Three times a semester and six times a year if you would like to be informed of future events there is a signup sheet over there put your name and email in and we will we had have a pretty good ones. These three we have some great stuff plant. Tonights forum is being filmed by cspan so during the question part of the forum if you would go up to one of the microphones and also hopefully state your name. We then do a write up of all of the forms. And the last announcement as it is cosponsored by radius another group here i am thrilled to be able to introduce these three. It is a different three than we initially thought would be here. Because jeff how he calls me up at a little bit past five. Fortunately it is a brilliant journalist and his in his own right. Let me introduce to everyone. The author of the new book know it all. And i will also be a hashtag tonight and then i think moving forward. We Work Together a decade and a half ago i had known him ever since he is a great guy and a brilliant journalist. He wrote the link by link column. His first book the know it all is a political powerhouse and social wrecking ball. And even democracy. It was published in october 2017. It is available for purchase right here and in addition to supporting open discussion we also support both book stores and authors so please by all means buy the book its a great book. To his left is sarah m watson. She is a Technology Critic who writes and speaks about emerging issues in the intersection of technology her work has appeared in the atlantic. She is an affiliate with the brooklyn Client Center and author of the center for journalism. In the current state of journalism. And then of course to the right is chris couch. As science journalists who ive have the opportunity to work with for several years now. Shes also the court needed for the Commission Communications form. Heart bylines have appeared in no but next. We have also for your convenience put all of their twitter handles on the board and without further ado i will turn it over to chris. Sorry about that in addition to that book. We have a book have of the it media lab its also a great book. Both of those are available immediately. Now without further ado. Think you all for being here. We are so excited about this panel i feel like it addresses a lot of really important issues i want to kick off this penal by talking about the central argument of the book. Its really the disruption in the individualism. It has kind of in a lot of ways eroded humanity is that fair to say. The premise of this get to go. The answers today have it. Everybody has humanity. What we really talking are we really talking about that has happened. I approached some of this from the Computer Science aspect. Its one of the crucial mistakes or paths that we are on its kind of denying the humanity. I think about that its kind of like a well known antidote with the first design director who was asked to create design for gmail when they were doing it and he suggested a color. Instead of using the color they wanted. They went and tested 41 different shades of blue. He eventually resigned over that. To have a human vision for what they were doing and then i apologize for that. They say the color, and the shade of blue we pick is the most popular one. I think it is that breakdown. I think theyre not apologetic about it. Can you stick a little bit to what those outcomes are. For people that are not familiar with the intricacies of Silicon Valley. They are taking in this french philosophy and making it seem very normal and mainstream. The idea that we should regulate taxis or hotels or you can think of all the Different Companies that we should regulate. What they see on video should they just declare what they are doing. That is one part of their ideology. The taste for regulation in the trust of government is one part. I think the idea of free speech is another one. I know all of these issues are competent. I wrote a piece that was on new york. Com this week. Even back in the 80s where there there should be any limits on free speech. There was such a fierce back. To me having a limit on free speech is vital to having a community that is cohesive. That is another dangerous aspect. I think theyre doing all of this i think it is just having horrible consequences. I was certainly looking at it. A lot of what happened there bears out this point. The facts that these Big Companies are so blase about the idea that a foreign country could influence our election. Whether these powerful tools of targeting people should be used by anybody just to dash stir up anger and resentment. They are not seen themselves as custodians of powers. And maybe the utopian vision. That has the effect. People asked me what property do you have. Its clearly not the 2016 election. One thing was sort of a turning point. Its about using gmail. The idea that it would have a computer read your email in order to pack place ads for it. I remember thinking how i never mentioned the word cancer in an email. That it would be a custodian of my information. It would still feel like they have a right to commercialize it. When i think back on it. A lot of it sears work deals with the Technology Criticism not just the technology itself. But also the culture surrounding it. From your perspective do you agree with the premise absolutely agree with that. With the overall premise. I think a lot of people have started to unpack the kind of implications the ideologies that are hashed out. Obviously looking at the individuals who are coming up with these designs and looking at their assumptions and ideology. They really do matter. The biggest thing for me as i like to think about this in terms of optimization. I think most leaders in companies are designed around questions of optimization. Whether its the design itself getting you the information as fast as you can or evil as efficiently as possible. Those are questions of efficiency in optimizing for profit. Those are kind of taken for granted with the right terms of optimization. I think trying to unpack what those assumptions are is really productive starting point to say what of spending more time on facebook was in the optimization model. What if it was a quality of experience on facebook. What would that look like. Also what with that change. That is that cracks for the questions. The trick is using the terminology of the industry. And the way that they are thinking about problems is actually a productive productive way of sharing language. And trying to get at we havent necessarily agreed to the terms of optimization they are coming from it at a market perceptive. That is a natural way. We as a society can start to question us. One of the things in ways that they may not agree to. They really started with this. How did we get here. I think the way sarah said that. Its really spot on. She kind of classifies critics and i could see myself doing that. What shes talking about as practical ways of trying to get to a better place. Trying to ask