eh “A-COMIC BOOK WITH ZEST AND BRAINS—ONE THAT JUST MIGHT HELP A READER UNDERSTAND THE BRAVE NEW WORLD.” WEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER THE INFLUENCING . MACHINE yeaan 1969, nitory ensiyst and Pentagon sider ME They are the "Pentagon Papars,* a Defanse Banl Eiscorg removes £7 voles from Il Deportnert siuay of US. mecvenert Wi safe at the RAND Corporation ana Visteon 23 years oP sect nrewvertons | with the help of Wis frond Anthony asso, A aed fos EisCerg.a forsee Marc, Copies then fesolves fo risk He prion fend & Siroghut war. No ove is evar gong to VEEL (fans W ( te'ne agsin thot ttave a |e fa auty to fe. a? F 7 ERPs SE EE fe] 32] [lee — AOENR=ase ——— ai /f After Feling to persuade any Serators to expoce the i Papers, he fakes the fo the j New York Tiwes, which aPter To the ondary | cersideration begins to ‘ayy, al this 16 a burch oF presidents, nhich has been fubsh thers | | ef gobbedyacch. But!) an accepted ting x America, cout of the gobbledygook | i6 badly hurt by ‘His, becouse | 7 | | comes 0 very clear ting: Jit shone that people do Hens lal : ‘You can't trust the {the President wants to ao y government. even thaugh T7S wrong, and theure (th, 197, 2442 pon, Oval OPFice. The | | The charges agshnst Elsbare and Rusto President, Haldeman, and Press Secratary were drepged. Ronald Zigler, - } We can Wil these people with thi "Knowingly publishing Stolen ‘Thats what the Tines is doing Nixon charges Elsberg and Anthony Russo with feeasan under the Espionage Act oF 1917, ‘and serves the Trees with a Federal injunction +e Stop puication, in revealing the workings oF government that led 40 the Vietnam War, the newspaners nobly did precisely thet which the Feunders hoped and trusted they would A EE Cis a b ; AY So wow, bec OF the wad, we rave aces fo te rue Wary oF ‘that nee and the chance fo learn ‘rom it. (Not that we necessarily\ oe Ade | tea Senator Frank Qurch chairs 9 committee to investigate the FBI and CA, amassing thousonds of P8g88 00 phone-tapsing, eal-cpesng, political blackmal, ervation of aistdent oreups, attempted murder oF foreign leaders, LSD anpernarts on vemitting subjects. Que society has drawn its inspiration From the biblical “The Church injunction is, elderly, carved into a wall at the CIA inGEORGE W. BUSH OFFERS NO SEDITION BILLS after the atacks of September 11, 2001. Instead, he works behind closed doors, or through the rushed passage of bills ike the Patriot Act... Bypassing the court created to approve domestic eavesdropping and reinstituting Nixon- era spying + Expanding the ability of law enforcement to search telephone, e-mail, and financial records without court orders... + Rolling back the Freedom of Information Act... * Removing information from government websites . * Classifying or reclassifying millions of documents that would have been public... Ignoring the president’ statutory obligation to inform the Congress ‘+ Undermining the Watergate-era law that makes presidential records public... So... presidents rave bent 3 few ules when the nation’s very existence has been ‘threatened by France ‘and civil war and Nazis ‘ard Commuist® and ruclear wespors and ‘Sua! terrorists omnes”oc quaaton, APter 3/8 New York Tents/CBS News gol showed 64 aoe eee ae carte a grotect national security during wartime, Some 42 percent ‘seid navepapers shouldet criticize ‘he government, 7 = \\\) \" ‘Under the Homeland Security Act, if a private company voluntarily divulges relevant information to the government, that information is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and the company is immune from prosecution. What's more, anyone who blows the whistle goes to jal ‘Are you safer not knowing why we invaded Iraq? ‘When the CIA found no decisive proof of Iraqi complicity in the 9/11 attacks or weapons of mass destruction, the White House created an “Office of i Special Plans” in the Pentagon to cherry-pick the : evidence, free of congressional oversight. According to the Center for Public Integrity, the White House made 935 false statements ‘about Iraq in the two years following the 9/11 attacks. {Donald Trump, to whom we will retum in the Afterword, was averaging ust over 22 false claims a day and was set to reach 25,000 by the end of his term.)