Al Gore addresses Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco - November 7, 2008
Al Gore addressed the San Francisco audience at the Web 2.0 Summit with an urgent appeal to assign a purpose to Web 2.0 tools. His address focussed on three themes:
- the democracy crisis: television has removed the democratic view of truth, and interactive Web TV – (Current tv) has the potential to restore it.
- the economic crisis: how to stimulate the economy by undertaking a 10 year project to transform the economy with a national infrastructure project aimed at eliminated America’s dependance on foreign oil by focusting on 100 % renewable and “0 carbon” power sources
- the climate crisis: how to as Gore said, “use Web 2.0 for organizing an imminent rescue of the earth’s climate balance which is now in great jeopardy”
Gore began by addressing Web 2 Summit Attendees, “The election of Barrack Obama would not have been possible without you, the empowerment of individuals to use knowledge as a source of power that has come with Internet.” Gore was referring to the proliferation of blogs and social commentary including the interactivity or user-generated content, social networking and new collaborative projects like Current.tv ‘s interactive projects with Digg.com and Twitter.com to “Hack the Debates” and provide interactive election night coverage on cable TV and the Web.
Web 2.0 has given us all kinds of power to do “gee-wiz” and “wiz-bang” stuff but according to Gore, Web 2.0 is largely operating without a clear purpose. His presentation was a call to the social media community to use Web 2.0 tools to restore democracy and take on global challenges. Are you willing to do your part?
Mr. Gore reminded attendees that it was the printing press that brought civilization out of the dark ages, ushering in democracy.
“1000 years between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, there was a monopoly of information with the church, and the feudal system, the monarchy and all power, economic, political, spiritual was held by the kings and queens. What was sovereign was the new rule of reason. 500 years ago, the introduction of the printing press revolutionized the public sphere.”
The printing press brought about a significant change in the way people came to accept the truth of the information that was being passed on.
“People could connect with one another and search out the best available evidence and crowdsource their version of truth and make a decision about it. And then that matured into the American Constitution which was a miracle and a breakthrough. It’s belated redemption of one of the central pieces of what was celebrated this week (the election of Barrack Obama).”
According to Gore, television has taken away some of the freedom and access to the truth that the printing press first brought about.
“Television, refeudalized the dominant source of information in society, reconcentrated it.“
By putting the distribution of information by the televised media in the hands of a few, television viewers only have access to partial versions of the truth.
The tools for production and distribution of video, until now, has remained in the hands of a relatively small number of people who control which stories need to be told, which information needs to be shared, and this small group of people propose courses of action that we as a people should take.
Web 2.0 has brought about the wide distribution of the tools required for video production, knowledge of how to produce video content and free distribution of video by anyone on the Internet. The Internet is bringing back a broader sense of democracy.
“The Internet comes along and democratizes information. It’s so exciting, All the vibrancy and rules for change are living on the Internet. but television has been dampening it,” said Gore.
“Joel (Hyatt) and I said hey wait a minute, how can we connect tv to the internet and couple it with the new exciting low cost, high quality video production and allow people to make choices about what they see on television. So that’s what Current TV is all about. How do we seed the incredible explosion of new ways of collaborating and securing new information and new wells of creativity?”
The challenge posed by Gore is to move past the Gee-Wiz mentality and find a deeper purpose for the use of these Web 2.0 innovations.
According to Gore, it is vital that climate-related information be kept alive in the cloud so that people can continually be called to respond to the climate crisis. “We’ve got to have a shared set of values that can serves as the basis of decision making on the fly. If everyone is pursing the same vision and using the same values, we’ll have intelligent organizations. The most important goals need to be ranked in terms of importance and urgency to maintain the health of that information ecosystem.”
The polar ice cap is one of those things that has always been there, for millions of years. Gore reminded Web 2 Summit attendees that scientists say there is a “75% chance that the polar ice cap will be totally gone in summer in 5 years”. Our relationship as a species with the planet is risking a wild disruption in planetary weather patterns that have (until now) remained constant for thousands of years. Weather has dictated settlement patterns of people all over the world and within the United States.
“We are completely disrupting things.”
“The purpose I would urge you to take up is to bring about a higher level of consciousness of our relationship with the planet. We have everything we need to save it, create thousands of new jobs, remove our dependance on foreign oil and create economic abundance. The only way to address it is to address the democracy crisis.”
Is Al Gore worried about the movement losing steam?
“It’s interesting… No I’m not at all worried. It is very much in its infancy, barely beginning. I think that we are a couple of years away. The civil activism that is possible right now is just coming into it’s own.
“I feel as if I’ve failed. Even though there is a greater sense of awareness, there is not yet an appropriate response to solve the climate crisis.”
We can create 10 million new jobs
In response to the idea that the economic crisis precludes us doing anything about the climate crisis, Gore steadfastly proposes that the climate crisis offers us away out of the economic crisis. In fact, he posits that the economic crisis gives us a perfect opportunity to create wealth by setting an audacious goal: “Generate 100 % of Americas power from renewable and non-carbon sources.”
“The ideal way to stimulate the economy is with a large infrastructure program. We need to build a Unified National Smart Grid”
Gore’s proposed smart grid has 2 characteristics – power generation and power distribution. By undertaking climate-friendly “0 Carbon” energy harvesting projects: wind from Texas and Southwest, Solar power from the desert and geothermal energy in areas where the earth’s abundant natural heat is easily accessible and then distributing that power to our cities in low voltage, efficient underground electricity network, we can move toward energy independence in a climate-friendly way.
According to Gore, the construction of the National Unified Smart Grid will cost $400 million over four years, compared to $120 million ongoing cost of power generation just to maintain the current system, which is falling well short of meeting our current needs.
“The National Smart Grid will pay for itself in 3.5 years.”
The annual cost of oil to the US economy is $328 billion. $700 billion is the cost of Iraq war until now; a war which in a significant way is designed to protect the worlds largest oil reserves.
“We need a one off investment to create access to fuel that is free forever.”
35 years ago today, Richard Nixon announced the Oil Independence Plan. Back then, we were only relying on 1/3 of our oil from outside of America. Now the U.S. is getting 2/3 of its oil from outside the country.
“We would be fools not to make a transition, create jobs, stimulate the economy and reduce our vulnerability on the national security crisis being brought about by our dependance on foreign oil.”
Gore also proposes, “a national retrofit program to insulate, replace light-bulbs and make homes more efficient.” According to Gore, when our government invests money on improvements, we help people be able to afford to stay in their homes. With energy costs being lowered due to greater efficiency, such a program effectively puts money into people’s savings accounts
Mr. Gore delivered the story of President Kennedy’s proposal to put a man in space within 10 years to back up his bold plan.
“Kennedy proposed that we could land a man on the moon in a decade…. 8 years and 4 months later they made that happen.” Gore reminded the audience that “the engineers in that control room at NASA when man first man walked on the moon had a mean age of 26, which means that when Kennedy made his audacious challenge those engineers were just 18 years old.”
“We can do this.”
Cue the shivers down the back.
Many in the audience would disagree with Mr. Gore in his self assessment that he has failed. In some regard, many instead came away from this closing presentation feeling it is our turn to take action.
Individually and collectively, we have at our disposal powerful tools with which we can lay the groundwork for the future we want to leave our children. I’m planning my next steps.
We need a few heroes. Won’t you join me.
