Is Humor The Best Antidote to Tyranny?
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Andrew talks to the legendary Czech diplomat, writer and human rights activist Michael Zantovksy about how to fight authoritarianism.
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Pivoting to the Killer-app.
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Andrew talks with writer Larry Downes, the author of five books including this year’s bestselling Pivot To The Future. Best known, however, for his first book, Unleashing The Killer App, which, in 1998, sold 200,000 copies and was one of the first big hits about the internet.
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Facebook’s Moral Crisis
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The American technology journalist and impresario David Kirkpatrick is probably the world’s leading authority on the history of Facebook. The author of the 2010 best-selling Facebook Effect, over the last few years – become one of the Facebook most articulate critics.
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Ninja Morality: The case for technological innovation
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Andrew talks to Ninja Future author Gary Shapiro about our moral obligation to unleash technological innovation on society
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Keen On The State of American Democracy
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Andrew talks to noted Harvard Law School scholar Noah Feldman about the health of American democracy, populism, anti-trust law and what James Madison would think of contemporary America.
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How to Lose a Country With Turkish Author Ece Temelkuran
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Today Andrew is talking to Turkish born author of How To Lose A Country, Ece Temelkuran. As global citizens we chat about her rejection of the parochial, cul-de-sac of identity politics and shows us how to engage in REAL democratic conversation.
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Why Democracy Is a Conversation
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Andrew talks to internet guru Jeff Jarvis about how to save democracy through turning it into a civil and civic discussion
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Why Democracy needs Team Human
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Douglass Rushkoff is one of the world’s leading humanist critics of contemporary capitalism, particularly of the digital economy. In this week’s episode we chat about his latest acclaimed book is TEAM HUMAN.
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How Globalism Is Turning Us All Into Palestinians
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Andrew talks to Ian Bremmer, author of the bestselling Us Vs Them: The Failure of Globalism about the political crises of inequality and alienation.
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Finally Some Good News: Democracy works in Turkey!
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Andrew talks to noted Turkish political pundit Soli Ozel about democracy in Turkey. Democracy works, Ozel says. Authoritarianism may even be on the wane.
info_outlineToday, I’m in New York City talking about the same subject. My guest is Rana Foroohar, the Financial Times columnist, CNN global economic analyst and best-selling author. Foroohar, who is coming out with a book about the tech platforms later this year entitled DON’T BE EVIL, is also one of Silicon Valley’s most articulate critics. And so she is particularly well equipped to make the connection between the rise of Big Tech and today’s crisis of democracy.
FAROOHAR’S FIVE POINTS
So there is, indeed, an intimate connection between the rise of the big tech platforms and our crisis of democracy. At least according to Rana Faroohar. But is she right? Is Silicon Valley really the cancer eating away at the American Republic.
- I think Faroohar who, by the way, wrote Makers and Takers, an acclaimed 2016 critique of contemporary American financial capitalism, is correct to describe Silicon Valley and Wall Street similarly. Both industries are dominated by libertarian ideologues, she says, which have profited liberally from fourty years of radical deregulation. The monopolists in both industries are stifling innovation. Both sectors are lacking any kind of moral center – a ethical vacuum epitomized by Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg who worked on Wall Street before coming to Silicon Valley. And both have contributed to a blatantly rigged economy that has triggered the rise of populism.
- So to protect both democracy and capitalism in America, Faroohar convincingly suggests, requires both reforming Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Self regulation doesn’t work, she insists. And that’s why, I suspect, she positively cited Elizabeth Warren several times in our conversation. You see, Warren is the one Democratic Presidential candidate who is both in favor of aggressively regulating Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Warren has even announced that, if she became president, she would favor breaking up Google, Facebook and Amazon.
- Faroohar’s remarks about California leading the way on regulation are also very intriguing. Yes, she says, European regulators like the EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager have pioneered a defense against the big tech platforms. But the real innovation on regulating privacy and introducing a data dividend, she says, is being pioneered in California by reformers like Governor Newsom and the billionaire leftist Jim Steyer. I’d like to explore these innovations in future shows. Especially the idea of a data dividend which has always represented the holy grail of Facebook and Google critics.
- The key to enriching democracy in America, Faroohor insists, is by focusing on citizens rather than consumers. And it’s here that she plays the generational card – suggesting that millennials are particularly sympathetic to this return to the original principles of American democracy. I hope she’s right. Certainly millennials have been deeply affected by both the great recession of 2008 and contemporary surveillance capitalism. But I wonder if a generation reared on narcissistic products like Instagram and Twitter really are ready to make the kinds of personal compromises necessary to resurrect the communitarian ideal of citizenship.
- What is undeniable, however, is the importance of this debate. Faroohar wants what she calls a “massive multiyear dialogue” about regulating the tech platforms and protecting democracy. With the imminent destruction of millions of jobs by AI, she predicts, both our economic and political future will be nightmarish unless we fix Big Tech now. Rana Faroohor is, of course, right. And we’ve got to hope that – via politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Gavin Newsom and writers like Faroohor herself – that this dialogue is now starting.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode with Rana, you can find out more about her here:
Find Rana’s Books here:
- Makers & Takers - How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street.
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Produced by Jason Sanderson - Podcast Tech