Kerry: The Internet is making it hard o govern

[freedombecki]

John Kerry: 'This Little Thing Called the Internet ... Makes It Much Harder to Govern'

"Well, folks," he said, "ever since the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed that were tamped down for centuries by dictators, and that was complicated further by this little thing called the internet and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day than most people can process in months or a year -"

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Oh poor John, the Internet has made it SO much harder for him and his miscreant pals to fool all of the people, all of the time. I'd suggest sending him a purple heart to honor his suffering but ......

The INTERNETS is now officially the 4th branch of government. We shall not be silenced. There are no longer taboo subjects.

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You're right, Contumacious. The Internet has replaced lying news media. If we want to know something about our government, the British papers already have the scoop, and we no longer depend on the lying leftist press to decide for us what corrupt thing is foisted against the people by ambitious women and men in Congress who have forgotten the very people who voted them in to do the nation's business.

 

[francoHFW]

OP- ..."FOR DICTATORS", hater dupes. WTF is wrong with you people.

And Gore never said he invented the internet, fools.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

 

[Billo_Really]

You don't have a right to the internet. You have to show an ID to buy beer, so you should have to produce a DHS-approved Internet ID before getting online. It will make things easier for the NSA and the world safer for democracy. Anyone against democracy is a commie *** hell bent on bringing down the internet. Millions of illegal aliens are using the internet to tell each other how to use our government welfare system. We need to keep our internet secure. Internet ID now!

The internet is the last bastion of pure democracy, where people can communicate without government censorship or filters.

And you are a fascist, totalitarian prick!

 

[theDoctorisIn]

Do YOU even read what you write there sport?

Again?

From a sovereign INDIVIDUAL AMERICAN CITIZEN defending his Life, Liberty, and persuit of happiness without the Imperial FED telling ME it's wrong?

YOU=DISMISSED.

GET IT?

Um, no. I don't "get" whatever it is that you're talking about. It's clearly not what I'm talking about.

My point is that from whichever side you're on, half the information out there disagrees with you.

Except that is NOT what you said. You did not say that half the information out there disagreed, you said that it (or more precisely that a ‘lot’) was WRONG.

That is a massive difference. Disagrees is a matter of opinion, wrong is a matter of fact.

"Wrong" is often a matter of perspective, not fact. But you're getting hung up on something unimportant. It doesn't matter what you call it - what I was referring to is that people on the far-right and people on the far-left will agree with the following statement:

"Much of the information found on the internet is wrong".

But they won't agree with what that "wrong" information is.

In a sense, he has a strong point.

Too much information (particularly when a lot of it is wrong) does make it make it harder to govern - or function at all, when it comes down to it.

Has anyone ever heard the expression "A man with a watch knows what time it is, a man with two watches is never sure."?

This is, for lack of a better term, horse manure. There is no such thing as too much information when it comes to politics. There is also no more /misinformation’ out there than at any other time. The only real difference between now and before is that I have the ability to vet that information. Before the internet, everyone essentially had to take the ‘news’ for fact and the opinions of those around them had no real way to be measured as truth. This generation, by a MASSIVE margin, has the ability to be far more informed than any previously. Not only do I have access to massive amounts of data but I also have access to various was to VERIFY that data. The average politically informed person 30 years ago did not know a fraction of the things that I know about the government now. I have an app on my phone that details every single bill that goes before congress, websites that detail the actual expenditures of the government to the last dollar, official Whitehouse links that tell me every single EO that has been signed and a thousand other things I can view to get real and solid information. Something that was completely unheard of 20 years ago.

To say the we have access to more information that is wrong is simply leaving out the VERY important fact that we have access to more information period and, far more important, more ways to vet that information.

Nothing I said contradicts what you're saying.

No, the exact opposite of what you imply is true, before we had FAR more access to incorrect information as there simply was no way to verify that it was correct. Now we have the means.

What do you think I was implying?

 

[francoHFW]

#83-What about letters, e-mail, books, conversation?

 

[theDoctorisIn]

Then I guess people will be exposed to "wrong" information.

Freedom is a GOOD thing.

People have always been exposed to "wrong" information. The Internet just makes it easier to spread.

And of course, freedom is a "good" thing. That doesn't change the validity of Kerry's statement though.

Yes, it's valid -- in totalitarian regimes.

It's valid everywhere, it's a true statement.

The internet makes it harder to govern. That's simply a fact, no matter if we're discussing a totalitarian regime or anything else.

Whether it should be harder to govern is an entirely different question. I say yes, as I'm sure you do to.

 

[francoHFW]

What's wrong on the Internet? Pubcrappe, like everywhere else.

 

[Crackerjaxon]

I'm not so sure the government can put the shit back in the horse. I don't think the government can find people smarter than the hackers who will thwart their every move. Modems work very well on shortwave radio, too. So I don't think they can shut down the pipe. I'm sure they'll try, but I don't think they're up to it. Government dweebs are very good at using force to get their way. They're not very good at creative enterprise.

 

[FA_Q2]

"Wrong" is often a matter of perspective, not fact. But you're getting hung up on something unimportant. It doesn't matter what you call it - what I was referring to is that people on the far-right and people on the far-left will agree with the following statement:

"Much of the information found on the internet is wrong".

But they won't agree with what that "wrong" information is.

And that is entirely irrelevant. I don’t have time to guess randomly what some unidentified person on the ‘far-whatever’ would state about the internet. The is no point in that at all.

Nothing I said contradicts what you're saying.

Everything you are saying contradicts that as covered by the response to the next statement.

No, the exact opposite of what you imply is true, before we had FAR more access to incorrect information as there simply was no way to verify that it was correct. Now we have the means.

What do you think I was implying?

People have always been exposed to "wrong" information. The Internet just makes it easier to spread.

And of course, freedom is a "good" thing. That doesn't change the validity of Kerry's statement though.

It does change the validity of your assessment of his statement. Here you imply that it has something to do with ‘wrong’ information yet that was not in Kerry’s statement at all. My statement however completely contradicts the core Idea that you have been pressing – that people are exposed to more ‘wrong’ information. That is false.

In a sense, he has a strong point.

Too much information (particularly when a lot of it is wrong) does make it make it harder to govern - or function at all, when it comes down to it.

Has anyone ever heard the expression "A man with a watch knows what time it is, a man with two watches is never sure."?

Again with the too much information meme – the opposite of all my statements.

Last thing politicians want is an informed populace...

True. But I think in the end, misinformation is a bigger problem.

And here we have more.

I can’t fathom where you think that what I stated and what you state do not directly conflict.

 

[FA_Q2]

OP- ..."FOR DICTATORS", hater dupes. WTF is wrong with you people.

And Gore never said he invented the internet, fools.

snopes.com: Al Gore Invented the Internet

Read the statements. He is not talking about dictators at all when he states that the internet is making governing hard. Here it is:

It makes it much harder to govern, makes it much harder to organize people, much harder to find the common interest," said Kerry, "and that is complicated by a rise of sectarianism and religious extremism that is prepared to employ violent means to impose on other people a way of thinking and a way of living that is completely contrary to everything the United States of America has ever stood for. So we need to keep in mind what our goals are and how complicated this world is that we’re operating in.

He is CLEARLY talking about American politics. Even worse, the dictator comment was talking about how those forces that are making governing harder were kept in check BECAUSE of dictatorship:

ever since the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed that were tamped down for centuries by dictators.

 

[bucs90]

Without the government.....you people wouldn't have internet anyway, since the government invented the damn thing.