Independent production fund, with support from the partridge foundation, a john and polly guth charitable fund. The clements foundation. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations Whose Mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The bernard and audre rapoport foundation. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org. Anne gumowitz. The betsy and jesse fink foundation. The hkh foundation. Barbara g. Fleischman. And by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Welcome. My guest, martin wolf, says the us debt ceiling is the legislative equivalent of a nuclear bomb that america has aimed at itself. And because congress refused to permanently defuse it this week, the threat remains and could still detonate early next year. Take this flashing red alert seriously, because it comes from a man who has been called the premier financial and Economics Writer in the world. Martin wolf is the chief economics commentator for the influential financial times, and he is read by just about anyone who is someone in the stratosphere of high finance. But he plays no favorites, and confronts the private sector with its failures of principle and mission just as quickly as he does government. His opinions are known to make the mighty listen, and sometimes tremble. Martin wolf, welcome. Thank you very much. Well, the bomb didnt go off. What now . Well, first of all, im not surprised it didnt go off, because in the end the u. S. Has always drawn back from the brink. And im terribly pleased, because it was so dangerous. What now . Thats the really big question, isnt it . Theyve set themselves the task of preparing a budget by middecember. The continuing resolution will run out in january and the debt ceiling issue will rise again in february. I dont see how theyre going to agree a budget. We know why its been so difficult so far. I hope they will. And if they dont, i imagine there must be a possibility that well be in the same place again early next year. So, how are the markets likely to handle that uncertainty between now and then and as we get close once again to the brink . The interesting thing is that the markets have taken all this in their stride largely. Theres been very small tremors in parts of it. But i think the markets still assume that nothing bad is going to happen, that in the end it will be so insane for the us actually to default even for a few hours that its not going to happen. Its not a real threat, its just political theater. And i have to say thats generally been my view. Though this time i was more worried than before. Why . I was more worried because of the tone that one was getting from the republicans and particularly in the house. There were a remarkable number of people, obviously as it turns out not a majority, but a remarkable number of people saying, well, a default will be okay. It wouldnt be a huge problem. We could manage it. It might even be a good thing. It would force the government to live within its means. Now, if a lot of people really think like that as opposed to saying it in order to be more effective bargainers, because its obviously an effective bargaining technique, then they might actually live up to it and maybe this time at last they will actually let the bomb go off. Its like crying wolf. In the end, well, there was a wolf. Well, whats new, it seems to me, that perhaps the markets, especially markets abroad, dont understand is that this minority within a minority is seriously devoted to its ideology and to the struggle for power, and really does believe that a debt ceiling can be used to balance the budget, which is holy grail. Yes, well, that is exactly what we learned. Now, the fact is that an instantaneous balancing of the budget, even if we leave aside the terrible possibility of defaulting on debt, would do Enormous Economic damage, impose an instantaneous and, i think, really very large recession on the u. S. And on the world. Doesnt seem to bother them. Or at least thats what they were saying. And some of them were even saying, well, if we demolish the credit worthiness of the United States, the full faith and credit of the United States, no one will lend to it anymore, it will never be able to borrow again and then we wont have the problem with over mighty government. Looking at this from outside, what i see is the old American Revolutionary tradition if you like, against government, against over mighty government, but now its your own, not king george. And it seems to recur. And its fairly scary when its there. Lets listen to a couple of members of congress who were really saying that default, and whatever would follow, its no big deal. Listen. I would dispel the rumor that is going around that you hear on every newscast that if we dont raise the debt ceiling, we will default on our debt. We wont. Well continue to pay our interest, well continue to redeem bonds and well issue new bonds to replace those. So, its not entirely accurate. Were never, ever, ever, ever. Its implausible that we wont make out interest payments. You have a 3. 1 trillion were going to take in in tax revenues, were going to spend about 3. 