As you will see from my biography, I have been a computer engineer, scientist and executive in Silicon Valley for more than thirty years. Just like all of you, I worked hard to succeed in my career and contributed to making Silicon Valley what it is today. We have indeed triumphed as it was pointed out in the recent PBS program "Triumph of the Nerds". I was not featured in the show, but I was certainly there. I hired Bill Gates and Gary Kildall (before they were famous) as consultants to HP to help my team build the best OS for the early palm tops, I introduced UNIX to HP by buying the first 32-bit license, I licensed Small Talk '81 for HP from Xerox PARC, and I brought Andy Bechtolsheim from Stanford with the "SUN" board to HP for a potential technology transfer before SUN was established. I founded the Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop, now in its 24th year, and I still run the IEEE Computer Society's annual technical conference, COMPCON. Finally, I was among the first members of the MPEG technical committee representing HP. My evangelism about multimedia and interactive video resulted in HP getting in the Video Server business. As we say: "been there, done all that".
Triumph of the nerds in technology and business is only the first step in a long process. Now that we have successfully created an information industry that is causing a business revolution and becoming the world's foremost economic engine, much like the industrial revolution of the previous century, we must protect this industry from government regulation and other perils that threaten to suffocate it. I don't need to remind you about CDA, encryption, escrow keys, digital wiretapping, FCC regulation/deregulation, government information access, profiting schemes from public information, taxing network transactions, frivolous law suits, etc.
A few people, like columnist Jim Warren, organizations, like EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and forums such as SAFE (Security and Freedom through Encryption), and CCFP (Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy), have been helpful in educating, advocating and lobbying elected officials with some success. Once the advocacy slows down, legislators go back to their ignorance.
The bottom line is that nerds must now triumph in government just as we did in industry. It is the only way to protect the industry we worked so hard to create. We can not triumph by being outside and lobbying. We must get inside government and work as insiders.
I am soliciting your support and your help in making effective and constructive use of the Internet to promote my campaign and help send me to the California State Assembly. The network is a very powerful tool that we have available to us if we organize and use if effectively. I will leave it up to each individual to decide how they can help. The key is to penetrate the Internet users in my District and convince them to vote for me as well as to have them do some proselytizing among friends, neighbors, and relatives. You can post my web site address on bulletin boards, send messages to lists you belong, and even put ads such as "Help send a high tech person to the State Assembly" at the top page of commonly accessed sites. My web site address is http://www.laliotis.org. There is also a form "How you can help" that you can click at the top page that gives you additional options. I hope to be the first successful high tech practitioner in California State Government and to be followed up by many others once I blaze a trail.
Sincerely,
Ted Laliotis
Candidate for California State Assembly
ted@laliotis.org
Return to Home PageE-mail: ted@laliotis.org
61 Doud Drive, Los Altos, California 94022
Phone 415.941.1752 * Fax 415.941.6721