Priston harris: These problems are solvable. And we know that because they have been solved many times before. The new public festival is a first stepd one of many steps towards all of us imagining not just the dilemma, but the social solutions. Our minds have been so engineered to expect so little from the way that we engage on line, that we've forgotten just how rich the alternative space is. I'm priston harris, and this is your undivided attention.
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.