servitude and that is what this boils down to when you remove the window dressing of identity politics this is about the indentured servitude and people are too involved in all of these politics to realize ultimately what path they are being led down with this argument and that is the scary thing about it. the fact you had a reporter that went to this small town and saw to someone else to prove a narrative that she was building a, that is why people in flyover nation have had it. .. ÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ is relevant

for this election year. we will get started with sanford. please turn off your cell phones. afterwards we will have time for q and a and have an opportunity to go to the book signing tend where you can meet tim wu and pick up a copy of his new book "the attention merchants," which is an outstanding and really quick read with a lot of amazing stories about the battle for

oman. i enjoyed reading it. when you purchase the book you support an outstanding offer, you support the texas book festival and public libraries across texas. join me in welcoming tim wu. [applause] >> glad to have you here, thanks for being here. let's start broadly as we focus our attention on "the attention merchants". layout for us your overall thesis and what you want us to take away. >> i will do that but not before saying i love -- my brother lived here when we were younger. richard gary out who is a native and i just love it. every time i arrive the first 20 minutes i walk around and i'm reminded of that movie slacker. always someone looking around.

i relax, i like it here, talking about the book. so the thesis of the book for the reader is your attention, your time and attention are valuable. about 150 years ago, a kind of business discovered that attention is valuable and began to harvest it, started very small, this business model called the "the attention merchants" business model where you get a crowd together to assemble advertisers, you have a captive audience but that was confined to the tabloid press in new york, eventually came to devour much of our lives. i am speaking to this feeling, maybe you had it, where you sit down at your computer and have an idea you want to write email

and three hours have gone by, you click on one thing, click on another and get lost in these vortexes. i am writing this book to suggest we are living in a casino, where there is constant for to try to pull you into things that afterwards, why did i spend that time, what was i doing? what did i click on? to understand the environment, i am a person who thinks the way we live today is driven by business models and history. this is a history of the business model that led him the first tabloid newspapers through radio, through television, through the early days of the internet to our present time where i think we are in this unusual state of living lives always on demand, being sold to 1000 times a day, sometimes

quite distracted. i wrote the book out of concern for our culture and how we live and a concern for what kind of civilization we are going to live in and ask if there will be spaces and times that are walled off from commerce or screens. that is going a little far but that is what the book is. >> host: more from tim wu after this brief message from our sponsor. this is c-span. it is free. it is fine. not really free though. one of the compelling things about the way you present your case is it is a narrative historical arc that moves quickly from story to story to story, each one, the next one more compelling than the last one but it starts somewhere and you talk about advertising was invented somewhere. can you talk to us about the

origin, the original piece of it? >> where did it come from? researching this book, i set around saying where did advertising come from? was there a time we were not advertised to? there was. i went in search of the source of the nile and found it in new york in the 1830s with the

audience. the business model of facebook, google, twitter, most of the

media, the idea is even though you think you are the consumer, the reader, you are the product. you use facebook, don't want to attack facebook too much. i like seeing my friends kids. it is important to understand you are not a customer of facebook, they sell you access to advertising. that business model was invented in 1830-something. it has moved in unusual directions very quickly and shows you the talent of the business model with all of us gathering attention. they face strong competition from a strong there is a strange man named gordon john bennett who ran the tribune and he had crazier stories, the gerri springer of his time. >> sensationalism.

>> guest: the early days of competition, completely different. think of the competition to gain a crowd versus selling a copy of the best product, when you are trying to gather a crowd you need something a land and outrageous so the tribune gained huge audiences with a first-hand account of a prostitute murdered with an ax and set on fire and the editor himself witnessed the scene and described her as the most beautiful thing he had seen, the venus the milo, covered her head, they never read anything like this, they loved it so i will finish the story here, we are in trouble so they ran a series of stories where they had an exclusive report from the owner of the world at large as telephone about what they had seen on the

moon. it was amazing. >> host: was it a logo? >> guest: not a logo. they discovered bats, human bats on the moon prone to fornication. it shows you, they never retracted the story. no one was able to say the story was wrong. no one knew it wasn't true. that is where the business model started. even in the early days, it can lead you in strange directions all-consuming ÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ competition for attention. >> host: from the earliest time of "the attention merchants" through today there are several revolutions along the way. talk about those revolutions and why those matter and what we have seen at each point. >> guest: one thing interesting about the advertising industry is every so often people get fed

