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Aspen Ideas Festival: Peter Hirshberg Interviews Jim Steyer About How Children Must Learn Responsible Digital Citizenship on the Web

Technorati's Chairman,Peter Hirshberg, is on the move at the Aspen Ideas Festival-- his video blog provides an excellent forum for impromptu commentary from influential thought leaders in various fields who are attending the conference (link below). Globally, children are developing differently as a result of the pervasive influence of the Internet in their social relations. Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, explains why it is imperative to define 'rules of the road' for every kid on the Internet and the role that his organization plays as a thought leader in this area. According to Steyer, "this is a huge issue of ethics and responsibility . ... kids get this, parents are clueless but know they should." Despite many challenges when it comes to media content regulation, Steyer is optimistic about the future. This important discussion that ties directly into the that we discussed at our Socrates Society seminar last week on issues of the Media and our Conflicting Values. to watch the video: click on the following link:

http://fora.tv/myfora/PeterHirshberg/clip/127/Aspen_Ideas_Festival_Interview_Jim_Steyer

Aspen Ideas: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Challenges Game Developers to Bring Civics in Government to the Web

How do we get young people in America, particularly children in the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, to learn about Civics in Government? Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has been working with the MacArthur Foundation, Georgetown University, and Arizona State University to develop engaging game content that will teach young people the importance of Civics and get them to understand how issues are actually decided in the US court system.

This video clip from the Aspen Ideas Festival really resonates with me, as it highlights the ignorance of our civic process among young Americans, a topic which I have written about in my blog series Democracy in America Revisited in the context of America's political identity. Justice O'Connor poses her questions to Eric Brown of Impact Games and Douglas Thomas, also a game developer. Brown is the co-creator of the game PeaceMaker-- coincidentally I just had breakfast in New York last week with his partner, Asi Burak and have a copy of the game that I am planning to play this weekend.

Justice O'Connor asks, 'do we learn better by doing than by reading about something in a book'? Watch the video for the answers and for some of the challenges facing game developers who want to create entertaining content that also teaches about civic duty and citizenship.

Irshad Manji from the Aspen Ideas Festival on Ijtihad and Interfaith Marriage in Islam

Irshad Manji comments on the positive power of Ijtihad, the ancient tradition of critical thinking in Islam, and the importance of contemporary Muslim imams in justifying Muslim interfaith marriage.

Re-Defining the Public Interest in the Media Torrent of the Internet

Media and Our Conflicting Values: Day 3

On our last day of this Socrates Seminar, we jumped squarely into the discussion of the Internet that we all wanted to have since Day 1.

First, we acknowledged the disruptive transformation of the media away from its historical one-to-many controlled distribution model, which was largely restricted to professionally produced print, radio, and linear video broadcasting content. We discussed how the Internet’s broadband infrastructure has supported the development of a global multi-media content stream now defined by many content creators, both professionals and amateurs. Today we are inundated by countless streams of data broadcast in a free flow of information that is truly a torrent of bits.

Research has shown convincingly that the attention span of Americans has shortened substantially over the past several decades and that the rate of change in this direction continues to accelerate.
Are we doomed to being Information Snackers, a nation of dilettantes distinguished only in being a mile wide and an inch deep in our thinking? Does this trend raise troubling questions and pose risks to the integrity of our democratic society?

I think so. Why?

First, because we are drowning in choice. While America’s obsession with Freedom is empowering, too much choice is debilitating. We have too many choices in the Internet Age of mass customization in digital media. While people like to speak of their love of choices, in fact, people hate choices. Notice the incredible power of global brands today after the initial view that the dawn of the Internet rendered traditional brands worthless.

What are some of the nasty implications for democracies overwhelmed by media choices? In my view, the hyper abundance of choice makes individuals increasingly susceptible to manipulation by groups that have an agenda—especially an agenda associated with power and manipulation of masses of people (does anyone doubt that Al Qaeda has developed a sophisticated web presence, for example?)

The web has massively reduced the costs of coordination among large groups and truly revolutionized social collaboration on a large scale—for a positive example, consider the fundraising powerhouse of the Obama campaign and the massive empowerment and inclusion in the democratic political process of otherwise alienated and disenfranchised groups of American society.