7 trillion . So, using language like, well, were going to default. Has the left decided that theyre hungry to scare the markets . Hungry to scare the world debt markets . And is this how you leverage politics . What theyre saying here is, well, the administration could always decide, thats a question that the administration would answer, well, its not so easy, but they would say, the administration can always decide to use its money to pay its interest, to pay the interest, and redemption is not a problem. I agree with that, they can pay the interest. And then they will default on something else. And Social Security and medicare. Social security or medicare. Now, the administration would say, and i agree with them, that is a default. Lets be quite clear. The United States has a legal obligation to pay those Social Security checks and medicare checks. These are legal obligations and not meeting those obligations is itself, in my view, a default. But its a different sort of default from a financial default. Then theres a political aspect. Just think of it. Here will be an administration which is paying interest to china and all the other creditors and is not paying its own veterans, and its own pensioners, and its own elderly beneficiaries of medicare. This would seem to me to be politically virtually impossible situation. And yet theyre recommending it. They are recommending that the United States pay its creditors and default on these legally binding obligations. And so, in this situation yes, it might be possible to continue to serve this debt, but it would still be a default. And the default would have moral implications for domestic american politics, which is very clear. You will be defaulting to domestic citizens. But also it would create an enormous recession because instantaneously, even if they cover their interest obligations, the budget deficit will be closed. Its about a little over four percent of gdp, which is a very big sum, instantaneously that will be taken out of the economy and the economy would just as its beginning to recover reasonably well, collapse again. So, in many Different Levels it seems to me what theyre saying is extraordinarily irresponsible. And amazing, even if you accept it, which the administration would deny, that they can and must meet their interest payments. Yes, president obama has said he cannot give in to the people threatening default because this would increase their incentive to use it again. Do you agree with that . I agree. I recognize that the president was in a very difficult position. And it was obviously scary. But threatening actually to default on your obligations in this way seems to me to go well beyond normal political life. And any president it seems to me has to defend the political process against that. And i think hes right to say, well, it might not be the democrats in future, i dont know. That this is not a weapon that should be used. And my own view is that the debt ceiling should be eliminated. Its a very strange law. Its not constitutional. Its not a constitutional requirement. And it obliges, if its imposed and if its actually not lifted, it obliges the president to break the law. Now, to have a law that obliges the president to break the law, i. E. , not to meet the spending commitments that as an executive hes obliged legally to meet, to have such a law seems to me just ruinous. And i think you should get rid of it. But thats not going to happen alas, no. So, we know that a few weeks from now well be back with this circus again. So, what should the president do when the circus comes down the street again . Well, i think there are, i think in essence theyve taken the right position which is we will not negotiate under the threat of blowing up the solvency, the creditworthiness, of the us government. Thats not a reasonable threat. We will not respond to that. But we will negotiate a long term budget deal. I think the outlines of such a deal have been completely clear for at least since 2011. We all know that it will involve some reductions in long term entitlement spending and some increases in revenue, not necessarily in taxation but reductions in so called tax expenditures, the deductions in the tax system which will raise revenue. And as a result of those two things, i think the completely manageable us debt, Long Term Debt position, theres a lot of hysteria about it, but i think the us has a completely manageable Long Term Debt position. The opposition, the republicans, have said they will not consider any increases of any kind in revenue, even if it means getting rid of deductions or tax reforms which Everybody Knows are needed. Corporation tax in the us is a terrible mess, just to take one example. If the opposition dont want to negotiate on the only basis you could imagine a negotiation with the Democratic Party which after all really did win the last election, then i dont see how they can proceed. Well, suppose that congress does not, hypothetically, does not raise the debt ceiling at the first of the year, the president has to borrow. He has to borrow money to pay those bills, as you say, he owes. But if he does so without congressional approval, arent we facing a constitutional crisis . Yes. If we actually got the situation, the debt ceiling were not raised, the president had to make his decision on what to do, if he were, all the options are very bad, i think the least bad is to continue borrowing. The second least bad is just to cut the domestic spending, but that creates a huge recession. But the worst is actually to default on their debt. So, theyre all terrible. If this then ends up in a quasijudicial process, an impeachment or something of this kind when were just sort of getting out of the big post crisis malaise, yes, i think it would, could be potentially catastrophic. One never knows, but it would certainly be very bad for the reputation of the United States. The last time the United States played so fast and loose with the debt ceiling in 2011, Standard Poors downgraded our debt rating. Was there any, has there been any lasting consequence of that downgrading . No. I think, i thought at the time that there probably wouldnt be because actually everybody continues to be confident that in the end the us will serve its, service its debt and meet its debt obligations. There is in the end, as weve