"I think that the influence of television over the last half century has been harmful to the operations of our democracy," said Gore. "In the age of our founding, and for much of the history of the republic, crucial. Individuals could gain easy access to information and could express their own views. They can't do that on television."Actually they can, if they want to put the work in to learn the craft - and television is not an easy medium to master when it comes the art of expression, mostly due to the constraints of time and the number of people it takes to make it run. But it's doable, especially now that you can take high quality video with something as simple as your phone. Get good enough at it or be at the right place at the right time, and television will be happy to slap it on the air because television has a voracious appetite for content.
And I would quibble about the phrase "easy access to information"; that only became possible for the masses after the start of the Industrial Age, a relatively short while ago. In our early history, collections of information came in the form of academic and social libraries which were a privilege of the wealthy.
Go on...
"They get plenty of information from it, but they can't participate in a dialogue or engage in collaborative decision-making," he went on. "But the internet is now growing in importance and pervasiveness, to the point where soon it may offer an alternative to the TV media environment that reinvigorates democracy. I'm hoping that's the case."Um, yeah, it has been for more than a decade now. Some of us had these great things called "blogs" where we expressed the hell out of ourselves about democracy. Who is going to tell Al what "collaborative decision making" about democracy on the internet looks like?
But thanks for the heads up sir. Will take your words under advisement.