Too much to listen and too little time...
My rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Pointers:
- 1:23 – Cass Sunstein new book: “#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media.”
- 3:52 – We live inside this echo-chambers where we don’t allow the alternate view in.
- 4:16 – Any generalization about “We” is going to run in some trouble unless we are talking about “We have lungs and we are bipedal…”
- 4:48 – Many of us are sorted either by an algorithm or by our own behavior into information cocoons, which means that our own pre-existing tendencies get reinforced.
- 5:52 -- What’s your backstory [in political terms]?
- 8:31 – What about Social Media algorithms in the election cycle and their influence in sorting and filtering us?
- 12:17 – If you’re being sorted by an algorithm into an echo-chamber then that’s not good for you because your horizons are being limited and it’s also not good for our system because lots of people horizons are being limited[1].
- 13:40 -- This idea of grouping is not good for a healthy Democracy, why?
- 20:40 – According to Hamilton, deliberation among people who are very different can be a creative force, but we are living in a Hamilton’s nightmare where the disagreement among people who are on different sides or different tribes is not a creative force but a force of paralysis.
- 21:50 – On the Founding Fathers’ thinking about keeping us open and exposed to the uncomftable and engage to each other.
- 26:16 -- The problems with the Daily Me as a filter either through an algorithm or by personal choice[2].
- 30:01 – Tech is not the enemy, but we need to think about the downside, the side effects, trade-offs and externalities.
- 31:04 – On Freedom equaling Choice.
- 35:19 -- What about Social Media in countries where they don’t have Democracy?
- 39:21 – Are media becoming too polarized and partisanship?
- 41:10 – Can we keep our Republic?
Listen to it: http://trendfollowingradio.com/ep-543-cass-sunstein-interview-with-michael-covel-on-trend-following-radio
NOTES:
[1]Recommended reading about filters: “Filters fail when they know us too well and when they don't know us well enough” (Jay Rosen) via https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25540
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Me