already discussed, and you can see that in the markets now, confidence that however messy, complicated and theatrical, the us has a functioning political system in which the necessary compromises will always be reached because the center will hold. And thats what weve just seen. So, as long as thats the case, these downgrades i dont think matter much. Now, if we suddenly find thats not the case, then were in a different world. But doesnt the world, it seems to me the world understands this is a circus, that this is theater, this is spectacle. And they know in the end the United States will back away from the brink, so they sort of shrug as you indicated earlier in the discussion and say, well, theyll get through this and well go on. And the markets dont rattle very hard. Thats exactly right. What i think is the bigger cost if the theater goes on is simply that the government of the United States is distracted. Obviously if its going to now have a rolling every couple of months crisis and a rolling discussion of these issues, it cant do any of the other things that the world would like the us to do, perhaps too much. So, the president for example because of the shutdown couldnt go to the meeting that he called in east asia was that an embarrassment . It was clearly an embarrassment. Obviously, you know, the us president suddenly cant go because hes got to deal with what seems an absurd domestic problem to the rest of the world. So, it does distract the us in a profound way from its own role in the world. But thats, i think, very sad because i think the world needs american leadership, but its not a catastrophe. Thats not a catastrophe, its a nuisance. But the nuisance it seems is likely to continue. Well, so much of the world owns our treasury bills. That has to influence their response to crises like this and no doubt their wish that wed settle down and be a little more adult when it comes to facing issues like that. Well, yes, but again they do trust that it will continue to be serviced. Remember, they have very few alternatives. If you, the us really has such a strong position in many ways in the world that only its own foolish folly could really damage it. The us provides the most liquid securities in the world. Theyre backed by the full faith and credit of the Worlds Largest economy. One of its most stable democracies, thats how people see it. There are no alternatives. People dont want to hold renminbi debt in huge quantities, even if it existed, they dont know the future of china, there are exchange controls, so you cant convert it easily. There are no financial markets. The euro zone has been a mess in itself. So, in the end people are very happy to hold us treasuries as long as they see the us is continuing basically to be a stable place. The deal that has just been reached will confirm their view, i think, that in the end the us pulls back from the brink. And so, the confidence will remain until that ceases to be true. Looking at the economy, how do you see the us economy five years after the great crash . Well, i think its actually largely healed. The evidence we have from previous studies of crises tends to take five to seven years to get through the process of deleveraging and so forth. Now the u. S. Economy clearly has some very, very big issues, some problems. I think rising inequality and the plight of the middle class are the most important structural problems. The long term trend growth issue, how fast will the economy grow in the longer term thats, i think, a very, very big issue. But in terms of dealing with a crisis the us is clearly ahead of anywhere else. The deleveraging has been very substantial, theres been a big reduction in Household Debt in default which is sad, but its happened. The Financial Sector is clearly healthier. There are lots of problems in it, we can see this with jpmorgan for example. But the Financial Sector is clearly much, much healthier. The Housing Market has corrected. Youve got a big energy boom, Energy Prices here are lower than in any other developed country and youre becoming largely energy selfsufficient. Theres still a very powerful innovative engine here though you need to continue to fund research, which has been the basis of this. And thats a government function, a fundamental government function. But innovation is still there. So, and you survived really quite well this year, a massive fiscal tightening. Weve had an enormous fiscal tightening, about 3 of gdp with the sequester the sequester thats the sequester and which is really budget cutting. And, exactly, and its too much. And it shouldve been done in a different way. I think the tightenings been far too much. You couldve had a much stronger economy, a much lower unemployment if you hadnt tightened the fiscal position by about three percent of gdp. And now the fiscal deficit is four percent of gdp, its fallen by about seven Percentage Points in the last three years. So, its a massive shift. The, and yet the economys growing. So, i actually am quite confident, you know, if nothing disastrous happens in this sort of area that we might see two or three years, maybe longer, of really strong growth in the us. And it will look a very, very good post crisis recovery. But the sequester, which began earlier this year, is supposed to deepen in the new year in 2014. Thats not promising. Well, this is where the budget discussions go. I dont know what deal they will do, but i would hope that they would focus on where the issue really lies which is the very long term, way into a 2020s and 2030s, focusing particularly on the health costs issue which is the core fiscal issue in the us and not tighten the sequester. Indeed they should get rid of it, they should have a more rational budget