more or if the wealth who are not wealthy and i lot of that. i love that. people make that commitment and i love that joan made that commitment, too but not with any sort of proclamation, she just happened to be what happened. i hope that answers your question. it's a fascinating glimpse into american philanthropy for sure, that i hope celebrates her for a long time to come.ur >> host: this is five years of your life to research this. was this a labor of love sunny got a ph.d on ray and openand never, as my partner pointed out it, never done anything for as long is a have this book, which is telling about me. i'm sure. >> we happen you have enjoyed lisa napoli, the awe their of "ray and joan." i feel like we know them so much better after this conversation

today and it has been wonderful. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> appreciate earning become heath. [applause] ...

>> the first targeted advertisements which are just designed to make women into consumers and have them buy. so whether or not, you know, how that plays with suffrage is hard to say. a lot of the women who were advertisers were former sufficient rah jets. lady persuaders, they called themselves. and in particular, you know, some of the departments, there were some advertising departments that were just staffed with women only, mainly former suffragists, and they emphasized the themes of individual self-actualization through purchasing decision. so, for example, you know, this cleaning solution will liberate you from, it will liberate you from drudgery. [laughter] you know, the idea that all these -- i'm trying to remember some of the other copy. >> host: you give an example, a

soap, a soap that will make you desirable to your husband. >> guest: yeah, well, that was a bit less female. no, i'm talking about some of the advertisements where like, oh, you know, freedom from the enslavement of having to cook for your husband every day. here's this instant food, you know? [laughter] you see what i mean? so these are the women's liberation-style advertising. there's also a lot of advertising directed at women which you wouldn't exactly call feminist in its style, a lot of shame advertising. i was looking yesterday at the old listerine advertisements which had the headline often a bridesmaid, never a bride. the idea was that bad breath would make no one want to marry you, and you don't know it, and you can't figure out why you keep being passed over by men. ultimately, it's because you have halitosis which made you undesirable and so, therefore, the solution was listerine which

had been a battlefield disinfectant. you know, the brown stuff? >> host: right, yeah. >> guest: so there was this whole movement. and one of the most extreme, and i can talk about it if you're interested, is the cigarette, marketing the cigarette to women as part of women's liberation. >> host: yeah, that's a really interesting thread that you have there in the book, the idea that women couldn't smoke in public. and so there was a campaign embarked upon to more than double the market for cigarettes. by making it socially acceptable. how did that come about? >> guest: for women to smoke in public. private was okay. you know, if women were smoking in a restaurant, for example, she'd be asked to put out her cigarette. and so lucky strike in particular had the idea that if they could just get women to smoke whenever they wanted, that they could increase their market share dramatically.

and this was the age when, as i said, targeting women was all the rage. first targeted marketing. and so they did various things to try to break the taboo. one of the more well known, famous efforts is they staged a fake protest. lucky strike staged a -- it wasn't lucky strike secretly staged a protest during the easter parade -- >> host: it was a real protest, yeah. >> guest: a real protest, but it was put on by lucky strike. well, they paid people to protest, where women marched in the parade with cigarettes which they called torches of freedom. and they described when reporters asked, you know, why are you doing this, they said, well, we're expressioning our freedom -- expressing our freedom to smoke outside which we see as a form of liberation. this was a kind of forerunner of astroyou are the the of which -- astroturf which we talk about. here in washington you have a fake protest movement for some cause.

this was one of the first. >> host: so television and the internet dramatically raised the stakes in this attention economy. >> guest: yeah. >> host: looking at today, looking at even this proposed acquisition of time warner by a, the and, the -- at&t, how does that fit boo your thesis, into the idea that capturing attention and monetizing it, turning it into dollars is a prevailing business of the time? >> guest: yeah. so, you know, there's -- at&t is, obviously, an incredibly wealthy company. it has more revenue than many other companies combined. but it too has come to think that maybe the real resource here that matters is your hold on human attention.

