>> this is "bbc newsnight." funding for this presentation is made possible by the freeman foundation of new york, stowe, vermont, and honolulu. newman's own foundation. and union bank.

>> union bank has put its global financial strength to work for a wide range of companies. what can we do for you? >> european leaders meet in brussels as the greek prime minister tries to sell his people on tougher times ahead. we hear from greek and british politicians and the assistant to the president. remember lehman brothers opened the -- have you ever wondered how google seems to deliver exactly what you want to hear? instead of broadening their horizons, maybe it is trapping as a side of our own bubble -- trapping us inside of our own bubble. >> the mess in greece was not formally on the agenda of the eu summit but it was on the minds of all of the gathering leaders. the key is whether the prime minister can win a vote next

week and seeking a approval for tax increases. some are saying that this is the biggest crisis since the second world war for europe. >> we must build a kind of united states of europe. in this way only with hundreds of millions of joiners will be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which makes life worth living. >> europe's union group out of the experience of what happened when the national interest is pursued to its ultimate and most terrible conclusion. what could have been more logical to the british were later than assuming those powers for the common good. right from the start, the european community was seen as a

mechanism for binding germany peacefully within the european family. people were still frustrated from the horrors of war. in the decades of the past, its purpose has shifted suddenly to moderating what would otherwise be political and economic power of unified germany. >> the founding of the cold and steel community in 1951 marked the start of a process. >> this is the first session. >> the sixth nation, part of the euro, sought to make -- possible by closer economic integration. >> to beginning to moderate germany and to contain it, later on, the core mission of the european union became peace and cooperation with the european

union. now, i think we're moving in the directions of the european union which might be capable of coordinating economic policy more than in the past. they are stabilized in the cells are trying to export this to other parts of the world. >> the european community flourished and even britain decided to put itself into this new creation. the self-interest was beginning to take over. >> for the british, the appeal was in growing a single economic space and pushing forward ever greater european integration. >> the president said that he wanted the european parliament to be the democratic party of the community. he wanted the commission to be the executive. he wanted the council of executives to be the senate, no, no, no.

>> the collapse of the soviet bloc has created a united germany much bigger than france or britain and offered the possibility for many new countries to join. elites saw the chance to push for further integration to bind his growing family together. >> this is created by. people have something like that. that does not mean that this is some delete idea which is shut down the throats of people. -- some elite that is shoved down the throats of some people. >> the elites began to run afoul of public opinion. france and the netherlands voted against the constitution. national interest was

reasserting itself. these days, germany boasts the europe -- boasts the largest population in europe. it is the largest exporting economy. an increasing number of germans wonder why they should remain quite so closely tied to a european union that requires them to keep bailing out less successful members and so restrict their economic freedom of action. >> the need to finance huge deficits in greece or spain has produced anchor in germany. propping up the euro has become horribly expensive. that leads some to want to pitch it. supporters of the european union urged resume in the process of integration. >> there are always two competing designs. one is that what you see, no 11 want to pay for economic mistakes of another country.

in this case, greece. on the other side, they would like to have a friendly relationship with all of the neighbors. also, there must important trading partners. when we put these two in balance, the pro european argument is always winning. >> some see a chance for another leap forward and this will not simply garner support across the union. for as long as germany and others are prepared to keep bailing out the hero, chances for the itself are not likely to survive. >> i spoke to the greek communist member parliament, a member of the british parliament, and the assistant to the president of the european council. >> is this the end for greece in the euro? >> there might be but there

could be a chance for europe itself because i think that this is practically the end of the modern europe. the euro is not a solution and it starts being a problem not only for greeks but for the western economy. by killing greeks, killing the future, taking their country, their streets, there islands, everything we have produced for years and years now, this will not save the system. there is a problem in the whole system. >> let me bring in richard. the euro will not save greece, this might be the problem. >> it would be a far worse situation if it was not receiving a loan. we tend to forget that it is actually doing rather well. it has had a low inflation rate

ever since it started. it has lower public date -- lower public debt. this is better on all of those counts when we say for instance, the pound. >> this is increasing in the streets of greece. you have the austerity measures. >> we have three countries that have run up effective debt. there are countries outside that have done that as well. address thatto with some help. loans, not grants. we're not giving them money from fellow euros own countries. >> you were actually nodding when -- was talking. is this an i told you so moment for you? >> we have been arguing that