There are many good things associated with these paradigmatic changes in the American political process enabled by the Internet borne media revolution.

But we should also consider the corner cases, the potential for abuse, for manipulation, for the propagation of lies through the digital media. We need to remember the potential for Tyranny of the Majority in a digital media search construct that determines what rises to the top by its popularity.

As Newton Minow, Chairman of the FCC said in his historic address to the National Association of Broadcasters in 1961, “some say the public interest is merely what interests the public. I disagree. … broadcasting, to serve the public interest, must have a soul and a conscience, a burning desire to excel, as well as to sell; the urge to build the character, citizenship and intellectual stature of people, as well as to expand the gross national product.” Promoting citizenship! A novel concept, and one that I have written about extensively in this blog in the context of the Democracy in America Revisited Series and Professor Michael Sandel.

In my view, being right and doing the right thing should have nothing to do with what is popular and everything to do with the responsible exercise of leadership (something that is in very short supply in America today). Having technology drive people to the most popular result only accelerates the mediocrity that Alexis de Toqueville foresaw for American democracy.

We should not let our passion to uphold the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech trump the obligation that we have as a democratic society to keep our citizens informed of objective facts so that they can responsibly exercise their civic responsibilities. To be clear, I do not see this statement as being unsupportive of the First Amendment in any way.

Unfortunately, our discussion on Day 3 did not address a redefinition of the Public Interest.

Domain expertise, an objective mastery of the facts and the nuances associated with a specific body of knowledge, requires more than a passing acquaintance with that domain (would you go to a doctor for surgery who is not truly an expert in his/her field?). In my view, the knowledge crisis facing our next generation will be rooted in the misconception that surface knowledge is sufficient to impart expertise.
We are certainly still in our infancy in this new realm of digital media, but it is abundantly clear that technology has left our regulatory institutions in the dust. While I am a strong believer in the positive power of the market, I fear for those members of our society who will be left behind, for the voices that will not be heard.

The Government is a steward of the Public Interest, and that Public Interest will, of necessity, be redefined when we face a crisis. There needs to be a cool hand, a slow, deliberative process, that gets us to the right answer. Unfortunately, the history of regulation in America shows us that it is most often reactive and likely to generate severe, negative unintended consequences (Sarbanes Oxley, for example).

While I greatly enjoyed our Socratic discussion, I left the seminar continuing to ask myself, what will force this question, and how great a cost will our society bear along the way?

"Fat, Dumb, and Happy"-- Intel CEO Craig Barrett Comments on American Competitiveness at Risk at Aspen Ideas Festival

KPCB's John Doerr interviewed Intel's Craig Barrett at the Aspen Ideas Festival on the impact of technology on our society and dives into the topic of the sustainability of American competitiveness in innovation. This topic is front and center for the American venture capital industry, as the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) declared yesterday that a U.S. capital markets crisis exists for the start-up community. Just as the capital markets problems for emerging US companies are structural and have been building for years, Barrett accurately points to underlying structural issues in the U.S. educational system that put America at risk of losing its ascendance in innovation leadership.

Some ominous signs-- Intel used to make 90% of its investments in the US-- today the split is 50% US, 50% Asia. While the U.S. still has the best engineering schools in the world, Barrett points out that 60% of PhD graduates from US universities are foreign nationals. He notes that, due to our current visa policy, the US is stupidly sending them home after the US taxpayer has subsidized their education in this country. Watch the video:

Of Free Markets, Regulation, and Tipping Points

A very interesting Day 2! Some highlights:

First Amendment issues and the specific domain of government regulation over free speech are narrowly confined to content creators over the licensed spectrum. For example, had the famous Janet Jackson Super Bowl breast exposure incident occurred on cable TV as opposed to broadcast TV, there would have been no regulatory issue over indecent exposure and hence no grounds for the FCC to get involved.

In short, you can be the willing consumer (or the inadvertent and unwilling spectator) of the most indecent behavior embedded in content on cable TV anytime and cannot object to it on grounds of Public Standards of decency because you have paid for the basic cable TV transport infrastructure. If the content is broadcast over the government licensed spectrum, then it's a totally different story, as you have entered the domain of the Public Trust.