Bigger Picture questions. I was almost going to be making it. And then there is that destruction that you should just give it one pass in harvesting it. You should go back a second time and get every little fruit and kernel that you missed. The poor people who live off of the gleaning. That is a metaphor again. I need to get all of the content out of it. Or you can say youre part of a society. Let some kind of scratch be there for other people. Someone pointed out that he cared so much about this election meddling that the company was can spend good to spend all this money to hire people and thats what he mentioned in an investment call. The natural, it was they basically make money from the current situation. That is again the efficiencies and the way that they are set up that are really troubling. I was trying to look back. I did not really know these answers. You will see pieces of the book. In the accounts for some of these extreme ideological free speech. And lack of diversity. Then i credit or blame them for the kind of profit seeking. The google case was it very enlightening because you go back and read the original paperless papers it was incredible invention. I think everybody agrees that they were standing on the shoulders of others. They really created something and made it coherent. It was incredible it was an amazing invention. They also explained why it needed to be advertising. In the actual academic world. It needed to be a place where it was transparent. Now we just come to accept the idea with the secret things. They are constantly tinkering with this. Its very bad for trusting the system because you dont have any screening of it. Basically they are serious academics. Office incredible idea that they have. You end up using so much and bandwidth at stanford that they were told to if to start figuring out how to pay for this. Can sanford have said this is a great invention we are to gonna pay for it. Its very important for the study of society and science. They were told you better figure out a way to do this. That they were not incorporated. A person who have been at stanford wrote them a check for google incorporation. The rest is history. I do feel like that its a little coordinated. A little corruption for them in for facebook as well. They really have some idealism and they were in all of how computers and they were trying to become billionaires in the book you will see their other characters who are bankers and that was really what they were trying to do. To figure a way they were led astray a little bit. You had written extensively about how coverage of the Technology World has changed over time can you explain a little bit about how that has the media has involved. Evolved. In the Research Report i think one of the things i was trying to look at was coverage from the early almost breathless excitement about the. Com boom and all that energy that went into covering and then later in the google and facebook and others here. Starting from very businessoriented coverage models were from a tech blogger model. That breathless coverage moving into something a little more concerned with as the technology starts to intersect with a lot of things like politics in people in society those were shifting the narrative about what matters about technology. And why this is changing our lives in affecting our lives. The iphone comes out. And we all the sudden had dramatically changed our daytoday relationship. A computer in our pocket basically. That was still in that gadget excitement and then we had like a 2013 moment which is a snowden Movement Technology has both good and bad uses. That to me is the larger discourse moment they are willing to acknowledge that. What is really interesting right now there is franklin thoresen book. A little bit more about these companies with knowledge and accusations. It was a lot more about the monopolistic approach about the attention. And they are talking about these companies in the information i think its an interesting moment right now. All these books are being written before the crisis hit is fascinating the writing has been on the wall for a long time they thought there was a market for these books. Where is the audience. He was who is this for. It was sort of an important moment. I wrote a piece earlier than that about this german politician who petition to get all of his data about all of the tracking that was done. It was again can you point twopoint out in that paper you wrote that the breakthrough is hard. Until Something Like this really gets attention for a lot of Different Reasons it probably takes a while for people to see it. I think that probably was a big thing. Were talking about earlier the problem of access. For them to have access to these companies they have to stay on the good side. And that is especially true if you are the Business Tech journalist covering the story. As more journalists from different walks of life are also coming to terms with technology. The narrative starts to change. Its also one of the benefits. From leading leaving and that gadget phase. There was a sense of getting access is usually important but now we are beyond the gadget phase. Is that a will told story explaining that is there. I didnt seek out a lot of access. I knew that there was not interested in talking about. There is an incredible site called the zuckerberg files. The professor kind of over privacy issues. It has access everything he has ever said since he was 19. Likewise until he deleted all of his tweets he had tweeted hundred thousand times. There was more than enough about him. There was an early book he wrote they all have a lot of documentation and interview. It was often very stenographic and not that revealing. I think there is an appreciation for the deeper journalism. I think thats great. I think thats what we need too. Has to be supported by the institutions to be able tos sneak stick their neck out. I think of the amazon Workplace Environment example just to fill everybody in. They ran a pretty large piece on the inner workings of amazon employees and it really spans from very low level all the way up to not all the way to the top but they really a detailed the work conditions of that place and ended up getting lots of attention. I felt like the response that he gave wasnt really a classic libertarian response. I think he embodies a lot of what im saying in the book. It cant be true because these are people that could go to another company. If they werent being treated right they just wouldnt be working here. There can be the sexual discrimination because there would be the arbitrary opportunities. And therefore it cant exist. The market would correct for a. That is another theme of the book. The detachment from reality. When you ask about their attentions. Theres something very seductive about how they can erase all of that. It is a new world. I dont know if its in the book but about how it have a huge product. We are so proud. They were walking in saint this is really offensive. My