October 28, 2021 • 39 mins
Right now we interact with the public more online than offline. But these digital spaces are not designed with our collective wellbeing in mind. Baratunde speaks with Eli Pariser, Co-founder of New_Public, about how we are missing intentionally designed digital public spaces, like libraries and park spaces online, and they discuss New_Public’s NEW! design playbook for creating platforms that bring us together instead of tear us apart.
Guest: Eli Pariser
Bio: Author, Activist, and Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of New_Public
Online: New_Public website; @elipariser on Twitter; Eli’s website
Go to howtocitizen.com for transcripts, our email newsletter, and your citizen practice.
ACTIONS
- PERSONALLY REFLECT
Public Interactions
Reflect on some recent online interactions you’ve had with total strangers on social media. Now think about some interactions you’ve had with strangers offline, maybe in a public park or library. How did each experience make you feel? Did you prefer one over the other? Why?
- BECOME INFORMED
Check out New_Public’s work
Check out New_Public’s new design playbook for building digital public spaces of the future. It was built from two years of global research and feedback. Also, read Eli’s thought-provoking article in the Atlantic about envisioning a future online that serves the public good and supports a culture of democracy.
- PUBLICLY PARTICIPATE
Join a niche, online community forum.
Consider joining or starting your own online community where you can practice some of the 14 signals using a platform like Hylo or MightyNetworks. Most of the signals don’t require code as much as thoughtful governance, culture, and norm-setting to create a different kind of online space that helps us citizen. Said another way, try finding or creating an online community in a space that isn’t a giant shopping mall.
MORE WAYS TO CONNECT & SUPPORT
- Leave a review and rating. It makes a huge difference with the algorithmic overlords!
- Find us at @howtocitizen on Instagram and tag us in your actions.
- Visit our non-Bezos bookshop.
Subscribe to Baratunde's weekly Recommentunde Newsletter, his column on Puck, or you can even text him right now at 202-894-8844
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a podcast
that reimagined citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
This season is all about tech and how it can
bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
you the people using technology for so much more than
revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
(00:28):
So last time, we covered some major ground with Prof.
G Mr Scott Galloway. Scott did a lightning round of
issues plaguing the tech ecosystem. Mainly, he touched on the
lack of regulation. The government has got to get on
tech and we well, we've got to get on the
government to do us damn job. And we also heard
(00:50):
more about my journey. We charted through my personal experiences
in the tech landscape, and we learned that I'm an
even bigger tech nerd than you already knew. I shared
with you my visions of what was possible for technology
over the years, like changing how we tell stories, how
we make comedy, how we organized politically. But we ain't
(01:13):
done yet because we talked about the problems right, but
now we have to talk about the people who see
things differently now, Scott, he argued, for a more traditional
path of regulation. But I think we need something new,
(01:34):
something that connects us to values that might feel disconnected
from the current tech landscape. Some of you might remember
my walks during the pandemic, a little bit of the
rich audio environment O pregate. Then out here in these
streets that was a menacing hound. Heck, I still walk
in my neighborhood almost every day, being outside, seeing people
(01:59):
live their own live lives, checking in on the shops
of York Boulevard. All that provides a lens to view
the world differently. It's grounding, but it's the road where
I see other black people walking, and that's the somewhat
rare sighting over here. I'm in a heavily Latino Latino
neighborhood in a time where distance literally equal safety. Being
(02:22):
in a public space can provide a basic way to
see humans being human. Neighborhood very special. To see a
fellow Negro, it was like a family reunion with people
I've never met before. So thus black people hill now
where I'm walking right now, I call coy Rod Because
(02:49):
what if we applied this sense of connection, community and
humanity to technology. Our current platforms encourage us to engage.
But how's that working out for us? But Scott Galloway
mentioned social media platforms inflame our arguments and tear at
our social fabric. Here's a simple truth. The giant tech
(03:12):
companies are not in the business of what we refer
to as citizen ng But using some imagination, is there
reversion of social media that can serve the same function
as our public spaces, like those parks and community centers,
those things we came to rely on this last year.
(03:32):
This all feels daunting, but I've got hope. This moment
calls for a lot of kind of creativity and boldness
and public imagination. Eli paris Or believes that through new
design principles, we can change our digital spaces so that
they bring us together instead of tearing us apart. And
(03:53):
that might seem insanely ambitious, but the plan he lays
out is far from impossible. Eli makes his case after
the break, Eli, Hello, welcome to How to Citizen. How
(04:17):
are you doing? I am doing well? How are you?
I'm doing well? Especially? Eli Pariser is a triple threat, author, activist,
and entrepreneur. He was the executive director of move on
dot org and Eli has been a pioneer working to
create democracy friendly spaces, the ones we sorely need in
(04:38):
the digital landscape for decades. Right now, he's running a
nonprofit organization called New Public, and he's putting into practice
the methods we need to citizen better online. So when
we sat down, we started our conversation by strolling down
digital memory lane. I want to rewind the clock a bit, because, um,
(05:00):
you've been around technology for a while, as have I.
I can remember the early days with when everything was monochromatic,
green blinking curses, Unix and DOSS, when you had to
like manually serve the Internet, you know, like one site
at a time, just grabbing it. And you had an
early what we would now call viral moment when you
(05:21):
were about twenty the attacks and I and Leven had
just happened. What did you do? Yeah, so I had
just gotten out of college, and you know, it occurred
to me that this was one of those moments in
history where things can go very different directions, and there
was this opportunity for the world to come together around
what I thought was really like kind of a global
(05:42):
problem of terrorism or there was this world where you know,
people kind of seize it and use it for their
own political ends and things go badly, and so I
set up this little website calling for multilateralism. Quick explanation.
Multilateralism is when multiple nations agree on some common goal
or mission, in this case, for the potential war on terror.
(06:06):
And there was this guy at the University of Chicago
had written up this petition. We put it on the website,
and then I like logged off, you know, I needed
my phone line for a phone call, and I didn't
check my email for like four days. So I log on,
you know, the Monday morning after, and there's this kind
(06:28):
of loading bar downloading my email, and it says like
four thousand messages left to download and then forty thousand
messages left it down. It's just this kind of crazy
and comprehensible thing, like what what happened? And it was
an early viral email basically like it it had spanned
the globe. I thought, if we got a couple of
(06:48):
hundred people to sign it, like that would be something
that would be good. But I just didn't even imagine
that we'd have fifty thou people as it ended up
like five thousand people, you know, signing onto this thing.
Five hundred thousand people. Yeah, and and from all over
the world. It was like a hundred and nine two countries.
(07:09):
And that was crazy. I was a twenty year old
college student. I had no political connections or capital, I
had no resources. I had not spent a cent. I
just put this website up. And so you know, in
those moments you can kind of see why it might
feel like this is just this is a democracy tizing technology.
(07:35):
What kind of email storage did you have in two
thousand one, because that's a lot of email. I appreciate
I appreciate the follow up questions. This is really the
kind of detail I think people are interested in. It's
like I was on outlook. By the way you painting
this two thousand one picture is taken me back there
as well. I'm remembering the simplicity of the websites, the
(07:56):
crudeness of the HTML, the optimism. M uh that again,
the terrible design comes back to me a lot. This
was like peak ugly Internet, but also peak beautiful Internet,
because we didn't care what it looked like. What was
the potential that you saw in this period? The idea
(08:17):
was that information is power and knowledge is power, and
here's this technology that's making information and access to some
degree free and also allowing people to conceivably the public
could break through with the leads because they could demonstrate
to each other, hey, we all care about this issue.