Today, 95% of US homes are passed by cable and increasingly ubiquitous access to the Internet brings streaming media of just about anything you can think of all the time. Most people get their content from new forms of media that are unsupervised and unaccountable to anyone other than The Market. Many people may feel this is not a problem at all-- on the contrary, they may see it as a blessing.

Licensed spectrum broadcast content is now dwarfed by other media transports. In short, the domain of the Public Trust, and thus standards of socially and morally acceptable program, are hurtling toward irrelevancy in our new digital world.

My problem with this is that a few clicks away for ANYONE, especially children, you will find abominable violence, graphic examples of human enslavement for sexual exploitation, and hard core porn. The evidentiary record is increasingly showing that exposure to these types of negative human behaviors has a bad influence on children and absolutely impacts their social development.

The consequences of these trends are not well understood, but, in my view, these tectonic shifts in the landscape of content distribution will reach a tipping point that will trigger new regulation. Can the market self-regulate? Perhaps, but at what cost in the process? While America was built on freedom of speech, the proliferation of freedoms in the Digital Age may substantially fray the fabric of our society before we reach a new equilibrium.

Whether or not we think this is a good thing, we are already in the soup.

Am I My Brother's Keeper? Stewardship of Media Content in the Internet Age

Today we began our Summer 2008 Aspen Institute Socrates Society seminars. My session, moderated by former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, addresses Media and Our Conflicting Values. And plenty of conflicting values emerged in our lively four hour discussion.

My takeaways after Day 1:

* The function of the FCC as public trustee, or steward, of the content broadcast by licensed content creators in America has been made largely irrelevant by the Internet. Historical approaches to media regulation in America are not useful in addressing the challenges of today and of the future, in my opinion.

* We live in a many-to-many world of content generation and broadcasting. The super-empowered individual on the Web wields disproportionate power over groups ranging from a small affinity circle to an entire society.

*Large media organizations also continue to wield huge power in disseminating information and in 'spinning' or biasing content. While the Founding Fathers saw Government control of media/propaganda as the primary threat to free speech, we now live in a brave new world where any fanatic can wrap him or herself in the mantle of truth and spread lies unchecked.

* Defining regulatory boundaries is infinitely more complex when you have a multiplicity of transport mechanisms for different forms of protected free speech from a First Amendment perspective: for example, traditional linear over the air broadcast television, cable television, user-generated content on the web, and newly emerging forms of time-shifting content distribution (what I want when I want it on any device).

* Regulation of speech in any way raises fundamental societal challenges to open, democratic societies.

* The social contract of any democracy faces a basic tension between freedom and maintaining social order.

* Technology combined with human innovation in the media are exacerbating this tension in ways considered impossible just fifteen years ago.

So after Day 1 I have a lot of questions:

When it comes to regulating media and the web, how are we to decide the mechanisms for regulation?
Are we to expect the market to self-regulate? How do we distinguish between content that the market should self-regulate (various forms of entertainment) from content that debases and violates basic human rights (sexual slavery and child pornography on the Web)? How do we stop groups that re-write history (such as Holocaust deniers) from simply opening up shop on the Web and perpetuating lies? How do we prevent false stories about political candidates from being seen and accepted as fact by millions of people prior to elections?

Maybe I'll have some answers, and certainly more questions, after Day 2. This is why we love the Socratic method. For another perspective on the Socrates Seminars, check out Sam Perry's post on Conferenza.

U.S. Health Care Reform Made Simple-- Eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and Employer-Based Health Insurance

Zeke Emanuel is known for having Big Ideas. His short, easy to read new book, "Healthcare, Guaranteed", is a must-read.