having that as their slogan they were in essence saying what we have now is fair. If you are representative of unit cut it. I think it eventually took the carpet away. They really believed the world has been remade because it is a Digital World none of the problems are obviously current dont matter. I wanted to go on that. Its clearly articulates the complete disregard for the physical world. They are in seattle. For them to get another Silicon Valley job there had to operate their families and in their lives and everything else. Its not the question is whether its on purpose or not. And he saying that. Is he really not understanding that thats i always got hung up on. Both in terms of biases within the culture of technology and underrepresentation of another a number of groups of people. Whether that is as Computer Vision systems that has a hard time detecting. There was an article fairly recently on women having a hard time getting prosthetics that fit. Some of these problems just stem from when you have a dominant group. It so much so much very much dominated by white men. From your perspective do you see this type of issue changing. Changing over time are right now. There are books that are coming out. Theres a lot more Media Coverage on this type of things. Are you still see it as we saw a really long way to go. I would say that it would require for it to change the book is saying that these companies are antidemocratic and they are against democracy. How do we correct for the them to head wheelchair access and ideally we have a democracy where they get to express their opinion and thats how you represent people. There was the hearing that the senate had about the top lawyers. And she was explaining to them very patiently we live in a representative democracy. Thats how we do it. How do you ensure fairness. I remember hearing it said that the japanese if there had been a japanese american representative it would have happened. You need to have some political way of correcting these things. As long as there can argue that they will self regulate. It wont change. Im optimistic that there could be some sort of a wave election that will present a new path but i dont think having done that themselves the idea of a self regulation self regulation as it wont work. It is 60 of people that are talking about this is another problem that stems from peer self regulation. The number of issues that are connected to that are just astronomical. If i were given free will to be in charge of everything i dont think i would be quite as fair. I think its a little scary that you get the sense. I think one point of the book. Is he is not an outlier. Hes often described as a fringe character he is really expressing the main thought there which is democracy is bad. You have not if not smart people running the world. I think they really believe that. He was saying he believes in regulation they just think i think it gets down to our democracy and its really important. Youve written about how specifically within technology that that world is in certain ways very reflective of technology and female voices have been overlooked in a systemic way. Can you talk a little bit about do you see that end of it changing at all. As part of why i was looking at this larger echo system a people who are writing about these things. Certainly in the last couple of years it has drastically changed which is all for the better. I think that has put pressure on Silicon Valley to change. At the very least speaking of now versus in the future. I think we head at least seen the kind of oh yes we will work on diversity for hiring. And thinking more about you were users interests and needs. On the writing side of it. I wasnt really interested in looking at a set of people who were covering technology but the rest of the people who were also contributing to a larger discourse. Some of that has to do with looking at a whole range of writers not Just Technology and journalists whose beat his technology. But the people that think of themselves as critics, people who are just writing an oped because their Academic Work has it direct response to the Current Issue on russia for example. In trying to articulate this larger group. And one of them writing the terrible things happening at their workplace were critiquing a technology that does not include fitness tracking iphone not having a menstruation tracker. They are coming from a lot of Different Directions and disciplinary backgrounds in existing in a lot of different places. What is frustrating is the majority of the traditional ways that you would look for Technology Coverage for a long time is still speemac as you point out. That was a woman was blogging that. Thats kinda why i stumbled on it. Those are things that no matter how enlightened you are not to be able to do that. Of the coverage and the harassment and a lot of them are women journalists who are writing that. Imagine if there was similar kind of push going on about that. With the weight Silicon Valley works. Especially in this current two months moments im hopeful i think when you look back at what ellen foul went through she was in a bc company. And have a Sexual Harassment issue. That just kind of got shoved under the rug basically. Then again was probably two years ago at that point. She now has a book out that is all about her followthrough on what to do about this systemic system. And not having an ability to have support and to take her claim seriously. The Google Engineer a lot of people say google fired this guy. I wonder how do you see that. In some ways it was a pr the google memo it included a pretty large critique of their internal culture and some information stating women might be there ideologically for coding than men. And he ended up getting fired and that he went on a fairly large pr push it was his autism spectrum that led him to believe this. I remember seeing someone on twitter. Charles garwood darwin couldnt work at google. Its now a company that is doing so non diverse. This is actually affecting our society. There is some the roles to be played at google. Its a very weird way of defining it. And what it means to be a tech worker. The interesting thing on the freespeech side of it i should be able to say but i think and yes thats true in a public forum but this is actually within the company and the company basically saying yes said yes you had free speech but we can also decide to fire you. You dont fit in our culture anymore. I think its fascinating that we had reached a point that they can say that. Or what they dont want their culture to be like. It is still indicative of the engineering mentality. Very date of data driven assumption. Backing of an idea and saying this is the way the world works. The just interventions are not viable. As far as the tech culture. There is a very valid argument that as technology increases this may become more reliant on automation you might once be able to hold some buddy responsible for hiring only men or whoever now youre losing