(08:39):
And as an organizer you start to see that as
a moment where people are willing to do more because
one of the biggest impediments to citizen power is just
feeling like I'm alone and in my concerns, and so
that ability to like quickly find like, oh, there's a
there's millions of other people who are concerned like me
(09:00):
about what's going on. It seemed like it could change
the dynamics of what was happening in politics, and in
the same way, you know, change some of the economic dynamics.
If I had been placing you know, five thousand phone
calls around the world at that time, yes, long distance
was still expensive, like that would be a real undertaking.
But here was this thing that was like completely horizontal
(09:22):
and free. The main reason that I wanted to talk
to you, besides this trip down Lexicon memory Lane, which
has been joyful, is this work you're doing with New Public,
this new platform organization, trying to connect and inspire the
people who build the Internet tools we use and the
people who design them to use them to make better
(09:45):
digital public spaces, Healthier public spaces for us to interact
with each other that don't descend into some of the
horrors that so many of us have experienced. In your definition,
what is new public? So New Public started as kind
of a research project I was working with and co
founded it with Talia Stroud. There's this communications professor in
(10:09):
the University of Texas who studies how media organizations and
communities can get engaged better in civic life, and we
started to ask this question that was kind of taking
the conversation about tech and flipping it a little. There's
a lot of conversation about misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, and
all of that is really critical and important work that's happening,
(10:34):
But somewhere in there, I think you could end up
playing a lot of whack a mole if you didn't
have a north star of where you wanted to get. Like,
in other words, a good Internet is like a conducive
space for people to come together, especially across difference. And
so our original project was like, can we start to
put some definition on what the qualities of the spaces
(10:57):
that we would really want would be, and then we
can evaluate, like can our existing platforms even possibly help
us get there, or do we need something else. We
came out with something called the Civic Signals, which are
basically kind of fourteen qualities that we saw show up
again and again across different academic disciplines and also in
interviews and in surveys that we did with people in
(11:19):
twenty countries around the world, and the qualities that they
want to see in their digital spaces. And if we
think about digital platforms as spaces rather than just as
markets for information, how does that change, you know, how
we might think about designing them. And we realized, like, oh,
this problem of designing spaces where strangers can relate to
(11:42):
each other can behave well, like, this is an old problem.
This is an urban planning problem, and it's a problem
that's been around, you know, as long as human settlements
have been around. And so why aren't we bringing all
of that kind of understanding to some of the questions
that seem so intractable online. I really like this idea
(12:05):
of asking people what they want in a platform, in
a space, trying to define a north star. I think
so many of us have gotten used to settling for
whatever is seemingly available before us. What's the elevator pitch
for what new public is trying to do in establishing
that north thought. So we're basically like an incubator that
(12:29):
draws on the research that we've done to help support
community leaders and technologists who are trying to build better
digital spaces. And our belief is that it's when those
two ways of thinking come together, kind of the social
intelligence and the design and engineering intelligence, that you really
find sustainable and durable solutions. But we've adopted this saying
(12:54):
from a Nobel Prize winning economist Eleanor Ostrom about no
panaceas it ain't pretty, but society is complex. People are
complex and forced to have simple solutions to complex problems
not a good idea. And she studies like how human
beings manage commons well, and it turns out like all
(13:15):
over the world actually contra you know, tragedy of the commons.
There are lots of examples where communities really do manage
commons well, but there is no one master key, there's
no one master pattern to commons management. It always happens
in a very specific way to that community, to that
set of problems. And when we think about the way
(13:37):
that we're structuring the Internet right now, you know it
is built around there is a Facebook algorithm and maybe
millions of lines of code. It exists for everyone in
the world, you know, everywhere. We think that's impossible. You
can't get to something that really works for everybody with
one master protocol or approach. So if there are no panaceas,
(13:59):
no universal solutions, how do you give people the tools
to build the right kinds of solutions for the particular
problems and the particular communities that they're in. There You're
on again about democratizing and civic power and helping people
to find their own futures. But no, it's like I
do think our current digital environment is like subtly so undemocratic.
(14:24):
Your option is to be part of Facebook or not
be part of it, and not being part of it
at this point has some social costs, or not being
part of LinkedIn has some social costs. But you don't
get to like weigh in on a design change or
have any say and what the rules of speech should be,
how people should work. And I think that's problematic and pernicious.
(14:46):
I think there's a better way to do things. Now,
what New public is calling for our digital public spaces.
These are similar to physical public spaces like a park
or library, right owned by the public, serving the public
interest in these civil, social kind of political ways. And
that's different from a digital private space that most of
(15:07):
us use in a daily basis. Right those spaces that
operate like a walled garden where corporate owners got total control.
Not everybody has equal access, and the space is really
designed for commercial or financial interests, not a public interest.
So tell me why you think it's important to have
digital public spaces as opposed to just a bunch more
(15:28):
digital private spaces. So when we were doing this kind
of look at the sociology of communities offline in the
physical world, one thing that was very apparent was like
the value and importance of places like parks and libraries
in building kind of cohesion and giving people forums to
(15:49):
raise their concerns. You know, there's just a whole bunch
of ways in which, like measurably, these public places helped
knit communities together. And that's because they do whole bunch
of things that most private places simply can't or won't.
Lending books to anyone who needs them, especially to people
who can't afford to pay them. Is just not a
(16:09):
good idea for a business, but it's a great idea
for a community function. I think part of the problem
when you kind of think about our online world right now,
is that we're trying to cram all of these different
functions that need to happen in order to have a
sustainable community. And I think even if you have the
wisest possible leadership and the best possible management and everything
(16:34):
was perfect, it's just not what they're there to do.
And that's okay, but we need this other thing as well.
The library metaphor really strikes me, and I've been able
to see the community function that the library is performing
pre pandemic and during the pandemic, a literal common space.
(16:55):
People bring their kids there. They're obviously lending books as
one function, but they have production facilities, they have career advice,
they have citizenship training for those who are new to
the country who really want to join the commons in
a technical legal sense, and you know, Amazon is not
doing that. It's more than a place of transactions, right,
(17:16):
sort of a place of people and connection and community.
So when you put it that way at digital public
space feels lacking because every example that my mind goes
to is actually a private space. Tell me more about
that than what what does a quality a well functioning
public space, digital or otherwise need to thrive well. I
(17:37):
mean the first piece is you need to be serving
a bunch of community needs. And I think that's one
of the cool things about libraries is that it's not
like people go to the library because they want to
be a great citizen. Like they go to the library
because they need a book, or their kid needs a
place to play chess, or they need a meeting room.
There's a bunch of really tangible needs that need to
(17:59):
be met, and there are librarians. I think there is
another sort of piece of what's missing in digital spaces.
You know, what would a library be like if it
was all self served and don't like, you know, instructions
taped to the door, but go in at your own peril.
