A Commentary on the New Digital Republic
Yesterday Trevor Noah, comedian and anchorman, visited The New School with Brad Smith, President and Legal Chief of Microsoft, to talk about privacy, tech rights, digital citizenship, and governance. This is a very timely moment for this visit, featuring the tech establishment becoming one of the most innovative companies in the world right now, and a curious and witty political and social commentator, discussing the pressing topic of weaponized Tech and Media.
Mainly, I’ve been following Noah’s TV show and podcast, finding a refreshing voice in political affairs, and a measured perspective in the social and cultural conversation. His embrace of different viewpoints in the long-form talk show, but especially his origins, his fresh formats, crisp tone, and pointedly critical satire is closing the gap between political theater and a disengaged audience. The meaningful and humorous digestion performed by Noah is an excellent example of the scope of cultural criticism in our digital era.
That makes me reflect on the appetite that Lippmann cries to be an “unattainable deal.”[1] Critics of the Digital Era point that one of the most significant risks is the drastic reduction of our attention span and fragmentation or decontextualization of our information sources. There is no denying that the news cycle overwhelms us and sometimes impair our discerning capabilities, even in educated societies. In fact, education -Lippmann says- cannot grasp the pace of change and potentially ends on disappointment, true in 1925 and 2019, including polarization, apathy, disengagement.
The Digital Liberalism
There is an underlying call for American pragmatism[2] in times of extremism, partisan doctrine, and the hacking of the electoral mind. Interestingly, that calling is now led by the Tech industry, whose founders and CEO’s have a standing tradition of regarding themselves as Liberals and moderates. Take Microsoft’s Bill Gates or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, richest men on earth, philanthropists and Media guardians (the ownership relationship of Bezos with the Washington Post is quintessential on this).
Brad Smith himself has become one of the most grounded and diplomatic leaders in the Tech world, commanding governments and businesspeople to convey non-partisan, global consent regarding freedom of speech, data privacy, digital citizenship, and digital human rights, a sort of digitized Geneva convention.
While the world of politics and some Media outlets are looking for exploits on the attention span, the tampering of voters and disinformation spread, these moderate leaders, capitalist-driven innovators, tech and media liberalism heirs are trying to raise legitimate concerns on the perils of the Humanism ideals, literally, standing up in the defense of democracy and summoning on the precarious state of the intellectual world and its disenfranchising, wondering themselves what is the future of this new Digital Republic: global, borderless, made of networks, but outpacing the limited speed of traditional communication and sharing of ideas and replacing it with the massive and immediate reach of the digital widespread.
That is precisely what happened yesterday, where Noah and Smith represented the calling of the Media and Tech industry and no cultural and political criticism could abide to be a bystander in this worldly and surpassing reality.
