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May 18, 2007

Gore Decries Television, Praises Internet

Time has an excerpt available online from Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason. In it, he asks the question "Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned?"

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong.

If you share that feeling, then you'll be very interested in what he has to say about it. He doesn't point at the President or the media or anyone else we tend to want to blame. He points directly at us and our addiction to television.

Our Founders' faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry, their ingenious design for checks and balances, and their belief that the rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people. The Founders took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas so that knowledge could flow freely. Thus they not only protected freedom of assembly, they made a special point—in the First Amendment—of protecting the freedom of the printing press. And yet today, almost 45 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers. Reading itself is in decline. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by the empire of television. … According to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes every day—90 minutes more than the world average. When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time the average American has.

I've got to tell you, before I even got to where Gore said it I already had concluded that the answer to this problem of reasoned public debate is the Internet. We need to get more people into reading and debating issues on the Internet, where they are actively engaged by speaking their mind, facing challenges to their views, and learning from each other. It is amazingly powerful.

Even more amazing to me personally is how my own view of Al Gore has been completely transformed over the past year. Although I don't agree with him politically in a number of areas, I have to admit the man is an incredible visionary who, through his activism in the development of the Internet and in increasing public awareness of global warming, has had an incredibly powerful and positive long-term impact on the future of this country and of the planet itself. He is the classic example of why the demonization of individuals whose politics are different from your own is so harmful.

Posted by Becky at May 18, 2007 11:09 AM