Like it would be hard, especially with the library, because
you know, there's a whole bunch of people with a
(18:19):
bunch of pretty different needs trying to get their needs
met simultaneously and balancing that's challenging, and you have, you know,
someone who's experiencing homelessness over here, who's trying to get
their unemployment benefits, and you know, someone who's got their
young kids at a story hour and without someone kind
of holding that space and mediating it um, you can
(18:40):
run into real trouble, which I would argue is like
a lot of what happens online. And as soon as
those conflicts start to escalate, than that experience of safety
and the experience that oh I can be with people
who are pretty different and it's okay, starts to dissipate
more librarians is never a problem. It's always a step
towards the solution. Go librarians, all right. You alluded to
(19:10):
four categories of signals. They seem like a new etiquette
or framework so we can actually have more quality digital
public spaces. Break that down for me. The first and
most important in many ways is this welcome category, which
is where a lot of platforms fall down kind of
almost as soon as they've started, which is, do people
(19:32):
feel invited to be part of the conversation here in
the first place? Do they feel safe to be part
of that conversation? Does the platform go out of its
way to help humanize people to each other, or does
it quickly reduce us to you know, our most incendiary
positions or to caricatures. And I think there's a reason
(19:52):
that in our physical life we haven't reserved a huge
amount of space. That's like walk up to a stranger
and tell them you're hottest. Take uh, you know, we
haven't recreated Twitter in real life. Yeah, there's but there's
a reason for that, which is like, it's difficult and
unpleasant and mostly people don't want it. But having spaces
(20:14):
like parks and libraries where you just see people who
are having different lives than you. You're in a park especially,
you're in this nice environment, and you just get to
be like, okay, they're familiar, I've seen them a couple
of times before. Maybe this is all okay, and we're
part of something together. That's that's nice. That's really an
important experience actually in in building a democratic culture. So
(20:39):
then then we've got to connect. And connect isn't just
about like everybody connect with everybody. It's about how do
you support kind of good connection, especially across groups. Because
we know, for example, when it comes to like economic opportunities,
job postings will often literally get stuck. And how do
you build these networks that like allow information, allow ideas
to kind of cross boundaries. You need to build bridges
(21:01):
between these groups, and there are ways you can design
for that, and there's a whole field about designing for that,
and so we kind of get into how do we
support better designs for cross group contact essentially, and then
there's this understand chunk, which is really, you know, not
just about individual understanding, but it's about how do we
(21:22):
build meaning together. So one of the things that really
effective communities do is you kind of have this yes
and element where people are kind of adding their their perspective,
their point of view, and you're building something that you
really couldn't build along. And I think because digital products
are often built for with a kind of individual user
(21:44):
in mind, we don't think a lot about sort of
how do we facilitate these collective experiences that are really important.
And then finally you get to act. And act isn't
just vote or change your community selectmen. It's actually like
just platforms that facilitate people coming together and doing something together.
(22:04):
Because one of the things that sociologists and social scientists
and political scientists tell us is that really any time
you get a group of people, especially across some difference,
just to accomplish something together. That builds social trust, It
builds a sense of power and capacity and agency, and
that has this kind of like it feeds back on
the whole thing where people then are willing to take
(22:26):
on something more. How did you and your co founder
Talia come up with these? So basically, we we talked
to over a hundred experts in a whole bunch of
different fields, from urban planning to political scientists to community experts,
(22:46):
and ask them what public spaces needed for a healthy
society and a healthy democracy. And then we did these
focus groups where we kind of took them out in
five different countries around the world, talk to people and
really got sense of like does this resonate, does it's
not resonate? Change some things, And then finally surveyed people
(23:07):
in twenty countries just to make sure that this was
resonating and also to get a sense of how people
evaluated which platforms did well on on what. And that
was also really fascinating because you could see both what
people wanted from the platforms that we have today and
where they fell short. Where did the private spaces the
(23:29):
companies that most of us been too much time on
Where did they most fall short? Well? I mean on
that welcome category, there weren't a lot of them that
did very well. And just you know, do I feel
invited to be here? Do I feel safe? Do I
feel humanized? Like there was really not a platform but
did especially well on humanization, which I think says a
(23:51):
lot about our current digital environment. It's a powerful word, humanization.
I think it's an easy one to use. So if
it strikes me as very plausible that they are bad
at humanization, because I don't always feel very human in
in myself. If you look at a TikTok, it's like,
please don't colonize this sound. If you're not black, just
(24:12):
watch and enjoy. There's two sides to it, right, there's
these moments of incredible kind of creative expression and a
window and to all of these worlds that you just
would never get to occupy otherwise. And then there's this
sense of like, but I've got a game this for
attention for clicks, and that's kind of an always on endeavor.
(24:33):
And I think we saw this in the service too.
It's like, there are real value that these platforms provide.
I just think part of the problem is like we're
asking too much of the platforms that we have as
opposed to like inventing a world that has more opportunities
for different kinds of experiences and different kinds of spaces.
So you're out here trying to invent new worlds, and
(24:54):
there are a lot of people concerned about the topics
we're talking about. Part of their approach is regulatory. It's
like we've got to limit the power, the reach, the
depth of these organizations, apply new rules and new regulations.
That doesn't sound like the focus of yours is much
more creative and inventive the usual own language. Why have
(25:15):
you chosen this approach and why have you chosen to
work on this of all the things you could do
right now? I think the regulation piece is important, But
I also think without a kind of imagination for what
we want, it's hard even to regulate well, let alone
to start to like move towards the future that we want.
(25:36):
And I think this moment calls for a lot of
kind of creativity and boldness and public imagination. I think
this is the playbook for how we've moved through times
of social stress and social fracture in the past is
like we've invented new kinds of organizations, new kinds of institutions,
(25:57):
public library or a thing that we're invented, and so
we're public parks like they didn't always exist with public parks.
We're starting to build these things called cities. There's a
lot of smoke and people don't have a place to
go to exercise and get some fresh air, Like we
need to think about how to do that. Oh, let's
have a park that's open to everyone. I think we're
(26:17):
kind of there with our digital life, where like it's
not just about tweaking things, it's about really having the
bold vision for like, what is the life we want
to live, and what are the kinds of institutions we
need to make that life possible. I am indeed tired
of breathing the toxic smoke of the current Internet, and
I would love a public park equivalent. This effort, this
(26:44):
mission that you've given yourself is very aspirational. It makes
me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It restores my faith
in people, and then I have to ask, how real
is it? Yeah? I think, Um, we're starting to see
more and more people take this on right, and there
are people who have been building places like front Porch
Forum in Vermont, which is kind of a great example
(27:06):
of what social media can look like when it's detached
from the pressure of kind of up into the right
exponential growth expectation. So from Porch Forum, it's basically like
a local discussion forum that's heavily moderated in every community
in Vermont. Oh throwback term list serve. It's it's like
a listener, but it's like a really well moderated listener. Right,
(27:30):
so before you can post, someone's going to read your
message and they'll send it back to you if you
run a foul of the norms, which are pretty like serious.
Even though you know Facebook is very popular, Twitter is
very popular, all of these platforms are popular or Vermont,
there's this different quality of conversation that happens when it's
slow and it's thoughtful and there's an expectation that we're
(27:54):
really going to stick to the agreements we make about
how we're speaking to each other. To me, that's like
one example that exists right now that I think that
you can have one of those in every community, and
the United States, it would probably need to be different
in every community because no panicsy is I like that example?
It sounds deliberate. A lot of us are hooked on
(28:15):
what I would consider a kind of an entitled version
of the Internet where I want to I get to
I will that's it. I something came to my mind.
I'm going to post it. It's my right to post it.
