looking forward to go through this book. >> at evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to bind a noble upper west side. louis hyman at the industrial labor relations school of cornell university as well as direct your abortion to do for work as studies in new york city. a former fulbright scholar in mckinsey consultant, hyman received his from harvard. his writing has appeared in "the new york times," the atlantic, late, bloomberg, pacific standard time enough for quarterly and elsewhere. derek kessler is the author of

the end of the job in the future of work and the deputy for quite some work. her reporting has been cited by the "washington post," new york magazine and npr. tonight mr. hyman's new book "temp: how american work, american business, and the american dream became temporary" every working person in the united states asks the same question. how secure is my job? regeneration, roughly from 1935 to 1970, business and government leaders embrace an american work force routed instability. but over the last 50 years, job security at the postwar institutions that insulated us from volatility have been swept aside by a fervent belief in quote, unquote the market.

"temp" is a riveting read for anyone grappling with the inequities of contemporary capitalism. showing us the decades long evolution of the present economic taking a clear eyed look at the exploitation of women and workers of color and outlines a positive vision of how americans can for both in work and life. without further ado, please join me in welcoming lewis hyman and derek kessler. [applause] >> hi, everybody. thank you for joining us today. and wouldn't talk a little bit about my book for a second before we have a nice q&a. first of all, thank you to barnes and noble for hosting us

this evening. when we think about insecurity in america today, it is very hard to get and historical perspective on it. i would like to start is a history teacher talking about history and remind you about what you remember from school. the industrial revolution in school we often hear about factories in steam engines and may be particularly nerdy teacher. the technological innovation drive social change. the technology reshapes work. likewise today we talk about today's economy. we focus on smartphones and artificial intelligence and apps. dear to is the march of technology that is disrupting our work today and often times we will point to the smartphone is the reason for the so-called economy. this narrative is wrong. the history of labor shows the technology does not usually

drive social change. on the contrary, social change is typically driven by decision about how we organize our work, reorganizing people, reorganizing relationships, reorganizing society. only then does technology common and consolidate the change. technology is neutral. technology is used to solve business problems. sometime around 1970 stable workforce from a secure, long-term investment became a problem for business. the solution sold by consultants and business gurus to remake the corporations, to end workplace security. in short, to make us all temps. to find the limit of what is possible in our labor market casting long shadows over the rest of the workforce committee laborers who linger out by home depot in the early morning hours for contract there's are

wondering if both of you. industrial workers assemble electronic components for cardboard packages for amazon. management consultants but first class all over the world advice ceos on global strategy. for some of the new tabs by consultants to glamorous and well-paid. for others like office workers at the dead-end. for those we do not at home depot, it is work with little pay in much danger. despite paid jobs, education gap since the decision got, thames come to find work faces from the margins of the center in ways that batman era and secretarial temps, white gloves and beautiful never could have imagined. this book is the history of that transformation. the transformation from a secure

first world war to where we live today. in many ways, the people are left out of those jobs, the people who are people of color, who are migrants, the people who are left out become a reversal for the rest of us today and as the century progressed, the other groups would not have the same kind of protection. they would act as transitional labor forces from new kinds of work-based models, especially silicon valley. but the protections remain on the books, they are not renewed alongside the economy, making the so-called laws from a similarly so-called rights evermore peripheral to the everyday experiences of working americans. again and again, we are forced to ask the question, who deserve security? who deserves uncertainty over

where their next paycheck is coming from? at the same time and the important thing we need to always remember to talk about the freelance economy as even for those white vans to have a good paycheck, works from an assembly line assembly in a cubicle in an office, the work was dehumanizing, backbreaking, monotonous or tedious. for all these kinds of jobs, whatever the wages and benefits, humans should not do the work of robot. that kind of monotony and repetition is unworthy of the word human and the challenge for the 21st century will not be defending our robotlike jobs for discovering what is valuable in being human. add in a few minutes is what the book is about. sarah and i will have a talk more about her book in my book

in the intersections they are in. so welcome sarah koestler. hope that was temporary enough. >> very appropriate. >> so, your book is it's not just the last two years. exciting to me as an historian. in my book i read about most of the 20th century. they start with the formation of the new industrial corporation and chase that room in your book really starts with the invention of the smartphone the last two years. tell the audience what you're doing your book. >> yeah. what about having common is they both position that economy is an extension of a trend happening for a long time. the plan focuses on the extension and nurses on the history which i thought was no interest in to kind of have that all put together.

