Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment.

The most important shift in mindset that we're trying to bring about is moving from a passive acceptance of the effects of technology to a recognition that the effects of technology on society are in our control.

But that doesn't mean that they are only in our control via the actions of elected officials. They're in our control because all of us engage with technology in a variety of ways.

Some of us design and build technology. Some of us work in the businesses that invest in technology. Most, if not all of us, are users of technology.

And then of course, all of us are citizens who influence the way that our politics shapes technology. So there's a role for all of us in affecting this debate. And we can't reduce what's required to Will Congress Act.

Good morning, everyone. I hope everyone is having a great start to the day. I'm recording this on Wednesday night, but I will tell you that as you are listening to this right now, I am preparing slash taping my first ever guest hosting appearance on breaking points.

I'm filling in crystal. I'm going to be doing that today and then this upcoming Tuesday. I'm incredibly excited. So as soon as you finish this episode, be sure to go over breaking points and see how soccer and I actually play off each other in a totally different format.

I've hosted once before. That was way, way, way earlier in my media career. It was actually right before COVID. So hopefully I've improved somewhat by then, but super excited.

I'll check it out. Secondly, this episode is going to be a solo one with me. I recorded this when soccer was out of commission during his COVID kerfuffle slash scare. It's a really great conversation. I've brought on the authors of system error or big tech went wrong and how we can reboot this book is available preorder and it is out this upcoming Tuesday, September 7th.

I have two of the authors, Mayhan Sahame and Jeremy Weinstein. They are actually Stanford professors. This is basically culminating this higher ed focused week that we have here with the start of the school year coming upon us.

The basic idea for this show is everyone here knows I'm really obsessed with tech, but I'm incredibly frustrated by people's inability to bring clear thinking, good faith arguments and even just useful frameworks how they confront these issues, whether or not they're content moderation.

The size of the company themselves, how founders should run the company, the how media should actually cover the companies themselves. So this is a great episode for bringing two professors who focused incredibly deeply on coming up with frameworks and answers.

The people are going to think about another great example of what we're trying to build here at the realignment where the idea here is look, no matter how you think about these issues, what's it we've come together and try to think about them in a useful way so that we can actually move forward.

The real focus of this episode is the idea that we have the ability as citizens, as users, as founders, as designers to actually take the various decisions that we're putting in front of you to actually do something with that.

It's pretty easy to get cynical and think there's nothing we can do about things, but professors Sahame and Weinstein are really good pushing back on the bit that I brought there, but it's always refreshing to think about these things from a different angle even if we disagree.

So of course, huge thank you to Lincoln Network, supporting the work of this podcast and a final reminder, go check out Breaking Points today. Hope we do a great job for all of you. Let's dive into the opposite.

Maron Jeremy, welcome to the realignment. Thanks so much for having us. Thanks very much for hosting.

What I really appreciated about system error is the fact that you all are taking this approach to these big questions about the feature of the technology industry and the US from the perspective of there are all these open questions and ways the society are attempting to figure out what exactly we should answer those questions with and how we should actually think about the questions themselves.

So I want to take this episode in a really straightforward manner. You all teach at Stanford. So I'm going to pretend I could have gotten into Stanford after high school and I will ask you questions that is going to come to mind immediately after all of this.

The first one of which is at the start of the book, you make clear that for the past 10 years or so we've seesawed between tech optimism. It's 2011, software is eating the world, Google Glass is coming down the line. Everyone including you Jeremy and show your talk about this is going into the Obama administration because the tech industry has something to teach the US government.

That's through with the tech optimism piece. We then obviously for a variety of complicated reasons that we'll get into during this show shift to the more as you put it dystopian perspective on the tech industry a lot of this is going to tie into the election of President Trump in 2016 debates about Facebook.

Then there's this broader conversation around phone addiction and privacy, all those different bits, but you two are positing that we are trying to move beyond these two extremes towards a more nuanced position. So a great way to start a full list to you first, Maron, is how do you really think of us as a country, like where are we in terms of relationship with the tech industry if we're not dystopian and if we're not purely just overly optimistic.

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