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SXSW: Al Gore Talks Surveillance Culture, Spider Goats
Nerval's Lobster writes "Former vice president Al Gore sat down with Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg at this year's SXSW conference to talk about the future — specifically, what Gore sees as the dangers and opportunities awaiting the planet for the next few years. Gore drilled down into what he referred to as the "stalker economy." The rise of apps such as SnapChat, which allows smartphone users to control how long friends can view messages, is emblematic of people reaching the "gag point" with pervasive recording and surveillance by government and business. "Our democracy has been hacked," Gore also told his audience, referring to the U.S. Constitution as "our operating system." While there's never been a "golden age" of American Democracy, he added, the perils emerging today are new. "If a Congressman or Senator has to spend five hours a day begging special interests or rich people for money," he said, they'll be more concerned about how what they're saying will appeal to those interests—rather than their constituents. In yet another tangent, Gore railed against genetic engineering, including Spider Goats, which are goats with spliced spider DNA that allows them to secrete spider silk along with their milk. The goats breed, extending that trait to future generations. Gore sees such things as a case of science run amok, alternately creepy and scary."
Spider milk. I wonder what it tastes like...
Tomorrow is another day...
I'm serial!
The flow of money into the U.S. political system, he argued, and the need by politicians to fundraise has led to special interests gaining undue power.
âoeOur democracy has been hacked,â Gore told his audience, referring to the U.S. Constitution as âoeour operating system.â While thereâ(TM)s never been a âoegolden ageâ of American Democracy, he added, the perils emerging today are new. âoeIf a Congressman or Senator has to spend five hours a day begging special interests or rich people for money,â he said, theyâ(TM)ll be more concerned about how what theyâ(TM)re saying will appeal to those interestsâ"rather than their constituents.
Special interests are inevitable in a system that allows politicians to set the rules for businesses and individuals in the first place. The politicians are the ones that hacked the Constitution, they hacked the Law. They figured out how to remove the chains that were placed upon the government to bind it, to provide it with only limited powers (article 1, section 8). Once the politicians found the way (it was easy once the Republic became wealthy enough due to all the business that thrived under the mostly free market system in the first 124 years of the Republic), just promise the people something for nothing and they will vote for you and will let you do whatever you want to the Law. The politicians turned the Republic into a democracy by promising a bunch of stuff to be given out as subsidies and it was popular, because the promise was to make only a minority of people to pay for it (discrimination against a minority based on different levels of income).
So the more power that the government stole from the people by promising them free stuff, the more lucrative it became for politicians to keep power and the more competitive the field of politics became because it brought with it much more power than it was ever designed to give to the politicians.
Politicians are today's Rock Stars, they live better than the rest of the public, they get all this respect for some reason, they get the best deals on everything (trust me, companies like large banks, credit card companies, even phone companies have lists of 'higher class' people to provide a much better service and not to bug in case they break the rules, and these lists include politicians and their various friends).
It's lucrative to be a politician, and so it is very competitive and it gives so much power that wasn't meant to be there, that's why there is all this money pouring in - those are bribes to leave people alone in many cases.
You can't handle the truth.
Sad to see his stance on genetic engineering is so negative. How does he expect us to recover so many extinct species and continue to advance if we don't master our biological side?
Those goats aren't being thrown out in the wild to breed, they're being used to create stronger materials that will likely be used to protect us from the dangers of climate change. Sure we have risks of contamination, but to be put off advancement because of what-ifs would mean we'd still be in caves fearing the wrath of fire.
Spider Goat, Spider Goat,
makes the thread for your spider coat!
Spins cloth with eight legged speed,
Any color, any weave.
Take note,
Here comes the Spider Goat!
Spidergoat, the secondary menace to Al after, of course, man-bear-pig.
When Bill Clinton was president he sold top secret ICBM technology to the Chinese in return for cash donations to the DNC, specifically his and Gore's election campaigns. This is fact. When asked about it during a debate between Gore and Bush, Gore's response was "No controlling legal authority" meaning that Janet Reno was the only one authorized to prosecute and she was told not to.
I really have a hard time listening to Gore, especially when it comes to campaign contributions. What he and Clinton did was treason, period, and he abused his power to not be prosecuted.
I used to own stock in the company that made spider goats.
When it was first announced I thought it was a great idea and would lead to a business producing a useful product. Spider silk is strong stuff which and would have many useful applications such as lightweight rope and lightweight body armor.
Although the goats made the spider silk proteins, the company never figured out the trick of making actual silk. Some process in the spinnerets of the spiders turns the proteins into silk, and the company was unable to reproduce this effect.
They sold off the IP for the process, and vanished into obscurity. I don't think anyone has figured out what the missing step was. (This was a couple of years ago - may have been solved since.)
I see nothing wrong with using animals in this way - as factories for producing useful products. The goats weren't mistreated (unlike chickens we raise for food). We do the same thing with other animals without the genetic engineering aspect - wool from sheep, for example.
Al Gore is right on one thing. Since the politician who gathers the most campaign contributions tends to win elections, we have a system in place now where the best sell outs get in office. This means politicians do things like make pork projects to special interests, and the special interests pay them kickbacks, all increasing the national debt. At one point the phone company and monopolies were supposed to be regulated by the government. Now corporations regulate the government by writing the legislation for them. Unless we change how campaign contributions work, the system will eventually fail because the national debt's interest becomes more and more of the total tax dollars taken in. Politicians in charge now won't change campaign contributions, because that's how they get paid, that's how they play the game and feel they're winning. But the people's interest aren't always the same interests as corporate interests, and the politicians might not give a damn about the people, but just themselves. This is the biggest problem of democracy as I see it now.
God spoke to me
Ford flew to Jakarta to accept a large donation on the day Indonesia invaded East Timor, and then the US used it's regional influence and UN veto to ensure that Indonesia was left alone. Policy has been set by foreign powers donating to US political parties for quite a while and what looks like it should be treason is sometimes just the way both parties operate, and why outsiders like myself see the US political system as a corrupt shadow of what it was supposed to be.
If we dismiss arguments with "the speaker is a hypocrite" then NOBODY will EVER listen to ANYBODY because we are ALL hypocrites.
FOR GOODNESS SAKE, stop associating ideas with the mouths from which they emerge, and
LET IDEAS STAND OR FALL ON THEIR MERIT
NOT ON WHO SUPPOSEDLY SAID THEM