that is, just raw time, raw time and raw hours spent with certain content. so that's what they've seen as the only route forward for them to make more money. and i think that, you know, the fact they want to pay $85 billion for time warner's property gives us the sense of just how important this is. i think it is odd just how far this model has gone. in a historic perspective. we started this session talking about the penny press, tiny, tiny sector of the economy. nobody really cared about it necessarily. so, and then you have a spread where it spreads from this business model, the attention merchant business model spreads, you know, first to radio, then to television, and now we're watching, you know, every night. and then in the last 15 years comes dramatically to the internet. and so now it's sort of every activity -- not every, but so many of our activities, you

know, going to see what your friends are up to on facebook, even e-mailing google maps, you know, all these things we do from day-to-day are supported by an ad model. it's really kind of weird. you've got to be kidding, even 40 years ago, this is really going on? so the reason i wrote this book is how much can this really support, can we drive everything in the economy on this advertising model? but there's no question in my mind particularly when everything else in our world, in our economy becomes more abundant. we have enough food, we have shelter, you know, we have clothing. so the old things aren't scarce anymore. the one thing that is scarce is time and attention. the one thing no one has enough of and the one thing you can't expand is time and anticipation. and so i think the kind of contest to control the 168 hours -- we each have 168 hours

a week -- is becoming more and more intense. >> host: so your previous book, "the master switch," is about this idea -- and forgive me where i get this wrong -- that previous modes of communication have eventually been dominated by one or two big players and kind of to the detriment, perhaps, of the society as a whole. and the internet could perhaps head down that similar path. >> guest: right. >> host: now, interesting that at&t, which was one of those dominant companies in a previous era, is now making moves to try to better position itself in the internet age. but i believe you wrote that book before the real rise of facebook. >> guest: yeah. >> host: what do you think are the chances that the internet will be dominated as your thesis in "master switch" warns is a possibility? >> guest: so when i wrote "master or switch," it was -- a

lot of it i wrote about ten years ago. and that at that point the internet was understood by everyone to be so incredibly competitive, there was no chance that one company could remain dominant for any the length of time. people said, oh, yeah, google's here, but they're going to be gone in a year or two. there's no way they're going to hold on. facebook had just gotten started. they're, like, flash in the pan, you know, there's no holding power for them. they're going to be gone. so my book, you know, i looked at history again and had suggested these patterns, long cycles. and, you know, i'll briefly describe it. you have something new invented, there's sort of a wild open period, a wild west era while everyone's trying on different business model, seeing what workses. very open speech, a lot of talk, and then consolidation into either an oligopoly or a monopoly like at&t of players. you know, like the telephone industry once had a thousand different companies in it, now

it has four depending how you're counting, right? and for a long time, it was just one. so that cycle which everyone thought the internet was immune to has clearly, i think, come to the internet. when you look at it now, it is a handful of big companies; google, facebook, apple -- when they're being entered as a company -- microsoft and then amazon, and then the list starts to sort of trail off. and we were talking about the companies that depend on the time and attention. it really is google and facebook are the big players. so that consolidation, which everyone thought would never happen, has happened. and, you know, it obviously has implications for our future. and -- >> host: is that necessarily bad? >> guest: i don't think it's necessarily bad, i just think we need to be aware of it and not pretend. one thing we shouldn't pretend is like, oh, you know, this will

all be solved by competition, we don't have to worry, the internet is so competitive. someone new will come along. at&t lasted in monopoly form for 70 years. i think, what i believe from "master switch with," the previous book, is that monopolies themselves or powerful companies themselves go through a life, series of life stages. they often right when they achieve their monopoly or their power are in kind of a golden era. they have idealistic founders, they have very good products. mainly, they got there for a reason usually. google became what it is not because it had good advertising. it didn't even have advertising initially. 9 got there -- it got there because it had a great project. facebook, it's a little harder to explain exactly how they got there, but people liked it. and it was a hit on college -- [laughter] >> host: i wanted to ask you about this because your book, it sounds a very cynical note on

facebook. >> guest: right. >> host: putting out the idea that they're really not giving the world anything but its own relationship sort of reprocessed and re-- >> guest: yeah. it's a little bit of a mystery to me. because i get the -- you know, the basic quid pro quo we've always had looks like this: you know, you watch i love lucy, you watch the ads, you get -- you know, you trade something for something. you get the ads, but you have to watch finish you have to watch the ads, but you get good content. i like football, and i sit through it, oh, god, how many ads can they put in the fourth quarter? but i understand because they've got to pay salaries. there you go. facebook, what are you getting exactly? you know, you're getting stuff you like, pictures of your friends' kids. but, you know, those are your friends, they're not facebook, so it's this kind of weird thing where they sort of resell your own life back to yourself -- >> host: is it any different than the telephone? >> guest: well, the telephone, before there was a telephone,