And what you're describing as a different balance where there's
a sense of obligation as well, Like I can't imagine
if I had launched a tweet and it came back
(28:36):
to me, this isn't good enough, this is too rude.
You're gonna make somebody, You're gonna hurt somebody's feeling, like
that's what a tweet is dog launch, Like, why should
we care about this? There's a lot of people I
can imagine and know some of them who are like,
they can have my data. I'm a grown up. I
know what I'm doing. I don't need like a library
(28:58):
version of the Internet. Just control yourself and be a
good person. Is it that hard? Why do we need
a digital public space designed intentionally for these outcomes? Unless
you're literally in the cabinet, was you have to deal
with society or society is going to come deal with
you and you wanted to be healthy, you wanted to
be good. I think that's one perspective. I think another
(29:21):
pieces there's just so many people who don't get to
to contribute, and that's a loss for all of us.
There was a great study on our science where they
started kind of moving the norms toward being explicit about
what kind of speech was welcome and I welcome there.
And there was this question of whether that would just
(29:42):
put off everyone, everyone would feel kind of like nannied
and and shut up. But actually what they found was
not only was there more speech, there's a lot more
speech from women, from folks of color, from groups that
would kind of tend to feel like, am I is
it okay to be here? Is it okay to be
speaking here? Those are the people who then felt like, oh, okay,
I can speak up, And those conversations are better when
(30:03):
you know you don't just have a bunch of entitled
dudes talking to each other. So I think there's something
that we all miss out on when we don't create
spaces that are actually doing that work. What if you're wrong?
What if humanity is just trash? Right? What if what
if your goals and aspirations for us exceed what we're
(30:26):
capable of, and this is who we really are, and
you can try to mitigate that with some better design,
But you're fighting upstream against human nature. What do you
say to that. You know there is no such thing
as universal human nature. And part of what we know
from social scientists is that even the same person in
different contexts will behave in radically different ways, and in
(30:47):
some contexts will be much more altruistic and other context
will be much more selfish. A lot of that has
to do with the situation we find ourselves in and
how we understand how we fit into that situation. And
so this is kind of the no panaceas point, Like,
I just don't think there are universal statements that are
very helpful about humanity as a whole, because people are
(31:11):
lots of things, and there are definitely some pretty screwed
up people out there with some pretty screwed up objectives,
But there are also so many times when you can
look at these stories of people with just like not
a lot of resources coming together and doing something really cool,
And to me, that's kind of the battle is, like,
how do we help those people on those moments happen more,
(31:34):
and the people who are kind of aiming to do
screwed up stuff do it a little less. And if
we can tilt that balance a little bit, Like it
doesn't have to be a universal solve, it just has
to kind of be a game of inches. It sounds
like somebody's trying to bend the moral arc of the
universe towards justice. I wouldn't. It's a small small part
of that project. It's look, if billions of us pull
(31:57):
on that arc, it'll be right, not all build in
just a majority. We just need more. And it's like
at any given time, the reality is most people are
just living their lives, doing their thing. And that's why
building the number of people at the edges who are engaged,
who are active can be so powerful because people are busy.
(32:17):
We've got a lot of stuff going on, and just
a little bit of extra time and a little bit
of extra energy really actually like can have a big,
big impact. This stuff takes time. What do you want
for future generations? I have heard some kids in the background,
so I've seen you're pretty invested in the future. Yeah,
(32:39):
my kids have it pretty good and are privileged. But
even for them, like I look at the digital landscape
that they're going to grow up and be a part of,
and I worry for them, like I worry for their souls.
I worry for what it means to them to be
human being and some of these environments that we've created,
because they can be pretty soul sucking, pretty extractive. So
(33:03):
what I want and what I think is possible, and
it's not going to be me, but it's like this
movement that's growing to say, like, hey, we can build
digital environments that are good for people, and we should
do that, and that's going to require thinking about it differently,
Like I want those kinds of environments to be available
to them. It doesn't have to be that you're spending
all of your time in the park. Nobody spends all
(33:24):
their time in the park or the library. But going
to the park allows you to see a certain way
of being together that's possible, that changes your ideas about
what humanity is. And that's kind of what I want
for them, is to have those spaces where you can say, like, oh,
it is possible to have like a good conversation with
strangers online that doesn't evolve into all of us calling
(33:44):
each other Nazis. When you put it that way, it
sounds like such a meager request and so achievable. And
I also think it's it's important that you oldline that
in the words of like the early eighties serials commercials.
That is the stuck in my head. This is part
of a complete breakfast, right, it's not digital. No one
(34:05):
lives in the library or just hangs out in the park,
like you said, And so you're not trying to displace
the spaces were already used to. You're calling for some variation,
some diversity, options, choice, even um a capitalist should love it. Yeah,
you know when you talk about freedom and that kind
(34:26):
of like everybody should just be free to do whatever
you want. Like the limits of that idea of freedom
are that how do you think about freedom when there
are certain kinds of things you can only do with
other people, you can only experience with other people. And
if your only thing about freedom is this individual like
I get to do it or I don't get to
do it, you miss all these categories of human experience.
(34:47):
There's some of the most joyful, amazing categories that only
are facilitated by being able to be doing stuff with
other people. And so I think there's that piece as well,
which is like, you don't get to really be free
if you're free, you know, just in your own yard. Yeah,
freedom all by your damn self is kind of missing
(35:08):
out on a lot of the value of freedom. Yeah, Eli,
I have thoroughly enjoyed finally being able to spend some
quality one on one time with you. Thank you for
doing this has been great. Thank you. Eli's reasons for
designing a new Internet are pretty personal. It's for as kids,
(35:29):
and that seems like a good thing when designing things,
shouldn't we be making things with the people we love
in mind? Eli and Talia created the Signals as guide
posts for new online conduct and design. These principles directly
speak to democratizing and harnessing civic power in digital spaces.
(35:52):
They're both helping folks define their own digital futures. It's
a roadmap for our tech future, at least one we want.
But it's also damn good philosophy to carry offline as
well as the world heals or struggles to. Maybe we
can start using this new framework in person. Here at
(36:16):
how to Citizen, we're committed to giving you things to
do beyond listening to me talk to somebody, though the
talking is pretty good. We're building an entire universe of
citizen action over at our shiny new website, how to
citizen dot com. It's got every episode transcripts, links to guests,
and things you can do. Now, for every episode, we're
(36:36):
offering you three ways to take action. A personal reflection
you can do alone and even just in your head,
a way to get more informed and publicly participating, joining
with others for something out in the world. So for
this episode, here are three things you can do. First,
I want you to reflect on some recent online interactions
(36:59):
you've had with total strangers on social media. Now, think
about some interactions you've had with strangers offline, maybe in
a public park or library. How did each of these
experiences make you feel? Did you prefer one over the other?
And why again, just think about it in terms of
becoming more informed. Check out New Public's new design playbook
(37:21):
for building digital public spaces of the future. It was
built from two years of global research and feedback. Also
read elis thought provoking article in the Atlantic. It's all
about envisioning a future online that serves the public good
and supports a culture of democracy which is totally possible. Finally,
in terms of publicly participating, I want you to try
(37:45):
to find or create an online community in a space
that isn't a giant shopping mall where you can practice
some of the fourteen signals, but using a platform like
highl h y l O or Mighty Networks. I think
you could do that. I'm gonna try to now. Look,
we've got links to all this and more over at
how to citizen dot com, and please follow us on
(38:06):
Instagram shiny new account at how to Citizen. There you
can share and learn from others on the journey. Next week,
we talked to a tech designer, an activist who's got
some very strong opinions about the birth of the Internet.
