SAN FRANCISCO -- Al Gore has been reincarnated. Gone are the stuffy suits and ties. These days you're more likely to spot him in a hip, open-at-the-collar, all-black ensemble. Gone also is the wooden, almost mechanical personality. He's all smiles and jokes with his new clique of beautiful twenty- and thirty-somethings.
This is not the two-term Vice President Gore who lost a presidential run five years ago. This is the Gore who today is launching Current, a new cable TV channel/Internet site for 18-to-34-year-olds that aims to turn traditional television on its head.
Some of the channel's programming will be produced professionally, but it will also feature contributions from amateurs who will be able to upload their video segments -- on topics such as technology, music, relationships, spirituality and politics -- using the venture's Web site.
In touting the channel, Gore has said it will give "those who crave the empowerment of the Web the same opportunity for expression on television" and will allow young Americans to "participate in the dialogue of democracy."
Gore, 57, the ultimate Washington insider, the policy wonk endlessly mocked for supposedly saying he invented the Internet, is now trying to reinvent it.
He is among the flood of former government officials who in recent years have headed to Silicon Valley and are making their marks on the world of technology and media.
Former secretary of state Colin Powell announced last month that he would serve as a strategic limited partner to storied venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, which has funded such success stories as Sun Microsystems, Genentech and Amazon.com. This past spring, Tom Ridge, former chief of the Department of Homeland Security, joined the board of Savi Technology, which uses radio tags to track cargo containers and other objects around the world. Ridge said he's found the pace and excitement of work in Silicon Valley to be as challenging as in Washington. "It's probably one of the most stimulating environments going," he said.
And Jack Kemp, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who in 1996 was Bob Dole's vice presidential running mate, is on the board of database powerhouse Oracle Corp.
There has always been a revolving door between government and industry, but the relationship between Silicon Valley and Washington is like the one between Mars and Venus, said Reed E. Hundt, a former Federal Communications Commission chairman who sits on the boards of a half-dozen Silicon Valley companies. "One would regard the other planet as utterly uninhabitable."
That was especially true during the heady days of the late 1990s, when tech entrepreneurs preferred hanging out with rock stars to schmoozing with politicians and wanted little to do with government policymakers, and when it seemed the government was interested in high-tech types mostly for their campaign contributions. Today, however, there's more of a mutual respect."Technology is changing the world, and people in Washington who were drawn to public service to begin with are seeing that getting involved in Silicon Valley is a way to be part of that," said Ron Sege, president and chief executive of Tropos, a wireless networking company.
Gore is arguably the most prominent former federal government official in Silicon Valley.
Four years ago, Gore teamed up with Joel Hyatt, an attorney and entrepreneur who served as national finance chairman for the Democratic Party in 2000 and is probably better known for the Hyatt Legal Services commercials, to begin brainstorming how to create a media outlet that would involve ordinary folks. In 2004, the friends pooled some of their money along with that of about 20 other investors -- including Bob Pittman, formerly of America Online and MTV; Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks; and the investment firm of Richard Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) -- and purchased Newsworld International for a reported $70 million. The 24-hour channel, available in 20 million homes via DirecTV and mostly Time Warner and Comcast systems, will relaunch as Current.
