Is There a Governance Question?

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I just think we'll look back at this era and, like, feel some sadness and amusement that we tried this model. What is a library if you optimize it to be a venture or institution, like its amazon? But it's not a library any more. And then there's all i heard you also say there's a governance question. So what is, how do you design that space?What are the right affordances? How big sould the square be? Should there be soap boxes in certain imes? There's a fourth dimensional thing here too, which is, maybe on saturdays or sundays we allow for soa box talks - but not every day.

You’ve heard us talk before on this podcast about the pitfalls of trying to moderate a “global public square.” Our guest today, Eli Pariser, co-director of Civic Signals, co-founder of Avaaz, and author of "The Filter Bubble," has been thinking for years about how to create more functional online spaces and is bringing people together to solve that problem. He believes the answer lies in creating spaces and groups intentionally, with the same kinds of skilled support and infrastructure that we would enlist in the physical world. It’s not enough to expect the big revenue-oriented tech companies to transform their tools into something less harmful; Eli is encouraging us to proactively gather in our own spaces, optimized for togetherness and cooperation.