People always complained it's like, oh, the Internet is full
(38:27):
of idiots, because that's by design how we made it.
I told you serious opinions. We aim for brutal honesty here, folks.
Stay safe and stay tuned. We've got more imagination and
stories coming next time. Keep citizen and y'all. How to
Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of I Heart
(38:48):
Radio podcast and dust Light Productions. Our executive producers are
me Barritton Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf. Our
senior producer is Tamika Adams. Our producer is Ali Kilts
and our stint producer Sam Paulson. Stephanie Cone is our editor,
Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer, and Matthew Laie as
our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional original
(39:11):
music for season three from Andrew Clauson. This episode was
produced and sound designed by Tamika Adams. Special thanks to
Joel Smith from My Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at
dust Light Production.
Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a podcast
that reimagined citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
This season is all about tech and how it can
bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
you the people using technology for so much more than
revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
(00:28):
So last time, we covered some major ground with Prof.
G Mr Scott Galloway. Scott did a lightning round of
issues plaguing the tech ecosystem. Mainly, he touched on the
lack of regulation. The government has got to get on
tech and we well, we've got to get on the
government to do us damn job. And we also heard
(00:50):
more about my journey. We charted through my personal experiences
in the tech landscape, and we learned that I'm an
even bigger tech nerd than you already knew. I shared
with you my visions of what was possible for technology
over the years, like changing how we tell stories, how
we make comedy, how we organized politically. But we ain't
(01:13):
done yet because we talked about the problems right, but
now we have to talk about the people who see
things differently now, Scott, he argued, for a more traditional
path of regulation. But I think we need something new,
(01:34):
something that connects us to values that might feel disconnected
from the current tech landscape. Some of you might remember
my walks during the pandemic, a little bit of the
rich audio environment O pregate. Then out here in these
streets that was a menacing hound. Heck, I still walk
in my neighborhood almost every day, being outside, seeing people
(01:59):
live their own live lives, checking in on the shops
of York Boulevard. All that provides a lens to view
the world differently. It's grounding, but it's the road where
I see other black people walking, and that's the somewhat
rare sighting over here. I'm in a heavily Latino Latino
neighborhood in a time where distance literally equal safety. Being
(02:22):
in a public space can provide a basic way to
see humans being human. Neighborhood very special. To see a
fellow Negro, it was like a family reunion with people
I've never met before. So thus black people hill now
where I'm walking right now, I call coy Rod Because
(02:49):
what if we applied this sense of connection, community and
humanity to technology. Our current platforms encourage us to engage.
But how's that working out for us? But Scott Galloway
mentioned social media platforms inflame our arguments and tear at
our social fabric. Here's a simple truth. The giant tech
(03:12):
companies are not in the business of what we refer
to as citizen ng But using some imagination, is there
reversion of social media that can serve the same function
as our public spaces, like those parks and community centers,
those things we came to rely on this last year.
(03:32):
This all feels daunting, but I've got hope. This moment
calls for a lot of kind of creativity and boldness
and public imagination. Eli paris Or believes that through new
design principles, we can change our digital spaces so that
they bring us together instead of tearing us apart. And
(03:53):
that might seem insanely ambitious, but the plan he lays
out is far from impossible. Eli makes his case after
the break, Eli, Hello, welcome to How to Citizen. How
(04:17):
are you doing? I am doing well? How are you?
I'm doing well? Especially? Eli Pariser is a triple threat, author, activist,
and entrepreneur. He was the executive director of move on
dot org and Eli has been a pioneer working to
create democracy friendly spaces, the ones we sorely need in
(04:38):
the digital landscape for decades. Right now, he's running a
nonprofit organization called New Public, and he's putting into practice
the methods we need to citizen better online. So when
we sat down, we started our conversation by strolling down
digital memory lane. I want to rewind the clock a bit, because, um,
(05:00):
you've been around technology for a while, as have I.
I can remember the early days with when everything was monochromatic,
green blinking curses, Unix and DOSS, when you had to
like manually serve the Internet, you know, like one site
at a time, just grabbing it. And you had an
early what we would now call viral moment when you
(05:21):
were about twenty the attacks and I and Leven had
just happened. What did you do? Yeah, so I had
just gotten out of college, and you know, it occurred
to me that this was one of those moments in
history where things can go very different directions, and there
was this opportunity for the world to come together around
what I thought was really like kind of a global
(05:42):
problem of terrorism or there was this world where you know,
people kind of seize it and use it for their
own political ends and things go badly, and so I
set up this little website calling for multilateralism. Quick explanation.
Multilateralism is when multiple nations agree on some common goal
or mission, in this case, for the potential war on terror.
(06:06):
And there was this guy at the University of Chicago
had written up this petition. We put it on the website,
and then I like logged off, you know, I needed
my phone line for a phone call, and I didn't
check my email for like four days. So I log on,
you know, the Monday morning after, and there's this kind
(06:28):
of loading bar downloading my email, and it says like
four thousand messages left to download and then forty thousand
messages left it down. It's just this kind of crazy
and comprehensible thing, like what what happened? And it was
an early viral email basically like it it had spanned
the globe. I thought, if we got a couple of
(06:48):
hundred people to sign it, like that would be something
that would be good. But I just didn't even imagine
that we'd have fifty thou people as it ended up
like five thousand people, you know, signing onto this thing.
Five hundred thousand people. Yeah, and and from all over
the world. It was like a hundred and nine two countries.
(07:09):
And that was crazy. I was a twenty year old
college student. I had no political connections or capital, I
had no resources. I had not spent a cent. I
just put this website up. And so you know, in
those moments you can kind of see why it might
feel like this is just this is a democracy tizing technology.
(07:35):
What kind of email storage did you have in two
thousand one, because that's a lot of email. I appreciate
I appreciate the follow up questions. This is really the
kind of detail I think people are interested in. It's
like I was on outlook. By the way you painting
this two thousand one picture is taken me back there
as well. I'm remembering the simplicity of the websites, the
(07:56):
crudeness of the HTML, the optimism. M uh that again,
the terrible design comes back to me a lot. This
was like peak ugly Internet, but also peak beautiful Internet,
because we didn't care what it looked like. What was
the potential that you saw in this period? The idea
(08:17):
was that information is power and knowledge is power, and
here's this technology that's making information and access to some
degree free and also allowing people to conceivably the public
could break through with the leads because they could demonstrate
to each other, hey, we all care about this issue.
(08:39):
And as an organizer you start to see that as
a moment where people are willing to do more because
one of the biggest impediments to citizen power is just
feeling like I'm alone and in my concerns, and so
that ability to like quickly find like, oh, there's a
there's millions of other people who are concerned like me
(09:00):
about what's going on. It seemed like it could change
the dynamics of what was happening in politics, and in
the same way, you know, change some of the economic dynamics.
If I had been placing you know, five thousand phone
calls around the world at that time, yes, long distance
was still expensive, like that would be a real undertaking.