up, had enough and start to revolt. that can happen a lot of different ways. around the turn-of-the-century in paris people got fed up with posters, the intrusive advertising, every square surface was covered in posters. they formed a group which banned posters over most of paris, most of paris was new to posters compared to other cities. during the depression, a powerful revolt against advertising, the idea that it was fooling people, led in part to the depression. consumer reports which many of you may know about was founded in 1929 with the idea they were going to tell the truth that advertisers were liars and scoundrels who were misleading the american people. a big revolution in the

depression. advertising almost died in the depression except by television. one last story i will tell is interesting, the 50s saw one of the first revolt against advertising in commercials that was technologically safe. a fellow named ÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ commodore mcdonald who ran venus, a company in the 1920s, strange guy. called himself a commodore, he was in the naval reserve or something. an enormous vote in chicago parties. sometimes you get weird people. tv and radio were ruined by commercials, these incredible technologies and scientific inventions, why are we allowing them to be polluted with commercials for aspirin and cigarettes.

what is going on? can't we do better? charge engineers to invented technology to destroy commercials on a block commercials in the 1950s. they came up with something shaped like a gun. you point at the screen and it zaps out the commercials, the first ad blocker. today we call it the remote control. it was the invention of the remote control. the remote control's original idea was to shoot out commercials. >> host: how did that work out? >> guest: a mixed story. on the one hand you were now -- turn off ch sports i÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ the volume. i think he overestimated our ability to control our attention. one of the book's themes, it is hard to control your attention. how often you have the idea to do one thing with email? you get torn away from it but it has gotten harder to get work

done nowadays than it was even though computers are powerful, magnificent they are a distraction. very strange, we allowed our computers which are meant to be tools to get things done. a good cohost. it is an important point. think about the chainsaw. texas chainsaw massacre, local reference. >> host: it wasn't a real chainsaw massacre. >> guest: the chainsaw is a tool that does what you want. it doesn't also advertise to you or pull you away on the job. it is important to focus when using a chainsaw. some of you in the crowd may be writers or authors of some kinds. it is hard to write if you are

constantly getting distracted. i am inspired by the story of jack kerouac who has some of you know wrote on the road in six weeks using a single piece of paper, single scroll. some of you may know the story. what would that be like today? what is on twitter for a while? like you did, the point is the remote control did lead to a television watching, channel surfing which leads us into some trange places where we lose÷÷÷÷ control, it had mixed results. >> host: if you start with, the book starts with the story of the 6 penny paper, with no advertising and the one sent paper with a lot of advertising

and if you fast-forward to 2010 with netflix which in essence says for your subscription price we won't have any ads you can binge watch 26 hours of television and that is the 6 penny paper. you can talk about that? >> guest: i will be pleased to. the web is a beautiful invention and the internet also, to be this way for anyone to read anything but honestly we kind of blue it. i was one of the people who was n early backer of the web but÷÷ everything became, everything took to the advertising model as if there was no other and as a result, one exception is wikipedia. as a result the web has gotten hot in this circle i talked about with nearly penny papers

where the basic game on the web is you have to be more crazy, lurid, shocking. >> host: you saw the first buzz feed. >> guest: invented to get people to click, no greater goal, no deeper goals. part of this has to do with the fact that click became everything. in the 1950s television in the early 50s was an idealistic miracle through science and we will have great shows, bringing down the mccarthy era, started the way but bit by bit÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ intense competition led further from quality content into game shows, westerns, fine shows but nothing challenging, light entertainment with interruptions of advertising, powerfully designed to keep people there and not leaving the television set with no other goals. the web suffered the same problem because everything

became about clicks. television got ruined by ratings, the web got ruined by everything being about clicks. talk to the engineers, can't believe i spent we 10 years of my life trying to fool people to click on something moving around the screen. this is a serious problem in our time. the medium, the main medium of our culture are who we are so leads to netflix, netflix because it has been so successful because so many of the media of our time i distracted, short and crazy and we will offer something that is ad free, you sit there for an hour and hopefully come out of it feeling satisfied. very different feeling. they are appealing to a different part of our consciousness which in theory books will become more popular

because right now when you read a book, i assume you are a book reader, in some small ways you are staging a revolt when you read a book against -- >> host: we are revolutionaries. [applause] >> guest: somewhere, a lot of companies, people reading books are not watching any ads. they are not getting branded. get n't have a chance to÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ information out of them. we are not picking up anything about their habits. >> host: a are learning something. >> guest: all these hours going by of people reading books, the intentional industrial complex is missing out and you are staging a revolt. there you go. netflix -- i have -- i am sort of an optimist.

