Frances Folsom Cleveland was a celebrity first lady unlike almost any before her, and the mass production of her image to sell a variety of goods by the American Consumer industry in the mid1880s angered both her and her husband, president Grover Cleveland. To help us understand the Frances Cleveland sensation sweeping the country, we begin our story inside 1600 pennsylvania avenue as a curious nation waited for the details of a 49yearold bachelor president marrying his 21yearold bride inside the white house for the first and only time in our countrys history, launching Frances Cleveland into instant celebrity. Youre standing in the cross hall of the modern white house. Its the same basic layout as it would have been on june 2, 1886, when president Grover Cleveland and his bridetobe, Frances Folsom, came down what was then the large staircase to the family quarters at the west end of this corridor. They would have proceeded down the hallway. The music started up at the east side behind
Quickly but so is our adaptation to it arent we overdramatizing the fact of the digitalisation the internet and other phenomena brought on by the 4th Industrial Revolution well well we dont really know i mean its a bit like things like demographics where youve got rapidly aging societies were not entirely sure whats going to happen because its never happened before and yes people point to the industrial level revolution saying its all happened before but equally in the context of losing jobs and other jobs being created but it does seem slightly different this time i mean its more than just ways of making things ways of living its a bit broader than that potentially this time and i think we need to be quite careful about things and the thing im very disappointed at the moment is possibly get more into the so philosophical ethical area is theres very little discussion about what all of this technology is ultimately for it seems to be an end in itself a lot of the time now ive seen you w
Not its not very different i mean i acquired this and i still think slightly ludicrous job title but since having written a book about 11 years ago about what i thought would happen in the in the future and ive always used the future as an excuse to engage with people about what theyre doing right now and what they might like to do next so im somewhat cynical about a lot of the stuff that surrounds the socalled industry but i think it is quite a useful thing to do i know that you believe that the next 50 years of Human History will be determined by our relationship with the machines and i think this is a very popular notion nowadays but it strikes me as a little bit. Isnt Human History always altima to the determined by our relationship with ourselves rather than the tools we use well its everything i think one of the mistakes a lot of technology. Making is to purely look at technology in a very linear fashion and you have to consider the entire system the psychology the history Everyt
Companies who are trying that bass to get consumers who looked in order to sell their products would you have a point i mean i think a lot of products have been designed by sort of western white middle class people in the past the difference this time is that it was easy not to buy their products there was a limit to how impactful that products where whereas this time the Digital Products in particular are being designed by terribly tiny size slice of society and if it is white middle class young men in a certain part of california and they are designing things that they truly believe in and i think that works for them quite a lot of them quite frankly to stick spectrum and they have issues relating to other human beings now that Technology Works for them it doesnt necessarily work for the people weve had a lot of discussion about products being designed by men that terribly well for women but its. So young men designing products terribly well for older people and even the discussion a
Which is that we have fucking number we have the brains of the page the institutions of the medieval and the technology of the gods and he wasnt being terribly complementary i mean technology is accelerating extremely fast in certain areas computing and genetics primarily we still essentially have the same brains that we crawled out of caves with and there is a problem emerging that we either have to merge with the machines or reject or restrain some of this technology but the previous Industrial Revolutions also happened very quickly in a matter of day kids and to some extent they were far more dramatic in terms of changing peoples lifestyles and their values i agree technology is advancing very quickly but so is our ive taishan to it arent we overdramatizing the fact of the digitalisation the internet and other phenomena brought on by the 4th Industrial Revolution well well we dont really know i mean its a bit like things like demographics where youve got rapidly aging societies when