Semester, these three duke with some great stuff planned for next semester already. Also to nights for him being filled 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 and your question, another reason why we ask you to stitching is because we didnt do a write up of all of the forums afterwards which you will be able to read a couple of days after the event on our website which is comp forum. Edu, and the last announcement is that this event tonight is cosponsored by radius, which is another group at mit. I am thrilled to be able to introduce these three. It is a different story than we initially thought would be here because jeff, he called me up a little past by because his daughter was puking, and as a aa father of two young kids myself i said please stay home. And so fortunately christina couch who writes a lot about technology and works with the forum is a bright journalist in her own right has agreed to fill in as a moderator. But let me introduce everyone. Noam cohen, death of the new book the know would also, that will also be a a hashtag tonigt at a think moving forward. Got to get on that. We Work Together a decade and a half ago. Ive known him ever since. He is a great guy and a brilliant journalist. He covered influence of the internet on the larger culture for the New York Times when he wrote the link by link column beginning in 2007. His first book to know what else can the rise of Silicon Valley is a political powerhouse and social wrecking ball come is an intellectual history of Silicon Valley and critically examines how its destructive culture and ideology the little civility, empathy and even democracy. It was published in october 2017 and it is available for purchase right here, and in addition to supporting open discussion we also support both bookstores and authors. So please by all means buy the book. Its a great book. We have both read and loved it. To his left is sarah watson, a Technology Critic who writes and speaks about emerging issues and intersection of technology, culture and society. Her works have appeared in the atlantic, wired, the Washington Post, slate and mother were virtues are filled with the broken cline center for internet and society at Harvard University and author of the city for digital journalism. And then to my left is chris couch. Chris couch is a science journalist who ive had also pleasure working with for several years now. Shes also the core data for the communications forum. Our own market for the intersections of technology and psychology and her bylines have appeared in Mit Technology review past company, coexist, science, friday and wired magazine. Weve also for your convenience put all of their twitter handles on the board. And without further ado i will turn it over to chris. Actually, with further ado, sorry about that. In addition to the book come with a book that jeff cowrote, ahead of the Mit Media Lab on sale called whiplash from which is also a great book. The book of those are available immediately afterwards. And no will be your design. Thank you very think you guys for all bigger group were so excited about this panel. If you like it addresses a lot of important issues. I would encourage you to buy a book, great book. So first of all i want to kick off this panel by talking about the central argument of the book, and correct me if im wrong, is really the disruption and individualism, endemic to Silicon Valley has kind of in a lot of ways the road of humanity, is that fair to say . I was thinking about the question, the premise of this get together like have lost your humanity. The clip and is that they have . The deeper answers and the person has humanity. What were talking about this happened at a think ive approached some of this on the computers that aspect of the book goes to a lot of history of Computer Science. Peoples machines and machines with people is one of the crucial mistakes or password on i think is scary so that is denying humanity of your fellow people when you think of them so individualistic leave as little data points. I think about in the introduction type but a wellknown anecdote about googles first design director who was asked to create a design for gmail window doing it and he suggested a color. Is that you can wanted he went and tested 41 different shades of blue. The one people use was with the one in which is that he resigned over these issues and to be design director at lisa bennet googles like an oxymoron. Two other human vision of what theyre doing when they were going to test it and they dont apologize because basically they say the color, the shade of loose most popular one. Its led to 200 million in additional revenue as i think that breakdown, seeing people as data points. Theyre not apologetic about it but at least that outcomes come to some extent . Can you speak to what those outcomes are. For people to not familiar with the intricacies of Silicon Valley, can you tell me about how to supplant . What i was trying to argue is there taking this ideology called libertarianism and making it seem very normal and mainstream. What do i mean by libertarianism. Regulation, the idea that we should regulate tax these or hotels taxis come all these Different Companies that we should regulate. What children see on video, nt tv. That we should regulate who can pay for political ads. Should you live in america lacks should they declare what theyre doing . Thats one part of that ideology. This tasteful regulation and this trust the government which is really the point of our society. Thats one part. The extreme idea free speech is another one. I know all these issues are complicated. We will talk but whether im coming out too strong. To me i wrote a piece in the new yorker. Com this week about an issue on the boulevard in stanford back in the 80s with the speedy limits on free speech. There was a joke group that told racist and sexist jokes. Stanford