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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (40472)	8/28/2002 6:06:05 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I agree, but when recognizing that it wasn't till the Clinton admin that the White House got updated to the computer age, this is not so surprising. I think both parties were using slide rules and tin cans tied to strings before that. ;^) There were computers in the White House in 92. Mainframes and terminals, I believe it was, but computers nonetheless. I believe it was the horrid phone system Clinton complained about loudest. And they were still using teletypes and wire services. Wow. Derek

To: SirRealist who wrote (40472)	8/28/2002 6:15:29 AM
From: D. Long	Respond to of 281500

Here's a reference I found that is interesting re:White House technology circa 1992. Interesting little bit of historical trivia. :) cni.org AM-CLINTON-COMMUNICATIONS (SCHEDULED) CLINTON MAKING WHITE HOUSE COMPUTER FRIENDLY By Steve Holland WASHINGTON, Reuter - Bill Clinton's aides knew the White House phone system left something to be desired when they discovered the operators transferring calls by plugging cords into holes. Then the president himself tried to arrange his own conference call and found he could not do it without getting an operator or a secretary involved. ``I was amazed,'' Clinton said later, showing frustration probably similar to that of President Rutherford B. Hayes, who installed the first phone at the White House in 1877 but had nobody to call because few people had phones then. For Clinton, it was not long before a deluge of calls from Americans interested in expressing their opinions on topics ranging from Zoe Baird to gays in the military overwhelmed the White House, which could handle only 5,000 calls a day. Phones either went unanswered or people found a constant busy signal. It was a terrible embarrassment for Clinton, whose 1992 campaign prided itself for its communications and whose headquarters could accept 60,000 calls a day. His immediate reaction was to blame the Republicans. ``The other crowd had the White House for 12 years, and they have presented themselves as businesslike and modern, you know, and tried to make the Democrats look like yesterday's crowd. Well, when I got to the White House, guess what I found? Same phone system Jimmy Carter had,'' he said recently referring to the last Democrat to win the White House. For 200 years the White House has been subjected to the whims of the presidents and every occupant has left a mark on the place, whether it be Harry Truman's complete rebuilding job or Jackie Kennedy's redecorating. Now, Clinton and his team are trying to bring White House phones and the executive mansion's computer system up to date and ready for the 21st century. ``It's a yesterday place, and we need to make it a tomorrow place,'' Clinton said. Some of this work is falling to Jeff Eller, Clinton's director of media affairs, a moustachioed fellow who lives and breathes computer software, electronic mail, satellite uplinks and the like. ``Tyson's Chicken had a better phone system than we had in the White House before we got here,'' says Eller, referring to a large Arkansas business that Clinton's Little Rock headquarters surpassed as the state's largest in phone capacity when his campaign picked up steam last year. Eller says there is a generational, philosophical and emotional gap between the new White House team and that of George Bush, who only learned how to use a computer in the last couple of years and often complained he could not program his television video cassette recorder. ``What I'm talking about is that we are for the most part younger, computer literate, comfortable with computers and understand their value in moving information,'' Eller said. The Clinton team has already installed a comments line for everyday Americans to phone in their concerns. It's 202-456-1111. And the team is working to allow the system to accept more calls, helping out the half-dozen or so weary operators who still plug patch cords into holes to transfer calls -- a system that apparently dates back at least to the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s. Clinton's assistants are also seeing how they can expand the capacity of an obsolete mainframe computer and adapt it for easier access to ``E-mail,'' an electronic mail system in which people can quickly send messages to each other via computer terminals. Troubled by the sight of an old wire service teletype printer when he got to the White House, Eller is improving the ability to call up news on more computer terminals rather than printing out stories and copying them for distribution. ``Emotionally, our heads are always in touch with the news cycle. That's how we think,'' Eller said. ``We believe that the more information you share, the better you're going to be.'' REUTER