I was a speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival for the first time last week. I spoke about trust, in particular the rise of populism, the dispersion of authority and the increasing self-reference of those reliant on social media. There was particular interest in the horizontal, peer-to-peer communications supplanting top-down opinion on everything from point of purchase to political campaigns. Here are my observations from other sessions I attended throughout the week:
1. Media Picture 2016 — There is a huge rise in digital video and a switch to mobile devices, with 44 of the 50 top U.S. market newspapers having more consumption on mobile than desktop. The head of the Pew Foundation, Michael Dimock, said that the main source of information for Conservatives is Fox News (47 percent of total), whereas Liberals have more dispersed sources (CNN 15 percent, NPR 12 percent, The New York Times 12 percent, MSNBC 12 percent). He continued, “The sources of news on the election are cable news 24 percent, social media 14 percent, local TV 14 percent, but with 18 to 29 year olds, it is social media 35 percent.” There was fierce debate about whether the news media has enabled the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
2. The Steve Rattner Statistics — The stats on the U.S. and inequality were frightening. On male employment, the percentage employed from ages 25-54 from 1964 to today in each of three categories: college plus down from 98 percent to 94 percent, some college down from 97 percent to 88 percent, high school or less down from 97 percent to 85 percent. The U.S. is the leader in the inequality index, Gini coefficient, at .4 percent. Twenty percent of U.S. kids live in poverty, while the bottom 80 percent of people have only 7 percent of the wealth.
3. Cyber-Terrorism — Former Army General and director of the CIA, David Petraeus along with Tom Fanning, CEO of Southern Company, led a panel, which concluded that the Internet of Things has made the central control systems for power and finance more vulnerable. Eighty seven percent of the IT infrastructure in the U.S. is owned by private enterprise. “We do have an effective relationship with Government to manage these threats,” Fanning said. But he disagreed vehemently with Apple’s decision to block access to the mobile phone of the terrorist in San Bernardino.
4. Artificial Intelligence and Robots — Gill Pratt, executive technical advisor and CEO of Toyota Research Institute, and John Markoff, science writer for The New York Times, explained that we are now in the age of Assisted Intelligence, with man machine symbiosis. Adding robotics will increase societal wealth but the key issue is distribution of that wealth; will capital gain more than labor?
5. Criminal Justice in America — U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch was grilled by Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post, about her recent unscheduled meeting with former President Bill Clinton on her plane in Phoenix. Capehart got Lynch to admit that, given a do-over, she would not have met with Clinton given the on-going investigation of his wife. Lynch went on to discuss the need for different policing tactics. “We train police like soldiers. A soldier’s mission is to conquer, but a police officer’s job is to be a guardian.”
Walter Isaacson attracts the best and the brightest to Aspen. It is exhilarating to listen to the likes of David Rubenstein and constitutional scholar Jeffrey Rosen speak about George Washington and Newt Gingrich and the original intent of the Second Amendment. I completely disagree with Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute on the need for dignity in the marketplace instead of the social safety net, but he is a very persuasive character. In the meantime, if you are ever in Aspen, I highly recommend doing the Ute Trail hike and a white water rafting trip on the Roaring Forks River.
Richard Edelman is president and CEO.