At least for me. He seems to be interested in, and understand technology.

That tech acumen showed up again last week when -- after months in an unofficial shadow campaign -- Thompson announced he would kick off his official run for the White House with a webcast this Thursday.

Hmm. I guess this counts for technical acumen.

"accused of ignoring the realities of a digitally networked era."

I hate buzz-phrases like this. They hint at "realities" but never state what they actually are. The connotation being that something about these unspecified conditions inexplicably trump "old wisdom".

Airy abstractions don't really say anything at all though, other than "look at our cool gadgets".

I'm not meaning to imply that there aren't unique conditions in the modern world. But you can't dismiss someones "conservatism" without specifying why their reasoning is actually wrong.

I hate buzz-phrases like this. They hint at "realities" but never state what they actually are.

And there's always the assumption that new realities require more central planning, more government control, and less freedom.

Somehow, they never consider that the opposite may be true: That as society becomes more complex, centralized planners become even *less* capable of analyzing and controlling everything and individual initiative is more necessary.

TnT,
that's not the sum total of Fred's acumen and you knew that when you cherry picked that phrase. It wasn't even implied that way in the article. I'll bet you thought Howard Dean was really cool because he was so "internet savy" 4 years ago. That was the term the MSM used a hundred times then. As if Dean ran the website himself from the campaign bus.

I notice you haven't commented above yet on the Hsu item posted there. Just couldn't find a snappy one liner to make that sound or look better, huh?