countries should be allowed to default on the debt and decouple from the euro. we have been arguing this. >> would that be good for greece? >> pressing them with a high interest loan, another who was somebody in debt is not one to help them. this has not only add it to the debt that the greeks have to pay back, i think it would be better to allow them to default than to decouple from the year up -- from the euro. >> i wonder how far you think that the elites in europe are disconnected from the people. >> definitely, they are completely disconnected. we're going back about 300 years. wheat lose every working class right. we are losing what people fought

for. -- we are losing every working class right. there is no future. this is not a state, this is just an area. some make money. i think that the north is making money while the south loses. we cannot have the same currency, the same measures which exporting countries like germany and importing countries like greece. after all, you cannot have people saying i did a mistake, i trusted you, i put you in. if you go to any back in london -- bank in london and you find someone who does not have enough money, you don't give them a credit card. >> that means that greece should not have been allowed in the first place. >> no, greece must of been gauging from big organizations that are not helping the new generation fight for the future, like nato. we have beautiful son and we still have a huge american base

where airplanes began their trip against libya. >> that is another issue. this question of the elites being out of touch, people in germany are saying that. why are we working so hard to pay work for these countries. you except at that point is true, that of the elites are out of touch? >> they are usually elected representatives. they are confronted with the independence, whether we like it or not. they have found out that greece has got itself into a very difficult situation through its own decisions. we are trying to give them time to restore credibility and to get rid of that deficit. we're helping by loans, not grants. it would be far worse for greece if we were not doing that. the idea that we could let

greece go bankrupt, learn the lessons of a few years ago. remember lehman brothers in the usa. it has an effect throughout the world. this is the same with greece. if greece started to default, it would have an effect on banks all across europe. >> would it the european project not survive? >> britain has the third highest level of liability. >> would the european project not survive if greece was allowed to defaults? >> it has nothing to do with european project. a simple fact with lehman brothers, it had nothing to do with the dollar. this would have a huge negative economic consequences across the rest of europe. >> richard, and other people who

earn their living by arguing for more in europe, but in the real world we have to confront reality. mathematics means that greece's debts are increasing faster than the economy. greece cannot be put in a situation where she is not going to be able to pay back her debt without some kind of default. this is mathematics, not political opinion. >> there was a question of a lack of leadership and he agreed. >> you can say the same of your own party. >> i'm very pleased that the prime minister said note to a greek bailout. >> he said, no to the stability mechanism. >> he needs to apply that same logic not just to greece but to portugal and to ireland as well. for the past 13 months, the

government has been increasing the liabilities and by increasing the liability by 27 billion pounds. that could double the size of the british army. that is a huge amount of money. i am pleased that we are realizing that we cannot continue to throw ever greater liabilities at sorting out a problem not of our own doing. >> on that point of leadership, the cannot imagine a call letting this get out of hand in the way of hand -- that in this get out of hand, can you? >> we have 27 sovereign countries. you cannot just ram things through. there are 27 democracies. you have to build an agreement and consensus to do anything. this is really easy to say, if you like america or something else. that does not work in the european union because we are 27 different countries. >> we will begin and end with

greece but i want to repeat this question which is that greece should not have been allowed into the euro in the first place. it did not meet the condition and it is obvious why. >> i have been listening about the economy and mathematics. you cannot judge a company like this is lynn brothers. this is a country, this is a state. this is a state of living human beings, very hard working people. when lehman brothers fell down and blew out the whole system, no one accused of the employees of lehman brothers. they accused the system, the directors. this is a political problem. with what kind of growth, with what kind of economic system, some of them were traded after wars. we have yugoslavia, now we have

three, four, five different states. we have different economies, we have different interests, and we cannot have a europe that uses the euro as a weapon to penalize more poor countries. the problem now for greece is that it is not only surviving, this is designing the future. we cannot expect anyone to have its day with no future. >> the internet has democratized knowledge. you can find out almost anything. that is not true. supposing we are getting told what some believe that we want to hear or even worse, and algorithm has decided what to feed us. we talked to the author of "the ble."r bobbub