But here was this thing that was like completely horizontal
(09:22):
and free. The main reason that I wanted to talk
to you, besides this trip down Lexicon memory Lane, which
has been joyful, is this work you're doing with New Public,
this new platform organization, trying to connect and inspire the
people who build the Internet tools we use and the
people who design them to use them to make better
(09:45):
digital public spaces, Healthier public spaces for us to interact
with each other that don't descend into some of the
horrors that so many of us have experienced. In your definition,
what is new public? So New Public started as kind
of a research project I was working with and co
founded it with Talia Stroud. There's this communications professor in
(10:09):
the University of Texas who studies how media organizations and
communities can get engaged better in civic life, and we
started to ask this question that was kind of taking
the conversation about tech and flipping it a little. There's
a lot of conversation about misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, and
all of that is really critical and important work that's happening,
(10:34):
But somewhere in there, I think you could end up
playing a lot of whack a mole if you didn't
have a north star of where you wanted to get. Like,
in other words, a good Internet is like a conducive
space for people to come together, especially across difference. And
so our original project was like, can we start to
put some definition on what the qualities of the spaces
(10:57):
that we would really want would be, and then we
can evaluate, like can our existing platforms even possibly help
us get there, or do we need something else. We
came out with something called the Civic Signals, which are
basically kind of fourteen qualities that we saw show up
again and again across different academic disciplines and also in
interviews and in surveys that we did with people in
(11:19):
twenty countries around the world, and the qualities that they
want to see in their digital spaces. And if we
think about digital platforms as spaces rather than just as
markets for information, how does that change, you know, how
we might think about designing them. And we realized, like, oh,
this problem of designing spaces where strangers can relate to
(11:42):
each other can behave well, like, this is an old problem.
This is an urban planning problem, and it's a problem
that's been around, you know, as long as human settlements
have been around. And so why aren't we bringing all
of that kind of understanding to some of the questions
that seem so intractable online. I really like this idea
(12:05):
of asking people what they want in a platform, in
a space, trying to define a north star. I think
so many of us have gotten used to settling for
whatever is seemingly available before us. What's the elevator pitch
for what new public is trying to do in establishing
that north thought. So we're basically like an incubator that
(12:29):
draws on the research that we've done to help support
community leaders and technologists who are trying to build better
digital spaces. And our belief is that it's when those
two ways of thinking come together, kind of the social
intelligence and the design and engineering intelligence, that you really
find sustainable and durable solutions. But we've adopted this saying
(12:54):
from a Nobel Prize winning economist Eleanor Ostrom about no
panaceas it ain't pretty, but society is complex. People are
complex and forced to have simple solutions to complex problems
not a good idea. And she studies like how human
beings manage commons well, and it turns out like all
(13:15):
over the world actually contra you know, tragedy of the commons.
There are lots of examples where communities really do manage
commons well, but there is no one master key, there's
no one master pattern to commons management. It always happens
in a very specific way to that community, to that
set of problems. And when we think about the way
(13:37):
that we're structuring the Internet right now, you know it
is built around there is a Facebook algorithm and maybe
millions of lines of code. It exists for everyone in
the world, you know, everywhere. We think that's impossible. You
can't get to something that really works for everybody with
one master protocol or approach. So if there are no panaceas,
(13:59):
no universal solutions, how do you give people the tools
to build the right kinds of solutions for the particular
problems and the particular communities that they're in. There You're
on again about democratizing and civic power and helping people
to find their own futures. But no, it's like I
do think our current digital environment is like subtly so undemocratic.
(14:24):
Your option is to be part of Facebook or not
be part of it, and not being part of it
at this point has some social costs, or not being
part of LinkedIn has some social costs. But you don't
get to like weigh in on a design change or
have any say and what the rules of speech should be,
how people should work. And I think that's problematic and pernicious.
(14:46):
I think there's a better way to do things. Now,
what New public is calling for our digital public spaces.
These are similar to physical public spaces like a park
or library, right owned by the public, serving the public
interest in these civil, social kind of political ways. And
that's different from a digital private space that most of
(15:07):
us use in a daily basis. Right those spaces that
operate like a walled garden where corporate owners got total control.
Not everybody has equal access, and the space is really
designed for commercial or financial interests, not a public interest.
So tell me why you think it's important to have
digital public spaces as opposed to just a bunch more
(15:28):
digital private spaces. So when we were doing this kind
of look at the sociology of communities offline in the
physical world, one thing that was very apparent was like
the value and importance of places like parks and libraries
in building kind of cohesion and giving people forums to
(15:49):
raise their concerns. You know, there's just a whole bunch
of ways in which, like measurably, these public places helped
knit communities together. And that's because they do whole bunch
of things that most private places simply can't or won't.
Lending books to anyone who needs them, especially to people
who can't afford to pay them. Is just not a
(16:09):
good idea for a business, but it's a great idea
for a community function. I think part of the problem
when you kind of think about our online world right now,
is that we're trying to cram all of these different
functions that need to happen in order to have a
sustainable community. And I think even if you have the
wisest possible leadership and the best possible management and everything
(16:34):
was perfect, it's just not what they're there to do.
And that's okay, but we need this other thing as well.
The library metaphor really strikes me, and I've been able
to see the community function that the library is performing
pre pandemic and during the pandemic, a literal common space.
(16:55):
People bring their kids there. They're obviously lending books as
one function, but they have production facilities, they have career advice,
they have citizenship training for those who are new to
the country who really want to join the commons in
a technical legal sense, and you know, Amazon is not
doing that. It's more than a place of transactions, right,
(17:16):
sort of a place of people and connection and community.
So when you put it that way at digital public
space feels lacking because every example that my mind goes
to is actually a private space. Tell me more about
that than what what does a quality a well functioning
public space, digital or otherwise need to thrive well. I
(17:37):
mean the first piece is you need to be serving
a bunch of community needs. And I think that's one
of the cool things about libraries is that it's not
like people go to the library because they want to
be a great citizen. Like they go to the library
because they need a book, or their kid needs a
place to play chess, or they need a meeting room.
There's a bunch of really tangible needs that need to
(17:59):
be met, and there are librarians. I think there is
another sort of piece of what's missing in digital spaces.
You know, what would a library be like if it
was all self served and don't like, you know, instructions
taped to the door, but go in at your own peril.