process. I think actually the us is clearly cutting the economic functions of the government too far, its basically being reduced to just defense interests, Social Security and medicare. There are other things government needs to do which are shrinking dramatically to a tiny proportion of national income. I think its a tremendous mistake. So i think you should relax budget, not tighten further. So there is a worry there. Would you agree that despite what happened this week and the political victory that president obama seems to have won, would you agree that the conservatives have really won the argument about government . I think that is true. What has surprised me is how little pushback there has been from the democrat side in arguing that the government really did have a very strong role in supporting the economy during the post crisis recession, almost depression, that the stimulus argument was completely lost though the economics of it were quite clearly right, they needed a bigger stimulus, not a smaller one. It helped, but it didnt help enough because it wasnt big enough. And theyre not making the argument that government has essential functions which Everybody Needs in the short run. Well, we can see that with the national parks. But also in the long run the strength of america has been built, in my perspective, particularly in the post war period, since the Second World War on the way that actually the public and private sectors have worked together with the government providing enormous support for research and development. Its been the basic support of americas unique position in scientific research. You look at the National Institutes of health which are the most important medical Research Institutions in the world, these are all products of the willingness of the United States to invest in the long term interest. Then theres the infrastructure, think of the highway program, which was the most important Infrastructure Project under the republicans interestingly. And those arguments seem to have been lost. So i am concerned that the government that i think Grover Norquist once said he wants to drown in the bath. If you drown your government in the bath in the modern world, we dont live in the early 19th century, its a different world, that the Long Term Health of the United States will be very badly affected. Its strange to me that a government which has obviously achieved very important things, think of the role of the Defense Department in the internet, has achieved such important things, thats just one of many examples, it should be now regarded as nothing more than a complete nuisance. And the only thing you need to do is to cut it back to nothing. And it does seem to me that the democrats have, for reasons i dont fully understand, basically given up on making this argument. And so in a way the conservatives, the extreme conservative position has won, because nobody is actually combating it. So its only a question of how much you cut and how you cut it rather than, well, what do we want government for . What are the good things about it . What are the bad things about it . How do we make it effective . And how do we ensure that its properly financed . Martin wolf, thank you very much for joining me. Its a great pleasure. Enough of politics, the debt and that spectacle in washington. Lets change the subject. If youve ever lost your smartphone, as i have, you know it can feel like a death. The experience highlights just how our world has been engulfed by social media and how our technology has become a vital organ of our being. And its happened so fast. Facebook is not quite 10yearsold, twitter is younger still. Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg told a reporter that in 2016, just three years from now, people are going to be sharing eight to ten times as much stuff. Like anything hurtling us forward at breakneck speed, the advancements are great, and so are the dangers. For every arab spring or Political Movement using social media to foment change, there may also be campaigns of abuse and hate. For every wikileak and revealed secret, theres the encroachment on personal privacy by the nsa. For every new friend meeting through cyberspace, theres the risk of estrangement from the real world. Our devices change not only what we do but also who we are. So ive come to Sherry Turkle to try to explain how and why. Shes a clinical psychologist who was one of the first to study the impact of computers on culture and society. A professor at m. I. T. And director of that Schools Initiative on technology and self, shes written several important books based on deep research and hundreds of interviews with children and adults alike. Her most recent sums up her conclusions alone together why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Sherry turkle, welcome. Pleasure to be here. I saw a video the other day that i want to share with you. Its now been seen 25 million times yes. On youtube. Here it is. This guy, im not, im not wow. But like if you, its not, its not real i dont think its real. I dont think its real. Maybe theres a did you guys see the lineup for cars wasted the Empire State Building is like, really close to it. What are you thinking as you look at that . Well, i call it alone together. That were moving to a space where we feel free to respond to the three promises that technology now makes us, that we can always be heard, that we can be wherever we want to be, and that we never have to be alone. And that third promise actually is terribly important because i believe that the capacity for solitude is terribly important to develop. I even believe that if you dont teach your children to be alone, theyll only know how to be lonely. And by not developing