you couldn't talk to someone 100 miles away. so there's that -- >> host: well, before there was facebook, you couldn't immediately share pictures with people from high school. >> guest: there was this thing called e-mail, i guess. so, you know, there was -- okay, i admit, they organized people a little bit. >> host: yeah, how are you going to find them, you know? >> guest: all right. how to you find them. [laughter] it doesn't fully compute to me, like, the service. like the telephone, maybe this is just -- and i don't, i mean, i like seeing my friends' kids, i just sometimes think the deal is a little weird with. i mean, we also gave up all of our personal information. it was like i remember when i signed up for facebook, oh, yeah, who are your favorite bands? okay, i'll tell you. i think we were kind of more naive back then and thought, oh, i'll tell them more, and everything will be better, and i didn't quite have the idea that i was just sort of pulling out a giant marketing survey at the time. look, i was naive as everyone else. but, you know, to get back to

"the master switch" a little bit, i think we've had a big consolidation. as i've said, you go through life cycles. the real danger, i think, is if the companies are powerful enough that they can shut off their competitors and, therefore, stagnate the economy. so, you know, that sounds absurd for google or facebook, but, you know, at&t was this incredibly dynamic young company in the '20s, and by the '50s, it had shut down all its competitor, shut down innovation. so if you let -- this is master switch territory, not "attention merchant." but if you let a giant company have too much control over a part of the economy, it tends to be bad for this country overall, and i'm a very strong believer in stopping that. >> host: and that, to me, was sort of the unifying idea, is that if you let big companies have too much control, too much influence without the people being aware of exactly what they're doing and why it could

be bad for society, that to me -- correct me if i'm wrong here -- is a thread that's running through both these books -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- because it seems like increasingly where you go in "the attention merchants" is this idea that the googles, the facebooks of the world are capturing our attention in subtle ways at first but then pervasive ways that we're not necessarily thinking about. >> guest: ing right. >> host: we're not conscious of the bargain. >> guest: yeah. i am concerned, frankly, about a future where we live in a state of almost being constantly manipulated in subtle ways. it reminds me a little bit of, like, the casino again. i don't know if you've ever spent time in a casino, and it can be fun to gamble and stuff. but there are all these subtle earths to sort of make you lose control of yourself and stay there for hours and just do one bet. i don't know if i -- i'd like to be able -- i don't like my everyday life to be like that, you know? i don't think our homes should be set up like that where we're just kind of in subtle ways

always being a little bit manipulated. now, it's impossible not to be sort of. i mean, if you read a newspaper, you're a little bit manipulated. but i'm concerned these business models when we look guard to the future -- toward the future, is it the fact that we're going to create an environment where these devices and everything around us are kind of trying to move us in certain directions, maybe commercial, maybe sometimes political without us really knowing what's going on? and what does that mean about a country where we're meant to be free? that's what i'm concerned about. >> host: okay. so, tim, you've got our attention now. ideally, what do we do about it? >> guest: you know, i think it is really important to in some sense do your own attentional accounting. to figure out how you actually spend your time. and some degree, seize control of it and decide very

distinctly, like, this is how i want to spend my time. many people do this already, you know, they decide they're going to have dinner with their families or something and have that be a time where they -- or the weekend, you know, you spend your weekend with other people or with friends. i think being aware of how you are spending this incredible, valuable resource is kind of the first step. i also, you know, it's going to make me sound old fashions, but i think -- old-fashioned, but i think we often have to create these lines by ourself. in the older days, maybe religion forced, you know, would make people take a day off of work and have them go to church or do things like that or traditions, and now because of with the lack of -- because of the lack of power of organized religion and things like that, we have to kind of do this for ourselves and be like i'm going to decide what is going to be, in some sense, a sacred space or a space that's off limits and what's going to be the rest of

my life. i'm not saying people shouldn't watch tv or click around on your phone, whatever, that is part of your life. but to have that be all your life, i think, imposes serious risk. the last thing i'll say is we need to think about advertising and our revolt against advertising. i believe we are in something of a revolt against advertising. and be a little smart about it. we're in a situation where a lot of people are doing everything they can to get away from ads. i understand it. ads are annoying. on the other hand, that means advertisers even more desperate to gets a out. and so -- get at us. so we're in this terrible equilibrium where we're constantly fighting. and i don't know what the new deal is, but i think we need to somehow, you know, create as a society a better deal with advertisers. but at the same time, number two, also support content if you really believe that you don't want advertising, suck it up and

