Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

[katty]

more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/21/AR2009012104249.html

Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

President Obama, with Vice President Biden, finishes signing one of his executive orders on his first full day in office. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2009; Page A01

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

1. Unfortunately, Bush's fear of robot overlords meant the WH staff

had to keep most of their records on velum and papyrus.

[slewfoot]

2. Hell, I'm surprised that they didn't find hammers, chisels, and stone tablets. N/T

[Jkid]

3. And I thought we're #1 in everything...

I did not see this coming.

[Dr.Phool]

4. Did they at least leave the "O"s on the keyboards?

[Fire1]

5. Now, THAT'S funny!! lol!