this capacity for solitude, were not doing our children a favor. What do you mean . Well, there are many things that were doing that are having bad effects on our kids because were really not looking at the implications of immersing ourselves in mobile technology to the degree that we have. And what its doing to, not just our children, but to our family lives, to our social life, to our political life. Ill give you a good example. All right. John mccain recently, under the pressure of the discussion of the syrian crisis, said that was boring. And he needed to go to something that was more stimulating. And so he went to a game. And what that showed is that what were going to is something that revs us up and puts us, we know, neurochemically in a state where were less able to come back and be part of the give and take of human conversation. I mean, isnt every media revolution greeted with the kinds of concerns weve been expressing . Havent we adults all through history always said that this is how the this is a terrible one, right. Yeah. I face this question every day, of i welcome the internet, i welcome the mobile technology. Im saying there are certain ways were using it that are not taking account of how misusing it, overusing it, can really threaten things that we care about. Its a question of technological affordance and human vulnerability. This is a technology to which we are particularly vulnerable in certain ways. A mother adores being with her children. And yet with this technology, she is so vulnerable to the stimulation of knowing what the next message is on her cell phone, that when she picks her kid up at school and the kid comes into the car, this is the gesture she makes to her child. Let me just finish this one last email. Let me just get this one message. And does not make eye contact with the child as the child comes in. Its the desire to look at that one last message that causes her to go like that to her child. Now thats not saying theres anything wrong with a cell phone. Its saying that we are so vulnerable to the seduction of who wants to reach us, what sweetness is coming through the phone, that were really at a point where we turn away from our kids. So what sweetness is that attractive . The sweetness of something new thats coming into us on our phone. People talk to me about, you know, not being able to tolerate not knowing what that new thing thats coming in on the phone is. I mean, kids sit in class now and they, you know, the phone is in the bag or the phone is on the floor, and they check regularly what new texts are coming in. Do you have boundaries for them every professor do you push back . Every professor knows this. Well, i had a thing in class where the kids, i was teaching a class on memoir at mit, and it was about these kids fantastic stories about their lives. And a group of the class came to me and said, you know, were texting in class. And, you know, we feel bad because the rest of the kids, i mean, theyre talking about their lives. And i said, well, we have to discuss this as a class. And basically, they said, we are not as strong as technologys pull. What did they mean by that . They were not as strong. They couldnt say no . They could not say no. They could not say no to the feeling that somebody wanted them. Somebody was reaching out to them. The neurochemical hit of constant connection is what we are is what we have now. The multitasking . It is we definitely get a high from multitasking. Are our brains programmed to do four to six things at the same time . No. Theres really no such thing as multitasking. Studies show decisively that your behavior, your performance degrades for every new task you multitask. So when you add a new task, your performance degrades in all of the tasks youre doing. But theres a catch. You think youre doing better in each of the tasks youre doing. So multitasking, which we hyped and hyped as kind of this is what this technology allowed for us, is actually the first thing that we need to address in order to do serious work. Well, you have helped me to understand a puzzle because in your earlier book, life on the screen, you were optimistic. You thought all of this technology was truly promising. Well, i mean, ive had an evolution in my thinking. And what was the critical factor in that . Because in the early days of the internet, people went online, in those days anonymously, and could create identities online that were very different from the identities they had in the real. And people were experimenting with gender with, you know, the shy would be less shy, and people, as i studied them online, were really using online identity to work through questions of kind of experimenting using the online world as a sort of identity workshop to play with questions of kind of experimenting, using the online world as a sort of identity workshop, to play with questions of who they were and to experiment with being a little bit different. And i thought that was very exciting. What i did not see, call me not prescient, was that my idea of how we would be thinking about identity had a model of a person at a computer playing with identity, and then after you played with your identity at the computer, then you would get up from your computer, having experimented with identity, and you would go out to the world, into the world, and you would live your life having learned these lessons from your online identity. When the book was written, i looked around me, and there were already people in my environment using computers that they called the wearable computers. Wearable . Wearable computers. They had antennae, they had keyboards in their pockets, they had glasses that were their screens, and they were wearing the web on them. In other