pay for more content. i think people who really, you know -- >> host: so -- >> guest: go ahead. >> host: netflix. >> guest: netflix is the most successful, kind of an easy example. but, you know, subscribe to newspapers you believe in, you know, all those annoying options, you know, if you like -- i just, basically, paying for stuff is really important. you know, even sports broadcasting, whatever it is. if you really want it to be more and more ad-free, you have to actually patronize the ad-free models. because we have this bad habit of -- >> host: now, do you, do you intentionally stop short of recommending any kind of legal or regulatory action here? because, i mean, the problem you present, you present on kind of a global scale, on a pervasive, multi-billion dollar corporate conspiracy. >> guest: right. >> host: suck the life out of us. you know, acting on an individual basis, spend a little

less time on your phone doesn't seem like the scale of solution to such a big problem. is there a reason why you stopped short of saying, boy, there need to be some either new lines in the sand or redefinition of power in this era where people's information, people's data, people's attention has become such a commodity? >> guest: it's a great question and a challenging question. i think it comes maybe from, from experience with government and really wondering if this problem which is subtle and very moment to moment is something that is easy to regulate in a way that is not dangerous or counterproductive. so that's the challenge in this area. i mean, writing this book i've also watched government be involved in this, watched government be involved in this world, and it is mainly in the form of propaganda. so i think it's a very

challenging thing especially for, say, a federal government to step in and say we're going to regulate how the marketing appeals to these companies' work. now, there's a couple things they can and should do. truth in advertising, you know, banning fraudulent advertisement which is supposed to be done already, that kind of thing. but to say we don't want you watching more than x hours of television is really hard in a free society. i do support more than, you know, these large scale solutions, local solutions, you know, bans on billboards, bans on flashing signs. but i am not, you know, i was a little different in the message with in this particular case i think the problem of our own consciousness is very challenging to solve through state, federal legislation. i'll just put it that way. even -- because it's such a micro, moment-to-moment kind of thing that i just can't imagine.

and when i think about congress getting at this. [laughter] it was like how is going to work. or even well-intentioned agencies. now, there's certain exceptions like banning ads for kids, for example, certain kinds of ads or trying to limit kids' programming makes a lot of sense. but more broadly, especially in a free society, it greats very tricky very quickly. -- it gets very tricky very quickly. >> host: now, it was okay though in the earlier era to ban certain kinds of false or misleading advertisements, i mean, i'm not sure whether you feel it was fine to have limits on advertising for things like cigarettes and alcohol in certain cases -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: these are rules that evolved over time. is there no need for any type of different thinking around the way information is collected? personal information is collected. >> guest: i'll take that. first of all, you're right that,

first of all, there was the -- you know, at some point in this country we realized you had to ban advertisements that are flat out lies. this is truth in advertising, you know? this pill, you take it, it will make you lose 30 pounds and, actually, it makes you sick. or there was a big period, this is a little off color, but there was a period where it was very popular to sell the implantation of goat gonads into men to make them more sexually virulent -- >> host: of course. [laughter] >> guest: yes. there's a lot of stuff. you want to make money appealing to men's sense of a fadingly by doe, is a very -- anyway, this is a little bit of an aside. >> host: i mean, in a way, i see lots of those commercials on tv now. >> guest: i know you do. >> host: the little blue pill works. >> guest: we definitely have not given up -- to add to that, we haven't begin up on magic potions as well. there's raspberry keytones,

you're supposed tooz these things. every day there's some new, wondrous thing. and i think that stuff, the line should be -- so where would i, you know, given carte blanche think there should be targeted. i, i think we, you know, in terms of regulatory areas, i think it is important to think about the ads that are just stealing from you with nothing in return. so i don't know if you've ever been -- i'm sure you've been in the back of a new york taxi cab, and all of a sudden they start blaring ads at you. you're a captive audience. how is this not, in a way, stealing from us? it's your mind, your time. sometimes in an airline. so i would be very situational, certain environments need to be more peaceful. and i actually, i guess maybe one reason in the book i held back a little bit is i didn't want to try and cram into one chapter at the end, like, here's all the solutions to all the problems and all the regulation, but because then people get

