Crowdsourcing at Presidential Debate No. 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJlnwVCA2eY (fast forward to 5:03)

So, last night as I was watching the second presidential debate of the season, about an hour into it, I got really excited about something - Tom Brokaw asked a question about crowdsourcing! This means one of two things: either a.) Jerry's class is, as he promised, incredibly relevant, or b.) I'm a big huge dork. My hunch is that it's some combination of the two, but that's neither here nor there. (Also neither here nor there: did you ever notice that Tom Brokaw has practically no upper lip? Perhaps there's some medical condition he suffers, in which case I'll feel really bad that I'm writing about it, but my girlfriend pointed it out and I had to concur.)

Anyway, thanks to the wonders of DVR, I pressed rewind and listened to the question again, just to be sure. And indeed, while he didn't use the term "crowdsourcing," his question was no doubt a reference to it. Here is what he said (asked directly to Senator McCain as a follow-up to a discussion about alternative energy sources):

"Should we fund a Manhattan-like Project that developed the nuclear bomb to deal with global energy and alternative energy, or should we fund one-hundred thousand garages across America, the kind of industry and innovation that developed Silicon Valley?"

(Click on the link here or at the top of the page and fast forward to 5:03 to see the clip of this).

Now, without revealing my political leanings, I will say that McCain didn't really answer the question. The beginning of McCain's response was as follows:

"I think pure research and development investment on the part of the U.S. Government is certainly appropriate. I think once it gets into the productive stages that we ought to obviously turn it over to the private sector."

After that, as is so often the case in these debates, he veered away from the question to address something Obama had said about him in the previous segment. So, I was disappointed that he didn't directly address the "Manhattan Project vs. 100,000 garages" part of the question, but still, it was pretty cool to see crowdsourcing arise as an issue to be addressed in a presidential debate.

You want my opinion? So glad you asked. I think it would be great for the government to undertake a crowdsourcing project, particularly in terms of renewable energy sources (which I personally think is one of the most critical, if not the single most critical issue facing our country right now). I mean if crowdsourcing has proven so effective for so many coroporations, why couldn't it work for a government project? (Perhaps the government has already used it in ways I am not aware of. If so, please excuse my ignorance).

Anyway, kudos to Tom Brokaw for asking the question and let me reiterate my dissapointment that it didn't get answered.