i believe at some point we and other people revolt when things go too far. there is a novelty factor that lead us not to but eventually this is too much. -- radio will come back, podcasts in particular, excellent podcasts, npr, public radio in the 60s with a reaction to everything being commercialized so i think it is possible and this is something i believe, things do get bad but we get better as part of what i wrote this book is a call 5 to save and fix our main media because they've gone too far. not to say everything, spend all your time watching documentaries or something but we can to better. >> host: how would you advise the individual, what are the things we could be doing to

reclaim our own attention span and reclaim our brains? if you were to write the prescription, you read through this, now what? >> guest: i call it the human project.ion ÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ sometimes they will tear up a parking lot and underneath is dirt and things start to grow. that us. we are overharvested. the thing about this industry it is a natural resource industry. instead of drilling for oil it is access to your mind. we are the resource, when we get over harvesting. in our times we need to do more for your time and attention, in the same way you are in a casino you can't go with the flow because if you go with the flow you are bankrupt and wondering

what happened. we live in an environment designed to attract the time and attention under the guise of being free and if you go with the flow you will have huge spend on our life÷÷ nothing. why i wrote this book is i was influenced by the writing of william james's 19th century and he made the point, an important one, when you get to the end of your days, what you paid attention to will be your life. you have this resource, 168 hours a week and how you spend it, that is it, i don't begrudge anyone who likes to watch comedy. i watch some ridiculous things myself but the idea that you choose is part of it. once upon a time, tradition,

religion, technological limits impose a lot of limitations so what else are you going to do? have to program your÷÷÷÷÷÷ own life to retain your sanity. you have to declare, draw your own lines and draw them quickly thick. there are days i don't touch the computer because -- away from the computer a few days it does feel better. >> host: it takes a while for you to respond to my email. i try to maximize human contact with my secret weapon is i have two daughters and they are intentional feedback loop. you get on your phone, they

won't stand for that. i notice -- i wall off the evening's, they have to be walled off. they can't be maybe i will try to do this. one of the things i did that was interesting is i spent a couple weeks keeping track of how i spent every hour. this was pretty interesting, maybe you could choose what to do and we live lives, people want to write or read, you have to make sure you do that. >> host: it is about ntentionality and not letting÷÷ this wash over you. >> host: not trusting your self-control.

people have a gathering problem does go into casino saying i will be fine and then walk away because it doesn't happen and i am not going to use my computer, just not going to. it is extremely hard and they are smarter than you or stronger. people who design things design the main interfaces are not jumping around, they know what works. >> host: i want to leave some time for questions. if you have questions for tim up to the mic.÷÷÷ as we give people a chance to formulate questions if you were to write an epilogue to this and take on one more chapter to explain trump, trump wtf, how does that factor into the attention of "the attention merchants"? explained that phenomenon using

your framework. >> host: he belongs in the book more. he is a master of everything i described, the combination of spectacle over substance, over using the classic technique of the attention merchant. even in the 30s, you would create a sensation. create false scandals which it attention ter -- the÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ merchants have always understood it doesn't matter if you look good or bad, as long as people keep watching. that was the key to winning the primaries. the war is getting your face out there as much as possible. if i do that i win nt did win and is competing closely in this

election using every technique. there is something that happens when you have attention being too dominant, an important element in your culture. the battles become battles for attention. i worked on a lot of -- i am a law professor and i worked at the us supreme court. is not perfectrt÷÷÷÷ but they think about things on their merits, what is right and what is wrong with we are at a danger of more elections being decided by who is more famous and i don't think that was the plan for democracy. i'm worried the ratings were so good for this election. it is like a show. that was a great season one, what is season 2? who can we find to run for the republican party next time or maybe the republican party -- the democrat party, even wilder?

