Is Humor The Best Antidote to Tyranny?
Keen On
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.
Keen On
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
Keen On
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
Keen On
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
Keen On
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
Keen On
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
Keen On
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
Keen On
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
Keen On
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!
Keen On
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_outlineGiven that our conversation with James Bridle was about enlightenment, let me begin by reiterating that it’s no substitute for his book THE NEW DARK AGE. If you really want to be enlightened, read it. You won’t be disappointed.
The point of the book and our conversation is that today’s digital revolution, with its cornucopia of information, was supposed to enlighten, but is actually become a vehicle for mass mystification. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Bridle lives in Greece. The ancient Athenian imagery is, of course, self-evident. In today’s so-called information society, Bridle says, we are back in Plato’s Cave. Staring at shadows. Transfixed by lies. Awash in ignorance.
How does democracy fit in here? There’s an intimate relationship, he says, between a successful democracy and the visibility of the technology maintaining it. He uses the example of a technology of ancient Athens to make his point here. It’s the KLE-RO-TER-ION - a randomized device designed to select citizens to state offices and juries. This slab of stone, which literally sat in the heart of the Polis, was the anti Facebook - technology that all Athenian citizens could see and thus understood – and it was the bedrock of their democracy. Transparency of technology, Bridle thus insists, is essential to democracy. Might Blockchain be the answer here?
In our age of digital obfuscation and confusion - it’s no surprise that authoritarianism is prospering around the world. The Putins, Erdogans, Trumps and other mountebanks of our digital age rely on ignorance. Authoritarianism is a consequence of the mystification of the world – to people not understanding it and thus grasping at the simplest solutions to blindingly complex problems. Ignorance empowers xenophobes, he says. Once again, Bridle borrows from ancient Athens. As Plato reminded us The Republic, ignorance is the best friend of autocrats.
But It’s not just ancient Greece that is relevant to Bridle’s argument. He uses contemporary Greece as an example for avoiding the descent into xenophobia and fascism. Yes, he acknowledges the existence of the Golden Dawn and other violently anti democratic fringe groups in Greece. And yet contemporary Greece – which is on the very front line of African and middle eastern immigration – hasn’t fallen under the spell of autocracy. Why? Historical memory – a kind of enligh
Rather than contemporary Greece, however, Bridle’s main fix for dysfunctionality of contemporary democracy lies in Ireland. He uses the examples of Ireland’s Citizens assemblies – randomized selection of citizens to solve complex problems – which successfully devised a political solution to the age-old issue of abortion. And he suggests that would certainly have been a better system in the UK than parliament for figuring out complexity of Brexit. Citizens Assemblies is definitely a theme we’ll come back to in this show.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode with James Bridle, you can find out more about him here:
Find James’s Books here:
- New Dark Age - Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle
Please be sure to check out DLD’s up and coming events,
http://www.ajkeen.com/podcast/episode13
Produced by Jason Sanderson - Podcast Tech