Open Transcripts

2013 Internet Hall of Fame Interviews: Stephen Wolff

presented by Stephen Wolff

Anything that is vital and living and growing, there’s always going to be turbulence. It’s always going to be going off in many directions, several of which are bound to be wrong, some of which are going to be right. So I think the Internet is still a work in progress. And that’s a very good thing.

2013 Internet Hall of Fame Interviews: Scott Bradner

presented by Scott Bradner

The biggest surprise I’ve ever had about the Internet is that my mom surfed. It never occurred to me in the early 80s that my mother would ever knowingly use the Internet. It was a toy—it was a geek thing. It was for scientists, it was for researchers, it was for technical people. I expected her to use it without knowing it, because I expected it to be an underlayment for a lot of telecommunications.

2013 Internet Hall of Fame Interviews: Andrew Sullivan

presented by Andrew Sullivan

My big concern right now actually has to do with the tendency of people to want to regulate it. So, the Internet is mostly successful because of the ability of people to do whatever they want. That is, innovation happens wherever you are. You can just add things to it and so on, and nobody’s in charge. And that’s scary for a lot of people who want to run things.

Class, Race and Poverty in the USA

presented by Anne Applebaum, Derek Shearer, Jeb Bush, Randall Kennedy, Roger Berkowitz

Americans have always accepted a degree of inequality, inequality of outcomes. What seems to have changed in recent years, or at least in people’s perception of it, is…that there seems to be growing inequality of starting place.

Afro Tech: Afrofuturism, Telling Tales of Speculative Futures

presented by Inke Arns

The exhibition Afro-Tech and the Future of Re-Invention puts Afrofuturism in dialogue with alternative technological solutions and imaginations.

The Breakdown: Claire Wardle on Journalism and Disinformation

presented by Claire Wardle, Oumou Ly

I think those of us who study and think about mis- and disinformation, it’s very tempting to study what’s in front of us. And so there’s a disproportionate focus on Twitter, because it’s the easiest to study because there’s an open API—although, caveats—and Facebook. That’s a lot of the places that we study. And similarly, that’s a lot of the places that journalists look for content and sources and stories. And so we end up kind of really just thinking about that as the “problem,” when actually we need to think about the full ecosystem.

Interview with Opal Tometi (#BlackLivesMatter)

presented by Opal Tometi

There’s a lot going on in the United States, right. So there’s a legacy of structural racism that’s been impacting Black communities in the United States ever since we were kidnapped from Africa and brought to the United States. And so what we’re seeing today is actually a continuation of the racist policies and practices of the United States. We’re seeing state-sanctioned violence with impunity on black people.

How To Lose A Country: The New Political Ice Age

presented by Ece Temelkuran

When did we decide that we no longer need to watch news? We no longer have to watch these disturbing images? That’s why I’m writing a book. I’m thinking about these issues.

The Breakdown: evelyn douek on Doctored Media, Platform Response and Responsibility

presented by evelyn douek, Oumou Ly

The question also does come up, you know, is there anything really new here, with these new technologies? Disinformation is as old as information. Manipulated media is as old as media. Is there something particularly harmful about this new information environment and these new technologies, these hyperrealistic false depictions, that we need to be especially worried about?

The Breakdown: Renée DiResta on Misinformation and COVID-19

presented by Oumou Ly, Renée DiResta

It’s been really interesting to see the entire world pay attention to one topic. This is something somewhat unprecedented. We have had outbreaks in the era of social media misinformation before. Zika in 2015, Ebola 2018, right. So there have been a range of moments in which diseases have captivated public attention. But usually they tend to stay at least somewhat geographically confined in terms of attention.