I first met Zeke several years ago at the Aspen Institute's Socrates Society, and Zeke has been one of the most popular Socrates seminar leaders on the topic of bioethics. An oncologist and currently the chair of the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, Zeke is a penetrating, deep thinker who knows how to cut to the core element of difficult issues. I have previously posted about Zeke when he remarked at our last Socrates gathering that our society is robbing posterity to live today. His new book is no less profound in its approach to simplifying the American health care system by gutting its core 'sacred cows':

According to Newsweek's review of "Healthcare, Guaranteed", written by Mary Carmichael:

In place of all these institutions, Emanuel says, the government should offer every American a voucher for health insurance—one that covers the same benefits that members of Congress get. Insurance companies would have to accept the vouchers, and each person could choose from a variety of private networks of docs, hospitals and health plans. A National Health Board would oversee it all. And that's pretty much it. Now the big question: how do we pay for it? Emanuel's plan lowers some taxes by gutting costly programs, but it also adds a new fixed tax on some goods and services to pay for the vouchers. "Americans will come out revenue-neutral on average," he says. "The poor will pay less." And the rich will probably pay a lot more. Sweeping changes are one thing, but sweeping changes and a new tax? Even if the plan could save health care, it'll be a hard sell.

Clearly not a layup, but also a very interesting and possibly a compelling solution to the broken healthcare financial reimbursement system in our country. So read this book-- and let me know what you think by commenting on this blog post.

Democracy in America Revisited—Toward a New Definition of the Public Good [Eighth and Last of a Series]

As we reached the end of our eight-hour, one-day Socrates Society Salon in San Francisco, Professor Michael Sandel pulled together many of the threads that we had discussed on the future of American Democracy. To paraphrase his concluding comments:

Liberalism in America has experienced a failure to give a convincing account of the public good or the common good. When inequality becomes as pronounced as it is today, the wealthy buy their way out of public places and exist in their own world—which is a very bad thing. Public services and public places increasingly come to be seen as a place for the poor-- witness the multi-year secular trends in American public schools, in public transportation (think NetJets), and in health care (think Concierge Medicine for those who can afford it).

You need to have people of widely ranging socio-economic backgrounds bumping into each other in civic proximity to have some meaningful deliberation about the public good.

There is a civic reason to worry about forms of inequality that lead to separate lives between the Haves and the Have Nots. This leads to the Meaning Deficit in America today. One reason why there is so much fraying of the social fabric in America in the early 21st century is because we don’t know what it means to be an American anymore—we don’t know what we belong to that matters to all of us as Americans…

We need to constitute a shared public realm so that people can at least argue about what is the public good.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Democracy in America Revisited-- Defining America’s Current Political Identity [Seventh of a Series]

You can’t stretch a shared political identity so far that it becomes overly abstract and therefore impossible for people to articulate in a way that everyone can easily understand it.

Think of this statement in the context of the Presidential debates in the current election. Why is the media obsessively focused on candidate mis-statements regarding their exposure to ‘sniper fire’ or commenting on how social alienation can lead to ‘clinging to guns and religion’. Why does it take 43 minutes into a debate for George Stephanopolous to ask the Democratic Party candidates the first substantive question on the economy, which he acknowledges as the most important issue in the election? Should candidate gaffes be defining elements of campaign momentum and qualifications for Presidential leadership? Not in my view.

American citizens span the spectrum from evangelical Christians to ardent atheists; from observant Muslims to secular and orthodox Jews. Ethnically, American citizens include Mexican Americans, African Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, European Americans, Russian Americans, and many other ethnicities. The definition of family in America now includes traditional marriages, same sex marriages, and no marriages. It is uneasy for societies to live with a complex narrative of citizenship forged from the richness of diversity that has made the melting pot of America historically great.

The rise of Evangelical Christian religious fundamentalism in America and Muslim fundamentalism in the rapidly modernizing societies of the Third World each share a reactive thread in opposition to the forced acknowledgement of diversity highlighted to all of us by the Internet. These movements, which are organized attempts to re-assert a single identity and to fight social complexity, trigger equally negative reactions form those that are left out of the picture. A complex world where differences are heightened because everyone is aware of everyone else requires nations to grapple with a complex narrative of citizenship. America's great historical achievement as a pluralistic society stems from its immigrant melting pot roots and from the strong democratic institutions that have evolved over 232 years to embrace this complexity. Let's not forget this in the 21st century.