LIVE from Town Hall: Gore traces the origins of democracy and the rule of reason
Gore is now talking about "information ecology", science's understanding of the human mind, and the beginning of democracy in ancient Athens.
"For the thousand year period between the fall of Rome and through the Renaissance, democracy had disappeared...The inacessibility of knowledge to the majority of people supported the structure of feudalism."
But then, Gore said, the printing press sparked a new revolution was born. "Out of this new information ecosystem a new reality was born."
"The philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment was born of this new reality."
"After ancient Athens and Rome, we were the first big break in that pattern," Gore said of America's founding being an interruption of traditional autocratic regimes.
"The print medium and the ecosystem that flowed out of it was open and accessible, and a meritocracy of ideas."
"In the 1920s, radio was the first significant challenge to the printing press. But newspapers still reigned supreme."
"In the devastating interwar period, radio served as the single most powerful of the tools Hitler used to indoctrinate that generation of vulnerable Germans. Mussolini, likewise relied on radio. Goebbels said, without radio it would have been impossible for the Nazis to do what they did."
"For the thousand year period between the fall of Rome and through the Renaissance, democracy had disappeared...The inacessibility of knowledge to the majority of people supported the structure of feudalism."
But then, Gore said, the printing press sparked a new revolution was born. "Out of this new information ecosystem a new reality was born."
"The philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment was born of this new reality."
"After ancient Athens and Rome, we were the first big break in that pattern," Gore said of America's founding being an interruption of traditional autocratic regimes.
"The print medium and the ecosystem that flowed out of it was open and accessible, and a meritocracy of ideas."
"In the 1920s, radio was the first significant challenge to the printing press. But newspapers still reigned supreme."
"In the devastating interwar period, radio served as the single most powerful of the tools Hitler used to indoctrinate that generation of vulnerable Germans. Mussolini, likewise relied on radio. Goebbels said, without radio it would have been impossible for the Nazis to do what they did."
