What Matters to IT in 2008?

Just where do the politics of IT workers lie?

With the presidential election less than a year away, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) took a look at the political concerns of a cross-section of technology professionals.

Topping the list, 29 percent of survey respondents identified the war in Iraq as the greatest challenge facing the next president. Twenty-three percent said that terrorism will be the most important issue, and 19 percent said the top priority would be the economy.

In the second part of the study, which CompTIA authored and enlisted Rasmussen Reports to handle the polling, respondents were asked about issues relating specifically to the tech industry.

An overwhelming majority – 82 percent – said that the government should not regulate the Internet as it does the telephone and television industries. The 12 percent who said they favored government regulation tended to be older, Democrats or women, though no more than one-quarter of any one of those three groups said they wanted more regulation.

When asked about free trade, 48 percent of the respondents said they felt it helps the economy; 37 percent said free trade is bad for the economy.

On the hot-button issue of consumer privacy, 60 percent of IT workers said that the onus is on individuals to protect themselves. Nineteen percent said that the primary responsibility to protect privacy falls to the companies that provide Internet services; 12 percent said it should be the government’s job.

Intellectual property is a different story: 39 percent of the IT workers polled said the government needs to do more to protect intellectual property; 25 percent said less and another 25 percent said the government should maintain its current approach toward protecting IP.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020