44th President of those United States

I say 'those' because I'm not American. However I have nothing but good feelings for my neighbours to the South nearly 99.999% of the time. With this new President will come a great number of changes in Science, Technology and Environmental policies.

Some of the changes that I await with Excitement:
The creation of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) position, this is an important step to bring the American Government's Policies and Technology into the 21st Century.
The replacement of the current FCC Chairperson, with someone who is able to understand and work with the desires of consumers and business.
Finally the Changes in Energy Policy driven by people like Steven Chu as the Energy Secretary, while still having someone running the EPA who actually understands the environments needs/limits.

Ultimately though I wish them (the Americans) more satisfaction with this administration than they had with the last one.

Watching the inauguration of Obama some things resonated with me. This is an office that has passed non-violently between it's holders 44 times now in history. This is a remarkable achievement for any country when you look at the longer history for Humans. When I read Speculative Fiction I typically find Democracies to be in the minority. Many times it's the dream of a protagonist, but just as many times I've seen it reviled by characters. The sad thing is that rarely a different alternative to Democracy is presented in these stories other than the various forms of Tyranny that we've known throughout history.

Why is it that a world with spaceships, massive power generation ability, and advanced biomedical treatments has a King? Technology both changes and enables change within the societies that spawns it. It is illogical to expect modern soldiers to carry swords on the battlefield, not when Guns exist. It should be equally illogical to expect future societies to govern themselves in limited traditional manners when new technology will exist.

I don't buy a King with a spaceship, but I would buy something like Realtime Democracy, a constant monitoring of opinions and beliefs of the existent society. If you watch 24 hour news you might believe we are already there.