try to limit that and it was such a severe pushback from the Computer Science department, the kind of people talk about who are running Silicon Valley, that it was reversed. To me having limits on free speech is vital to having a community that is lisa. Thats another dangerous aspect of that ideology. I think theyre doing all this, i think some of it is done in good faith but i think its having horrible consequences. I wrote this book for the 2016 election, was working on it, thinking about it but what happened from that election bears out these points. The fact that the Big Companies like google, facebook and twitter are so blase about the idea that foreign companies, a foreign country could try to influence our election or that they should be disclosure was advertising, whether these powerful tools targeting people should be used by anybody to stir up anger and resentment. Jamie shows this disconnect that they are not seeing themselves as custodians of the power they had and instead exploding it exploiting it for profit or a utopian vision that supersedes other concerns. Thats the effects. I would add one thing. People ask me when i talk about the book what prompted me to do because clearly it wasnt the 2016 election. I think about how one thing was a turning point and you can look me as a hypocrite about using gmail. I remember thinking that give it gmail would have computer region email, in order to place ads for, my mom actually passed with them catch up in the time and remember thinking how whenever mention the word cancer in no because i just didnt want hey, have you thought of radiation treatment . I didnt want that. That notion like someone would be a custodian upon information, giving it for me, would you like that right to commercialize it was a think the crystallizing moment to me when i think back on it. A lot of your work is with Technology Criticism not just the psychology but the culture surrounding it. Im wondering from your perspective, do you agree with the premise that he feel about the premise i guess of the culture of the Technology World having an effect on humanity and empathy and severely . I absolutely agree with the overall premise that a lot of people have started to unpack the current applications of the way that technology is built but also the kind of assumptions and ideologies that are acted out in the technology itself. Obviously, look at the individuals who are leading these companies and coming up with these designs look at their assumptions and ideologies really do matter. I think the biggest thing for me is i like to think about this in terms of optimization. I think most Silicon Valley leaders and companies are designed around questions of optimization. Whether its the design itself, whether its getting to the Information Access and you can connecting people as efficiently as possible or connecting you to all of the worlds material goods. Those are questions of efficiency in and optimizing for profit, right . Those are kind of taken for granted as the right terms of optimization. Trying to unpack what those assumptions are is really productive starting point is it okay, what if spending more time on facebook wasnt the optimization model . What if it was a quality experience on facebook . What would that look like . How would that change the experience or the design of the platform but also what would that change about what facebook scroll in our life is . Thats the crux a lot of question i continue to ask about technology and society. I think the trick is using the terminology of the industry, optimization and waited thinking about problems and problemsolving is a productive way of sharing language and trying to get at we havent necessarily agree to the terms of optimization but theyre coming at it from a market perspective and thats a natural way for things to evolve. But we as a society, we, construct a question whether those are the terms that we agree to or not. One of the things that i thought was really well done in the book, the book addresses how many of the issues that we associate with Silicon Valley now and with a larger Technology World, issues of privacy, issues of commercialization, issues of users being assessed in ways they may not agree to, only some of the companies that are major giants currently google being the one that one of sticks outd really started with an ethos that was entirely against all of those things. Can you speak to how did we get here . I want to pick up on the way sarah mentioned was spot on. I was reading the report she wrote that she classifies critics. I can see myself in it, and i think what shes talking about is practical ways of trying to get to a better place anything in this book i was looking at the history, also kind ask Bigger Picture kind of questions. Think of the efficiency argument. Argument. Its not in the book but this idea that in the bible there is this instruction given here you should just get it one pass in harvesting it. You should go back a second time and efficiently get every little fruit and colonel you miss because part of the ecosystem of people are traveling or four people who live off this. Again, the efficiency would be like i have a form, i need to get all the content, thats what i do, im a former. Or you could say your part of us aside society and efficiently is to listen scraps be there for other people because they efficiently use. Its like thinking about the picture, the world we are trying to create. An editor sent me a tweet or so the point out Mark Zuckerberg was saying how he cared so much about this election battling, russian meddling in the election that he was going, the company was going to spend all this money to our people, thats why he mentioned in the investment call, the were prepared to lose money over. The natural, basically youre making money from the current bad situation. Thats the point, youll flip on that