An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore: on Technology
Tech makes us a force of nature; obligation to use wisely
Mistakes in our dealings with Mother Nature can now have much larger, unintended consequences, because many of our new technologies confer upon us new power without automatically giving us new wisdom.
Some of our new technologies overwhelm the human scale.Our new technologies, combined with our numbers, have made us, collectively, a force of nature.
And those with the most technology have the greatest moral obligation to use it wisely. And this too, is a political issue. Policy matters.
The US is responsible for more greenhouse gas pollution than South America, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, Japan, and Asia--all put together.
Source: An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore, p.247-251
May 26, 2006
Internet restores press integrity lost by 1-way TV dominance
Part of the problem with climate change has to do with a long-term structural change in the way America’s marketplace of ideas now operates. The one-way nature of our dominant communications medium, television, has combined with the increasing
concentration of ownership--the vast majority of media outlets are owned by a smaller and smaller number of large conglomerates that mix entertainment values with journalism--to seriously damage the role of objectivity in America’s public forum. The
propaganda techniques that emerged with the new mass media of the 20th century prefigured the widespread use of related techniques for mass advertising & for political persuasion. Today there are fewer independent journalists with the freedom & stature
to blow the whistle when important facts are consistently being distorted in order to deceive the public. The Internet offers the most hopeful opportunity to restore integrity to the public dialogue, but TV is still dominant in shaping that dialogue.
Source: An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore, p.286-7
May 26, 2006
Page last updated: Sep 27, 2012