[| Brack Obama reverses Bushs pocy, federel agers to pretare in fover of erecting Fon suBut the mare Pact that ‘yeu have the legal gower ‘fo keep something secret dees not mean you should ‘alnays use it. Fer a fong tie now, there's been too much ‘secrecy in tis city. That ‘era 15 now over.. “The Obama administration has decided to ‘weep secret the locations of nearly Four dozen coalash storage sites that pose a treat fo peopl living rearby. It Say8_ ‘releasing the information would commpromis® A Seders! judge thrgatens to sanction the ‘Obama administration For withhelding a document from lawyers Suing the goverement va its wacrarti The government. secrets" privilege.So in this briet history a pattern emerges: We Sip back but we recover our Footing. “The media expose corruption and bouild pressure For chango ~ but the ‘government stil has the So when siz up White House assertions... “Take the advice of president who sized up Kremlin assertions...fe 8 speech to nthe mia co’ EK + coven > Y ~ N Key ayan important oom gamed in the devastating ‘wake of the First World War ‘and the Bolshevik revolution Ferventiy asserts: Deeply hald conviction leads to mayhem, Tarsing and turing in the widening gyre “Tha falcon connct hear the Falconer cupabie bias.na 2009 pol, 60% of ‘respondents ren. ‘And in Fact, reporters ‘organizations with biss, up ‘rom 45% in 985, both 'F 2006, New York Times publsher Arthur Sulzberger, Try Spoke to graduates at the State Unversity of ‘You werertt supposed to be Naty York at New Paltz, arsduating ito a world where ol Stil drove poey ard envicenmentals have fo fight rolentiessiy for ever ain. You waren, but yeu are, Arc ‘For that, Fn sorry. | must be honest can cnly [ead $0 many garsgraphs of a) New York Times story before 1! puke, ‘STATE UNNVERSIIYOF NEA YORK NUW7DAIT 7appears that MOST AMERICANS DON'T READ THE TIMES, but Sear Bbsral,® 8° among those who express an opinion, Republicans disapprove of the paper by a margin of nearly two to one, while Democrats favor it almost five to one. ‘A.2020 study published in Science Advances found that Journalists do lean liberal, but the topics they choose to cover are not statistically different from those of conservetive-leaning reporters. (And story selection is where bias first reas its head.) Moreover, liberal media watchdogs have found that the ‘mainstream media quote far more conservatives than liberals. ‘They have polled reporters and found them iberal on social ‘issues but conservative on economic ones. And they note ‘that “he who pays the piper calls the tune,” and the media's, aymasters are a handful of multinational corporations— hardly bastions of liberalism, So do liberal reporters report liberally, or don't they? ‘The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University surveyed ABC, NBC, and CBS's evening news coverage of Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bll Ciinton, and George \W. Bush during their first seven months in office, and then the first year of Barack Obama's presidency in 2009 and Donald J. Trump's first hundred days, a0 8 4 SD eee Bo ae Conclusive proof: the media are biased against presidents! ‘The argument over political bias is one that anyone can win. Its boring. Sure, the media are beset by biases, but they're probably mot what you think. Here are the biases / think you should worry about. . * This igure averages irreconcilable reports of increasingly partisan news outlets,c «.“This is a term thet refers to ou preference, all other > ge ea ona for ‘hes to se STATUS QUO BIAS Beceue of the status quo bie the ‘reaia ignore any cesition that advocates, ‘radial change. RaHORTARANE, Warlave ‘The ita made noer gusto the ‘structure of the potcal system. ‘Xrestan way ste ony wey poly ond socially. "Ths bs eet that alternate eos of ‘about how government ght rue ard what (poet nhl doe othe) greaReporters believe they must patrol the hells of power, but the price of admission is steep Antagonize power and the door is barred. So sometimes journalists dance with the devil Whenever reporters quote a “senior administration oficial,” they've allowed their source tohhide, But if we don't know who is speaking, wwe can't ascertain why. We can be more easily manipulated, See ifthe blind quote is worth it. Usually it isn't ‘The problem, of course, is that when journalists are held captive by their sources, they are susceptible to Stockholm syndrome. They empathize Afterall, when you're fed an exclusive quote, its natural to be grateful. i “When you're man-hugged by the powerful at any one of the half-dozen black tie parties the ‘Washington press throws for politicians each year, it's natural to be flattered. Reporters treated John McCain and George W. Bush relatively kindly during their frst presidential campaigns, partly because thiey seemed to like reporters. As the New York Times noted at the time, Bush “not only slaps reporters’ backs but also rubs the tops of their heads and, ina few instances, pinches their cheeks.” ‘Obviously, the biggest risk for access-dependent journalists is self-censorship, Former CNN news chief Eason Jordan sald CNN did not cover stories of brutal suppression in Saddam's Iraq for years in order to protect his Baghdad bureau and staff. At least one known CNN source died gruesomely, despite Jordan's efforts. So why maintain a bureau you can't effectively use? (im all this, asin 20 much else, the Trump White House proved the exception—as high-level access offered reporters little but lies-For shreds of truth, they ad to rely on a ‘multitude of lower-level staffers speaking off the record. And so the age-old chess match between journalists