Technology expert Tim O’Reilly says he believes former U.S. president Ronald Reagan is the true godfather of Foursquare and other geo-location services.
According to O’Reilly, Reagan was instrumental in opening the government-built GPS network to the private sector, which allowed companies to subsequently develop and offer a wide range of services.
”The government built this hard infrastructure and opened it up to the market,” O’Reilly told an SXSW panel on Friday.
“I didn’t agree with Reagan’s politics but I loved that he had values.”
O’Reilly – who coined the phrase Web 2.0 – also noted that major technology companies such as Google and Facebook are driven by people with values.
“Larry Page and Sergei Brin and Mark Zuckerberg are wrestling with problems out of love.
“I can’t think of a great company that didn’t have a big vision… [But] we [still] need a hell of a lot more engineers driving policy and fewer lawyers.”
[Via Telegraph UK]