that person to hold some be accountable to. Would you guys mind talking a little bit about this. I think there is a great interest in okay we will let the algorithm system do the work and then we have to say that its not bias its not a human deciding. But then of course what are you optimizing for. It gets back to my main question. Success if you are building this algorithm to say what a successful person and google looks like then you are already baking and a lot of assumptions about their background and their history and their schooling. Or you dont have the right background. A white man who gets along. I think there are a lot of people talking about this especially in the ai ethics the Client Center. For some of their work on this. On accountability of all the rhythms and things insane yes they are objective and yes they are outsourcing the decisionmaking process but looking into what the terms are really does matter. And i think that is still a hard conversation. There was a footnote in a book that they went back a lot. One of the chapters was a professor at the professor at mit. And then moved to stanford. He was in early Computer Science engineer. From the quest from creative thinking. Thinking that a brain itself is an entity that could exist outside of a body. It was a very odd in revealing quest so a key scene in the book is the debate between john mccarthy. Over whether a computer could be a judge. And then of course a computer can be a judge. As long as it is programmed correctly so it was a refugee and that was where he was obscene idea. Being a judge or therapist and thinking that that could be performed by a computer was a real disconnect. And they have the footnote out on the exact topic. It was about how she interviewed a minority student at the mit. They were very encouraging of the idea of the judge being program. They could really be the separate entities. It is being is being given as a garbage information about how judges rule in reality. How will it be different than any they are learning from. Obviously the people use them. It is this fiction that the computer was separate from the real world. When we have a racist sexist society. As second fix that. A lot of the problem is these people think that they are so great at math. So i think the data shows this can be very enlightening to the public. And im not using that to prove that theres racism in each case. You cant have some systemic argument that its unfair so we should fix it. On the other hand i do think the data could enlighten us about how unjust the society is but i dont think that programs would do that, does that make sense . This leads into a bigger question i had. You do an amazing job articulating the ideology of where the concepts are coming from up against the entrepreneurial model thats what life is left wanting more of it is so light and also what do we do. I always go back to the four planepoints of what we do to che things. He wrote in code and one of those things is we can decide what the technology is a. I think tha that theres still r parts that we can start to unpack like if the libertarian approach is a problem o the proe mentality that this has led to hear is a monopoly system. They have market code in the ways that one could change society or where things are going. Im hesitant to say the market seems to be a possibility here. This means its kind of impossible like do we have an alternative to facebook . Do we have an alternative to google and amazon, yes but not that the scale the companies are operating at which is why we get back to the regulation. Even looking to the Net Neutrality moment. Antitrust isnt set to address the way that the companies are set up. It doesnt really apply to the free services. The ways we look at antitrust art competition pricing harm to the consumer. These kind of dont work. So we have to think about other ways to hold the companies accountable. But that has to devolve into a new model that isnt based on our old leverages. The norms are something we are seeing and i guess i am leery of the idea being useful because again its not knowing what you dont know so the wellintentioned programmer its like it wont be a viable solution so i do have to say the idea of what do we do now is a big question and i think the characters that talk about how i am pointing out all the problems, i dont have solutions thats not my department as they say. But the arguments are that smaller and local that need to be fixed. I would think though the power of narrative and in the book i try to talk about this sort of embrace of the individual argument. The way we have the data is people should have a right to their data and its gone off the rails and considered normal to collect everything about you. All i can fall back on our imagined wed walk into a store and make it fascinating. It would be unthinkable. What can i buy with this, if i break a rule mayb may be i am hg for a way of these beliefs and how to make better rules. So the data is yours and partly into google and facebook and so many others havent started. It sent us down a wrong path and we have to get back to that. Tell us everything youve got and what you like. I think we need to try to get back to control for societ the s an openended comment. I still wonder how this to actualize and do we not let facebook do certain things and we demand certain features and protections of the companies does not mean we have a collective Action Movement about the default or some kind of way of getting into. To be able to voice my interest to determine the way that my newsfeed is filtered. I was struck watching this hearing that i watched to comment on the Senate Judiciary hearing that this sharpest question was john kennedy that asked the most pointed questions about whats going on like a does facebook give me a list and can i sell them alcohol, do you know whos overweight and should i sell them diet pills. It should transcend petty politics is not greed versus non greed. I think Middle America is one thats been hit hardest by this. Their wealth is being taken and sent to the coast by and large. I think that there is a chance for a movement if there is a belief in the system i do think that something could change. Event in that case if we are going to define the norms we at least have to have these examples like yes it is a possible way that it could be used. Its understanding how they work and what they are capable of and how advertisers are using them for ex ample to begin to establish. It was really impressive. How do we get here. I sell it as an incredible sum of these little parts become this incredible thing and i feel more optimism to answer that question how do we get here and how can we get it back but that is the next question. I am obligated to ask what role does the university have for the students before they move into the realworld . We are seeing how the deck is stacked. Advocating for local, there is a garden that must be a thrill for the small and seeing that kind of fruition and i do think