>> have you looked in the mirror lately? you will know what the future of the internet looks like. this is that we are entering the era of personalization is. this serves up a few of the world which matches our own. increasingly, we are in our own baubles. this filters of stuff which is not match our own life and tendencies. let's see what this means in practice if we look inside of mine. >> this is now pinpointing where you are because this is picked up where you are looking. it is using geographical information. >> this is a fairly anonymous message but alongside of it are advertisements for china.

my wife has been in china and we had been using female. >> some people can pick up a lot of stuff. they can pick up the subject matter. they can pick up all sorts of things. then you end up with china being advertised. a lot people find this creepy. >> one example is that the same searches can produce different results for different people. i am on a journey to test the theory. i am going to get you to type the things -- the same things i have searched for. we will start with banana bread. what have you got? you have got just about

identical results for me. you have two bbc recipes. can you typed in, it is wind power economic? yet again, you have got an eye to the results. is a wind power economic? it looks like you have the same results again. >> that did not work very well. you can see personalization in action when it comes to on-line advertising. previous searches and habits get remembered and trigger

advertisements that might not be relevant to you. this is particularly noticeable if you have a web-based account which stops messages and throws up advertisements that you might want to look at. what some people are making serious money in personalization. -- some people are making serious money in personalization. this company is showing advertisers how to reach you even though you have left them. >> you will continue to search the internet. we will find that user on a website. this will contain products that they would like. this personalizes the advertisements. one of the key things is that it makes advertising work. this continues to be free so we can use the internet for free. >> maybe we will find ourselves

trapped and our own bubble. here's a thought, maybe we would like to be. ♪ >> we are joined by the author of the "filter bubble," and a correspondent from "slate," magazine. >> the challenge here is that this is happening invisibly. we don't see it work. we don't know who google thinks we are. by the same token, we don't know what basis that facebook is showing us. as the power shifts from human editors who actually have journalistic judgments, today's algorithms, you are more likely to see things that you might click but you don't know what you're missing. >> what do you make of this anxiety? >> i would hate to reduce this question to a merely in purple

one -- to a nearly encircle one that i was surprised that this was happening on google. i found that some people i gathered for a test on twitter with different politics in different parts of the country or receiving virtually the same results. i think there is no evidence to say that we're becoming a more narrow or parochial or bubbly people as a result of the filtering going on in the internet. we are being exposed to a wide array is of viewpoints and sources, sources of information. we have enough things to worry about in terms of the suppression of internet freedom, the risks to democracy, not to focus on something that could happen but it's not happening. >> let us continue with this fictional concern for a moment

or two. >> we could create a anecdotes'. there has been some evidence on this with google. the journal "first monday," says that 64% of the results in the study differed between those on personalization works. >> you are taking people for idiots. if i want to find out what happened, i can go to the 10 downing street. i can go to some one that has consorted with my political preferences, left-wing, right wing, whatever. many people don't know what they're doing. >> in google and facebook are the ones that are assuming that people only want to hear from people like them. they are feeding them stuff.

>> the report that we did -- >> these are anecdotes. we have research. i have talked to google about this. they don't pretend that there are not differences. they are quite clear that some differences, it could have a political bias. course i don't think that they acknowledge that. if you look at historical perspective on this, for nearly all of human history, all people lived in bubbles and had no choice. either they had no outside information or limited access and a very limited source of ranges and now, for the first time, we all have access to unlimited range of information and it is possible that people will not take advantage that and they will go deeper into their rabbit warrens and only associate people who agree and only find out more about

specific things they are interested in. i think there's a lot of reason to think that the opposite is happening. >> what i think is happening is that in social networks where people are receiving information essentially mediated through people that they have identified as cantors spirits, that a certain happening there, isn't it? >> if you don't read a newspaper and you don't watch the news night and you did not get any news and now is of the three facebook, you have very little information. >> how much of your traffic comes from google are facebook? >> not very much, to tell you the truth. i wish we got more traffic. >> most are 50% or more. that is "the new york times," and another website. the point is that some stores will be doing very well and others will not in part based on whether you can click the

headline or not and that has a real serious consequences for journalism. in means that some stores make it out the public and others do not. >> that is all for this week, from all of us, goodbye. >> funding was made possible by the freeman foundation of new york, stowe, vermont, and honolulu. newman's own foundation. and union bank. >> union bank has put its global

expertise to work for a wide range of companies. what can we do for you. >> "bbc newsnight" was presented by kcet los angeles.