Trading Fear for Hope
the rapid pace of this erosion of trust it it it's there's not an unlimited supply of it and at some point there is a tipping point and when we lose our democracy it's very very hard to get it back and if we don't have a set of rules and a framework that we all agree upon and we can all thrive within then you know i think it's a very very very different country and a very different world this is rob johnson president institute for new economic thinking i'm here today with frank mccourt mccourt global in conjunction with science poe georgetown university and hopefully recruiting many more is looking at the nature of democracy the nature of governance in the context of the technological platforms we have here today and the challenges that his project project liberty is raising and these people are working on from the vantage point of the common good in humankind is an extraordinary endeavor and an extraordinary example frank thanks for joining me today it's a pleasure being here with you robin thanks for speaking kindly about the project i really appreciate it i find that effortless to be enthusiastic after learning about it let's talk first about your inspiration then we'll talk about what to do but i'm curious in your own mind where did this vision come from where what inspired you to launch in this direction yeah well i think um i was inspired in part because of a great deal of concern about the you know direction things are headed in a country i love and in a country that my family for five generations has been a part of building and um i suppose if i dig deeper and really think about where does it all come from it comes from uh a certain upbringing you know i think about my great-grandfather every day you know an immigrant coming to this country at 13 and then starting a business in the late 1800s building roads when henry ford started building cars and and then literally as i said building building this great country and uh sitting as a steward of a of a family in a business of five generations um up until a decade or so ago i never thought we'd be sitting here talking about the sustainability of democracy or or capitalism for that matter um but i became very concerned about that and and wanted to to do something about it and that's what is really the impetus behind this project is not not settling sitting idly by and complaining about it or opining on the problem it's it's actually trying to get in the game and do something to fix it and and lastly i would just say that you know again growing up in boston large irish irish catholic family seven kids and you know so nine at the table minimum often many more you can imagine that environment and what it was like and we as kids were very good at defining the problem and my parents would always remind us before dinner was out you've done a great job defining the problem now what are you going to do about it and project liberty is trying to do something about a really big problem you know i remember reading in some of the interviews that you've done that uh you talked about america being which might call the product of migration that people picked up and did something different they moved it was geographic migration and my sense was you were imparting to us that you may be in the same square miles it's not about picking up and running away it's about migrating our systems to be better and more supportive of humankind yeah i couldn't i i couldn't agree with that assessment more it's um when things are not good when we live in a physical place uh and we see this over and over unfortunately in the world um people leave where they're at when things become intolerable but they do need a place to go and uh and you know that's human migration of the physical nature in this very country as you point out was is the product of a physical migration from a regime you know a structure right where people felt under represented or not represented didn't have a didn't uh no would no longer tolerate you know a feudal system uh a monarchy etc and um uh and the the form of governance and uh what their lives were like and so they picked up and left and started a new project called america new governance a new model a new set of values and a uh a new set of principles and we've all lived with the benefit of of that of that physical act well well now we're we're living in a digital world and very very powerful large structure which is uh in my opinion and i'm just sharing an opinion is very very unhealthy and uh not only unhealthy is eroding trust at such a rate that the very systems that we rely on i.e democracy and capitalism which are built on the premise of trust uh when you destroy the trust you you the systems crumble yeah it is there's no logic that i'm aware of that if you remove the underpinning of a of a system that it will it will survive so it's i think a very very important time for us to define clearly see clearly the problem but i hope not dwell on the problem but now really gather up our our our our most creative selves our best selves in a way and do something about it you know the the what are you going to do about it answer to that moment yeah well i think that not wallowing in the sorrow of how you say recognizing we're in this difficult place and moving forward is a key part of what i'll call the example you're setting there are lots of different things people talk about they talk about climate change they talk about the military and the dangers of the ukraine they talk about instability in the financial system and what have project is focusing on what what what's the place you're zooming in on to make the difference yeah we're zooming in on what we see as a core a core fundamental problem and if we solve it the chances of solving all those other problems increases and so we're not suggesting that project liberty liberty solves all the problems