distracted. i wanted to say, okay, look, here is our problem. we have a problem. our attention is being taken from us. maybe we really need to think about this in a kind of way, as a kind of stealing almost before we get to what would work as solutions. because i didn't really think i had the master answer. it's very hard to do that in the last chapter of the book, and that's one of the reasons i held back on those ideas. >> host: oh, i can imagine. and one thing that i've wondered about though when it comes to the collection of information and the tracking of individuals across various -- >> guest: right. >> host: -- services is why isn't it possible for consumers to see thes do year on them -- doss year on them? -- dossier on them. if i'm retargeting ads on amazon back to me on facebook and is being used by other sites to track me across -- why don't i have access to a master map and be able to see that and then make the decision, well, do i

like this? and if i don't like it, can i shut certain doors and stop certain services from following me so easily? >> guest: right. i mean, actually you can stop them right now. the problem is that most people don't bother to use the features. there's these kind of do not track features built into most browsers. any viewer can do this and probably should. because there's no regulation in this area or very limited regulation that people are resorting to self-help,help, and there are browsers like the brave browsers which bans all ads and renegotiates what tracking is allowed. i think, you know, to get on this tracking we should never forget that, you know, this is our country, this is -- we are citizens sovereign. if we don't like something, we should be able to ban it. and, you know, what -- who really loves being tracked? who loves going to a web site and having all your information collected from you, sent over to, you know, mother ship somewhere to be processed? if we don't like it, we should

ban it. i'm not calling for it right now, but i'm saying we have the right as is citizens to say, you know, some of these practices are just too intrusive. we know that supposedly they're supposed to bring us better ads, but we don't think it's worth it. they know everything, this is a good example, i think this is in the u.k. this poor fellow had liver cancer and all of a sudden one day started hearing these ads for funeral home because they figured out you're going to die soon, obviously, probably an error. but nobody really loves these tracked ads. and i would never say that, you know, we, the citizens of this country or of a city or of a state, shouldn't have the right to say, you know, we just don't like this, stop it. >> host: so what do you think the odds are that we are, indeed, in one of those moments? you close the book with the anecdote about apple introducing -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- ad blocking in the latest version of the operating system with safari and the

uproar that that caused. or perhaps it was a version ago. is that the early sign of a revolt? >> guest: we could be in the beginning stages of a revolt that fundamentally changes the business model of media forever. you know, it's hard to say right now, but it is possible that, you know, 20 years from now we'll be like, oh, yeah, remember advertising? i guess it lasted for 120 years but, you know, it died off. people weren't interested. or people had all the information they needed. you know, one thing you have to realize is that a hundred years ago people didn't know what toothpaste was. people have gotten the idea, look, i know what budweiser is, i got it. i know what it tastes like. it could be that advertising becomes something that retreats to very limited kind of products, maybe new movies you need to hear about. but, you know, otherwise starts to fade away. it is possible that it just declines especially for some major media.

now, we're obviously not there yet, it's very early. but we but at the early stages f something in retrospect seemed so obvious that this business model 20th century, you know, like a lot of 20th century things -- processed foods, tanning salons -- they seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, you know, we do things differently. >> host: and i guess that would cause a major realigning in a lot of different businesses, not the least of which would be google's and facebook's. >> guest: yeah. >> host: they still have quite a bit of power to influence society. is that going to be a hindrance, do you think, to that happening? >> guest: they would be -- and there's also television advertising which is still the main revenue model. although about half of television revenue now comes from non-advertising, which is interesting. it would be really interesting, something to ponder, to see what would happen if facebook and google switched to paid models. and if people would pay, you know, $12 a year for facebook or something.

if people would pay -- i would probably pay for google, i think a dollar a month or whatever would be -- and if they wean themselves off that diet, would that ultimately lead to a completely different place for how the economy goes forward. i'm not sure. it's hard to get people to part with money, you know, what they think is money. we like, you know, americans, we like kind of parting with money in less obvious ways. [laughter] that's the nature of our culture. we're addicted to free stuff. so the other side of this would say advertising is so natural, part of this idea of selling is so natural that we'll never be fully rid of it. >> host: well, i can't think of a better note to end on than that somewhat hopeful note about what could happen in the future. tim wu, the book is "the attention merchants: the epic scramble to get inside our heads," a fascinating read and should make many of us, perhaps, at least question the bargain that we've made for me