Is There a Global Public Square?

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There's a bigger consumer demand for different ways for us to publicly interact on line that won't reproduce some of these problems. i think what we need to build will tend to be smaller and more discreet, because it's really its possible to hold norms over something as big and diffuse as the entire world's space. Andi: Are there even designd constraints for healthy digital global public square, or do we really need to do it more locally? You know again, if you sort of flip back and forth between this work in physical life,. how does it work in digital life? They're like librarians all out checking out books; they're very delicate balancing acts.

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.