in the world or that changing tech changes all human behavior what we're saying is that the current architecture of the internet is flawed and it can't be fixed merely by regulation or by tweaking it around the edges we need to fix the model and change it completely and make the old model obsolete and uh yeah maybe by by putting this in some context when i refer to technology and i want to be clear and the problems associated with it i'm talking about the idea of extracting and explo exploiting our data surveillance capitalism and just surveillance period you know i i it feels to me very incompatible with democracy and the other is social media and how it is it is designed actually to optimize for rage optimize for anger because that creates stickiness or time on online you get what you optimize for with technology technology is just a tool right and like a hammer a hammer is a tool yeah so we can go out and we can go out and build a house with that hammer or we can go out in and kill someone with that hammer it's a tool and so we need the technology i believe to support democracy to support a fair form of capitalism and and it can so um uh i i don't want to come across as being pessimistic in the least i want to be realistic about the magnitude of the problem but i'm highly optimistic that if we fix the fundamental flaws with the with technology and it's in how it's currently being deployed we can not only solve and strengthen our democracy we can actually then be in a position to solve other problems that have been really very difficult to even grasp how could we solve that if we can't even agree for instance on facts and so on and so forth so if we can reset the technology and kind of reclaim our public square refocus it all on the on the common good that this technology should be serving a purpose it should be for people and for society and strengthening not for platforms and just to just it to you know create as much uh monetary value at whatever cost so i i think that we're if we can fix the technology and and redirect it to work for democracy and for society i think we're going to find solving these other problems much much uh easier or at least much more possible if you get it right then the systems are more responsive to which michael detecting discord and evolving towards a positive outcome if the systems are refracted by that yearning like you said fomenting rage to increase time to increase the advertising rate for the vendors not a good formula it doesn't have anything to do with how you say meeting the challenges yeah and and let's think about this for for for a minute if you're if your mantra or mission is his statement is to move fast and break things well we're we move fast and we're breaking things if on the other hand it's move fast and fix things you know maybe we can fix a few things and maybe we can replace some of this despondency we're seeing all around with a real hopefulness and i believe that's that that's very very possible you know we've we've been beneficiaries um of of institutions that have supported these operating systems democracy and capitalism very well or reasonably well let's say over the last 70 years really post some time about post world war ii but that was an analog world and now we're living in a digital world and uh we can't expect that a set of institutions designed to support these key operating systems will function at at the highest level when the we're now moved from analog world to digital world so we need a new civic architecture for a digital world and again it's to me i um i'm very hopeful at the same time that i'm very concerned because i i think i've seen over and over again the ingenuity of people particularly americans to to innovate and create once we get directed and aligned and and right now the the the very unfortunate part of things is that the technology itself is causing polarization and misalignment and and misinformation and so on and so forth so we we need to fix the the this problem at the it after root cause to um to then in turn solve for lots of uh you lost lots of problem solving and lots of improvement for society and and humanity so yeah i think it's a very very critical critical moment for all of us well as you mentioned with the social media you can bombard and denigrate be vicious not even be truthful but really take people down when you look at surveys whether it's gallup or richard edelman or whatever the trust and faith in academic experts scientists government agencies corporate leaders are all collapsing yeah and it's it's the key it's the key single key thing that these systems are built on is trust and it's uh if you lose if we lose trust person to person uh or at a societal level uh as i said earlier i i don't think the systems have have a chance it's it's logic you know they they they're built the very foundation they're built on needs to be strong and needs to be maintained that's what really uh anime that's what continues to animate me but that's what got me off the sidelines here it's just a grave concern that the the rapid pace of this erosion of trust it it's there's not an unlimited supply of it and at some point there is a tipping point and when we lose our democracy it's very very hard to get it back and i want to see our our family's business thrive for another five generations you know i love the country and i want to see other people's business businesses thrive and survive and and if we don't have a set of rules and a framework that we all agree upon and we can all thrive within then you know i i think it's a very very very different country and a very different world and uh you know so i i i hope that you know many people will get involved and it may not be our our idea may not be the best idea there may be someone else out there with a better idea and if there is i want to support that person and those ideas but let's