that there has to be a way to they are looking to be acquired so who am i to say if they do not see your brilliance but that would be necessary to nurture something that is falling because there is a yearning for it. What should they be asking when they are building their groundbreaking technology . The hardest question to answer is we have one more question of technology that we are building for the myriad of ways that technology can be used. That is always a hard question to answer until someone has discovered another way to use it or monetize it. Learning to see your own effort from the multiple angles that is the thing that is missing from a lot of what happens in Silicon Valley how much do they do where the user gets to tell them how they feel. They do so much testing but does that ever tell you wha told youy attention was as a user, my experience and emotions in all these . Its the only way to see how to throw something out. There are so many assumptions in the way most of these technologies are operating and that is kind of bike design like the datadriven approach we can look at what the behavioral data is and then determine what is going to get more time or to spend more money and that doesnt get into anything about what my actual intentions are. So yes, actually talk to people. Forcing the connections would be a way of interrogating the idea. Even the idea that there is more where there has to be a basis to these relationships. Can i add one more thing . So much of what we are talking about is the leadership role. Those that are in charge to have these ideologies filters into the culture of the companies and it is imperative to think about the more systemic contextual way that these ideas get played out and how that is baked into your engineering goals and efficiencies. What is your Performance Review and having some control over those questions seems to be another way that we can cut into the overall culture. We are going to open up to audience questions if you would like to ask please use one of these microphones. We are going to this one here and then the next one coming over to you. Thank you so much for bringing this important topic out into the open. I wanted to ask a question you had mentioned that the technologies dont take peoples feelings into account and i wanted to say from the perspective as i experienced i believe to the use of the emotions and creating an addictive experience which is very unethical to bring this to awareness this is like whiskey and cigarettes. It goes back to the optimization is it to get use scrolling through and auto refreshing. Hes one of these engineers. We are going to define these in better ways. On the addiction side of things, i think she used to be at mit but she has a book called addiction by design. Its keep you going and not winning and that is kind of an interesting look at specifically the clear use of convictions but people have taken that into these broad consumer interfaces. My name is elliot and i was born and raised in the area of Silicon Valley and guess theres a lot of complexity. I think one thing that struck me is if you have some Large Corporation optimizing to take over some market or product whatever it is, then you are squeezing out a. When you pay a medical bill is still advocating the efficiency when you actually ends up best in the Health Industry and there is a huge cost to the efficiency and huge cost to the people out there an and theres so trying o think if you have a tech company that tries to completely redo healthcare. It is a much more important go goal. It is framing really well and the idea if the goal is to maximize the profit that is not a good goals that can explain how to maximize the profits of its not good oits not good of d another way of thinking is just like a pollution. They have a larger goal where we are having a problem. It really comes down to the reality of the highly regulated ecosystem that is so far down the road of just are not going to touch that. None of them are medical devices for a reason to. A checkup and five seconds. In five seconds. The reason was that company you probably havent heard of it is theyve gotten so far back with fda approval to. Being again detached from reality so thats how i viewed it in that kind of context that the ideologies that led to Computer Sciences is that medical . You have a lot of types that are willing to think differently about your place in the world and whether or not that is a sacred thing or not but that is just getting in the deep of the weeds. It was as much a liberal value and i wonder what you mean by the abuse of free speech and it isnt the best place for these discussions and we all know that. But how do you think we can maintain the spirit of the First Amendment going ahead . We can argue the amount of people in the campaigns is the restriction on free speech and we currently live on the Supreme Court for any rich person to give as much money as possible and that is their freedom. Corporations, people as well and it can be a very enlightening. So it really put the lie to that free speech if you believe it is just absolute for all that they were doing is putting words and pictures together to get people to hate each other it is just words and pictures but there is a sort of consensus that that was a bad thing. You cant bea be in the societyt there are horrible costs and msns places like twitter are allowing credible it isnt random ingrid is anger directed at certain groups. You have to look at the historical context. That is how i would argue it. It is the ultimate free speech and its going to work for all of the actual effects and that is my view of it. It didnt hamper the them from addressing very serious things and behaviors like harassment and how to embed checksum that behavior in the system. I think that they have done a whole lot and tried to do a whole lot so far but there are a lot of people who are really underwhelmed by hell that gets manifested in the code and as a user what can you do aside from just walking all over these we are living in a normal society and if you are someone picking up someone in a harsh way is if my freedom to deal with this one person and make them run away but dont do that. It is my speech right and becomes a piggybacking off of question. It relies heavily on the moderation of the volunteers especially in my case so what do you see as the current place and possibly future potential of the human moderation and commercial volunteer within these online social spaces . I fall back where they use some automated policing and i think it has to be. When we talk about this it isnt just the monopoly part or human scale and there is a book. They managed to grow. Its how they will respond. It is vital. I think it goes back to the question as well to is determining how the norms are expressed for algorithms or automated platforms. That is a pretty hard question. It will not just be either or but it will be both. In a way where do you see the political system in all of this doesnt