ObamaTech: where the president will take technology in his second term

Photo by Andrew Zaleski, taken during the 2010 House GOP Retreat in Baltimore.
With 1,458 more days until Nate Silver’s next statistics lesson, we pause to consider what Barack Obama‘s second term as president will mean for the world of technology. As Obama said in his victory speech, the U.S. is a “country that lives up to its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation. With all the new jobs and new businesses that follow.”

There’s some of this already, with the inaugural Presidential Innovation Fellows program, of which two Baltimoreans are fellows.
ReadWrite offers a primer on the subject in seven different areas, but the ones most applicable to the Baltimore region are broadband access, cybersecurity and education.

• Broadband: As ReadWrite reports, it’s a goal of Obama’s and a tenet of the National Broadband Plan to extend broadband Internet access throughout America. In Baltimore city, similar efforts are underway, as Lexington Market became the first of the city’s six historic public markets to receive free WiFi access last week at Tech Night.
• Cybersecurity: According to ReadWrite, the Department of Defense appears ready “to release new rules of engagement for cybersecurity.” In the Baltimore area, that means one thing: more jobs, about 13,000 of them. Cybersecurity spending by the feds is expected to top $14 billion by 2016, and Gov. Martin O’Malley said that Maryland must be the “epicenter” of cybersecurity at October’s CyberMaryland conference. Expect UMBC to play a leading role in training this cyber workforce, as the university has received several grants to date intended specifically for increasing its cybersecurity offerings.
• Education: Baltimore is fast becoming a hub of education-technology activity, with myriad startups, several created in the last year alone, dedicated to improving education as a whole or make teaching easier for the people at the front of the classroom. Keep your eyes on StraighterLine, which offers for-credit college courses online at $49 each, as well as the Digital Harbor Foundation in Federal Hill, which is now working with students to find them practical internships and jobs in technology as a means to fund their own college educations.