Modest Conversations - The Information 00 - Transparency - Good or Bad with Will Quist, Managing Partner Slow Ventures
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Mar 5, 2017 
Will Quist, managing partner at Slow Ventures and investor, joins to debate transparency. They question whether more openness helps or hinders outcomes. Historical secret diplomacy, platform identity hiding system behavior, targeted political messaging, and trade-offs between transparency, efficiency, and governance are explored in lively back-and-forths.
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Transparency Can Block Effective Dealmaking
- Increased transparency can prevent messy, effective diplomacy and dealmaking that produced large societal gains.
- Will Quist and Sam Lessin argue some historical progress required private, opaque interactions to get things done.
Identity Can Reduce Public Transparency
- Rich identity data and microtargeting can reduce overall transparency of outcomes by tailoring different experiences to different people.
- Sam warns platforms' identity richness can make what's happening less visible, not more.
Six Men Who Changed The World Example
- Will recounts The Six Men Who Changed the World to show leaders used private, messy networks to coordinate major national projects.
- He says reading their letters reveals actions that likely wouldn't occur under today's transparency norms.