Williams alum, author Ethan Zuckerman to discuss how mistrust can help transform institutions berkshireeagle.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from berkshireeagle.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Departures Podcast with Ethan Zuckerman
By Robert Amsterdam | Published: March 5, 2021
At some point, people stopped believing that electing the right leaders and passing the right laws was the most effective way to achieve social change. Since at least the 1970s, people have been rapidly losing faith in government, democracy, big banks, big corporations, organized religion, and other institutions which were thought to help give order and shape norms for society.
In Ethan Zuckerman’s new book, “
There are four ways that we regulate our societies, Zuckerman says in the podcast interview. We make laws, which say you can’t do this or that. We use markets to make bad behavior expensive, like taxing cigarettes. We use social norms – if you engage in prohibited conduct, we will shun you. And lastly, we have code, we use technology to impose normative values, making it more difficult to do bad things.
11 New Books We Recommend This Week
Feb. 11, 2021
Crime and punishment make their presence felt in this week’s recommended titles, from Russell Shorto’s family history of his grandfather’s mob ties (“Smalltime”) to Philippe Sands’s account of a Nazi fugitive (“The Ratline”); Maurice Chammah’s study of the death penalty and its decline (“Let the Lord Sort Them”) to Reuben Jonathan Miller’s look at the life that awaits ex-inmates (“Halfway Home”).
Also on our night stands this week: Ethan Zuckerman’s new book about the collapse of institutional authority (“Mistrust”), Emily Rapp Black’s memoir of motherhood and grief (“Sanctuary”), Jeremy Atherton Lin’s personal and cultural history (“Gay Bar”) and Avi Loeb’s argument that aliens visited the neighborhood in 2017 (“Extraterrestrial”). Finally, there’s Thomas Healy’s “Soul City,” about one man’s attempt to create a Black-run city in the 1970s; Charles Wheelan’s “We Came
OLLI, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Berkshire Community College, will present a live online program featuring two renowned writers and thought leaders on the impact of the internet at
Guest:
Ethan Zuckerman is the founder of the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and associate professor of public policy, information, and communication. He is cofounder of the international blogging community
Global Voices. His latest book is Mistrust:
Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them. Address 1929 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Berkeley CA 94704 Phone 510.848.6767 Contact Us