Dvorak: Web 2.0, Web 1.0, open source irrelevant to pols

All the recent hype about Democrats being more adept than Republicans at utilizing the Internet to further their cause and rally the masses, has PC Magazine blogger John C. Dvorak in a tizzy.

No voter, politician or journalist comes out looking highly educated when it comes to the Internet, he says. He makes an exception for kids and young adults who can't vote or aren't interested in voting anyway.

In what dimension of the space-time continuum are we speaking? The fact is that few members of either party at the national level have the time or the inclination to catch up to Web 1.0, let alone Web 2.0. The general public can barely keep up. The only people who do seriously keep up are the kids and young adults ages 10 to 25. Of them, only a few are of legal voting age, and most skip the process as a futile waste of time.

Dvorak makes an intriguing proposal:

Each member of Congress should be asked to tell us how the Internet works and what it does. Then they would tell us how they use it. This would be some of the funniest material ever! You might go one step further and ask about Linux and the importance or relevance of the open-source movement. I'd love to see the stuttering. If even 10 percent of our Congress knows how to use a computer with any expertise, I'd be surprised. Seriously, I would be."

The problem is who would ask such questions of the politicians: How many Washington reporters would be able to explain how the Internet works or what open source software is?