and so laid out as a progression of time. ps, my book starts in 2013 with this thing called the good economy which i heard about because i was a starter for porter. it is hard to imagine the to imagine this, but there was a time when anything silicon valley did was synonymous with progress. so they were what got this coming press a button, get a job. anything i was going to be flexibility for everybody. in a highly skilled person it might be flexibility and independent than live on your savings and buy health insurance and strip you of those things.

the broader larger historical narrative has more of that same thing that people marketing one thing >> yeah, it is not apt that is doing this. it's capitalism. i called uber the waste product of the service economy. they talk about the book but the alternative is for driving for cooper in working in a unionized jobs with guaranteed benefits and pensions or even just the alternative is selling coffee and maybe not enough hours are working in a wal-mart in not getting enough ships. it is uncertainty about working americans have already been living in the 1870s or so certainly the rhetoric around technology as opposed to the

insecurity and wage stagnation we've had since the 70s. >> yeah, this is something i was curious about. by 2013 when the buzzword appeared and you had already been studying this and the whole history of it and trying to draw attention. >> they were really slow actually. >> we like why are people talking about the economy? this is the thing i've been studying already for four or five years. >> that's why lashing to the book. like that. but i do think it coming out, i said it's capitalism. so i think opt for me, i was like wow, what is this cultural work being done by this time? it's progress, inevitable, in my pocket. it's empowering people with entrepreneurship.

well, you know, just like the rest of work you for some people that is true. for some people it is creating new kinds of opportunities to incrementally find work. for lots of people it's just more of the same, only with inexpensive cell phone plan. i am curious what your trend is. >> i totally agree with everything you said. one thing that was interesting about this trend in the story about where it came from was that it's not a new thing. but the buzzword in uber be in this dramatic big-company all of a sudden why think it was useful a little bit is that people were interested in that with a new cast of earth and all the sudden there's been things publishing papers in public solutions and newspapers following worker classification lost roots.

>> everybody loves labor laws. >> exactly. >> a kind of revitalize the conversation. >> i was struck her in the conversations going on about how suddenly everyone cared about taxi drivers, which is not my experience in new york before cooper came here. but he also thought who's been left out of the conversation. they would say well, the cars are being depreciated and not compensated. that's also true for domino's pizza delivery guys. it shows that they don't count. it is also true i thought about the history of silicon valley. the larger story of technology that some people don't count. transitional labor forces. uber is excited by the idea that robots will drive their cars for them, but this is the same kind of language you see at the first macintosh in 1994 where robots

are building robot. anytime someone says robot they usually mean woman of color. usually an immigrant woman of color and its hidden from the story. only because men driving these cars that account for much. so who's left income is up.we are still grappling with that kind of question. >> yeah, i was also reading your book interested in how you chose , in the sense of time from 2011 and told 2017. but i was there the whole time and saw how it progressed. how do you choose which companies use to tell this story of manpower. >> have to say when i read your perpetually envious but the idea that you could just talk to people who were alive.

>> sometimes they are kind of not very nice. did you read their papers -- [inaudible] i found the archives in manpower, which is an important part of the story despite what kelly services says. i'm having a twitter throwdown. >> why do they want that claim? [inaudible] anyway, doesn't matter. maybe if you return my phone calls them up into your archive. so i think the company is somewhat based on newspapers i could have access to, but also what i was important. hewlett-packard is a company

that promises jobs for people who are not union and yet that begins to fall apart during the 80s and 90s and i hope that i thought maybe for the feeling i might be president. that would make a lot of money if ever the case. but that didn't work out. i don't know if it's for good or bad. i think that is how i was choosing it. themes of the book were insecurity and how our world came into being. a lot of labor history was about to follow this postwar world and i wanted to write about the ascendancy of how people work today. you have wonderful characters in your book from all different strata. how did you find these people would choose them to write about? >> yeah, so we often talk about the economy in this monolithic

way as this is the best thing that's ever happened. congratulations, everyone's working from the beach to this is the worst thing that ever happened and we are destined to fail and technology will drive us off this cliff. i wanted to acknowledge people's experiences are different depending who they are so intentionally set out to find people who are working a range of different jobs from this nonprofit was trying to help people living in poverty get better work through the economy kind of all the way up to this computer programmer making $12,000 a month to show kind of a range of them. the idea was to follow them through several years of their life. it probably started with twice as many people that actually ended up in the book because you don't know what's going to happen in their lives. >> are they boring? is that why you cut them out?

