Why Americans are technology, political, and educational laggards and how it will doom them
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2946&tag=nl.e540...
Compared to other parts of the world, we're a relatively unsophisticated bunch, us Americans. And that culture of convenience, laziness, and ignorance is going to doom the US in the long run because of how it will deprive America of its edge in other areas where it was once a beacon to the world. Democracy is one of those. Education the other.
On the political front, we are no longer a nation of people that goes deep on the issues and seeks out the truth. I'd like to believe there was a time when the majority of Americans were passionate about democracy and politics. But perhaps I'm fooling myself. The People, helped along by a failing media complex, have established a preference for fast food politics. Forget any real exploration. Just give us the sound bites please, thank you very much.
Just yesterday, our culture of political convenience was probed and picked apart on National Public Radio when Tom Ashbrook interviewed Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein whose book Politics Lost: How American Democracy was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid was published this month. American democracy is being trivialized because we Americans are letting it happen. During the show, one caller remarked on how John Kerry as a communicator was very different in his town meetings leading up to the 2004 Presidential Election than he was on TV in front of the news cameras. Al Gore was the same way.
Before interviewing Gore on stage at one of Research In Motion's annual Wireless Symposiums (this year's event is coming up next month), I spent some time with him backstage. I felt like I was talking to someone I'd never met or seen before. I've heard the same about President Bush too. I'm not sure it's their fault. The law of political information supply and demand practically says there's no demand for the person with the biggest supply of information. Cure the sound-bites please (and kill democracy while you're at it).
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