Is it a weird question to ask what Al Gore has to do with the PDF? The answer: not at all.
Throughout his political career,
Al Gore has been a long time supporter and advocate of environmental issues. He is to Global Warming what Martha Stewart is to homemakers, raising environmental awareness since the late 1970’s.
Since then, he has participated and supported countless environmental events. With programs such as GLOBE in 1994, his Digital Earth in 1998 and the cable television network, Current TV in 2005, Al Gore has kept up to date with growing use of technology and media.
And to his credit, media technology and the Internet have proven to be a huge factor in raising climate change awareness and, more importantly, in providing a way in which it can be improved.
The Paperwork Reduction Act And The PDF
As an early pioneer of the “Information Superhighway” (his coined term), Al Gore’s push for
The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 was ultimately a push for digital workflows within the government. The act aimed to make government information economically and efficiently accessible through information technology, and thereby lessening the consumption of paper documents.
Keep in mind that in 1995 Adobe’s first version of Acrobat had already been out on the market for two years. And with Adobe’s vision for the technology to integrate people, information and processes across a spectrum of industries, it’s easy to see how the PDF format could be used as part of that strategy to prevent Global Warming.
So, with his support of policies such as this one, Al Gore is also essentially a supporter of the PDF format’s basic goals as well.
Putting It All together
Lately, Al Gore has moved from political candidate to celebrity figure. In addition to his political career, he’s been appointed director of Apple Inc. and Senior Advisor to Google (during a time of Google Maps and iPods, that’s big), and made TV appearances on shows such as the Tonight Show, Oprah and Saturday Night Live.
And now, an Academy Award winner, his appearance at the Adobe Acrobat & PDF Conference will bring a little more to the PDF, which will definitely help in making a not so exciting format. . . well, exciting.
