Martin Gurri on the Revolt of the Public

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Ethics, Philosophy, Economics, Books, Science, Business, Courses, Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Interviews, Education, History

4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2020

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Author Martin Gurri, Visiting Fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, talks about his book The Revolt of the Public with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Gurri argues that a digital tsunami--the increase in information that the web provides--has destabilized authority and many institutions. He talks about the amorphous nature of recent populist protest movements around the world and where we might be headed politically and culturally.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:12.0	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast,
0:17.0	and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.0	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going back to 2006.
0:27.0	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:33.0	Today is February 20, 2020, and my guest is author Martin Goury.
0:38.0	He has a former CIA analyst and the author of the Revolt of the Public, Maran Welpney, Cantalk.
0:43.0	Great to be here.
0:44.0	Revolt of the Public was first published in 2014, which seems about a hundred years ago.
0:50.0	You summarize the central idea as, quote, the information technologies of the 21st century
0:57.0	have enabled the public composed of amateurs, people from nowhere,
1:01.0	to break the power of the political hierarchies of the industrial age.
1:05.0	Expand how you came to see that, and what that means exactly.
1:10.0	Well, as you say, I was an analyst at CIA.
1:15.0	I probably had the least glamorous job there.
1:19.0	I didn't have my double-o license to kill or the beautiful girls.
1:24.0	I was an analyst of global media, and for the earliest part of my career, that was very straightforward.
1:30.0	There was a trickle of open information, and every country had its equivalent of New York Times,
1:39.0	a source that said the agenda.
1:41.0	So if the president wanted to know how his policies were playing in France,
1:45.0	you went to Le Monde, you went to Le Figaro, we just literally two newspapers.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.