>> some of them became clear that they didn't really want attention. in some of them just kind of ended up illustrating different aspects to organize and kind of what that looks like for other things in the book. so that was it for me. and so, also the idea was to take the worker's with the companies and politicians. i'm wondering what your book also taking the survey worker and how it impacts them, kind of us in his tory and what challenges does that perspective present? >> is really hard to find workers voices. especially it's easy to find the stuff that steve jobs they been very hard to find undocumented workers who are working in the

processing plant that are not registered with the government. you can find traces of these people in the archives. you don't have the complete story that you have of the wauseon on the other celebrated titans of silicon valley. so i think that is the hardest part is it requires and takes a lot of time to recover those stories and those people seek to destroy capitalism from the bottom up all the way to the top to get the complete picture. >> one of my favorite ways to do this is apparently temp workers workers -- a lot of them are hilarious. he met they are amazing. despite the fact i'm wearing the suit i was also a punk rocker in the 90s and so that kind of vibe came through in the culture of the 80s and 90s which i was enamored by. one which was called process

wrote, and these people have amazing stories of their lives. people sorted using their computers to push back against the experiences of what they're told their experience should be and they are hilarious. certainly a fresh breath of air in the public propaganda also been issued at this time. >> why is it become a thing in their culture? >> remember back before the internet. imagine a world where publishing is controlled by very few. and he also had access to copiers as your terrible job as an office temp. do what you do? you write things that make photocopies of them and they tell other kinds of stories about what is going on that work is boring and work is terrible

and it should end. that's the other part of this. not just about getting paid enough. it's not just about a paycheck. it's also what does it mean that a lot of these people are writing about the copy or eight hours a day. work doing data entry, spending day after day updating forms and i think else was something they'd rather be doing that imposes an important part to fix that every human would rather be caring for a kid or a grandparent or engaging and curiouser committee. everyone here -- i just got cut off. i was endorsing books. i mean, we think the limits were in terms of conversation and the people you met.

>> finding people was a big deal. also i wanted you to feel like you cared about everybody loves working with them to get to the level of kind of trust and familiarity we can write about someone in now way it's a really long time. a lot of vacation time. so that was i think the biggest feud about. and also, checking them. like your having conversations and also looking at their criminal record. >> to have a criminal record -- and mark >> do you have a criminal record? i don't know. >> i'm glad you don't know. i was struck also at the way you

show the uncertainty of the business leaders. you read about a housecleaning company that admits to an office cleaning company intends to figure things out. it is easy to think that corporations have it all figured out. and you really show how its very contingent in trying to figure out what to do. how did you gain their trust in telling their story? >> i met them early on and by the time i was done with the book they had a thousand. they kind of got to where they were like we can't take this back and also we met regularly for years and we did develop some charts. but what you're talking about that they adopted the theory based on research by the business researcher at m.i.t. and basically horrible argument

studying really offbeat companies like costco and quick trip in trader joe's. you've never heard of these people. but exactly what you're saying that she can succeed by treating people as poorly as possible but if you make the right business decisions, you can also gain a lot by treating people well. >> are we solving for profit, maximum profit or just enough profit? >> you can do both. you can make more money by paying people well. >> that is true. >> and certainly we did that for very long time. that is what the postwar period was about. where job security, rapid technological progress. the top corporations all made money hand over fist. they made so much money that they wasted it in many different ways. but it's something that's hard to remember what that would be like. the corporation that isn't just

beholden to short-termism, but long-term investment. >> what happened there? >> it also a colleague of mine says i'm whistling in the graveyard as they tell an optimistic story of this new economy but it's also better to whistle to just lay down and die. in the past, it took us 100 years to turn the industrial economy for regular working people. hopefully this time around it won't take 100 years. we can figure out ways to various policies and collective action to make it work with each other to make an economy that works for everybody. >> in something i was trying to do when i was researching the book is that for places where they were starting to make movements. i think they are there.

