Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls'

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Business

4.3 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2017

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Author and former New York Times columnist Noam Cohen talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new book, "The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball." In the book, Cohen argues that a libertarian philosophy that is hostile to outsiders and resistant to regulation is negatively affecting our society and communities. He diagnoses the problems with Google, Facebook and Twitter, noting that the latter has a business incentive to do nothing about hate speech and bots. However, Cohen says he's hopeful that Congress and regular people are "waking up" to the dangers of letting Silicon Valley run the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's show is sponsored by GoCD, a continuous delivery server built by ThoughtWorks.
0:05.4	GoCD helps your team release software more frequently, consistently and reliably.
0:09.6	Download and use GoCD for free.
0:12.3	Visit gocd.org slash recode.
0:15.9	Hi, I'm Cara Swisher, Executive Editor of Recode.
0:19.5	You may know me as the real know-it-all, but only when I have access to Google.
0:23.4	But in my spare time, I talk tech and you're listening to recode-decode, a podcast about
0:27.2	tech and media's key players, big ideas, and how they're changing the world we live in.
0:31.4	You can find more episodes of recode-decode on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music,
0:36.1	or wherever you listen to podcasts, or just visit recode.net slash podcasts for more.
0:42.4	Today in the Red Chair is Noam Cohen, a former New York Times columnist who wrote about
0:46.8	the influence of the internet on the larger culture.
0:50.0	He has a new book out called The Know-it-alls, The Rise of Silicon Valley as a political powerhouse
0:55.5	and social wrecking ball.
0:57.5	Welcome to recode-decode.
0:59.5	Wow, you couldn't have had a more pertinent book come out right now, essentially.
1:04.0	So let's talk a little bit about you, like your history, so we have some sense of where
1:08.8	you came from.
1:09.8	Sure, so I, right, I used to write a column called Link by Link for the Times, and it ran
1:13.8	the business section on Mondays, but I often did not write about businesses.
1:17.4	I really like writing about Wikipedia, free software.
1:19.6	I was really interested in how technology was affecting society.
	...

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