i am worried season 2 people are thinking how do we go that was incredible, cnn, profits through the roof, how do we do season 2? that is what i'm concerned about. >> host: 17 candidate living together, watch what happens. >> guest: the story of reality tv. >> host: let's have questions from you all.÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ so many topics to discuss with tim wu. do we have anybody? [inaudible question] >> not really the focus of this book, access to information is not the main focus but i will say that one of the things that happens where attention is so essential to the economy and

everything you do is the prior step of getting attention is important to get heard at all. isorked in journalism, there÷÷÷ no cause today that can get started without enlisting a celebrity. doesn't matter about orphans in africa. so in so, madonna, now we have a story. in terms of who gets access to the public mind, incredible how attached that has become to celebrity. just like a fact which i ran for office, we did great proposals, new york has a lot of corruption but we brought mark buffalo was the day -- now we got the press. perry for the win.÷÷÷ >> attention is finite. what does that portends for late

stage capitalism? >> guest: a great question. value depends on scarcity. we live in a society where many things that were once scarce have become fairly abundant, food, clothing, shelter. .. becomes invaluable so there is a case i don't know if we are there yet but there is a case that they see attention as the sort of currency of the future, or maybe even the present. from that point of thinking about it, you can think of your attention as being spent and maybe that's why so many businesses and politicians are desperate to even get a tiny second of your time because that

is what is scarce and what is left. i will say one more thing about the capitalism and talk about something in the 60s, how are we doing on time? >> we have everyone's attention. who doesn't like talking about the 60s. it's important evolution and the nature of capitalism documented in the book. so there's these revolts against advertising periodically every couple of years. there was a big revolt against. one of the things i did was to read carefully the ideas. when you get back to the heart of the culture we turn away from the capitalism and turn our attention to each other and

peace and love. in some ways he thought he had a great technology for controlling your attention or moving it away from things. it was lsd, the drug. his idea was it would be a good lot longer. about the transformation of capitalism but i'm trying to talk about, somewhere in the

60s, advertisers had this great idea that said they want something different, they want to feel free. we can advertise and make ourselves part of that idea. it is like any other and therefore one that can be catered to. so the greatest ads in the 1970s, the ones that i know some of you know the show madman but it is a coca-cola commercial i would like to give the world a coke, perfect harmony. it's a beautiful ad, sort of wonderful looking different niche idifferencenation committg together in peace. the camera work is incredible.

they have a great feeling of uplifted us. it represents the counterculture in the best of the 60s with a coke together and they masterfully put tha together seamlessly so you don't even notice. it's like the special charlie brown christmas and ultimately they recognize the real importance of christmas and so on, but it was also an amazing branding opportunity that sponsored in the 60s and at that moment they were likely the second, this isn't going to hurt us. so i think capitalism is an amazing kind of chameleon or system in the sense that it can adapt to any desire. it's kind of feeds on the desire

itself to be anti-capitalists come it doesn't matter as long as there is a desire it can be said. that isn't quite an answer to your question but i do believe that it tells how many things. and a lot is formed by the 60s and that was t the move that was so important. >> the polarization of politics and this is amplified by facebook and twitter and the things that draws your attention to the conservative bubble. i just wonder is there a way to break through that? >> that is an interesting question. i have some thoughts about that.

on the one hand, i agree with the questioner premise where people live so much in their world you can't have any sense of dialogue at all. on the other hand, in the alternative, there are some dangers in the alternative as well which is everybody watching the same thing all the time. i'm kind of conflict that about this. there should be room for subcultures and people that live their whole life very deeply nonconformist. so the 50s were a period where people probably saw things more or less the same way.

and there's only three stations monday night, 70 million people would watch i love lucy. can you imagine that. >> ed sullivan had liked ed 2 million people. >> i think it was over 100% all at once and you never see this. imagine the super bowl every night. what's good about that is the glue that holds us together but that doesn't necessarilit doesna lot of room for the trade-off. i don't have a good answer to it because i think that america should be a place where people feel free to be themselves.÷÷ that's really important on the

other hand if we are so divided we can't even talk to each other i believe in mutual respect among the subcultures that's like my idea. it's more religiously-based but you have different groups came to america and had their own ways but they live in a mutual respect and then i think under the first amendment that's what we need. we need to have room for people to be themselves and also a plaintiff mutual respect. >> we need more of that. yes sir. >> [inaudible] against the power of the internet. i heard a radio interview he switched the right thing and noted that they couldn't resist checking the e-mails etc. and learned when he bought a new

computer to physically disable it with a screwdriver or something. >> i have a stripped down kind of computer and it has a blank screen. it's just you and your work. it looks like a computer from the '90s were the 80s or something. if you want to write these massive books, you got to push your self. i am not perfect, but i needed. >> it is a powerful thing. everyone has their place in. it is important to change your environment. i think we sort of overestimate