words, they looked very science fiction. They basically had a portable phone. They were they could be you were wearing it . On the web, they were wearing it. They could be on the web all the time. It was their uniform. It was their uniform. They could be on the web all the time. And that meant once you had this device with you all the time, you didnt have this division of time at the computer or not with the computer. You had this always on, alwaysonyou device, and you had the possibility of being always, always in this world of the web. But whats wrong with that . I ask that seriously because, you know well, that is e. M. Forster said, only connect. That changed everything. Because people then, the kids in my class who were looking down at their phones through the entire lecture included, the people in church who text during services, who text during funerals included, everyone is always having their attention divided between the world of the people were with and this other reality. We now walk around with our heads down. I walked over here this morning, everybody is like this. I thats dangerous in new york city its dangerous. Theres even a new yorker cover i think about a family, you know, who are at the beach, and their heads are in their phones. I mean, we are always equally in the world of the machine, in the world thats in the phone and in the rest of the world. That new yorker covers a long way from the covers we used to see on the saturday evening post, particularly in Norman Rockwells famous depiction of thanksgiving dinner around the table, serving the turkey with all the kids and grandparents entering into the conversation right, right. If i came into this conversation and just put my iphone down and we started to talk, what we would discuss in this conversation would radically change. Because youd feel, and youd be right to feel, that im, you know, partly waiting to be interrupted by all the things people, experiences, emotions, connections that are here. And that changes what people will talk about, the amount of investment theyll make in the conversation, the nature of the degree of emotional content they will put into a conversation. What is this doing to us as human beings . The fact that were constantly at its keeping us more at the surface of things. I went to a dinner of a group of young people, constant, constant interruption. Everybody has a phone, phones are going off constantly, the average teenage girl is interrupted once every four or five minutes by an incoming or an outgoing text. So five people out to dinner, i mean, it was a constant interruption. And ill say to them, how do you feel about the interruptions . And they say, what interruptions . Because they experience these interruptions as connection. Things have gotten so bad that the culture is starting to present things that used to be dystopian as utopian. And my best example is dinner. Theres an ad for facebook which a dinner, a typical Norman Rockwell dinner, the type you were evoking. Big family, and extended family is at dinner. And you know this is going to be good, because dinner is the thing that we all know protects against juvenile delinquency, people stay in school if they have dinner with their families. It protects against, you know, everything bad and it encourages everything good in the growing up as a child. There are studies that confirm that . Studies confirm dinner with your family, just have dinner with your children. So we know this is going to be good. And this family is having dinner. And then all of a sudden, one of the members of the family, lets call her aunty, starts to get boring. A young girl, lets say a 19yearold girl weve hit a boring bit. And this girl is not going to take a boring bit. And she takes out her phone, and on her phone she goes to facebook. And from her phone comes out snowball fights and Football Games and ballet things, all the things that are on her phone come out of her phone. And shes not at the dinner anymore. Shes into this other world of facebook, all the boring bits are gone, facebook and all the things that are on her facebook are now at the dinner, on the table. Shes surrounded by this other world. Shes smiling, shes happy. And so, i mean, essentially facebook has taken out an ad against conversation at family dinner. The big issue is whether or not were moving to a culture, and we are, where people can no longer tolerate what im calling the boring bits. The boring the boring bits of human conversation. I call it a flight from conversation. Because weve become increasingly intolerant of the way in which we stumble and make mistakes and kind of have to backtrack, particularly when were talking about things that are complicated and hard. And you have to sort of work with somebody and get this is conversation. And children have to be taught, and this is why its a gift to them to say, put down the device and lets talk. And so what concerns me as a developmental psychologist, watching children grow in this new world where being bored is something that never has to be tolerated for a moment. You can always go someplace where youre stimulated, stimulated, stimulated, is that people are losing that capacity. And thats very serious. What is it about facetoface conversation you think people dont like . Well, i once asked a 16yearold who was talking about how much he doesnt like conversation. He actually had just said to me, someday, someday soon, but certainly not how, id like to learn how to have a conversation. And i said, whats wrong with conversation . And he said, it takes place in real time and you cant control what youre going to say. And this is crucial for what Digital Technology has given us that has made conversation seem like something that we