I liked all these books.
And I loved your latest.
You always manage to
both create something that a lot of people
can read,
but also is academically profound
and a contribution to the understanding.
And I actually found it pretty hopeful
that you gave examples
where countries had gotten through their problems.
I ended up cautiously optimistic
In the last 40 years,
the world has acted to solve really difficult
problems,
such as; agreement about getting chlorofluorocarbons
out of the atmosphere;
agreement about oil tankers on the high seas,
that they be double-hulled;
agreement to get rid of smallpox…
I mean to get the last case of smallpox.
That was amazing, yeah.
So those are examples of
successful world negotiations
to solve difficult problems,
which made me finally cautiously optimistic
that the world could solve
the other big problems that we're facing now.
In the United States, you talk about polarization.
It seems to me
that the fundamental reasons for polarization
are the decline in face-to-face communication
in the United States,
but we're not going to give up computers and
cell phones.
And the weak social ties in the United States
related to the fact that we're a big country,
but the country is not going to shrink.
Twenty years ago,
I would've been optimistic
that we were moving away
from mass communication.
You know, radio and TV
that anybody can publish.
As a technologist,
we all thought we were bringing this thing
that would,
would help democracy.
Right at the moment,
it feels like it's allowed people
to separate into their own bubble.
That's a bit of a surprise.
Without just going backwards,
how do we make there be
a sort of common front page,
or a common set of facts?
The counterexample is in New Guinea.
Traditionally, all conversations were face-to-face.
It means that they're used to understanding
the speech,
they're understanding the facial expressions;
they're understanding the body language.
The result is that New Guinea children,
by the age of five,
they are skilled negotiators.
American kids,
they don't learn that
because they don't have the constant
face-to-face communication.
Do you see a way
that we can back away
from the polarization that we’re seeing?
The only thing that I can see,
is to be aware of the problem
and to realize that we have to make an effort
to reduce the polarization,
both at the social and political level.
I hope everybody checks out Upheaval.
It's super educational,
and makes us think about
how we solve some very important problems.
