Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal wrote a rather curious article last week advising the next president of the United States to “avoid computers.” In it, he asserts a number of rather silly recommendations and opinions about the reality of technology policy in the next administration. The approaches to technology for the two candidates couldn’t be more different: Barack Obama is at ease with his Blackberry and iPod; John McCain is a self-professed ‘computer illiterate.’

Yet, for the either candidate, Gomes recommends a mandated 20 minutes of computer use per day. To him, using a computer is synonymous with “spending the day deleting spam or closing pop-up windows in a browser.” (Personally, I haven’t done either of those things in years; perhaps Gomes should check out Firefox and Gmail…) He continues,

“The president could use his computer time any way he wished: a favorite blog, YouTube videos, a mind-clearing game of Spider Solitaire. So many of his constituents would be doing the same thing at the same time, it would be a good way to keep up with the common folk.”

The common folk? I’m glad to see that blogging, YouTube and Solitaire is how the President can really get in touch with his constituents.

“The severe time rationing is necessary because a computer, far from making you more productive, instead loads you down with things to do, and it’s important for the machine to know who is boss.”

This is absolute nonsense. Technology is the basis for increases in productivity. Of course, the President should use assistants to deal with many tasks, and of course he should use his prestige to meet with people in person, but Gomes and McCain have missed the fundamental importance of computer literacy.

As Kevin Werbach pointed out a couple weeks ago, as digital technology is increasingly foundational to the modern economy, computer literacy isn’t about “being in touch” with the peasants common folk, it is about understanding the realities of the knowledge economy.

“…[T]he US falling behind other countries on both broadband deployment and competition, individual rights violated because the government hasn’t established rules of the road, and the Internet’s magnificent innovation engine in jeopardy” are all important problems that need to be solved. When you have the head of McCain’s technology policy team, Michael Powell, asserting that a “lot of the FCC’s issues aren’t ‘president of the United States’ issues,” you realize just how out-of-touch the campaign is with the importance of getting technology policy right at the highest levels of government.

[Image courtesy of Getty via WSJ]