PalmPower interviews Al Gore

.KEYWORD goreinterview
.FLYINGHEAD THE PALMPOWER INTERVIEW
.TITLE PalmPower interviews Al Gore
.FEATURE
.SPOTLIGHT FIGALT goreinterview-cover.gif
.SUMMARY Presidential candidate Al Gore is known to be an active Palm device user, wearing it most days on his belt. PalmPower Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz had the opportunity to ask Mr. Gore a few short questions. We’re proud to bring you the results of this exclusive interview with the candidate.
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.BEGIN_TABLE 2

Setting up an interview with a presidential candidate is both more and less work than you’d expect. Generally, you set up an industry interview by calling a facilitator, basically a public relations person who has the job of managing press interactions. When we decided we wanted to interview the candidates, we started the same way we would for any industry interview and called a press relations person in each of the campaigns.

Of course, when setting up an industry interview, most people are familiar with our publication. But when setting up interviews with the men who would be king, you’ve got to go through their staff, not all of whom are experts on the Palm economy. However, they are responsive to audience. When they realized just how many readers we have (and our incredibly valuable demographics), we started to get taken seriously–at least by the Gore campaign.

When you call the Gore campaign’s pressroom, you get to talk to a real person, who then shunts the call off to the right handler. When you call the Bush campaign’s pressroom, you get an answering machine. So far, the sum total of our contact with the Bush campaign has been with their answering machine. As answering machine messages go, it’s pleasant. But about all we can tell you about Bush’s techno-savvy is that he’s got an answering machine.

By contrast, Al Gore wears his Palm device on his belt. His press team was excellent at qualifying us as potential interviewers and at making arrangements with the Vice President. (Although, at one point, it sank in that we were dealing with the actual Vice President of the United States and we started to wonder if black vans would show up outside the office.)

A presidential candidate is perhaps the busiest guy in the world. He’s got to somehow talk to 200 million or so people in about two months and get them to buy into his vision. This means he’s always talking, and pretty much never sleeping. So when the Gore campaign granted us a one-on-one interview with their candidate, they were very specific: we would get a very thin block of his insane schedule. We would have time for exactly four questions, and while we really wanted to know what Al’s favorite third-party applications were, we decided to get serious and ask "the important questions."

.H1 The interview
And now, PalmPower interviews Al Gore:

.Q Gewirtz
You’re reputed to be an active Palm computer user. What do you use your device for?

.A Gore
I use the Internet and my PDA everyday and for everything. I’ve purchased books and Christmas gifts online. On my Web site (at http://www.algore.com), anyone can subscribe to receive campaign updates on their PDA. I am committed to using the Internet in my campaign to make this a truly interactive campaign–the very first in history.

.Q Gewirtz
As an Internet publisher, I’ve got to ask this question. What’s the real story behind the "invented the Internet" thing?

.A Gore
I would have to say that my biggest mistake was my choice of words when I claimed to have taken the lead in Congress for creating the Internet. I am proud of what I did in that area. I did hold hearings, secure money, talk about the idea of an information superhighway, and take the initiative in the Congress to provide funding for the people who later on created what became the Internet.

.Q Gewirtz
What’s your vision for the future of the Internet in American government and society?

.A Gore
I think the Internet is important to our economy and our society for at least three reasons.

First, the Internet has become an engine of growth for the U.S. economy. In the last three years, information technology has accounted for a third of U.S. economic growth. It is generating jobs that pay almost 80 percent more than the average private sector wage. Electronic commerce is growing at an incredible rate and could exceed $1.5 trillion by the year 2003 in the U.S. alone. Increasingly, all firms are using the Internet to increase their productivity, slash the time required to develop new products, and experiment with new business models.

Second, the Internet has the potential to improve our quality of life. Americans are using the Internet to improve the way we educate our children, expand access to high-quality health care in under-served rural communities, and gain the skills they need to compete for high-wage jobs using distance learning.

Finally, the Internet is triggering the biggest change in human communications since the development of the printing press. Unlike traditional communications media, the Internet allows people to be both producers as well as consumers of information and is enabling the formation of communities based on shared interest as opposed to geography.

.Q Gewirtz
You have the opportunity to reach millions of influential, online readers through this interview in PalmPower. Is there any message you’d specifically like to give them?

.A Gore
I believe that one of the strengths of the Internet is its ability to provide unfettered access to a vast universe of information and services. That is why I have argued for and promoted the administration’s generally "hands-off" policy when it comes to the Internet. At the same time, just as the government had a role in technology that underlies the Internet, I believe the federal government must continue to invest in the long-term research that can ensure that innovation continues. Federal investments in research, including those I sponsored as a member of Congress, helped to make the Internet what it is today.

Going forward, I support a doubling of basic Information Technology research and continue to promote the Next Generation Internet initiative to help develop new technologies that allow us to reach network speeds up to 1000 times faster than today’s Internet. I also support making the R&D tax credit permanent to spur greater private sector innovation.

In other areas, I believe that government, industry, and the non-profit sector must work in close cooperation to solve problems that affect the Internet. For example, I worked with 25 of the largest Internet companies to develop a parent’s protection page where parents can go to protect children from material that they think is inappropriate. In response to a spate of service disruptions earlier this year, President Clinton and I convened a meeting at the White House with leaders of the high-tech industry and experts on computer security to discuss how to maximize the promise and minimize the risks to the Internet.

.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Resources
For more information on Al Gore’s campaign, visit http://algore.com.

For more information on the Democratic National Committee, visit http://www.democrats.org.

For more information on George W. Bush’s campaign, visit http://www.georgewbush.com.

For more information on the Republican National Committee, visit http://www.rnc.org.

For an article in The Piloteer Magazine on how George W. Bush’s campaign staff makes use of Palm devices, visit http://www.pmn.co.uk/public/piloteerxiii/vip.html.

.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR

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