>> it is hard. there's a lot of common sense but the struggle of life in order to make profit and not a lot of stories about how to do that in a different way. should we talk to the people in the audience? okay, this is lovely. thank you. >> i have a q&a microphone here. razor handle comes to you. keep your questions to questions. thank you. >> you talk about private-sector responsibility. i don't think in a capitalist economy you can expect the private sector not to be concentrating. what you can have his government you can have government countering not in taking worries off the people mind were freeing the labor market. for example, the idea i think people waking up because the

republican states are now demanding the expanded medicaid could republican governors have to get into it. you see that. people are moving out toward more conscious. they don't like the idea that you have to depend on your companies for health care. >> how about health care and a guaranteed income. what would that do? >> one of them speak and talk about is how do we enable people to be part of this independent workforce, take risks, especially young people burdened by student debt and mental fears another thing said he threw out a way to enter the world. it's a really conservative argument to be made for the expansion of medicare and medicaid in other kinds of things so that people can do that. i don't personally think their

basic income is very tenable, but politically and lots of other ways i think this is the kind of thing we should be thinking about, how do we make it so it is easier for people to work in this new workforce just like we made it possible to have secure work within the industrial work. i'm curious what you think, sarah. >> i don't think i could add to that. >> super. >> so, a real estate agent making good money and i have been a trooper driver of different socioeconomic strata. being a cab driver is fun because you kind of get the whole upper east side -- [inaudible] if you're curious about what ca. there's an article on business insider or "huffington post"

about goober drivers keen interest in driving 90 hours a week in new york city traffic could barely make their lease payment. you'll get immediate comments. the caps are dirty in their suspension is screeching. people understand that people's lives are worse to make their life convenient. people don't understand that goober subsidizes fares. like you shouldn't get a 2018 toyota with leather seats picking you up to drive you somewhere for $8. your friend wouldn't come pick you up to drive you somewhere for $8 in gas money. so uber is the amazon of transportation. they are crushing right to buy market share. i think collect only like we don't care about one another as people in america pushes this idea. how do we get the political will -- maybe too broad of a question.

but how to regain the political will that thou been some kind of society that actually care about one another and make things better for the bottom 90%? >> sarah kesler. >> you don't have the exact answer? that is the question. we would solve so many problems if we did that. in terms of uber business model from a lott wrong with how we fund companies both private and public and what that does to your interest. i started describing cooper as an app that helps venture capitalist subsidized hipster rides because a sickly they are not making any money. they are just like you said spending, subsidizing that $8 right. >> i think new york city is doing this. pushing towards minimum wage, for goober drivers -- certainly tax drivers are killing

themselves. so are lots of other people. we explain the context of what is not just a story transportation in new york city, but the story on the service economy that black people behind. we hear all the time about unemployment rates are so low. labor force participation rate are low, too. people are just dropping out of this economy. they feel alienated from the economy and people are doing those jobs because they don't have a better alternative. they want to work and take responsibility, but they don't have opportunities to do so. you can only -- venture capital for so long. >> my question is as you were saying that we are getting out of jobs in the technology.

what do you think about that they kind of make easy money of restauranteurs and restaurant owners but the rent, electricity and everything. what you think about that? >> if there is a general problem for who controls the platform. this is a similar problem. in the 19th century, the similar thing in the platform was the railroad. you had everybody in america, west of mississippi trying to have a farm and they were a couch. they were charged to eastern bankers. they were gouged by the thieves paid for the railroad and in response to that a massive political uprising in the 1870s, 80s and 90s. the question who controls the

railroad. the answer is agog regulated by the government. that is one option. other countries have a nationalized railroads system. the question is how deep trouble the network, the railroad network whether it's a network of rails for a network of data and how do we make sure that the charges for that equitably reflect the interest of the whole. but it's not just a question of business or economics but a question of politics and how we share this economy. we all know it's much easier to press a button on grub hub. it is super good, right? we also want to make sure everyone gets compensated fairly. that is a question we are still figuring out what that platform looks like. whether it's collect lyons by the workers are the businesses, whether it's regulated by the state. what is important to do i think is to have that conversation and not just assume the market will