let's evolve together and and let's make this a collective project it's it's a i think this is a this is a project this is a problem big enough for all of us to pay attention to and to get involved in and you know project liberty um you know has three tracks associated with it it's not just a tech solution to a tech problem yeah there's a tech track and a tech solution something we call a decentralized social networking protocol which we've created which is open source and we've gifted to to humanity and if adopted it would fundamentally change how the internet works but there's also a governance track and a movement track because we really feel people need to get involved society needs to get involved to fix this and want to see it fixed and this time around we need to have real governance you know we need to and by governance i mean we need a conversation and agreement upon what are the values and the principles that we're going to agree on here that we want the technology to support and to help thrive in other words let's if we want democracy to thrive let's optimize for democracy not rage i'm looking at um the challenge you're a beacon you're going for it you're seeing it in this larger context of the common good and the systems that support them my sense is in a time where expertise has been denigrated to engender trust is a formidable challenge and i guess i'm saying people have their habits you're building a new platform how do we how do we catalyze the shift to the new platform to recognize that we might call collective health of going from dependence on those systems to these new systems you know i think um i again i i could be missing the mark here but i i'm a huge believer in in people and i've seen time after time after time if there's a if there's something that's credible authentic doable can be very bold but doable and hopeful people get very excited about it and rally rally behind it and make it happen if if we can replace some of this despondency that's creating this uh you know this instability and this leading to this lack of trust and so on and so forth with a a hopefulness uh and a future that is that people can see it as a possibility i think we can change the shift the energy completely here right now we're stuck and there's very little discussion about the future right there's a lot of discussion about um past grievances and lots of discussion about you know can we make things like they used to be and and so on and so forth uh we're stuck when people are afraid they become nostalgic they lurch backward rather than evolving forward many times and they want to recreate a time that maybe even wasn't really it wasn't really like they think but it was it felt like it felt better if we can feel better about the future why not go for it people people want what makes them feel better right if it's if it's real i think that what we're seeing though is that in in the recent past people are being sold something about you know making them feel better that's not genuine right you know it's a mirage and it's not being spoken to honestly and if we if we have a project that's a collective project right it's not just one person's project or one thing it's not like that it's a collective project it's a it's something it's let's put that man on the moon again and do it collectively and be excited about it and feel good about it i think that changes completely the dynamic i think that we are in a place where wallowing in fear creates otherness blame hostility polarity but it also none of none of those things help you regenerate when you say stuck that's the word that really came to my mind is when when you're stuck there's a lot of work done in mind science about the three regions of the brain and you know the old parables of fight and flight and so forth when you shame people things get worse absolutely and the nature the healing the moving beyond is about like you said that regeneration of trust and my chinese friends who are often very good at criticizing the united states say when you look at the history of china when did rebellions happen it wasn't when the adults were damaged it's when they feared for their children's future absolutely that's the propulsion and you and i have young children i have two grandchildren one on the way the anxiety that often inhabits my daydreams is what am i going to do for their future and feeling confidence in that i think will calm an awful lot of nerves and i think the chinese have a have an insight there i i think they're that that's exactly right and and uh uh we can get into a another conversation about the how the you know chinese people are looking at internet usage and technology and so forth but that's a conversation for another day but that insight regarding fear and that insight regarding um how we look at the world as as parents and grandparents and through the eyes of our kids in the world we're going to leave for them is i think very very powerful and i think we can turn this fear around because i haven't ever found or met a person that if there's that won't trade fear for hope if the hope is real there may be people trying to bombard you from finding or feeling the hope for their own narrow purposes but i think the example that you're creating with this project and with your vision and your work and the team you're putting together is the basis for hope and we'll conclude this chapter and we'll come back again we'll talk about some more of those other dimensions but i really am glad you could come in today and let me share with our audience the pathway you're and i'm gonna on i'm gonna ask a lot of people check this out and join i appreciate it a lot and be happy to come back anytime i enjoy the conversation and you're a hugely thoughtful person so it's a it's a pleasure to have this conversation with you pleasure is mine thank you thank you
2022-06-23 17:10
