blah blah blah port knocking blah blah blah)
Who is in the following roles as an aide to each congressman?
* Technology Consultant
* Foreign Policy
* Energy
* Agriculture
....
etc.
We should be able to reach out to EACH layer of aides for all of congress and say "To all the congressional technical advisors, as silicon valley reps, this is our stance on issue X"
These aides should then go to each congressman and say "this is what the tech on the street is saying" and inform them of opinion and reality.
The current system is DESIGNED to keep stupid.
take the widely held view that companies should have "all" their rights removed - the debate about personhood.
Do you realy want to end up with a system where any company could be taken over or shut down by political fiat - hint threes a reason Russian companies list in the UK its so they are perceived not to have the political risk.
In fact, the politicians are mostly concerned about reigning US in, right? That means we have the real power.
So, as many important scientists in history have mentioned, isn't it irresponsible of us to remain politically ignorant?