take a sort of individualistic approach. But i would argue that ultimately this is about how much influence do we want to give government a. You are describing that as individuality because the government is protecting individuals and i think they would be like how dare the government be involved in protecting these are the kind of catch22. Isnt it great we have all of these rules. We very much dont like that. If you committed a. But its part of your biography how dare you say some thing like we cant put that in. Its a definition of free speech i think so. I would take it one step further. Part of what you are getting at and what is at stake is the legitimacy of the companies. Its different than the transnational. Thats political term of legitimacy is alternative like did we sign up for this and are these the leaders and are these the ideas that we believe in and if not, what do we do about th that. My old exists on the eu and is the general Data Protection regulations which is coming out or applies in may, 2018. But the big thing here is any company that serves the citize citizens. Its two meets the highest standards in california i think we are going to see that kind of level of regulation obviously it is a little easier to change the User Experience so that is a tricky loophole. This is my life and all the articles you brought up. I am a Software Engineer and product manager focusing on the social responsibility of my field which is text and engineering and how to get policy people to understand technology and even a sliver of interest and whats going on in dc. I have on the first point harassment and women dont get the same kind of coverage as people in the media. They are brave women and i dont know how to amplify them even more and get the same kind of coverage that you see from. Theres a lot of stories of the media journalists. In addition to that and something sarah talked about also is the idea of modeling the market drivinnot only themarkett this idea of utopia. I often hear the narrative if they talk about money maybe they will care about users. The mission of connecting people and it drives all these engineers to go if you talk to these in years and the average revenue for the companys feet and put the ads and marketing. What they are doing is so good and that we are going to make the world a safer place because this is where security happens and there is the power of money to connect the world and teach someone. In the steep missions but then think about if that is a harder thing to put their finger on. You can even take the anecdote and switch it around. If theres something wrong about the meaning of the marketing and advertising people its the idea you are saying they are not as smart as we are. So part of it is the computer is a closed world and you are in such control and so to your mind maybe its unfair that we talk about how he got his First Program risked on Julius Caesar and doing more conquest now in real life. Is that crossing off the street the reality of the book is about and i wonde wonder were you dran into the programming because of that where it all kind of made sense and we can create a world that is coherent in that way. Its interesting to hear you say it that way. I was drawn in by the utopia that i cant help the world connect with each other and do all these things and studying in Computer Science this goes back tto whats dare i was saying if it is graded on the class and algorithm what is it that they dont touch on ethics or users what drew me in and away we were trained to and whats the right word, the way we were created at ththat years towards developingg in a certain way even if we have certain interests its what we think about all the time. How do you check that you are doing that and i dont think that most companies have a way of following through on that. Once you finish one product, you are on to the next thing so how much aside from using your self do you get to understand how it is impacting them and how they use it and what their experience is our. It requires different training and other things in the air against. One more and then i will sit down. They are seen as idols in the tech field. When they say stuff people really listen and things are usually around the users and they talk about the algorithms and things like that so perhaps there are ways to influence what many people listen to. I would collect how everyone must secure. Is he a great programmer of coarse he is. He was the central figure in the book as a mathematics professor went to dartmouth and became a Computer Scientist and was brought back. No one is secure when you have this both constantly. I hear you its like maybe an idol would be the way to get some change. I have a question. I think a lot of these issues have externality of scale can to be because of lack o the lack od Business Models so theyve released a new book about the free innovation and first they had market innovation so how do we think of monetizing value when you are not aiming for acquiring it but how do we create and value what we create and do you think that its going to become decentralized and are we going to go back to those that are interconnected. It was the summit of entrepreneurship and there was such a big debate around the startups and people were really revolting around that. That gets to the optimization question. In your account on facebook it is about we dont know what the Business Model is. They didnt know for a long ti time. And by the way thats another story. So it is hard for people to imagine other formats aside from okay whats the other one, have we talked about that since it first came out as a possible way to disrupt facebook . I think it was distributed and hosted the Network Infrastructure to not have the centralized control and i think some were former facebook. And then a similarly but more for the twitter model if that is a rough description. Thinking about the different models they belong with many good and the universality of the individual liberal and connecting like that. Otherwise it would be a great Business Model so it is on us to add the cost. To extract the most value. That is the alternative. I would also add this to consumer demand side of things. Its hard to imagine a World Without facebook and amazon and apple. What does it look like if we start to demand Different Things or ways of interacting with these companies, and i think that is hard for people to get their head around but is probably the only way that these companies are going to change. They are so big and powerful and if you think about the power in the lobby that doesnt mean its wrong but i think anybody watching onto see that it is an ominous thing. I come from the perspective of having delivered mail for 30 years in california back in the middle of Silicon Valley. So i have seen the houses go up hundreds of thousands and have had people that have worked for google and facebook and was eveand whatever come into the ns and by the houses and people get pushed out from the