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  2. December 2016

December 2016

The year of the demagogue: how 2016 changed democracy

[Commentary] Something profound is happening in advanced democracies. The forces at work are cultural, economic, social and political, driven in part by rapid technological change. In political terms, Brexit and the Trump triumph highlight the decline of the party system and the end of the old left/right divide. There is a widespread disillusion among western democracies with globalisation. The progressive abandonment of controls on capital, goods, services and labour, epitomised by the launch of the single European market and the single currency, reached its apogee in the summer of 2007. In 2016, we saw, finally, that this period — call it Globalisation 2.0 — is over. Free trade has become ever harder to sell to a public worried about job security and the competitive threat from developing countries.

Free movement is also in question. Trump’s winner-takes-all approach and his lack of respect for minority rights violates a cornerstone of democracy and free society, as set out in the 10th of the Federalist Papers written by James Madison, one of the founding fathers. His position mirrors the more extreme Brexiter demands that the “will of the people” be respected at all costs. Anyone who raises objections — the media, the opposition or, indeed, the judiciary — risks being branded “enemies of the people”. This is not merely populism run rampant. It is a denial of politics itself, which, as the late scholar Bernard Crick reminds us, is the only alternative to government by coercion and the tyranny of the majority. We have been warned.

[Lionel Barber is the FT’s editor]

How FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Became a Net Neutrality Champion

When Tom Wheeler was tapped by President Barack Obama to lead the Federal Communications Commission in 2013, many public interest advocates were skeptical, if not downright hostile, toward his appointment, because of his lengthy background as a top lobbyist for the cable industry, from 1979 to 1984, and the wireless industry, from 1992 to 2004. But over the next three years, Chairman Wheeler won over the public interest community, and infuriated his former clients in the cable and wireless industries, by successfully spearheading the most pro-consumer telecom policy reforms in a generation, including the agency’s landmark policy protecting network neutrality, and agency rules protecting consumers from broadband industry privacy abuses.

“Tom Wheeler has been—by far—the best FCC Chairman in the 45 years I have practiced communications law,” said Andrew Schwartzman, Benton Senior Counselor at the Public Interest Communications Law Project at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation.

FCC Transition Team Meets With Chairman Wheeler

President-elect Donald Trump's Federal Communications Commission transition team has met twice with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, the chairman said at his post-meeting press conference. Chairman Wheeler said he had met once individually with team leader Jeff Eisenach and with all three members on a second occasion. He called them good meetings and said he made it clear that if there were any issues that came up, "I was the guy to call first to solve those." Chairman Wheeler has experience in transitions, having helped the Barack Obama Administration move in back in 2008 as an FCC transition team leader.

How can Trump keep his promise on jobs? Prepare us for the digital age.

[Commentary] Computer science is one of the fastest-growing industries in America, and yet computer science education does not receive the same treatment as foreign language or math and is largely absent from the national K-12 curriculum. This precludes many US citizens from considering the field as a viable career path and has led to a shortage of US-born workers. By providing for the voluntary nationwide adoption of K-12 computer science curriculum, the incoming administration can ensure the employment of the next generation of American innovators. It is a potent way for President-elect Trump to deliver on his promise of greater jobs and better wages for the American people.

[Paula Stern is former chairwoman of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and founder and chairwoman of The Stern Group Inc]

New Report: Health Wearable Devices Pose New Consumer and Privacy Risks

Personal health wearable devices that consumers are using to monitor their heart rates, sleep patterns, calories, and even stress levels raise new privacy and security risks. Watches, fitness bands, and so-called “smart” clothing, linked to apps and mobile devices, are part of a growing “connected-health” system in the U.S., promising to provide people with more efficient ways to manage their own health. But while consumers may think that federal laws will protect their personal health information collected by wearables, the report found that the weak and fragmented health-privacy regulatory system fails to provide adequate safeguards. This report provides an overview and analysis of the major features, key players, and trends that are shaping the new consumer-wearable and connected-health marketplace.

Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit From Yahoo Deal

Verizon Communications is exploring a price cut or possible exit from its $4.83 billion pending acquisition of Yahoo!, after the company reported a second major e-mail hack affecting as many as 1 billion users, apparently. While a Verizon group led by AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong is still focused on integration planning to get Yahoo up and running, another team, walled off from the rest, is reviewing the breach disclosures and the company’s options, apparently.

Facebook unveils new features to fight fake news

Facebook is rolling out new features to combat fake news on its platform, including flagging disputed stories, following a wave of criticism at the social media giant. The new tools include a streamlined reporting process to identify fake news, flagging those stories, improved sharing analytics and steps to tackle spammers. The changes were introduced by Facebook vice president of product management Adam Mosseri. “We believe in giving people a voice and that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves, so we're approaching this problem carefully,” Mosseri wrote. “We've focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both our community and third party organizations." Under the changes, users will now have an option to report news stories they believe are fake by checking a box.

Fake news is a convenient scapegoat, but the big 2016 problem was the real news

It was real news from establishment outlets that made the difference in this campaign. The sum total of this media coverage — real stories based on editorial decisions about how to weight and present real facts — was to give the public the impression that two similarly ethically flawed candidates were running against each other in an election with low policy stakes. The reporters and editors responsible for that coverage can reasonably (if a bit absurdly) consider themselves proud of the work that led the public to that conclusion, or they can consider themselves ashamed of it. But the idea that voters were moved by fake stories about the pope rather than all-too-real ones about email servers is a preposterous evasion.

The internet is broken. Starting from scratch, here's how I'd fix it.

[Commentary] My big idea is that we have to fix the internet. After forty years, it has begun to corrode, both itself and us. It is still a marvelous and miraculous invention, but now there are bugs in the foundation, bats in the belfry, and trolls in the basement. If we could start from scratch, here’s what I think we would do:

Create a system that enables content producers to negotiate with aggregators and search engines to get a royalty whenever their content is used, like ASCAP has negotiated for public performances and radio airings of its members’ works.
Embed a simple digital wallet and currency for quick and easy small payments for songs, blogs, articles, and whatever other digital content is for sale.
Encode emails with an authenticated return or originating address.
Enforce critical properties and security at the lowest levels of the system possible, such as in the hardware or in the programming language, instead of leaving it to programmers to incorporate security into every line of code they write.
Build chips and machines that update the notion of an internet packet. For those who want, their packets could be encoded or tagged with metadata that describe what they contain and give the rules for how it can be used.

[Walter Isaacson is the CEO of the Aspen Institute]

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