Like it would be hard, especially with the library, because
you know, there's a whole bunch of people with a
(18:19):
bunch of pretty different needs trying to get their needs
met simultaneously and balancing that's challenging, and you have, you know,
someone who's experiencing homelessness over here, who's trying to get
their unemployment benefits, and you know, someone who's got their
young kids at a story hour and without someone kind
of holding that space and mediating it um, you can
(18:40):
run into real trouble, which I would argue is like
a lot of what happens online. And as soon as
those conflicts start to escalate, than that experience of safety
and the experience that oh I can be with people
who are pretty different and it's okay, starts to dissipate
more librarians is never a problem. It's always a step
towards the solution. Go librarians, all right. You alluded to
(19:10):
four categories of signals. They seem like a new etiquette
or framework so we can actually have more quality digital
public spaces. Break that down for me. The first and
most important in many ways is this welcome category, which
is where a lot of platforms fall down kind of
almost as soon as they've started, which is, do people
(19:32):
feel invited to be part of the conversation here in
the first place? Do they feel safe to be part
of that conversation? Does the platform go out of its
way to help humanize people to each other, or does
it quickly reduce us to you know, our most incendiary
positions or to caricatures. And I think there's a reason
(19:52):
that in our physical life we haven't reserved a huge
amount of space. That's like walk up to a stranger
and tell them you're hottest. Take uh, you know, we
haven't recreated Twitter in real life. Yeah, there's but there's
a reason for that, which is like, it's difficult and
unpleasant and mostly people don't want it. But having spaces
(20:14):
like parks and libraries where you just see people who
are having different lives than you. You're in a park especially,
you're in this nice environment, and you just get to
be like, okay, they're familiar, I've seen them a couple
of times before. Maybe this is all okay, and we're
part of something together. That's that's nice. That's really an
important experience actually in in building a democratic culture. So
(20:39):
then then we've got to connect. And connect isn't just
about like everybody connect with everybody. It's about how do
you support kind of good connection, especially across groups. Because
we know, for example, when it comes to like economic opportunities,
job postings will often literally get stuck. And how do
you build these networks that like allow information, allow ideas
to kind of cross boundaries. You need to build bridges
(21:01):
between these groups, and there are ways you can design
for that, and there's a whole field about designing for that,
and so we kind of get into how do we
support better designs for cross group contact essentially, and then
there's this understand chunk, which is really, you know, not
just about individual understanding, but it's about how do we
(21:22):
build meaning together. So one of the things that really
effective communities do is you kind of have this yes
and element where people are kind of adding their their perspective,
their point of view, and you're building something that you
really couldn't build along. And I think because digital products
are often built for with a kind of individual user
(21:44):
in mind, we don't think a lot about sort of
how do we facilitate these collective experiences that are really important.
And then finally you get to act. And act isn't
just vote or change your community selectmen. It's actually like
just platforms that facilitate people coming together and doing something together.
(22:04):
Because one of the things that sociologists and social scientists
and political scientists tell us is that really any time
you get a group of people, especially across some difference,
just to accomplish something together. That builds social trust, It
builds a sense of power and capacity and agency, and
that has this kind of like it feeds back on
the whole thing where people then are willing to take
(22:26):
on something more. How did you and your co founder
Talia come up with these? So basically, we we talked
to over a hundred experts in a whole bunch of
different fields, from urban planning to political scientists to community experts,
(22:46):
and ask them what public spaces needed for a healthy
society and a healthy democracy. And then we did these
focus groups where we kind of took them out in
five different countries around the world, talk to people and
really got sense of like does this resonate, does it's
not resonate? Change some things, And then finally surveyed people
(23:07):
in twenty countries just to make sure that this was
resonating and also to get a sense of how people
evaluated which platforms did well on on what. And that
was also really fascinating because you could see both what
people wanted from the platforms that we have today and
where they fell short. Where did the private spaces the
(23:29):
companies that most of us been too much time on
Where did they most fall short? Well? I mean on
that welcome category, there weren't a lot of them that
did very well. And just you know, do I feel
invited to be here? Do I feel safe? Do I
feel humanized? Like there was really not a platform but
did especially well on humanization, which I think says a
(23:51):
lot about our current digital environment. It's a powerful word, humanization.
I think it's an easy one to use. So if
it strikes me as very plausible that they are bad
at humanization, because I don't always feel very human in
in myself. If you look at a TikTok, it's like,
please don't colonize this sound. If you're not black, just
(24:12):
watch and enjoy. There's two sides to it, right, there's
these moments of incredible kind of creative expression and a
window and to all of these worlds that you just
would never get to occupy otherwise. And then there's this
sense of like, but I've got a game this for
attention for clicks, and that's kind of an always on endeavor.
(24:33):
And I think we saw this in the service too.
It's like, there are real value that these platforms provide.
I just think part of the problem is like we're
asking too much of the platforms that we have as
opposed to like inventing a world that has more opportunities
for different kinds of experiences and different kinds of spaces.
So you're out here trying to invent new worlds, and
(24:54):
there are a lot of people concerned about the topics
we're talking about. Part of their approach is regulatory. It's
like we've got to limit the power, the reach, the
depth of these organizations, apply new rules and new regulations.
That doesn't sound like the focus of yours is much
more creative and inventive the usual own language. Why have
(25:15):
you chosen this approach and why have you chosen to
work on this of all the things you could do
right now? I think the regulation piece is important, But
I also think without a kind of imagination for what
we want, it's hard even to regulate well, let alone
to start to like move towards the future that we want.
(25:36):
And I think this moment calls for a lot of
kind of creativity and boldness and public imagination. I think
this is the playbook for how we've moved through times
of social stress and social fracture in the past is
like we've invented new kinds of organizations, new kinds of institutions,
(25:57):
public library or a thing that we're invented, and so
we're public parks like they didn't always exist with public parks.
We're starting to build these things called cities. There's a
lot of smoke and people don't have a place to
go to exercise and get some fresh air, Like we
need to think about how to do that. Oh, let's
have a park that's open to everyone. I think we're
(26:17):
kind of there with our digital life, where like it's
not just about tweaking things, it's about really having the
bold vision for like, what is the life we want
to live, and what are the kinds of institutions we
need to make that life possible. I am indeed tired
of breathing the toxic smoke of the current Internet, and
I would love a public park equivalent. This effort, this
(26:44):
mission that you've given yourself is very aspirational. It makes
me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It restores my faith
in people, and then I have to ask, how real
is it? Yeah? I think, Um, we're starting to see
more and more people take this on right, and there
are people who have been building places like front Porch
Forum in Vermont, which is kind of a great example
(27:06):
of what social media can look like when it's detached
from the pressure of kind of up into the right
exponential growth expectation. So from Porch Forum, it's basically like
a local discussion forum that's heavily moderated in every community
in Vermont. Oh throwback term list serve. It's it's like
a listener, but it's like a really well moderated listener. Right,
(27:30):
so before you can post, someone's going to read your
message and they'll send it back to you if you
run a foul of the norms, which are pretty like serious.
Even though you know Facebook is very popular, Twitter is
very popular, all of these platforms are popular or Vermont,
there's this different quality of conversation that happens when it's
slow and it's thoughtful and there's an expectation that we're
(27:54):
really going to stick to the agreements we make about
how we're speaking to each other. To me, that's like
one example that exists right now that I think that
you can have one of those in every community, and
the United States, it would probably need to be different
in every community because no panicsy is I like that example?
It sounds deliberate. A lot of us are hooked on
(28:15):
what I would consider a kind of an entitled version
of the Internet where I want to I get to
I will that's it. I something came to my mind.
I'm going to post it. It's my right to post it.
And what you're describing as a different balance where there's
a sense of obligation as well, Like I can't imagine
if I had launched a tweet and it came back
(28:36):
to me, this isn't good enough, this is too rude.
You're gonna make somebody, You're gonna hurt somebody's feeling, like
that's what a tweet is dog launch, Like, why should
we care about this? There's a lot of people I
can imagine and know some of them who are like,
they can have my data. I'm a grown up. I
know what I'm doing. I don't need like a library
(28:58):
version of the Internet. Just control yourself and be a
good person. Is it that hard? Why do we need
a digital public space designed intentionally for these outcomes? Unless
you're literally in the cabinet, was you have to deal
with society or society is going to come deal with
you and you wanted to be healthy, you wanted to
be good. I think that's one perspective. I think another
(29:21):
pieces there's just so many people who don't get to
to contribute, and that's a loss for all of us.
There was a great study on our science where they
started kind of moving the norms toward being explicit about
what kind of speech was welcome and I welcome there.