can avoid. Lets say the old kind of conversation, which is openended, which is that when you type or use digital media, you can edit, you can correct, you can get it right, you feel less vulnerable. I call it the goldilocks effect. Goldilocks . The goldilocks effect goldilocks and the three bears . Right. We want to be in touch with more and more people, carefully kept at bay. Not too close, not too far, just right, edited, made with our communications edited, made perfect. Goldilocks. Everyone across the spectrum is talking about technology overuse, including comedians. I came across this moment on youtube where louis c. K. Is talking about his own kid. Here it is. My daughter was having a dance thing at her school. They had this big dance. Anyway, we all went, all the parents, and everybodys there, and everybodys got their phone. Every single parent, it was an amazing thing to watch, because kids are dancing, and every parent is standing there like this. Every Single Person was blocking their vision of their actual child with their phone. And the kids, i went over by the stage and the kids, theres People Holding ipads in front of their faces. Why are you taping this . Youre never going to watch it. You dont watch it, you just put it on facebook, here, you watch it. Its a funny video, but he isnt sure he likes whats happening. Well, i mean, it i mean, theres so many things going on in this. I mean, we are living the kind of mediated, a mediated existence where, you know, capturing the event in order to then post it, really has become, has come to seem normal. So i call it, i share therefore i am. I mean, its kind of a way of living where you dont feel fully as though youre living if you havent shared it in this new way. In other words, its almost as though you dont have the feeling, or the feeling is you get the feeling, or the feeling begins to come to you. You feel more yourself, you begin to feel yourself as you mesh yourself with the means of communication. So sending is being . Sending is being. Its starting to be that sending is being. And i think that this has a, potentially a downside, because, you know, you begin to not have as much a feeling of autonomy and sense of self if your way of thinking about yourself is so tied into sharing and texting and being enmeshed that way. Walt whitman should be around now, song of myself right, right. I mean, thats what society no, it really is a different way of seeing the self. And again, i come back to the importance of solitude, the sense that people need to learn how to gather themselves and be alone and experience solitude, which is different from loneliness. Because the way things are now, you know, people think that loneliness is a problem that needs to be solved and that only technology can solve. What about technologys ability to enable us to be mean and malicious from a distance without any possibility of retaliation . Why do people behave so differently on social media . Because the face, the presence of another person inhibits the worst in us. And the fact that we can behave as behind a veil brings out this side where you feel as though youre disinhibited. Theres no youre given permission. Youre given permission. Youre given permission. People behave cyber bullying, people behave as though theyre not speaking to another human being. Did you see the recent story about the 12yearold girl who took her life after being bullying yes, yes. Any take you can give us on that . Any insight you can share with us about how technology feeds Something Like that . She couldve just turned off the phone, put down the phone. No. No, she couldnt. Because the phone has become her lifeline too, to her social world. I think thats sort of what were saying, is that being part of her social world meant keeping on the phone. These people got to her because she could not be part of being 12yearsold in her high school. Youre so on that without keeping on her phone. There was a recent Pew Research Study that found teenagers are wary of excessive sharing on facebook but continue to use it because they say it is crucial to their social life. Absolutely, absolutely. So its not just the matter of unplugging. If they unplug, theyre unplugging from their universe. Yes. And there are many teenagers who ive studied who will unplug for a while, and then plug back in because that is where that is sort of where their social life is. Thats where their thats where they know where the parties are. Thats where they know, thats where they find out where things are happening. So this need for community that they now find technologically seems to me an extension of this powerful appetite that makes us human beings. But you say, i hear you saying, the machine threatens our humanity . Well, i want to say im optimistic if it can be used in a way that connects us in ways that will make us more human, as that will bring the Human Community together. But let me just take politics. I was so optimistic and excited about the connections that people could form politically using the computer. And there has been some fantastic things, obviously. But very often, people feel as though theyve politically participated if they go on a website and they check like. They feel that that is belonging to a making a political statement. Politics is actually, i think, going into your community, having a conversation, not to overuse the word, disagreeing with somebody, putting yourself into somebody elses head, often very hard, looking somebody in the eye, really doing the hard work of empathy, something that you dont learn by email. Its the last place to develop empathic skills. So the question of community and being part of a community is either something that computers can help or that computation