turn it out in the right place. >> are journalists all speak to the president. these companies -- we are just technology. we don't have responsibility and i think you are starting to see some pushback on that, for instance it's a near commissar to go go to the taxi drivers, but trying to sub this minimum wage. something that's really promising is the idea that you could make a cooperative, where the businesses on the platform and the absence of it being grub hub, it could be all the restaurants have a share in this thing where people order from and that is something trevor scholz has been working on and there's a couple examples of companies working it out. one of the major hurdles in the past has been it's really expensive to make than, one technology looks kind of like

the other, so maybe everybody could use the same one then it wouldn't be asked and said. and maybe that's a problem technology solves. in the past the way we saw this at least in the labor movement was we could imagine having digital hiring halls or you could go and hire a unionized janitor for unionized cleaner but someone pays them a viable wage. as a think about the future, we think about how can we support people as we do that. >> the kind of talk a disciple o the on off worker protection for can anyone permanently protect these people?

>> i don't think so. i think there is always a struggle between different groups in society. every time i talk about something i get cut off. but i think that it's okay. i think it is okay to have, you know, contesting interests of different institutions than a dozen to be able in capitalism has been imaging engine for growth and for change but also for equality and violence. i think it is important as we do this to realize we have to be vigilant. i feel weird sort of leaning around this. >> this is more of a sarah question since you've talked to more folks recently. i'm interested in what you heard about the philosophical changes you were talking to overtime.

i used to do some some organizing and i had a boss is done not going back to the 70s and he always said one of the things that made it tough to organize low-income people in america as they all have this belief that they could be rich tomorrow. we are all about to go around quarter to be rich. fascistic philosophy folks have here the sort of holds folks back. they think they've got a shot in it goes way back. i'm curious if that's your perspective or if you saw changes in how people saw themselves in the world over the time you're talking to them. >> yeah, a lot of people started kind of hopeful on these platforms that they were using the been around forever and not new. so that's the pitch. you're a notch for newer. and then kind of when they

understood, which sometimes takes a while to understand i'm paying this much in taxes than the rules are working this way for me and i can only get this much work. they came to understand this is a deal and it's not a path somewhere else. that happened for some people. i think it is probably different for different people. >> you have a character in your book. i know as a human being. a get-rich-quick scheme. >> which is something that i wrote about in the book because i think it does say something bigger about how people believe they'll be successful in america are what you need in order to do that. but he was convinced that he had to be a millionaire. and he's not wrong. that is a lifestyle that most of us don't have a shot at. so he had fallen for this tip

rich quick scheme. the pyramid scheme and lost a ton of money and then kind of sign up for uber with the same mentality that this is my ticket out. this is the thing that's going to launch me into this millionaire lifestyle. in a sense you're like he's kind of crazy, but on the other hand it is kind of true. to move out of a lower income bracket, if you look at research people have done, what they most often have in common is a source of capital. so i thought it was true in some weird way kind of the philosophy about things. >> yeah, for me the american dream is not about more money, more money, more money. i think it is a cheap inversion of what the real american dream is, which is economy come

independence, self-reliance, not being told what to do all day. >> that's thing. it is dependent on getting the nephew money. we are on c-span so i can't say what those words are. there is division in the 19th century of farm work, and peanuts hominis. i think that is what that's really a substitute for. people don't need a mega-guide to feel safe. they need to feel safe. we can get it done in a lot of different ways so it's not just rich people and their kids who get their businesses. but you know, ordinary folks and their kids. >> hi, so we have the sort of old school industry is seen as a sort of precursor to the tech

enabled economy that is still existent today in sort of parallel to the economy and uber is a household name, but major industry, like a lot of people don't know about them. so do you sort of see the sort of parallel existence at this saturday economy as using in some ways in the future in a way that there's going to be economy companies and that uber has been able to grab today that they'll are going to have pervasive power in other ways. >> yeah, the dirty access for sure. hearing about any company they probably use some sort of flavor other than direct employment for contract workers in you can

speak more to this, but the service industry it is common to have this sort of algorithmic scheduling that is sporadic, which is similar. and now new companies that are basically structured the same way as uber, but they use people that are technically w-2 workers, calling somebody up in having someone do something for you but they are technically employed by the app maker, which means they are not as susceptible to lawsuits, but living this kind of precarious. >> the w-2 versus 1099 for the w-2 was good and holy and moral. you can still have a terrible job as everyone here probably has had nba deputy worker. this is an excellent question in my titled the book "temp."

