'Creativity is a team sport'
Fareed speaks with Walter Isaacson, author of The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, about why team work is essential to innovation. Watch the full interview on a GPS special on innovation in America, this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN.
The most important thing part of your book, given your biography of Steve Jobs, is that this isn't really about a single hero or even a couple of heroes.
Right. You know, when I was doing Steve Jobs, I thought he was a great romantic visionary, that lone inventor who, in the garage, does things. And when I asked him, near the end of his life, what product are you most proud of inventing, I thought he'd say the iPod or the iPhone, and he said, no, creating a product is hard, but creating a team, a company, is even harder. The best thing I ever invented was Apple, the team. And we went through it all. He starts with Wozniak as his partner and gets that Macintosh team under the pirate flag banner, all the way through to having Tim Cook, Johnny Ive, the best team in Silicon Valley. So I realized from him that creativity is a team sport, that it's a collaborative effort.
And how do you create a great team of innovators?
You know, the good thing is there's no single here's the five rules. So I think you have to look at it like creating a good baseball team or something – who's our utility player, who's our shortstop, who's our designated hitter, who's our pitcher? But the main thing is two positions. You need a visionary, because without a visionary, everything you do is barren. And you need somebody who can every day execute, because vision without execution is just hallucination. So that's the core of a good team. And then you have to say, OK, and we need a designer, we need an engineer, we need the right people to make it work.
How will governments respond to technology wave?
For more What in the World watch Sundays at 10 a.m. & 1 p.m. ET on CNN
By Global Public Square staff
Several weeks ago, the CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, was a guest on the show. He said that the biggest development in technology today is that the world of bits is bumping up against the world of atoms. To which you might say, what is he talking about?
He was highlighting a crucial trend. For years, the technology revolution was operating within the digital world – changing the way we got words, music, movies – all products that can be produced and consumed in digital form, in other words, in bits.
But now, software and the big data revolution have moved into every aspect of life – getting a taxi, a hotel room, groceries, and other kinds of physical products. And that's causing friction where the bits and bytes of the digital world meet the atoms of the real world.
Kalanick's company is taking on the world's taxi cartels and commissions. Airbnb is battling the world's hotel industry and zoning laws. And the new global currency Bitcoin is puzzling financial regulators. FULL POST
Uber's mission? 'Transportation as reliable as running water'
Watch "Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
Travis Kalanick – You may not know his name, but you probably are well aware of the company he founded and runs, Uber. The company is a tech darling with an astounding valuation of $18 billion. That company has changed the way people get around cities from Raleigh-Durham to Rio to Riyadh, from Stockholm to Sydney to Seoul.
In all, Uber is in 200 cities in 45 countries on six continents and counting. But not everybody loves Uber or the disruption in the transportation market. Germany, for one, just banned Uber from operating anywhere on its soil. Fareed sat down in Uber's "war room" at its San Francisco headquarters.
Watch the video for Kalanick's explanation of what Uber is trying to achieve.
Have Americans given up on space?
For more What in the World watch Sundays at 10 a.m. & 1 p.m. ET on CNN
Fareed speaks with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, about the importance of space exploration – and whether Americans have fallen out of love with space.
What is the Orion spacecraft that NASA is talking about doing?
All of these efforts are trying to get us back into space, with the goal of possibly sending humans to the Mars system, Mars and the moons and the like. And if you have that capacity, then you'll have the capacity to go many other places. You could visit comets. You could go to the Moon easily once you've configured that.
So these are the things that have been discussed. But I don't see it happening in a real tangible way. In the 1960s, we were going to the Moon and every couple of months you saw the next spacecraft ready on the launch pad.
You led off with the ending of the shuttle program. For many people, that was sad. And it shouldn’t have been sad because had the cards been played right, on the next launch pad would have been the next vehicle to continue this adventure in space. And you say, OK, it served us well. Mothball it, but here's what's next. No one was sad at the end of the Mercury program, because the Gemini rockets were ready right there on the launch pad. And no one was sad when Gemini ended because the mighty Saturn 5 was ready to go. FULL POST
Social media poisoning Middle East politics
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CNN speaks with Fareed Zakaria about the killing of three Israeli teens and a Palestinian youth, the role of social media in the Middle East, and the prospects for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. This is an edited version of the transcript.
The violence and the tension between Israelis and Palestinians is nothing new. When did it get to the point that killing innocent teenagers is part of this?
