Dana Blankenhorn

Elizabeth Warren on Tech Street

Ronald Reagan was not oil’s first choice in 1980.

John Connally was first. George H.W. Bush was second. Oil accepted Reagan and, through Bush, won political power for a generation, power it still has in the face of tech’s need for human capital.

So it is that we come to the 2020 game. Tech has been in the economic driver’s seat for 12 years, but in the political back seat for three. Tech has suffered for this. Its priorities have been ignored. It has been scapegoated by an Administration working in the interests of oil.

Technology is Democratic. It’s not a question of who tech prefers. Tech needs a seat at the political table, it will have a seat at the table, and that table will be Democratic. Assuming, of course, that democracy survives.

The 2020s: DNA as a Programming Language

(This is Part II of a three-part series on technology in the 2020s, for publication while I’m on vacation with my best friend of 44 years.)

CRISPR is an Apple II with Visicalc.

It will take a generation to turn DNA into a programming language, just as it took a generation to get from the Apple II and Netware to the iPhone and cloud-based Internet.

But in 1979 the future of my generation was set in stone. Most of my Rice classmates wound up in the technology world, either as programmers, engineers, executives or (like me) just observers. Few of us were in any of those roles then. It happened gradually, as we saw opportunities and took them.

If you were in the computing field in 1979 and you stayed the course, you’ve probably had a pretty good life. The same is true for the worlds of biology and biochemistry today. This is where your kids are heading, whether they know it or not.

Mine know it.