houses and are now the contract workers that help support. The people that drive them and bring them here so they can work 15 or 20 hours a day. They have to spend more time on the internet getting drawn into say. I read an article on how they are trying to work on this homeless problem. They only value the core center but they dont have any value of those that truly support the company and all the outside workers. The core business is not the cafeteria and cleaning. She was sexually assaulted by one of them but this is before the company had a Pr Department or an hr department, sorry, where you learn what the rules are so a lot of them are broke but they dont understand how it is to value everyone around. Think about the logic of having food oil how are the holes being cleaned, and in the book i talk about the philosopher that argued the libertarianism is antifeminist by definition and its not a coincidence because basically where does the individual come from it is you can be a google employee that it just shows up magically. Magically. So libertarianism, you show up as an adult male, you dont owe any debt to anyone that raised you. If you felt it was a fair Playing Field okay that might make sense but its kind of predicated on the value of women and the role of family and women and getting us here to adultho adulthood. What happened after . She stayed and talked about who they were interviewing for the department and that person did get fired just in the conversation but she was worried about losing her job and didnt so that is a good thing, but because she was good at her job and he maybe wasnt as much. But it shouldnt have happened. But there were not things second place. This is the way to bring everybody around like if all the amazon drivers that are hired right now for the holidays, december 23 they all went on strike. People would be like my gosh. [inaudible] labor unions are the hope in that same, that is true. I am an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering and as an engineer that is interested in that user centered design and getting into that, and in particular how it has been changed for different users, ive noticed a lot of phone conversations are stuck on academia or design firms and even in my capstone class, the huge emphasis they put on the user design is great but then they shift between the jobs and i was wondering as somebody going into the engineering field and wanting to be a professional hell do we see that the shift of thinking in these companies i think the best way to get in is to make the business case. This is going to lead to better experiences and user value. I think the question is how to speak their language and put a number on it and integrate it into the kind of way they want to value their process and development. That is a tough question. I think it is also just a question of finding those people in the institutions themselves and thinking like that and whove been influenced in those ways or just working outside of it. To kind of advocate on the largescale to be asking these questions in the institutions from the bottom up i think that is arguably the most effective way to house the ethics from the bottomup. Bottom up. Thank you for what you do to bring these important issues to light. I am a resident fellow so shout out over here theres not a lot of us that come into these. I worked on the policy for the Obama Administration so im kind of a hybrid person. So my question is sort of related to that. If you want things to change, come join us. So how to interrogate our own products and if it is even realistic to talk about having teams that are within the leadership of some of these Companies Whose job it is to learn the effects on humanity and the justice because i if it isnt virtual to do it you forget how to look at those things and tell yourself it is easy to believe the narrative of what we are hearing in the world or even if the product is connecting people to education you would otherwise have come at the job isnt to look at a macro level at how the Overall Company is implementing a direction of things and so it strikes me a lot of us talk about joining the companies themselves but i also wondered if that is idealistic but people could be empowered in those roles and what would it take to say yes we want a team that would do this and it would mean having the humility to admit right now maybe they are not doing those things. Maybe it isnt quite to the level of the Human Experience officer or some version of that. This is why its important to not only look at the individuals but also to look at the systemic support systems around them. I think that is aside from trolling how as a public do we get to look at that and maybe the shareholder has a little bit of insight into the effect probably not much. Its why they are inefficient but when you see the whole of society, you can see them being inefficient whatever the criticism would be, but they check these companies and its not going to be selfregulation or appointing some of the Service Roles but it is a valid concern about the election with the lack of diversity and to the changes in the labor union that would be able to strike and affect the balance of power. Thats the only thing that will make the change and its not beyond the realm of possibility that that would happen but it wont happen voluntarily because the message enddoublequotes to think they were doing the best experience and they will say look how successful they are that is hoat that is how i knowg a great job and. I have a vision on the buck and they are like we are going to just test it and people will like what we do. It strikes me that now we are at the moment they can no longer say we are more than a natural platform if we dont meet people whose jobs it is to think that but it may be naive of me if there is a moment to push on it. If theres any product that goes through the warriors are the last step and engineers hate this so now they are saying we cant do it because it isnt integrated into the process. So imagine that its not just warriors integrated into the process. But the experience and emphasis into huge case for the humanist to find jobs and companies. Its not just the engineers. Last question. You have been waiting so patiently. I am a lawyer but not one of them that you were talking about. The thing that has struck me is how the rules got there and why we have them. The internet seems to be a giant eraser of history and why we do things because i know a lot of engineers and the general mindset of engineers is that we can figure out anything and so that means that expertise is not valued because we can always learn it. We have all this information out there, that they forgot the part about Bad Information is not helpful and so when you have a platform that has no way for you to tell what is good information and what is Bad Information you make bad decisions and in my corporations class the first things we study this taxi cabs. Its more that what they used to do to