Archive (Page 2 of 3)

How to Overthrow a Government

I don’t want to live in a world where ISIS is scari­er than hack­ers, espe­cial­ly in 2016. We pre­vi­ous­ly held the title in 2013, 14, and 15. And to be hon­est I was a lit­tle bit dis­ap­point­ed when I saw this result. So I thought I’m in my 40s now, there’s a lot of young hack­ers in the audi­ence, and I’m not going to pass the baton to you guys unless we have that num­ber one spot back in our pile.

Building Your Own Personal Truth

I think we are grop­ing towards this idea of truth. And even the word truth can be defined in mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent ways. So we are by its very nature deal­ing with a very slip­pery topic.

Is Digital Culture Responsible for Post-Truth Politics?

I’m going to argue today that even while we know post-truth pol­i­tics is hav­ing a ter­ri­ble effect on our polit­i­cal cul­ture and our role as cit­i­zens, it’s curi­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to com­bat it because of a set of beliefs about what pol­i­tics is, and about the Internet and the way it enables ordi­nary peo­ple to have a voice. And these beliefs inter­sect with a pre­vail­ing anti-intellectual anti-elitism which asso­ciates knowl­edge, dis­cern­ment, and truth with snob­bery and power.

Steven Pinker on Genetically Re-engineering Human Nature

There are many changes to our insti­tu­tions and our norms and our ideas that can reduce or elim­i­nate the risks of nuclear war with­out what I con­sid­er a rather quixot­ic attempt to change the course of human evolution.

Sean Wilentz on Donald Trump and the Crisis in American Democracy

I don’t think we’ve had any­body quite like Donald Trump before, in terms of the pol­i­tics of celebri­ty, which is what I think he’s real­ly about. It’s not sim­ply that he’s rich. We’ve had rich peo­ple in pol­i­tics before. He’s not sim­ply a busi­ness­man. We’ve had busi­ness­men in pol­i­tics before.

Three Advices for Clinton

I think the inter­est­ing and most dif­fi­cult chal­lenge for Mrs. Clinton if she becomes President is how to bring America together.

Roger Berkowitz on Refiguring American Government

The great dan­ger and fear that I have is that in the last fifty to sev­en­ty years, pow­er has increas­ing­ly con­cen­trat­ed not only in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment but in the presidency.

President Trump: The End of American Democracy?

One thing I can say is that I don’t think we know very much about Donald Trump, which is one of the things that’s scary about him but also one of the things that’s excit­ing about him.

Robert Reich’s Advice for the Next President

The next President is prob­a­bly going to have to deal with some very dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times. The hous­ing mar­ket is start­ing to look like a bub­ble. There’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty of that bub­ble burst­ing. We’ve been there before.

Peter W. Singer’s Advice for the Next President

If I had to sug­gest one job for the next President to do for a day, it would be to take on the role of a mil­i­tary spouse whose wife has deployed abroad.