Brewster in the Economist

The Economist (UK) gives proper respect to Brewster Kahle and Archive.org in their March 6 “Brain scan: The internet’s librarian.”

It would be easy to dismiss Mr Kahle as an idealistic fruitcake, but for one thing: he has an impressive record when it comes to setting lofty goals and then lining up the people and technology needed to get the job done. “Brewster is a visionary who looks at things differently,” says Carole Moore, chief librarian at the University of Toronto. “He is able to imagine doing things that everyone else thinks are impossible. But then he does them.”

David Burney

David Burney of New Kind writes in Business Week’s Nussbaum on Design that “President Obama Goes Optimistic. Obama Is The Design President.”

Since the earliest days of his campaign, it is clear that President Obama possesses a genuine understanding of design and open source thinking. He is a gifted communicator who aligns perfectly the form/media of his messages with the content he’s delivering. His principles, words and actions are in sync. When he speaks of ‘bottoms up’ problem solving, he ‘gets’ it far beyond intellectual and competitive theory arguments. I’d say that’s a good set of attributes to describe the ‘designer’ of the future.

Matthew Szulik

Matthew Szulik of Red Hat has recommendations for the economic health and the health of health services in North Carolina in an oped piece in the News and Observer called “State Needs a New Economic Plan.”

Create an authentic private/public partnership. In 1980, federal legislation created the Bayh-Dole Act with the purpose of developing public university/private company technical partnerships. Sadly, I believe the Bayh-Dole Act has become outdated in our digitally connected society. The rapid pace of innovation in software and hardware technologies reduces the economic value of these patents to the university system when these innovations could be fully monetized by the private sector. I propose that North Carolina “open source” the university technology and intellectual property portfolios into the public domain and place these assets in the hands of entrepreneurs who can create jobs. North Carolina has an opportunity to take the lead in creating authentic public partnerships through open source and open, collaborative and innovative models.

Carl Malamud

Carl Malamud, who should be the next Public Printer of the USA, gets his proper respect from the Federal Times “Data for the masses” and from Mother Jones (no known relation to the blogger) “President Obama, Appoint Carl Malamud!” which contains the immortal line “Carl Malamud is a badass.”

If appointed as head of GPO, the 49-year-old Malamud promises big changes. Among them: Make all legal materials readily accessible; tighten bonds with the nation’s librarians; create a United States Publishing Academy to educate the rest of government on how to print and publish effectively in the modern age; overhaul the Federal Register to be more useable and accessible; and post government Web sites and information to be more prominent on the Internet. From Federal Times.