our willpower to. to try to have i'm so great and strong i can write poetry and i am an alcoholic i will go to the bar and be fine. it doesn't work. it's an interesting point and you talk about sacred spaces where you draw the line and that ties into this idea that you open with a story about an elementary public school literally selling space on its walls to the captive audience. so are we losing our sacred spaces, you have to create your space to write. >> we once had a stronger stand. maybe some spaces were sacred and others were commercial people were yelling at you come

home. but we sort of switched to the norm where it's like why aren't we advertising to them. it goes back to the idea that they are reading a book and this is time and space wasted. i might be old-fashioned or silly but i think that we need to redefine this sacred spaces in life. i don't know what it is but you need i think to if you don't want to say the word secret you could just be like private spaces or imported spaces. we still need a plac places we e ourselves and we are losing that very quickly. all for the model that doesn't

even make that much money. the thing about these advertisements in schools, i think the advertising in school movement is terrible. the idea that you just have these kids that are susceptible to advertising, frosted lucky charms are magically capricious. kids are very susceptible. it seems to me very wrong. >> we have time for one last question. >> i wonder if you have anything to say about twitter. >> good point. it shows the big mistake that we made, and i'm talking about assuming every single business on the web is a profitable

platform that increases its revenue over and over again. because it is fun and useful and certainly popular among certain classes of politicians. but it's fine. >> i am tweeting that. [laughter] >> the e-mail doesn't constantly increase revenue so we need to think about why certain parts of our lives in the english language doesn't need to make money to access. if it is in a bad situation and people exchange information or it takes on a profit model that gets worse and worse and worse.

it's unfortunate that many haven't gotten better for us but have become better advertising vehicles. they could make a billion dollars a year and they do fine. they are sustainable. why is it that they should be anything else. sorry about that brand. >> you can purchase the book today and ten will b tim will be tent where you can purchase that i hope you will and support the texas book festival. thank you for joining us at the 21st annual. thank you, tim wu for being here. we really enjoyed it. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] live coverage of the texas book festival. starting shortly, orange is the new black actress diane guerrero

about her family's emigration experience and starts in just a few minutes. while we wait for the texas book festival to resume, we want to show you a little bit from an interview we did at the university of texas on a recent visit to austin. >> those that are attempting to take advantage of the programs that were created for the benefit of the middle-class and programs that infect native the middle class in america, social security, medicare, the housing finance programs and to essentially favorite part of the revenue stream from those programs to private benefit. >> so who would be the predators? -- creditors?

>> one could talk about the banks that took advantage and mortgage originatorin themortgak advantage of the political supervision of the sector the last 15 years to write massive amounts of fraudulent mortgages and peddled them to the world investment community. that was a predatory acts that contributed to the financial crisis in the case of the retirement programs one could talk about the way medicare was initiated and administered to benefit the pharmaceutical companies far more than it should have. these are the kind of things i am referring to. >> the subtitle is how conservatives abandoned the free market and why liberals should, too. let's start with the first half, how do conservatives and why do they abandon the first? >> my public career started in

the 70s and the early 1980s at the time of the ronald reagan administration iowa's democratic staff director for the joint economic committee and at that time, conservatives were true believers. they had a strong body of ideas they defended a very aggressively and imaginatively and it was a lot of fun to engage in that debate and we made a lot of friends from the period. bruce bartlett was my counterpart on the committee and has been a good friend for 30 years. the most recent republican administration i don't think there were any such big ideas. this was an administration that ran the country for the benefit of basically its own political constituencies and it did so in

a fairly unabashedly. you couldn't engage in the same kind of arguments because there was essentially nobody on the other side who was upholding them. >> so milton friedman even though you may disagree with him politically. >> someone i debated in fact in 1990 when he reissued his television program free to choose i considered to be a friend and someone who you have to respect becaushadto respect s advancing his ideas. in that format of the debate i admire. >> so those are the type of ideas in your view which the conservatives have abandoned, correct? >> they abandoned friedman very early. his ideas were unworkable.

they never advanced the monetary policy. >> and why liberals should, too. what does that mean? >> the rhetoric of the free market is something liberals have learned to give lipservice to as a price to the discussion in the united states and that little blurb would apply particularly to this administration, the obama administration. back in the campaign if you look at the candidate's website on economic policy there was a paragraph that was to the glory of the free market and my view is this is something that inhibits liberals and progressives from having a clear idea of what needs to be done and it simply ties their hands behind their back and allows