mostly to irritate social scientists. what i think is important is that flexibility, that it security, that could carry the been talking about consultants and temps in freelancers and my coworkers together. not only the same kinds of lies, but the new kind of structure under which our businesses are run. the set of procurement rather than employment. >> so, you chose to call your book "temp" and not flex. i think about the big attraction for the higher-end income. do you see any evidence of corporations reacting to provide more flexibility is. i think with as a lot of people from the workforce because of precisely that. is there any movement in the

other direction to move towards flexibility? >> flex is on the list of what should i call my book. obviously it's not. yeah, maybe. i think there's a lot of people that tell the story in there. independent contract or is who are highly skilled workers that it worked in these companies for 20 years and then decide to make a good living. i think it's important to keep track of that as well. not just a story asserted the keynesian spiral downward, but also this liberation. the question for me is how do we do that for more people. not how do we change back to their desks. it is hard because we want to have this evil versus good narrative in the changing relationship of work and we have a keep track of those simultaneously. >> eskimo is the question, and

so sorry. >> flexibility. that sounds like a good thing, right? also, who decides on what is flexible. [inaudible] who gets to decide what low-end service workers the flexibility of the employer decides when they show up for dough. again, it's about power. and i think the job as we know it, the nine to five on a perfect day to wish them disrupting you do a good job in your book talking about the way flawed. so an economy could fix some of that potentially. both surveys, do you like flexibilities. the question they asked. you like flexibility? what is going to say now?

but when they actually -- these researchers whose names i can't remember right now. and ari. they are economists admitted the survey did you take this much cut in pay to have a flexible schedule. so they were measuring how people value flexibility in the answer they came up with was not much. so right now if you want flexibility and went to go work in the gig economy, you are giving up a lot of us here in the situation where you can buy your safety net as you have so much money. i think that is worth considering in the conversation about flexibility. >> i read this article that you wrote, a short article we talked about counting people in the temp in the contingent workforce. i think i saw the study that i don't know how many years, but

going back 10 years, 70% or 80% of new hires -- >> 94%. >> it's interesting you are saying that people are really undercounted. a lot of the people i know are still getting full-time jobs with benefits. in terms of what the numbers you see out there, you're not reflecting how many people are times. >> just to get longish for a second, which by the way i didn't bring up, you brought up. so it not my fault. about 80% of workers still have a primary full-time job. but that doesn't mean -- when alan krueger comes up, in his study found that 94% of the net new jobs by the jobs created by ms. these alternative work

arrangements. so with the alternative work arrangement over 400 pages. so i think that is part of the story. if you ask people argue a gig worker, have you worked in this kind of space in the last two weeks, the answer is about 10%. it's been that way for a very long time. if you asked them what they've done in the last year, the answer is 80%. if you asked them whether it's primary or supplementary comic and the numbers change. there's this idea that supplementary work doesn't count. it's not part of how you're paying your bills and not saving for the new playstation or something else that doesn't founder. it is wonderful. but i think also these are the questions. what kind of work matters? what does it mean if you can get paid enough at your regular job and about half the people under 35 and the freelance economy.

his experiences depending on where you are in the world in the society. so they are getting full-time jobs. at the same time i'm a tenured professor at a universe d. well, 70% of higher ed professors or adjunct faculty to get paid $2,003,000 per course and they don't have time to do the research in their difficult lives. this is all part of the same system. >> yeah, one of the frustrations is the data in the way we categorize work is kind of outdated so you get surveys that say different things because they're counting different things in different ways in the world doesn't handle nuance very well so you get these headlines were everyone in the whole country is doing this in the next day you get a headline this doesn't even ask us in it's

really somewhere in the middle. >> high, both of your books are really interesting and i'm looking forward to reading them. [inaudible] he wrote a book called big business and tom peters wrote a book about the excellent dividend and they talked about how the number one reason why this exists is so that they can invest in people, create meaningful, challenging created jobs for individuals because what else is there? when you look at fortune 500 companies, a lot of the ones that land on the best places to work list usually are the most profitable. correlation between businesses doing well and they put people urged. so how much do you see may be more companies of buying into that train of thought?

>> contemporary sarah. >> i think there's a lot of people who wish more would. you know, there are think tanks working on how to get worse tedious to ignore short-term investors and think about value in a different way. how much progress they've made i don't have any actual data about data. i have examples of companies that you think this way. but i don't know the exact measurement. >> i think companies are so valued the nato ipo or get acquired and how few employees they have. full-time employees, fte, don't want those. those are obligations. this is part of how we value corporations. the next question about how do we help business people of tomorrow figurative path to profitability and product to the

deep in people and valuing people in recognizing people as human in making sure everyone counts and includes capitalism. thank you so much. thank you for coming tonight. >> big round of applause for louis hyman and sarah kessler. come grab a copy of the donor to have one in line up along the salt. thank you so much you've been fantastic. have a great evening. [inaudible conversations]

>> when i was very young i thought that good reader meant that one could read all the books that fill up two tiny shelves in a two room schoolhouse. when i began to study in places where books were so many that they felt multiple library buildings with levels deep under the ground, i thought the good reader must mean reading as many as those folks as possible. when i was a young teacher in a place whose teachers had long left, my only thought was that i could not help those children become good readers, they would never leave the borders of their families indentured eyes.

when i first became a researcher , i chafed when studies that compared good readers with children and individuals with dyslexia who worked harder than almost anyone else to understand and read the text. finally, when i studied with the brain does when it retrieves the meanings of words, gina, i learned that every meeting i possessed for a good reader would be activated when i thought it would. i have added a new meaning as discussed in the introduction. in the nick lachey and, aristotle wrote that a good society has three lives. the life of knowledge and activity. the life of entertainment within these very particular

understanding of leisure. and finally, the life of contemplation. so too i believe i did three lives of the good reader. there is the first life of the good reader in gathering information and acquiring knowledge and we are all a wash and not life. there is a second life in which a breeding various forms of entertainment to be found in the buttons. the sheer distraction in exquisite pleasure of immersion in stories about their lives, and articles about mysterious, newly discovered xo plant in poems that steal our breath away. we read to take this most economic =tranfour away from her frantically pursued everyday lives.

the third life but the good reader is the culmination of reading and terminus of the other two lives. the reflect the life in which whatever genre we are breeding would enter a totally invisible, personal realm. our private holding ground where we can contemplate all matter of human existence and ponder a universe whose real history for any of our imaginations. theologian john john wrote that her culture fully embodied aristotle's first life of a good society, but received each day from the third contemplative life. so too i think the third life of the good reader. there is no shortage of

contemporary observers of our digital culture who worry that the meditated dimension in human beings is threatened by an overwhelming success on materialism, consumerism in a fractured relationship with time as steve wasserman asked, does the ethos of acceleration prized by the internet diminish our capacity for deliberation and feebler capacity for genuine reflection. does the daily avalanche of information banished the space needed for actual was done? readers know in their bones something we forgot at our peril that without books, indeed without literacy, the good society vanishes and barbarism

triumphs, unquote. now, if we are to evaluate the truth in such descriptions of a digital culture, we must examine ourselves without a cognitive flinch and look at who we are now. focus readers and its co-inhabitants of a shared planet. many changes in our thinking was much to our biological reflex, the novelty bias to novel stimulus to survive as a culture, excuse me, to attend to survive. i lost that even though i wrote it. we have this novelty bias and nancy's pcs we have to look at all of these, whether it pray. i am suggesting that the changes in the game today at as much about biological reflex is to a

culture that floods us with continuous stimuli with their collusion. it will be what we do next, with our growing consciousness in changes that matters. but there we exacerbate negative changes by ignoring them. these will be a part in what all of us do next. whether we have capacity for reflection in the ski talk is a matter of personal choice with critical implications not only for us as individuals, but for us as citizens. john dunn saw the loss of this related to the rise of violence and conflict in society. i see it more as an out come of

her milliards unforced constant need for efficient the, biding time without knowing for what purpose. decreasing attention span is pushed me on their cognitive limit by a smoke psalm of distractions of information that will never be common knowledge. . [inaudible conversations]