one. Again, deficiencies in the way their setup that are really troubling. Is that what youre asking about, the history . I didnt know these answers directly but how did we get to. That was a question is kind ask. Youll see in the book the Computer Science at account for some hacker mentality, accounts for some of these extreme ideological ideas about free speech and kind of like a diversity and hostility to outsiders. I credit or blame stands up a lot of the profitseeking. For me the stanford, the google case was a real like very lightly. Go back and read the original papers when they were developing which was an incredible invention like the Google Search engine. Everybody agreed they were standing on the shoulders of others, but they really created something that took this chaotic thing called the early west and made it coherent. It was incredible and its the reason why he became so popular. They would also explain as you described it to me, why it need to be advertising free and it needed to be in the actual academic world. It need to be a place where it was transparent picture should be these black boxes and now of course it come to accept the idea that the google algorithm at facebook algorithm are these secret think salute you know what theyre doing. Theyre constantly tinkering with it in a mysterious way. They are arguing that for that for science, very better trusting the system because theres no scrutiny. At least the way i see the story going is basically they are serious academics. Their parents were academics. Basically the end of using so much bandwidth at stanford that they were told yet to start figure out how to pay for this. To the specific question to say could stanford have said this is a great invention, will pay for. We paid for like a Nuclear Reactor in our building. Its very important for our study of our society and site to do this but they are were told you that if you got a way to do this. There are connected to stanford network with an investor like immediately before, so only it were not incorporated. A story that is told in these books is how a person would been at stanford, graduate wrote that the check for google inc. There is no googling. There. There will be. Uniate center a month later it was of google inc. And they deposited that 100,000 check and the rest is history. Maybe its a little corny, sounds like corruption. I guess you call it selling out. For them and for facebook as well with a really had some idealism. They kind of work in all of part of the computer and do not necessarily tied to become billionaires. I think in the book you see there are other characters like peter and jeff basis for bakers and thats what theyre trying to do was to figure out a way to make money. These idealistic hackers kind of led astray, thats my view anyway. Sarah, he written extensively about a coming of the Technology World has changed over time. Can you explain how has the media theobald as a tech world has evolved . Sure. So in the Research Report i did for the center for digital journalism at columbia, what are the things of time to look at was coverage from that kind of early almost breathless excitement about the Silicon Valley moment, the dot com boom and all of that kind of energy that went into covering before the amazon era, and then later in the google and facebook and others era. That kind of, starting from a very business oriented coverage model, or from a tech blogger model. And so that kind of breathless coverage moving into something a little bit more concerned with as a technology starts to intersect with a lot of things like politics and people and society, those shifting the narrative about what matters about technology and why this is change our lives and affecting our lives. I think that shipped kind of happens at a couple different points. I think 2007 or so the iphone comes out and like we all of a sudden have dramatically changed our like daytoday relationship with a computer in a pocket basically. But yet that was still in that gadget excitement phase. Then we have like a 2013ish moment which is the snowden moment and thats where everyone comes to terms with the fact that Like Technology has both good and bad uses, right . I wanted to touch on this. As this book came out. Theres the World Without end more about the Company Controlling our access to knowledge and information. And from scott galloway, the m monopolistic, market side of thing and tim wu talking about the attention merchants talking about the companies monopoly over our information and our attention. So, i think its an interesting moment right now in part because all of the books are written before the crisis hit, so, its fascinating. The writing has been on the wall for a long time and publishers seem to have acknowledged that theres a market for the books. I like to think about this and met like where is the audience and who is this for its a narrative for 2013, it was sort of an important moment. I wrote a piece earlier than that about this german politician, a young guy who petitioned to get all of his data about that tracking that was done with him, but it was again, you kind of point out in the paper that you wrote, that the breakthrough is hard, so. Its weird, theyre keeping that data and its like they get attention for a lot of Different Reasons and probably takes a lot for people to see it, so, i think that was probably. We were talking about the problem to access, right . Like who, for a journalist. Ron and id be curious to see your take on this, for a journalist to have access to the companies they have to stay on their good side to a degree and that is especially true if youre like in the Business Tech journalist covering the story. So, you know, as more kind of journal from different walks of life are also coming to terms with impact on society, the narrative starts to change, right . Yeah, no, i think thats really wh