Unfortunately, there’s a long history of terrorism. Palestinians regarded it as a resistance to what they see as an illegitimate occupation. Of course, Israelis regarded it as terrorism. What I think is new here, which is very troubling, is that people are using the new tools of technology, social media, and you're beginning to see radical fringe elements that are able to organize, galvanize support. So what happens after the horrific murder of these three Israelis is you see Israeli right wing extremist groups go on Facebook and create sites that basically say, let's kill Arabs.
On the Arab side, on the Palestinian side, you've had similar kinds of incitement. It's as if we sometimes think that these technologies are somehow going to make everybody get along and cooperate. And instead what's happening is that it's creating a poison within the body politics of both sides, and it's going to be very difficult to walk this down because it's out there now.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has called for calm. Everyone on both sides is calling for calm on this. But can they keep a handle on this, especially when you talk about how now you have this social media element? FULL POST
Why U.S. needs to rethink whistleblower rules
By Dinah PoKempner, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Dinah PoKempner is general counsel at Human Rights Watch. The views expressed are the writer’s own.
Edward Snowden’s revelations, first published a year ago today, sparked a global firestorm of debate and outrage about U.S. surveillance practices, not to mention considerable wing-flapping on Capitol Hill over some exceedingly modest legislative reform. But there’s one subject that many surveillance reformers won’t touch with a 10-foot pole: whistleblower protection for people working for the government in the intelligence and national security sectors.
No legislative proposal to protect a contractor like Snowden has gotten traction on the Hill so far. And intelligence and national security workers lack the enforceable rights that other federal employees have against retaliation for calling out wrongdoing.
Worse, no one in the United States has a clear legislative defense against punishment for revealing government secrets to the public – not even if those secrets concern violations of the Constitution, international law, or outright crimes. Indeed, the heavy blunderbuss of the Espionage Act, a law aimed at punishing leaks to the enemy, doesn’t exempt those who try to alert the public to grave misconduct.
Bewkes: TV is taking over the Internet
Fareed speaks with Jeff Bewkes, chairman and CEO of Time Warner, CNN's parent company, about the future of television. Explore how television has evolved since the 1960s during the premiere episode of “The Sixties” this Thursday on CNN at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Bewkes: Television is a thriving business, not just in America, but all over the world. Advertising revenue, subscription revenue has all come in to create much bigger TV budgets, much more participation of movie actors in TV. And just to think of one show which is dear to my heart, "Game of Thrones," for example, I think it has the biggest cast of any show that's on TV today.
And this is all about the kind of budgets that television can support. So TV is now in a second golden age. And a...
And you think that golden age is mainly because of what forces? What's making this happen?
Bewkes: Well, really, one of the secrets about television today is there's all these channels. And everybody loves their favorite show. But as I think most people know, your favorite channel now may be different than your brother's or your father's.
So in the old days, everyone was sitting around. Every house had one television. And today, there's a screen for everybody. There's not only TVs across every room, but now – this is probably the untold story – television is taking over the Internet. And what the Internet does, is it...
Wait, say that again – so the Internet is not taking over television, television is taking over the Internet? FULL POST
Should we have the right to be forgotten online?
For more What in the World watch Sundays at 10 a.m. & 1 p.m. ET on CNN
By Global Public Square staff
Do you have something in your past that you would rather forget? A youthful indiscretion that led to a run-in with the police perhaps? A debt that you "forgot" to pay maybe? How about a quickie marriage one night in Vegas that ended in a quickie divorce? In the Internet Age, these are the types of things that can now live forever.
Except perhaps, if you live in the European Union. Let me explain.
Last week, the European Union's highest court decided that parts of your past have a "right to be forgotten" on the Internet. It’s a ruling that effectively censors search engines like Google. Here's how it happened:
A Spanish man filed a complaint against Google because searches of his name turned up links to a 1998 newspaper notice that mentioned some debts. He argued that this old, now irrelevant information infringed on both his dignity and his privacy. And, on Tuesday, the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice agreed. Google has to stop linking to the Spaniard's property notice, the court said.
Why U.S. should care about surveillance abroad
By Laura Pitter, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Laura Pitter is a senior national security researcher at Human Rights Watch. The views expressed are the writer’s own.
Under growing pressure to rein in domestic surveillance, President Barack Obama recently offered a proposal to end the government's bulk collection of Americans' phone records. Under the new plan, those records would stay with phone companies but be accessible to the government with the permission of a judge. While the proposal is a step in the right direction, many questions remain about how exactly it will be implemented. But even more important, it is just a small part of what needs to be done on comprehensive surveillance reform.
