I suddenly understand something really important about Gore's new network.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

He really does get it and he is actually smarter than most of us. Why did we lose the last election?(even though we didn't really, why did people even think it was POSSIBLE that we lost the last election?) We lost because of the Media.

Anyone who saw the oceans of humanity that protested at the RNC and then . . nothing in the mainstream media. Only people who watched C-Span had any idea of the immensity of the protest. Well, now we won't have to rely on the Corporate Republican American Press or CRAP anymore!! Gore's network, Current, actually does empower Joe Average to be the street reporter in their precinct for the next elections.

If I might suggest a media project: I've heard about Parallel Voting where people went to register their vote with a third party - how about if people who didn't mind losing the confidentiality of their vote were able to sit in a little chair and say "I voted for _____" especially in places with no paper trail?

[knowbody0]

1. i would gladly give up privacy to have my vote count

[tk2kewl]

5. how about your privacy for your security?

[knowbody0]

9. no

[tk2kewl]

10. don't give up your rights for anything

[troubleinwinter]

15. "i would gladly give up"

This is extremely disturbing.

Why would you negotiate away your RIGHTS?

They are not just YOURS, you know. They belong to all Americans. Now and future. They are RIGHTS, not daisy flowers. They are not to be negotiated away. They must be rigorously defended.

[Melodybe]

16. Current rocks on hour of current is better and more honest

than the last 5 years of the corporate media.

Gore is brilliant, he gave us the internet, and now we have Current.

Channel 366 on Direct TV, give it an hour and something you see in that hour will change your life.

And no I'm not kidding.

[wli]

2. well, that and far beyond massive election fraud n/t

[autorank]

3. Gores REVENGE

Gore is very smart--he enabled the Internet as anyone who knows knows!

I've seen portions of some of the shows and the ads for staff/citizen reporters...it's great. Lots of people will watch. Hell,I'm tired of just CSPAN and movies/The Sopranos,etc.

Rock on Al. Put them all out of bueiness and hire back the snotty reporters as pages...

[Fridays Child]

4. Since the day the presidency was stolen from him, Al Gore has been...

...studying the role of the media in that theft. He gets it way better than anyone, I'd say.

[Sick_of_Rethuggery]

7. He has always been a student of the media.

He started his career as a reporter at the Tennessean and somewhere in his real student days, one of his theses was also on the role of the media (I think may be on the Nixon election or something like that).

He really is far more far-sighted than most politicians...

[kodi]

6. we all live on that boundary between being an observer and participant

we are both the observer of the news and the news itself.

gore's network is helping to articulate that realization.

once people catch on to it and consciously realize that they are what they are observing, it can become a very powerful social movement.

must be a grateful dead thing, you are the eyes of the world observing yourself.

[patrioticliberal]

8. I doubt it

The network will magically not accept those submitted videos if there's anything about the elections....just watch.

[0rganism]

14. Why not try it first?

Let's not make any unnecessary presuppositions as to what will and will not be allowed on the channel.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

11. And don't forget about Independent World Television News too

http://www.iwtnews.com/

read about it, contribute if you can. The sooner we throw off the shackles of the asinine, inane, irresponsible American mainstream media - the freer we will be.

[Stephanie]

12. They did something like that in Yugoslavia

there's a great documentary on PBS called "Taking Down a Dictator" and it showed how the students organized and they their own crews doing exit polling and they knew exactly what the count should be and when he stole it they went on strike -

[elfin]

13. It's OK.... but

I REALLY miss NWI. I don't think "Current" will catch on without a huge pr/media blitz. Their audience isn't the one who used NWI.

I wish I could get Canadian news all day.

[insane_cratic_gal]

17. Be the Media

We've been saying it since the discovery that "liberal media" is actually on a corporate pay roll and caters to what story is popular. All the while disregarding truth, integrity, and award winning journalism we expected from our press.

So be it, I don't care who the media or journalist is, so long as the truth is finally being told.

[tomg]

18. I don't know if Current, in and of itself,

is going to survive. It may or may not; however, it is pretty clear that what it potentially represents - a collapse of the traditional boundaries amongst what have historically been three different groups: the consumers of information; the distributors of information; and the producers of information - is rife with potential. It is a much more advanced version of real public access television from the early 70s, but here the cost of production has radically dropped and the means of production is much simpler, making more and more people potential "producers" of information. It also expands what constitutes the "community." To a great extent, what we are seeing is the next step in a rather long history that goes back, at least in the west, to Plato's Phaedrus where he complains about "writing" and how the "technology" of writing is wrong. The Greeks, if I recall, had just introduced vowels into their written alphabet ( about 120 years earlier) which meant that if you could learn the individual letters, you could read and, potentially, write. Fun with Phonics. And potentially produce texts. Now you did not hierarchically transmit pieces of knowledge ( I know stuff I tell - or refuse to tell you - stuff) so much convey a means of accessing (and producing) that knowledge. And that changed who controlled the flow of information. This is potentially - and it is only potentially - a next step in the process of what is essentially the democratization of the text ( there have been a whole number of "steps" in the process.) Which is not to say it won't get co-opted or won't turn to crap, but it ( not Current, per se, but the process) is potentially very explosive.

Sorry to go on. Oh, and the irony is that, given my age, I can only watch it in short spurts. I am more linear and narrative in orientation, as are most 55 year olds. Still, it is pretty flipped out.

[Cocoa]

19. he was ahead of the curve on the Internet

maybe Current will be huge.

[Melodybe]

21. Agree what an hour of current and see if you are not addicted

Current will be huge! I love Al Gore!

[are_we_united_yet]

20. "Corporate Republican American Press"

I fell off my chair.
:rofl: