.. >> good evening everyone and welcome to read munro my name is nicholas i have direct events here the strand. i wanted expand his thanks to

cspan2 for filling tonight. thank you very much. from little bit of history but the strand, was founded in 1927 over on fourth avenue as will grow. stretching from union square to us in place, the probe gradually after over 92 years. genesis will survive her and still run by the best family from the original family who founded it. were running hundred events a year nearly. i still have new and used books after all this time. tonight we are excited to be hosting andrew marantz, author of the brenda book antisocial. an extremist, techno- utopians in the hijacking of the american conversation. andrew has wig written for the new yorker since 2011 it is also appeared in evers new york magazine, jones the new york times, among others. and contributed to the new yorker radio hour radio lab. joining him is fellow new yorker staff writer, ensign cunningham.

as magazines go critic. his byline has appeared in the new york times magazines, new york times magazines, and book review and alter, the old, in mcsweeney news internet tendency. he is currently teaching and zero losses writing course. i couldn't be more excited to hear from them all better informational landscape and how it's been transformed monopolized and radicalized. what its creators and inhabitants have it to see about the results and with that in mind, please join me in welcoming vincent andrew to the strand. [applause] >> it is great to be here with

you. so start on the title, you have set out to really draw what i say of as a fungal. online extremist. i guess take the bullet for all of us. and exposing yourself to that. techno- utopian, evil and sort of the top of the tech world. and the employees are part of this triangle is like squares were for the new yorker. i would love to just sort of trace all parts of that triangle. the first thing one ask is just about the question that a lot of people ask. i say why would you spend your time with these people. a lot of people see why give them oxygen or something like that. who is the impulse that means you saved, no it's really important that we have to understand who they are. it's a good question on multiple levels to wonder why put yourself through that

psychological ny given oxygen wide legitimated. and i didn't want to be flip about that. because the question of when to avoid normalization and how to avoid normalization i say it should be in everybody's mind hustling these days. and to not becoming hard to say that should be marginal and should be incredible. but basically, 2014 -ish, was very interested in what the internet was doing to us psychologically. decidedly also and sort of the thing is more of a business story. there is no logical limits how weird and darwinian and bleak the internet can get. and for specific reasons, there are two great checks on any american business institute. but specifically because of the first amendment among other reasons, the internet is made of speech acts and speech acts

can't really be regulated in any way. i say that is to be good but it also means that things can get really weird really fast. they can be this kind of darwinian spiral that happens. this all before politics entered into it. this is just sort of thinking what it would due to in the information ecosystem. i was at the new yorker sort of talking to people about just that sort of seemed a moral and have you know, and i was getting really worked up about it. did you not understand, you like we get up and just chill out. where old school but we don't have to look down our nose with the kids are doing on the internet. noise has brought that, there is nothing preventing from taking over the whole internet. thus everything. the internet is anything. as governed by the darwinian roles of morality.

the rescript right. no one can really argue me out of the did it. so i went to chicago to hang out with this one click entrepreneur and again this is obviously opposite thing but he was like, income down the escalator yet. and i was just sort of like, this was a technique telling comes in the sky was like a 26 -year-old just like making her name on facebook. like you do when you are 26. and he said i'm an innovator and disruptor, change the world and the never see i want to it for the better they just wanted to see want to change the world) and this is just assumed that that will automatically happen. this part of the utopian. as it will there's all of this, these waves at the market to be more efficient and kind of this meritocracy we get different elections with virality and change the world with virality. we could just sort of tilting if

this was just one obvious question over and over again like a video of change is in the right direction. it would just get really prickly and see your lanai and you don't get it. this is okay, there's the ideology and noise anesthetists fully see facebook is rational even though his hide themselves on rationality then donald trump comes on this later and i'm sick and now we really are screwed. because in two weeks when no, there was a window that conceptually not in and out of the opposite of a stent on the reason i keep staying darwinian. there's a sort of rough in the book all the news that's fit to print. which presupposes a woman that is fit. and there's is darwinian side of it that has no human at the helm of it.

they don't tell anything about the outcome of this election but even about our way of working at the new yorker. i thought instead and i would go out in the world and watch it. >> it's interesting that you see that certain space, things won't change with absolute worst. what an amazing somatic credit though all the way through the book, you show how much has brought just a check, that is a national belief. use the obama about the arc of the moral universe. but it was it and in which direction. >> and i didn't use his key thing in the book but it doesn't happen on the wills of another stability. there is multiple ambassador making of america such that we can continue draw on lincoln again are women or whatever these very specific and kind of heavily curated ways we can

remember the king and says we can live up our ideals is all going to work out but we don't really remember, we may all have to go to jail. things are going to have to happen in order to get there. the kind of filters into the consciousness of people, let's just see hypothetically, he it's been a couple of semesters at harvard and then you drop out and go to alto summit county. hypothetically, not thinking very hard about, not wrestling with the stuff, not reading histories of american exceptionalism works and humidity major should rule the world and we never will but we should. the reason that is not purely and it has material consequences. if you just sort of absorb it. it's really made not much says but need to sleep better at

night. but we do go through something that might turn into the world news largest discourse. there is a metaphor of the partyware of the star party need to sort of see, everybody, and i will just hope that all will be great and at the arc of this party will this is an woa printing you like but okay but when things are happening. like so many starts poisoning the drinks like you can check ids don't have a system, you just sort of hoping. is going to work out and then, and i have $2.4 million for people at your party. [laughter] to be the power of that phrase was woa you mentioned obama, a speech of the giving the middle east where we can hide from the truth anymore because the son live of nature of the internet.

there's a subtle critique over the past was a 15 years whatever with all been a loyal disposed to sleep. as an obama critique somewhere. >> oddly there is critique that runs through reagan and obama. were on the way to one of these propaganda kind of professional misogynists, folks houses, like childhood homes. i landed at chicago airport and drove to rural illinois and pass through reagan's hometown. in a very optimistic about our future and is all placed the better angels of our nature. really lincoln all of the way through there is this trying to deny sort of positive spin on what is essentially an lincoln news case, running courses in the worst of us but let's just say about the best of us. that happens with reagan and bush and obama clinton and that

is like i get why it's a good sump speech but it's not good policy and it doesn't help us, look and then there is this weird thing that happens where you get stuck on the flip side of this but actually sort of doomed to pessimism about ourselves and i just don't say either of us, they don't get very far. just say it is like new speech and 2010 in egypt talk about disinfectant but you back in 2012 or 13, you get laughed out of the room. pat just, the internet guy affects the utopians, you don't hear them talking about the muslim brotherhood very often but they are both facets of our history. can't have one that went out the other. the original question is why do you pay attention at online is famous that's why because the only good one about the other,

you'll love the story of three guys and hoodies got into a garage and start a company in tazewell. reese's is antisocial socialist, we have assumed for so long that the internet can only be prosocial as our fabric and bidding the arc in the right direction. we ignore the other side of the card, where there is 40 percent or 60 percent is kind of immaterial, it is a lot. we ignore that. the weird thing is that they are fine with you knocking on the door and loving the men. fly in the wall long-term reporting and never know who's going to be okay with you loving come in. some people slam the door my

face. i chickened out. >> or before the process. >> he was like, yeah, i've got nothing to hide. that a great operation and he has done profiles before i was trepidations because of the oxygen thing. this guy has a massive audience. only twitter can do that. and they did. but the time they had it and there was a whole thing, the new yorker is kind of like a minor back in the book in a didn't include any of the stuff because i was struggling with how matted to get on the one hand you don't want to be is it too enabling and the other hand, when these things happen in the story of how media is produced in the 21st century as part of in the book so there's a lot of stuff about how the new yorker does things in a quex and the non-

internet t wave. i didn't get into this there is a whole thing that we've god put me on the phone with alex jones as you've got to settle with this. as much as i would really like to, i don't say he is the biggest fan but i don't know if that would really help that much when he was like to set up a phone call. and alex chickened out he would get on the phone. i didn't do that one. ryan according to orange county california and sitting with this dude is kind of, the worst contribute over among other things. he was a lawyer and a married guy a dog and a kid was also just out there. i really say that hillary has a

known diagnosed neurological condition and i'm going to edit video footage of her blinking the way it seems suggestive and you can never get to the bottom of this and you believe this or not the moments he would sort of winking ladylike i just know what is going to go viral. and no i have a policy outcome i want. no one win this election from and i know my sort of abstract notions about saudi arabian policy won't get us there so i'm just going to get us this blinking thing. then i watched them do it. it is literally a dude in orange county and he connected to skype podcast and whatsapp chains and whatever. he would just informally

coordinate and i would just watch we set up a ipad and periscope video all the commenters, when our core 2000 fans. with their hashtag marie can do. hillary seizures no, stuttering hillary, talking henry ellery, just cut like a once is trading they would get it trending and once it was trending on twitter then it would jump over the fox news and a jump to see an end and literally in my hotel room in orange county to pick up the newspaper and be like, that guy did this. this headline did was in here because of what i watched the guy due yesterday. so this is marginal was often not marginal. i'm one of the things the internet does is breaks down all barriers between the front to

the mainstream and what is slow and would speak. this metaphor of infection. you can be some weird virus off in the middle of nowhere but if you get on the right jetliner, you are everywhere. so speaking of the just position of that incredibly dark phenomena, and as you see the new yorker as secondary character. opponent read on my favorite passages in this book to make it for much of 2015 attorney 60 i knew was incredulous of the notion that donald trump that he could be president. i was in my office on the 30th floor of the world trade center. being such blog posts as global elites secret plant revealed. and rational reasons. the misogyny gets delayed. when a bucolic walk and saw what was on my screen is scrambled to save several things issue on that went out staying. i was not reading up on the merits bigotry because i was open to being convinced and i was not scouring the internet from her mail titillation or

hits. something was happening. as try to figure out what it was. and somehow wasn't doing this at the new yorker. the world could not be more incongruent and the speech did other ways of being, the heart of darkness. on a day-to-day basis. just a second, i say another one of the themes of this book is what it is like to be a generalist and we have to do in pursuit of truth. >> yes it was weird. and it did have these moments of being like, i almost could yet vicarious pitcher and the thrill of why these people didn't find it totally even i was mortified. i could understand like the feeling of, and there's a few things that are still forbidden. you can and even like honey is out here like being a porn

addict. there is no down thing in the mark that just anything and actually for the few things in life that you are not supposed to look at. i understood vicariously the thrill of it bloody so also i could feel my brain be split into trying to understand but not excused trying to empathize but not native like trying to be okay i get why mr. doug a person in certain dive boat millie you would want to be drone to this but also not losing my moral compass is to your.about the part of the book is about what a journalist is supposed to be there is this fundamental perhaps irresolvable clash between pursuing truth and like keeping a kind of moral compass. this kind of journalism where the moral compass part is really on theorized and not supposed to, this is where you get a lot of in the key is phrase of some.about being an astoundingly frictionless weathervane which

is my like catty big journalist like him doing it wrong. that is like, don't just go. this is obvious in abstract but don't just go with the wind blows. he said all the place. some people see this is designed for us provocative rhetoric and there have been complaints that it has raised eyebrows like, just see what it is. i say where that confusion is coming in is that you don't want to seem, look it is weird to live in a world where the president is an idiot and a liar. so to see that, sounds like you are being biased, off of it is the plain fact. but to see it, it feels weird even to me to see it. somehow i'm journalistic to see it. even though it is likely the job of journalism, it's just not the only job. there's one job to tell the truth and there's another job

and it can't always be done at the same time so as not only the present, but is also the whole notion of the trolls though notion of internet sisters what they're supposed to do in the put you in situations that you cannot describe that went out being contentious because you describe the mutually he was the point. i a lot more new yorker set in the only draft as you know. >> i read this book a lot. >> [laughter] note but it was also, my life was very tough on me on this. my wife was. she read this many soupy times we had many conversations about how to do the new yorker of it all because the one hand, it is clear why the temptation is there to okay i'm going to talk about the way these people do

media, sort of weird and dishonest to not talk about the way i do it on the other hand, there's this we're kind of like almost dimension the new yorker is kind of like just a weird flex in its own right and it becomes, there's something where i am quoting one of these people the day after the election and he said about for trump was a vote against the ass holes and when i get a quote that in the wet piece of doing for the new yorker, the pretty little accent over the e and elliott. and i was like we've god dammit, so i wanted to talk about those that multiplayer in the book but even to talk about it was either play into it so i didn't want to fall into that trap but i didn't want to just pretended that i didn't notice it. the trap is there and to get right down to it, there are different elitists of the most

of them are bad. i don't say this is technically legalism but there is kind of a slippage between actual elitism and this notion of making decisions based on taste. that goes against the darwinian notion will just let the marketplace of ideas sorted out so there's obviously the bad the of elitism and then there is the menu and preserve which is like, you don't get to just get both sides of this. we don't get to just save this because it feels right. the arguments, you know, in that there is in addition to the drape things in the book, with how we are skating on thin i.c.e. as a country resort have his history of white supremacy would never coupled with an yada yada and all this stuff. there is also the media of it all which is like there is

nowhere, cast addition guarantees that the government can't shut down the press. it is a guarantee what the press means or whether it will be any good or actually serve democratic means or a business model the continuous function. it is just up feeling there is no safety net. you hope the people want to buy what you are la, but it turns out that if you actually test at regulus in the market place of ideas, attack his plans. they just do. let the marketplace sort this out pretty embarrassing when it doesn't start things out. it's all bad. not all that pretty much all. >> there is that fundamental i see that the underdog but there is this inequality, that there

is a weenie -ism talks about this other american strand pretty you talk about it another really funny part of your book is you talk about yourself. we all could conceive of ourselves as anti- elite or is really funny thing like when i was a kid, there were no cuban posters that some norms are worth deserving. we'll grow up with this idea of defining ourselves against something. so card set rebel sensibility. a lot of people in your book, britney sanders, 2016, he voted for most of them. they had come from the left of the far left or the whatever. they go through this pathway become the libertarian to all rights pipeline. they were the left libertarian right libertarian and it is like whatever it takes, 60 pages to get there but basically the islamic and german sort of questionable, why can't we have evidence of an association of blah blah blah there more steps

in the book and that is a scary thing. there is this not, or it is weird kind of traditional thing as an underdog economically it just sort of is. it is weird to talk about it that way but it is just kind of is the case. and there also is the reluctance institutionalized thing is what i about it. when i show up to the parties, the inauguration we can animate this party and is very wavy. which you know is you have to explain it. they are all, and this is me trying to vicariously go, what is the thrill for them. no other way i can hit on it was to go okay, they're fighting it

with is the part of the eighth greg part of me don't tell me not to skateboard on that statute. i would do if i want to. but the statute you are staying on is called democratic forum. let him sharper you it is fun right now prep the notion that women should be allowed to work in trans people are okay and you shouldn't punch people. my vehicle to you to be a renegade and will i permit but you better grow up eventually. and i'm talking real and 50 euros, some of their art 14 -year-old trolls in the baseman but gavin mcinnis, who can advise me it was more like a really want to go fight someone because his punk and countercultural. as like your ideas aren't interesting though.

there is a part of me in those moments that wanted to see that. there's another part of me that actually it would be better if i just sort of on attempts by three years give or take. then sated about because a sort of what journalism is. it feels weird because it feels like you are kind of, playing a persona. we kind of have to do it to get the goods. and it is weird how many of them in the night they knew who i was working on, just like kind of chumming up in china, they get lulled into this thing up, they appreciate that you are not lying about that. the kind of forget that you still have a brain and use of perceiving things that they are doing. in forming judgments about them in your head. >> not to spoil it for some of them are like, regret this. or just waiting for you to make the switch. i don't say so buys. but a lot of because so many of them have switched from burning

to waters or whatever other ideological, some of them don't have ideologies but some of them are really like they just say that all of these things are flimsy and meaningless anyway so will get to you is it too. i remember being at the mall and talking to some sort of trolley performance artist guy who then tried kind of movie up and i was really trying not to give him the time of day because i don't want to play into steak. and i'm not naïve enough to say that there's no transactional nature to any journalistic gelation so sometimes it will be worth it for me to write about you guys but i'm still aware that you are using me as much as i am using you. i was trying to thinking for him to huawei. then he gets a on the stage that he's going to be the white house

correspondent. >> i have a blanket, but if you do, do it on a indicate company no browser. because it will never look the same but i know from experience but. >> i can't believe you just said that. >> just fyi safe browser. this what part of journalism is. in a way it is funny how much we are so tripped up on this, should we know in the habit to relook away. it's good that we're tripped up on it because it's good that we are struggling to write but we don't really do it like boko haram a. were not like super covered or

not. this is to close it feels like some people are kind of like i don't know how much the i can really refute. this is this very, go to a place where you are like some people don't want to look at it because they're kind of like i don't necessarily want to do the work of stressing out how much of this i can explicitly disagree with. and just kind of like let's just make it huawei. but then once i for the sky was making his announcement of my.was is from the gateway.don't google it but it is like a and see 4.5 tears below with tabloid. that was who is reporting for from the white house. i statement reporting and eric was because he wasn't doing check check. it is like there is a troll or an actor of tolling.

but i was singing okay, i will go with you on the make a bus to dc and i will sit next to you on the make of us as he watched king of the hill in your laptop and nap. i was like the preparation white house. he knew, the one hand has brought a right person but on the other hand he knew his job was not to hold the powerful to account. come up with a question it was my break open russian scandal. his job was to show up and freak people out and he succeeded. what strikes me so much, and you went into the white house the press began with all of these, performance artist. and the are doing on the disguise of journalism. but what is interesting is you show how is possible for these

reasons. the white house itself physically and then on the other hand the things that i found so jarring and immediately was just shows you how important this book is that after the deplorable these people are so many assorted wrapped into a certain kind of respectability. certainly not after matter. the way that these other people are. you show help also there are implicated so thinking about your book is the week watching marks are compared before congress, what are you doing to keep these people away from her i was and ears on the internet. and so i found myself wondering sort of how you took that all in. i say the answered is no but what do you say these people have learned any lessons about their power with respect to all of this. >> and iaf.

zuckerberg news hand he was asked if he was a board member to be refilled. all of these things. so i don't say they have learned nothing. but depends on what you see by learned. and more zuckerberg is now aware that he cannot just ignore the stuff from a pr perspective. it's just not going to fly. ever since facebook since it was like, you say this girls hot .com before it was facebook. he's been breaking rules and then apologizing to them i say that's just the strategy. do whatever you want and apologize later. i say he knows by this one that this is to date from is it too big. so to me it is not only do we

keep these things out of our i.c.e. and ears. estrada julie recently is to rely on motion of free speech. give a speech at georgetown leslie where he said we believe in free speech and because of free speech, speech is good and the answered to speeches that you like more speech and therefore are doing fine because of free speech. there's 40 minutes of that. soon it is referencing king again. soul shameless. it is also again, this very selective breeding of american history that goes. the facts are accurate. yes we have a first amendment. following. >> yes. [laughter] >> parts that are being left out are okay, because we have a

ood,t how does it then follow that that's the only good worth pursuing. the only freedom the matters. the only kind of agreement that matters, as everyone freedom give me her name through their time and attention. that's not what freedom means it is a kind of freedom if you want to explain it as some in a row sense. but has brought a robust notice of freedom. and sacraments thing but as we talked about earlier a general society thing. now say about freedoms as being artist rights, or concepts as being able to in intentioned with one another but have complex trade-offs. there is a time when things don't need to be said so i'm going to save the first amendment is lovely and i limit let's not get rid of it.

it is wonderful. i don't want anybody that went out political idea is being sent to jail. when i am advocating for is that not be the end of the discussion. just where to me how often we establish those very simple fact of the novocaine we could come everybody good. and just imagine, we did that with the second amendment, so we have established that leaving hillside the woa regulated off-duty cop but if you just see, there's redfern, are we good our chemical home. >> no, you can't. the complicated and the race the complexity of them, and the states of this utopian and the notion that we are done here. we have done our innovative destructive work. i have moved fast and broken things and now it's up to the great arc of history to fix it for us. and here i say their sensing is 90 over and the stock price is

doing fine. so i don't of doing an out-of-pocket loophole. i'm actually, and weirdly, feel that they are levers to push with the dive boat utopians that are not about her name, they got enough of that. and i say they feel like they've got enough that they have or want to be luminaries. they want to have legacies in the names on the side of the building. and i say the wave that one lever that we can continue push as a society as they move out of their offer nobel willie dynamite phase and into the live nobel prizes phase, we can actually collectively as a society in general and this is such sense as are you sure your helping. i canoe you felt like your helping me never sort of you to

account for that but you know you are being held to account a bit. how sure are you. i say that's where these congressional hearings can be useful. and i don't know how much specific law or policy comes out of it but jane is the really useful, it's really useful. shame. >> i say we would like to get some questions from the audience. whether lining up for something else other. >> smo. the way that you sort of make all of that bent in this book is another of my favorite lines we see what we need instead of

small piecemeal solutions are trying to connected entire internet, what we need it urgently as a moral. anything that comply out. not only among the titans and barons with the potential nobel prize but among all of us. i start to get together. this book seems to me with one of the steps he sells with you that we keep that going. >> that is right was kind of able to rationalize my pink writers voice trying to rationalize why it home writing instead of like on the front lines of some demonstration or doing something more directly is socially and that was how i was sort of able to rationalize it to myself as i do say that this book has all the answers but we

do need to try to reconceptualize how we can say about these things more coherently and more robustly and inspired that a book that is about characters would be an attempt to try to knit together in newport vocabulary but yet the soaring reference to that was hanging over a lot of concern in the bucket liz and anti- philosopher. very interesting writer. essentially has no notion from anthropology that the way that we conceive of ourselves is to secretly reduce crime ourselves to ourselves. we don't get to new moral positions are really new profoundly new political positions by out are going each other. there's this enlightenment tennessee. >> lincoln and douglas and was

going to win. you need makes it very compelling case. the way ms. forward is telling better stories. this is in part an attempt to tell a story wraps his arms around more than just glossy hollywood version of how we got here. >> hi firstly thank you for doing this work over the past couple of years. so the rest of us don't have to. [laughter] the discussion of how there were two sides to when you are thinking about these people, no one wants to understand them at the inside and one overly emphasize with them. i'm curious if there was ever a time we do felt that that line and not hospital board and sort of the second part to that question is who is the society overall nature we don't go through that process or even the

blurred process even. >> so there's many different kinds, the red pill metaphor comes from the matrix and you take the red pill and a court tells you the truth. sort of one or more favorite stories. that feeling is really addictive and powerful feeling the feeling of having knowledge. there was never a moment where i was like, it really is the jews. [laughter] there were a couple of times, i will see i didn't know that this two things going to be a hangup for so many people i found it really quite an kind of off. you guys are still doing that. this was a guy [laughter]

>> towards the end where you really meeting the pick of the litter. there's a guy who had been circulating around talking to his family. this is kind of like a novel the sky story. just as that. he was born in like you kelly and tillich new jersey and his parents were from progressive professors. the most progressive title you can imagine it then he threw a series of vegetables and actual steroids. and stop and this place is in the darkest of the dark revocable and there is a lot of things going on but he is married to a jewish woman when he discovers that the jews are the central problem with the world. so yes know that and presents problems. so i've been circling around and

talking to his parents and one side, spares are divorced, one side has disowned him the inside straight see with him and is actually quite his mom is angry like are going to this rally in charlottesville of eliasson shirts and the other shirts are is it too big you know what to look good on tv. and those like the two sides of this experience. he finally called me. we were actually supposed to go out for friday dinner. and i'm on speakerphone with the guy and didn't realize this about me but an journalistic tech where to draw people out and now know my tickets to go right right right to get them to keep talking so that's why and i would go right right right and my wife runs into the room and hinges not agree with the nazi. then in the midst of all of that, is about to recommend maybe the book on the jewish

question. in in the middle of that, he's white, not a jew are you afraid did you google me. did you like you have so many facts at your disposal. and we kept talking about hours after that and then we met up for a beer you want me to beat him at a german peer hall affect so yes, i did not feel that by that guy. we collectively cardigan system. i don't say censorship is entirely the answered preventive guardrails and better algorithms in our building outrage and emotional engagement. some of it is going to be building a society in which this stuff has brought shocking or agent baited or titillating but is just written out of power, has brought interested in a more

say it's not emotional engagement in a positive sense tornado since this would get us out of it and he's going to be so that nobody talks with stuff anymore. >> center not that that guy to go to for optimism our hope and obviously the people you talk to, story of a lot of them is pretty horrifying. so anybody you talk about in the process of this they did give you some help. my.in the darkness. >> i say there are actually few. so one of the things that, some of these people are darkly funny and actually sometimes just inadvertently pathetically funny which gives the reader a good amount of shock. my people have rise and fall hard set. eaten the book on a note of, i speak a lot of these characters are going to be politically imploded. that doesn't mean that their ideas huawei but it does provide you loophole up sort of comfort.

but the real moments of hope for me or this notion of the art does move mistake is to say that our comes by itself. the act is meant. watching the wave in our society has responded house from, boston on like it should not have taken all of that. the fact that the response to that has been such that from the time i started working on this and now, we were totally different way of thinking as a society about the responsibilities that architects of algorithms and the responsibility that this entire sector of our economy, to go from geography to these guys, i don't say they're entirely the answered for the shows just how

quickly this stuff can move. and i went to believe that we could move this fast on this concept, and never thought that the golden boys of tech innovation would be essentially seen as tobacco executives, five years later. so that doesn't help not the date thinking they are literally tobacco grows, just make a shift and lots of surprising and interesting directions. and i'll try to do is.out the window can shift and really scary contractions and longtime, it is a nice surfing. the overton window on same-sex marriage, is the really hopeful thing to say about and that happened because of democratization of media and all the rest of it to so these are forces that can be really powerful to the good. we just have to stop being in denial. [background sounds]

>> i'm just curious about this whole, on some loophole is the human brain hardwired a certain direction towards eight. it is interesting in the edge of trump, within the rock has been lifted off the whole and all of this kind of has seeped kind of so deeply into society, is there something about the human brain i'm just curious because, in the beginning i found the sort of talking that we've sort of income for sized but at the end of the day, because germany to embrace the nazi movement and what is allowing people to take that kind of hate is okay. >> is the good question. i say that hardwire, hardwire thing is out and go back to one

of the internal occupations of our my household is like struggling with the free will exist and are we hardwired into everything so that was a background preoccupation that my wife and i would argue about we do are arguing about this book and i say again, shows up and up but not what i'm talking about one of the nazis that went out the philosophy of public attender who was defender and my child is named after the case they gave us public defenders. we believe that in our household but people are not reducible to the say the worst thing that they have not done. i know i skin all the way there and don't say i should get all the way there but i don't say everyone get stuck in my