Still left unaddressed are mass bulk collection and indiscriminate U.S. surveillance practices abroad, which affect many more people and include the collection of the actual content of internet activities and phone calls, not just metadata.
A number of media reports, based on documents obtained by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, have exposed the vast and sweeping nature of these programs. According to one story, the NSA taps into main communication links of data centers around the world and collects millions of records every day, including metadata, text, audio and video. Another revealed that a program called "Mystic" had allegedly been recording “every single” telephone conversation taking place in one, unnamed country and then storing them in a 30-day rolling data base that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive. Another, last month, reported that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a court that handles intelligence requests, often in secret, authorized the NSA to monitor "Germany” – as in the country of. And yet another claimed that the NSA has developed and deployed an automated system, codenamed “Turbine,” that could potentially infect millions of computers and networks worldwide with malware implants that can covertly record audio and video.
Will computers make human workers obsolete?
For more What in the World watch Sundays at 10 a.m. & 1 p.m. ET on CNN
By Global Public Square staff
Many people are worried that in tomorrow's economy, a machine might take their job. If you think your job is safe, you would do well to remember Watson – that's the IBM computer that beat Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings. If a computer can handle the complex challenge of playing a trivia game like Jeopardy, it is mastering the kinds of subtle judgments that we used to think of as the sole province of humans.
Eric Brynjolfsson and his MIT colleague Andrew McAfee recently wrote a book called The Second Machine Age – an insightful and sometimes startling look at how computers are becoming smarter by the minute. They note that computers can pull off some truly remarkable tasks these days: driving cars by themselves, and even talking to us.
Why is this happening? It's because while all machines improve over time, computers do so on an exponential scale. Moore's law states that computer processing power doubles every two years or so.
A fascinating way to visualize the power of exponential growth is the myth of the invention of chess. In one telling, the inventor of chess – a brilliant man from India – impresses a ruler with his new game so much so that the ruler invites him to name any reward. The inventor's request seems modest: he asks that just one grain of rice be placed on the first square of a chessboard, and then please double the grains on every new square, until all 64 squares have rice.
Understanding the 'Second Machine Age'
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Fareed speaks with Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor of management at MIT's Sloan School, and Andrew McAfee, a scientist at the MIT Center for Digital Business about the future of technology and their book The Second Machine Age.
OK, so you guys end the book optimistically. And I want to give you a chance to explain that, even though I think a lot of this will trouble people. So what can you do when confronting this reality of rising productivity and machines that are replacing humans, even at the very high end of the food chain?
McAfee: Yes. So for now, we're still adding jobs every month to the economy. So we have not totally decoupled job growth from economic growth. That indicates that the right policies for right now are to stimulate economic growth. Job growth will come along with it. So let's get our infrastructure in great shape. Let's get our immigration policies correct. Let's fix our educational system and let's create a great environment for entrepreneurship, not because some entrepreneurs get rich and we love rich people, but because entrepreneurs are the great engine of job creation. That's the right Econ 101 playbook for the short-term.
Am I going to be out of a job?
Brynjolfsson: No time soon, but we all have to keep reinventing the way we work together with computers. And that's the part that's lagging right now. The technology is racing ahead, but our skills, our organizations, our economic policies, are lagging behind. We wanted to change the conversation with this book and get people thinking about how to speed up that part of society.
Watch the video for the full interview.
How India can leapfrog to the future
Watch ‘India at a Crossroads,’ a GPS special, this Sunday at 10 a.m. & 1 p.m. ET on CNN
By Barnik Maitra and Adil Zainulbhai, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Barnik C. Maitra is a partner at McKinsey & Company’s Mumbai office and co-editor of Reimagining India. Adil Zainulbhai is Chairman of McKinsey India and co-editor of Reimagining India. The views expressed are their own.
In a village 100 miles from any cities in Andhra Pradesh, a young woman, three months pregnant, is getting her first and only medical check-up. This is happening on board a visiting medical van that now comes to the village every month. The paramedic gives her basic vitamins and enters various vital parameters into an online data base. Two weeks later, when she feels a little unwell, she calls a toll-free number from her family’s mobile phone, connects a $1 monitor to it, and talks to a doctor. He studies her vital signs through the monitor and reassures her that everything is fine this time. Five months and five such virtual check-ups later, it is time for her to go to the hospital. The online doctor sends her an ambulance, which drops her 90 miles away at the nearest hospital, for a safe delivery.
Thousands of mothers in Andhra Pradesh and around India are benefiting from the frugal technologies of wireless connectivity, sensors, software, and having a safer childbirth.
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