avoid liability is one car, one corporation, 10 cents in the bank. So thats why we have the rule of piercing the corporate veil. If you dont capitalize your corporation, then you dont get the benefit. And yes we should reexamine them periodically but we should recognize that there is a reason. You see the gape there. The middle of the field. There is probably some reason. They add some added some respect for history and contact. You could see why there was a fundamental level. Thats highly radical. In a sense like not what we seen since the russian revolution. For history and the belief that progress is the mysterious things that are happening. Its not easy to do that. I would just add to address the kind of allergy to regulation. There is a reason that the taxis are regulated or had rolls around them. The lack of we all know where he is ended up. It is worth acknowledging technology has politics. The im just apolitical. This is efficient. This is a Market Driven there is no politics involved. I think what we can really push against is yes there are politics involved to call it out and call a spade a spade. If you choose not to decide and still have not made a choice. It was actually pascal that said that. The fact that they are making huge decisions. And additionally the way you ask a question has an answer embedded in it. Thats what you learn in legal writing. Thank you all so much for coming out. The mailing list. [indisernable conversations] in publishing news this weekend author michael wolfs new book about the inner workings of the trump white house. Its arty been on the bestseller list. I think is it not an exaggeration or unreasonable and not unreasonable to say this is 25th amendment kind of stuff. They always bring up the 25th amendment. In the mid time we are not at a 25th amendment level yet. This is alarming in every way. This is a little 25th amendment. It is a concept that is alive every day in the white house. There was an interesting thing in all of this weird stuff that has gone on. For the last number of days. I especially noticed was yesterday are this morning john kelly said was questioned about these whack at the sweets and he said i didnt see them. Im just gonna sate was gonna say like how he didnt see them. And thats what goes on in the white house all the time. Its how to look away thats how not to confront. Absolutely. Its how to rationalize us. You cant say this is a moment in time this is a breakdown. You imply that even his children last night on twitter totally disputed it. Nor does he even think of his father that way. Somebody said to me about the children. Someone who knows the mall and the phrase was they are tolerant but they have no illusions. That is probably how it goes. He is the father of course. Not only is he there father he is their boss. Their whole lives are attached to him. But these are the people for us to have to do with him every day. He was a very good father. He was absent god knows who he was involved with at any point in time. This does not come as a shock to them. And next week michael wolf begins his nationwide tour to promote the book including on book tv. Federal appellate judge looks back i has 38 year judicial career he is interviewed by the command connecticut democratic senator. As a judge of 45 years. Having gone from to judging was that a difficult transition for you. And did you ever mess the life of advocacy so to speak. It wasnt difficult. It has been for some of us. Ive known people who became judges and so disliked the decisionmaking process. I found it while it was different and enormously challenging and satisfying. Large and small and they all matter to someone they have a large public significance the most important part as a look back in a row. By the circumstances around it Walter Cronkite 60 minutes was nothing there was parts of it that they were exciting. And don hewitt spent the rest of his career praying trying to prove into the murrell merle boys that he understood good journalism. He knew what they stood for. And fred did not like him which is why he fired him. But until his last days always said i learned more from fred than anybody else in my life. And he did. And so many of those things are part of what makes 60 minutes special today. Because we have changed the fundamentals havent changed. The things that they cared about. These are things that we practiced to this day and they are all about different aspects of what we do. And i think they are a huge part of why we are still successful this past sunday we were the most watched nonsports show of the week. I think that says something. Still that many people 14 and half million that night were willing to give up an hour and watched 60 minutes more than any other program on television that week. And some of those things which are simple are directly from fred we never underestimate the audience. Yet at the same time we know that we know more about a story than they do. We never talked down to the viewer. We always assume they know more. And most people do. Most broadcast you. We pour ourselves into. It was all about communist poland going capitals where do you want to kid right between the eyes it was a great learning experience for me. Because he proceeded to help me. And here is the most important thing. And this is what stands out to me to this day more than anything else. We never ever do Audience Research to determine what stories to cover. Especially in the stan h says a lot. We dont know what the viewer is going to want. Its on us to make the story so damn compelling they just head to watch it. This and other programs online every month for the past 20 years one of the nations top nonfiction authors has joined us on our indepth a program for a fascinating and threehour conversation about their work. We have invited 12 fiction authors onto our set. Authors of historical fiction and National Security thrillers like colson whitehead. Their books have been read by millions around the country and around the world. So if you are a reader plan to join us for indepth on book tv. It is an interactive program. Youre watching book tv on cspan two here is our primetime lineup. Including personal computing video games and biotechnology. Stephen still provides a history of the Appalachian Region from pioneering routes to the introduction of the coal industry. And current economic issues. And then on book tvs afterwards at 9 00 p. M. Appellate court judge john newman details as a career in an interview with connecticut senator the Pulitzer Prize winning and we wrap up our primetime programming at 1015 that all happens tonight on book tv. Fortyeight hours of nonfiction authors and books this weekend. Television for serious readers. And now here is Leslie Berlin on the growth of Silicon Valley. In an Information Age during 1969 to 1976. And within the space of just 35 square miles there was a big bank here in Silicon Valley. The most significant bursts in the past 150 years. Five major industries. They were born for salt computing