And there was this question of whether that would just
(29:42):
put off everyone, everyone would feel kind of like nannied
and and shut up. But actually what they found was
not only was there more speech, there's a lot more
speech from women, from folks of color, from groups that
would kind of tend to feel like, am I is
it okay to be here? Is it okay to be
speaking here? Those are the people who then felt like, oh, okay,
I can speak up, And those conversations are better when
(30:03):
you know you don't just have a bunch of entitled
dudes talking to each other. So I think there's something
that we all miss out on when we don't create
spaces that are actually doing that work. What if you're wrong?
What if humanity is just trash? Right? What if what
if your goals and aspirations for us exceed what we're
(30:26):
capable of, and this is who we really are, and
you can try to mitigate that with some better design,
But you're fighting upstream against human nature. What do you
say to that. You know there is no such thing
as universal human nature. And part of what we know
from social scientists is that even the same person in
different contexts will behave in radically different ways, and in
(30:47):
some contexts will be much more altruistic and other context
will be much more selfish. A lot of that has
to do with the situation we find ourselves in and
how we understand how we fit into that situation. And
so this is kind of the no panaceas point, Like,
I just don't think there are universal statements that are
very helpful about humanity as a whole, because people are
(31:11):
lots of things, and there are definitely some pretty screwed
up people out there with some pretty screwed up objectives,
But there are also so many times when you can
look at these stories of people with just like not
a lot of resources coming together and doing something really cool,
And to me, that's kind of the battle is, like,
how do we help those people on those moments happen more,
(31:34):
and the people who are kind of aiming to do
screwed up stuff do it a little less. And if
we can tilt that balance a little bit, Like it
doesn't have to be a universal solve, it just has
to kind of be a game of inches. It sounds
like somebody's trying to bend the moral arc of the
universe towards justice. I wouldn't. It's a small small part
of that project. It's look, if billions of us pull
(31:57):
on that arc, it'll be right, not all build in
just a majority. We just need more. And it's like
at any given time, the reality is most people are
just living their lives, doing their thing. And that's why
building the number of people at the edges who are engaged,
who are active can be so powerful because people are busy.
(32:17):
We've got a lot of stuff going on, and just
a little bit of extra time and a little bit
of extra energy really actually like can have a big,
big impact. This stuff takes time. What do you want
for future generations? I have heard some kids in the background,
so I've seen you're pretty invested in the future. Yeah,
(32:39):
my kids have it pretty good and are privileged. But
even for them, like I look at the digital landscape
that they're going to grow up and be a part of,
and I worry for them, like I worry for their souls.
I worry for what it means to them to be
human being and some of these environments that we've created,
because they can be pretty soul sucking, pretty extractive. So
(33:03):
what I want and what I think is possible, and
it's not going to be me, but it's like this
movement that's growing to say, like, hey, we can build
digital environments that are good for people, and we should
do that, and that's going to require thinking about it differently,
Like I want those kinds of environments to be available
to them. It doesn't have to be that you're spending
all of your time in the park. Nobody spends all
(33:24):
their time in the park or the library. But going
to the park allows you to see a certain way
of being together that's possible, that changes your ideas about
what humanity is. And that's kind of what I want
for them, is to have those spaces where you can say, like, oh,
it is possible to have like a good conversation with
strangers online that doesn't evolve into all of us calling
(33:44):
each other Nazis. When you put it that way, it
sounds like such a meager request and so achievable. And
I also think it's it's important that you oldline that
in the words of like the early eighties serials commercials.
That is the stuck in my head. This is part
of a complete breakfast, right, it's not digital. No one
(34:05):
lives in the library or just hangs out in the park,
like you said, And so you're not trying to displace
the spaces were already used to. You're calling for some variation,
some diversity, options, choice, even um a capitalist should love it. Yeah,
you know when you talk about freedom and that kind
(34:26):
of like everybody should just be free to do whatever
you want. Like the limits of that idea of freedom
are that how do you think about freedom when there
are certain kinds of things you can only do with
other people, you can only experience with other people. And
if your only thing about freedom is this individual like
I get to do it or I don't get to
do it, you miss all these categories of human experience.
(34:47):
There's some of the most joyful, amazing categories that only
are facilitated by being able to be doing stuff with
other people. And so I think there's that piece as well,
which is like, you don't get to really be free
if you're free, you know, just in your own yard. Yeah,
freedom all by your damn self is kind of missing
(35:08):
out on a lot of the value of freedom. Yeah, Eli,
I have thoroughly enjoyed finally being able to spend some
quality one on one time with you. Thank you for
doing this has been great. Thank you. Eli's reasons for
designing a new Internet are pretty personal. It's for as kids,
(35:29):
and that seems like a good thing when designing things,
shouldn't we be making things with the people we love
in mind? Eli and Talia created the Signals as guide
posts for new online conduct and design. These principles directly
speak to democratizing and harnessing civic power in digital spaces.
(35:52):
They're both helping folks define their own digital futures. It's
a roadmap for our tech future, at least one we want.
But it's also damn good philosophy to carry offline as
well as the world heals or struggles to. Maybe we
can start using this new framework in person. Here at
(36:16):
how to Citizen, we're committed to giving you things to
do beyond listening to me talk to somebody, though the
talking is pretty good. We're building an entire universe of
citizen action over at our shiny new website, how to
citizen dot com. It's got every episode transcripts, links to guests,
and things you can do. Now, for every episode, we're
(36:36):
offering you three ways to take action. A personal reflection
you can do alone and even just in your head,
a way to get more informed and publicly participating, joining
with others for something out in the world. So for
this episode, here are three things you can do. First,
I want you to reflect on some recent online interactions
(36:59):
you've had with total strangers on social media. Now, think
about some interactions you've had with strangers offline, maybe in
a public park or library. How did each of these
experiences make you feel? Did you prefer one over the other?
And why again, just think about it in terms of
becoming more informed. Check out New Public's new design playbook
(37:21):
for building digital public spaces of the future. It was
built from two years of global research and feedback. Also
read elis thought provoking article in the Atlantic. It's all
about envisioning a future online that serves the public good
and supports a culture of democracy which is totally possible. Finally,
in terms of publicly participating, I want you to try
(37:45):
to find or create an online community in a space
that isn't a giant shopping mall where you can practice
some of the fourteen signals, but using a platform like
highl h y l O or Mighty Networks. I think
you could do that. I'm gonna try to now. Look,
we've got links to all this and more over at
how to citizen dot com, and please follow us on
(38:06):
Instagram shiny new account at how to Citizen. There you
can share and learn from others on the journey. Next week,
we talked to a tech designer, an activist who's got
some very strong opinions about the birth of the Internet.
People always complained it's like, oh, the Internet is full
(38:27):
of idiots, because that's by design how we made it.
I told you serious opinions. We aim for brutal honesty here, folks.
Stay safe and stay tuned. We've got more imagination and
stories coming next time. Keep citizen and y'all. How to
Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of I Heart
(38:48):
Radio podcast and dust Light Productions. Our executive producers are
me Barritton Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf. Our
senior producer is Tamika Adams. Our producer is Ali Kilts
and our stint producer Sam Paulson. Stephanie Cone is our editor,
Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer, and Matthew Laie as
our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional original
(39:11):
music for season three from Andrew Clauson. This episode was
produced and sound designed by Tamika Adams. Special thanks to
Joel Smith from My Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at
dust Light Production.
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