Monday, November 17, 2008, 2:55 pm

For the Tech-Forward White House, a Reverse

By J. David Goodman

Evidently there will be no Blackberry One in the White House.

Concerns over e-mail security and the disclosure requirements in the Presidential Records Act, as The New York Times reported yesterday, will force Barack Obama to give up his second “addiction” in as many years. (The first may have been the easier one for the hyperconnected president-elect to leave behind.)

It seems Mr. Obama will be the third Internet-era president obliged to toil in an anachronistic bubble of paper, toner and human interaction while the rest of the world maxes out on the benefits (and costs) of digital productivity.

Yet there was time when the White House was a veritable house of the future. The sitting president enjoyed running water and central heat long before most Americans. Telegraph machines were introduced in 1866 by President Andrew Johnson (a year before his impeachment on technical — not technological — grounds), and electricity has been coursing through presidential wires since 1891.

Harry Truman gave the first speech televised from the White House in 1947, and he believed that the new technology increased his productivity, as he wrote in his memoir during the 1948 Democratic convention:“For the first time it was possible for the President to view the proceedings of the convention on television in the White House, and I was able to witness the major events in Philadelphia without leaving my work.”

During the energy crisis of the 1970s, Jimmy Carter installed solar panels for a heating system on the roof of the West Wing. “No one can ever embargo the sun or interrupt its delivery to us,” he said during the dedication. The panels were removed by Ronald Reagan when he moved in, though they worked fine (and, in fact, still do: they now supply hot water to a dining hall at Unity College in Maine.)

Word processors, and then personal computers, began appearing through the 1980s. E-mail was first introduced in the waning days of George H.W. Bush’s term, and under Bill Clinton, the White House got its own Web page.

So if President Obama won’t be allowed to keep his beloved Blackberry, maybe he can get away with an iPhone? After all, he’s already got his own app.