hardwired in predetermined are predestined. >> is kind of an excuse and was on hold people in account. i say this things descend is the more vocabulary getting out of control the sales have squishy and soft as opposed to more hard-nosed things like policy or psychology or biology but i say we exist within social structures and language games and speech conditions way more than we want to say and the ability to say that something is unthinkable but controversial in the not controversial but actually sort of desirable not desirable but inevitable like like that i say is what leads people into this kind of very dangerous group say tank aryan is like abstract and obviously

wars matter and you know all of that. and i'm not discounting about all of that in this way or worry about one of the phrases in the book is to change how we talk and to change who we are. and, i mean, that in a literal way. and how we talk is the product of the internet which again has brought good. i say that is where we need to get control of this internet stuff not as a business question or a tech media question as of who we are question. >> we have time for a couple of questions. >> you talked this a little bit in the beginning about how you saw it on your own all of this but i'm wondering we see the brawl of journalism going forward with. i also cover the stuff and i say amplification is the huge concern. in a warning how should we be covering this and how should we be looking at this going

forward. amplification is the huge concern and i say someone may sign thing is always an option not to do the story. and i say that option should be exercise a lot and there were many times that where i talked about the guy at the department while successfully pitched me on his misadventures into dc. everyone else in that room was pitching me to. there was a room of a thousand people who were professional trolls who all wanted me to write about them. one of them got me but 999 of them didn't. so some of it is just not always amplified. another thing is context and how you catch things. as a kind of an critical amplification that is sort of like, i really tried not to pick on anyone but i dig back through the early days and reconstructed how these people learn to be trolls because again they're not

internet rangers not in some tower in moscow. no american citizens operating and hindsight. most of them are not even breaking the rules. so when i went back to reconstruct all they did that, a lot of that was through an critical amplification. so you must feed. omg the 12 worst people on the internet today followed by cut-and-paste of all of this of the said with legs. with her hashtags so you can go in amplifying their. i say this hashtag. are you posting to it. i try not to come down is it too hard on that because we are all just learning and ensure that those busby drivers were doing what they thought was right. i don't say that is in the face of the terrible people in the internet and is always the right answered either because in that kind of look like they're going unchallenged but do say now that we've better than to

uncritically, if you going to do it, it should be much a big big question. then it should be, what am i really adding. and cannot do it in the way believe that there is some amplification that goes to a larger thing and i am learning. a larger pattern that i'm running is it too. i'm actually informing my readers in a good way. >> our final question. >> our practical question. do you hear from any of these people how will you handle that. >> hopefully not on the block. a few of them, so one of the that i wrote about a lot, was a guy mike service you again like a punchline on the internet in many ways but also extremely

influential in many ways that is not fun to hear about. you want to hear it. you don't hear that has been china twitter is actually shaping and is on a daily basis. write a review that was not positive. [laughter] a few people of written some amazon reviews that i was like, forensic speech but i say i know who wrote this. i say that person is very concerned with how one particular cow or character the book is pretrade, so that it meant that kind of stuff and there are people kind of follow me around a twitter but generally there's one person who i was following me around twitter staying you have factual inaccuracies in your book about me. it's weird because he didn't race fan to my fact checkers at all and they would way. there's been a few of those but i say, to the extent that they

thought they were going to read filmy, either they were joking or they now realize how dumb that was. and i say because of these mistakes the journalists have been making for a while with attempts to seem even handed, it is created this false norm will journalists can do is write down what you said. it just sort of give a little sort of weak quick encapsulation of it and that's it. so i say that some of them, they thought that that was it what it was going to be, someone sort of wrinkling his nose lightly insuperable including damages sort of habit ladies and gentlemen. and then when the book was more than that, i say they, this is projection but i say they felt numb, i say they were like oh that was always naïve of us. and i say that to protest about that is it too much we draw attention to the miscalculation. either that or they just never

read it. [laughter] alright ladies and gentlemen. of big round of applause for andrew. [applause] thank you so much guys. . . . .