can undermine, depending on how we use it. Have you found that people feel empowered when they can tweet or facebook their opinions . Ive found that theres a sense of response people get to their postings of their opinions that make them feel better. It may that theyre being heard. The feeling of always being heard is great and empowering, but again, the paradox, it can take people away from really doing something, from real action. I call this moments of more and lives of less. In other words, you have these moments when you feel as though youre doing more, and you feel empowered, but actually, you havent engaged with the world. So you feel great, youve tweeted an opinion, you feel, im in the world, but actually, joining a political group, learning something, taking some kind of action in the world, in the real world on the street in your community, would actually be a moment of more. But that requires negotiation, compromise, even vulnerability. And conversation with other people. That you cant do it from your room, which so much of the internet allows you to do. I mean, in education and in politics, i think we want to go to a place where were looking to give things the complexity that they deserve. But many elite institutions are pressing the case for online education. Yes. And this is something that i think is very, very interesting now. Its good for certain kinds of content. Its good for places that couldnt possibly get this education. But i think that the great education happens when theres really a conversation that mixes content, the passion of the instructor, and the conversation with a student whos physically there with the instructor. As a professor, the teaching of the content happens through the weaving of my passion for my subject with delivering the content. I dont want them to come in for a discussion after theyve been alone in their room learning this stuff. I want to be with them while theyre learning. So im willing to go along with this, if this is for people who dont have access to the ideal. And this is the best they can have. But in technology so often, we use the argument that theres something thats better than nothing. And in all of a sudden, it becomes better than anything. So this thing, this online education, starts out that its better than nothing, because all these people in thirdworld, this is the only thing they can have. So its better than nothing. And then all of a sudden, its better than anything. Its better than anything mit can provide for our own students, and it begins to creep in. I mean, sell it to other universities in the United States because its better than what they can provide. And all of a sudden, it starts to be a model for education. And thats when i think we need to sort of take a breath. My attitude toward so much about technology is really just take a breath and just approach it and say, do you really want to say that flipping the classroom is really the best model for everything were doing . Im not so sure. So do you have a couple of practical things that you would suggest to people about how to use this technology . Facebook, twitter, social media, for happiness and meaning . I have a lot of practical advice for parents, which is to create sacred spaces in your home. By which you mean. Places that are device free. Kitchen, dining room, and the car. You cant introduce this idea when your child is 15 that the car is for chatting. From the very beginning, kitchen, dining room, and the car are places where we talk. And you explain to your child. This isnt, you know, this is important to me. Were a family. I need to talk to you. I need to talk to you. Sherry turkle, i appreciate your coming to share your ideas with us. Thank you so much. Coming up on moyers and company, why are dr. Seuss and mack the turtle on this list of 100 great americans . Peter dreier has the answer. Yertle the turtle is a message to all americans that we can change america in a more democratic direction if were willing to fight back and were willing to challenge the powers that be. At our website billmoyers. Com, weve taken a cue from media scholar Sherry Turkle, and have some tips from our viewers on how to motivate friends and family to unplug from their devices and make eye contact again. Wed like to hear your ideas, too. Thats all at billmoyers. Com. Ill see you there and ill see you here, next time. Dont wait a week to get more moyers. This episode of Moyers Company is available on dvd for 19. 95. To order, call 18003361917 or write to the address on your screen. Announcer funding is provided by Carnegie Corporation of new york, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy, and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. The kohlberg foundation. Independent production fund, with support from the partridge foundation, a john and polly guth charitable fund. The clements foundation. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations Whose Mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The bernard and audre rapoport foundation. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org. Anne gumowitz. The betsy and jesse fink foundation. The hkh foundation. Barbara g. Fleischman. And by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Tavis good evening. Tonight, a conversation with writer Brian Jay Jones about his new biography of jim jensen, creator of one of this countrys most beloved characters, come at the fraud. Despite his childlike wonder, he was a complex man kermit the frog. Despite his childlike wonder, he was a complex man can and then we will talk with kathy eldon about the struggles to rebuild her life after the devastating loss of her son. We are glad you have joined us. Those conversations coming up right now