and official sources expired when the president ate the pawns and axed, the game)VISUAL BIAS Neng that has a visual hook i wore kay to be. roficed, PEt Lotti kee 1s Mee ane oa BRAT My favorite bias. Who doesn't love a good. story? But stories have begierngs, idles, ‘ed ends. Some nas Stones, sconce stories or instance, never realy end, They‘r@ all eiddle, W's a narrative rightmare. Tey to Foe the problem by tacking on“The great thing about rarrative s that once 9 ‘Fempate is set with plots ond characters, it can be reused jn and agala when reporting ‘Standard plot for flection coverage Was winning sTRal ‘EipreCase in point The topping (of Saddam Husse's Statue in ‘AbFirdos Square on Apri 9, 2008, You could af this 3 visual/marrative bias. ‘combo,[] That day cable news focused the world’s on cn the thr video, Fox News replayed tf every 4,4 wuts, CNN replayed it every 77 sues, Even then, they coud hove sed 0 wider erge and shown fhe Square nS Proper contextFAIRNESS BIAS ®OTHSIDESISM) ournafists will bend over backward to appear balanced by of ering equal tine te opposing viewpoints, leven when thay aren't equ ‘they bend to the right, charge of feral bias. ee a War Record eens agp oy never energe Case in point: the "Swi Boat Veterans for Truth.” ‘The group, funded by & ‘major Republican campaign donor, launched a series off attacks against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Itclaimed in ads that Kerry lied to get one of his two decorations for bravery and two of his three Purple Heacts for service in Vietnam, The charges blenketed talk radio, and were repeated hundreds of times on network TV and in newspapers. The Swift Boat ads were awarded a fortune in free TV time as the mainstream ‘media chewed over the controversy. ‘The charges were quickly debunked by Navy records and Kerry's crewmates—but the Teporting on the actual evidence was drowned in e miasma of mainstream media weasel-speak, the surest sign of terminal faimess bias. NBC's Tim Russert should ie the substance have known why. In a textbook of many of the so arent example of faimess bias, for weeks ertcbcaiie’ ” ] temainsream media floded the oma zone with “equal coverage” of the two unequal sides, distorting the ‘truth in pursuit of the appearance of balance,Scientific ideas & all Hine, but that 1wa8 wo excuse fob Feratics about i,But that cap was. untightly, ‘So scientists are develeping, ways to reach the Web using Tnvisiole brain inpants, Futurist titionaire Elon ‘Musk, S276 he plans te inplant a prototype cemectirg 2 human brain to the lnterngt... by ‘he fime you read “hi,Polymer ranotubes and sik Fiber electrodes are €asier on brain opening ts ean who is the content of and the message oF “the medi, which are extensions oF hinsel®, it akgo offers Fresh mest to mischies fers. Hacer vandals coua rewotely ontrel neural devies, just 08 they ‘computers with worn and viruses. 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To ma, the essence oF being predicted the moment we'a have the World furan i not our Bitters... "wise Webs. ~i au bi 4o rec beyond cur infor. We dirt sty on in thousands of Ile sfee8 a each ground, We didn't even Stay on the planet. nats sroduct that starts out ‘And we are already not settling For the , fare Z eta ‘And wall gat to the world of 2045 ‘working that wal, then it works a fttle Fritations oF our biology. ein better... uti we reach the Segularity.fens ache kainate a Famine cou do usin o pseu, oF many Such befevers. Kurz Ringel gives us ino” Plague, ‘the planet "a better than even chance oF sotercic, or ofan basin, And of waking it through And he's glass-halt- Fal kind oF ex. Belongingness, Love, VW Safety & Security LIFE: Air, Water, Food, Shelter ...hard enough just beng honest with myself ‘actualy tke fo get a‘Some scraars equate the origin of “vization" mith writing, writing equals Greece equals Piatorilfreracy equals tearbariéen equals Attia the rm Journalist Robert Weight befeves that techoiogy, ‘especialy ieForeestion you ada iterscy to Attia ‘tha Hur, you dor’t get Plato, Weight Lbafaves that techraloy hes given us new opportties to groFit rom one another's progress, lustead, we are able to ploy increashaly complex and wide ranging games” fo collaborate ~isfead oF says waging 4 n= you ese" bates = For pricy and You get Genghis Khan. He had ‘he fastest large ele frecwelogy of his era. So its vot kevitable that we oust afways battle over 8 ___ Firite pie oF posstites, larger and richer webs of interdependence, Ht started happerieg at least a8 early as 15.000 ‘YearS 6g0 unl, vol! Here we are —Fvig i aTo seme people, the current era has the aura of a thresholds it has ‘that unsetting, out-of control Feaina.. Our species seems fo Pace 2 Kind oF test... eqpiorimy at a lave! oF ‘orgarization tigher than SBE SSS BSSScSSOs}Ws true. With ueted ‘access fo information, we have the powerAFTERWORD WE GET THE MEDIA WE DESERVE. But. In the pestilential decade since this book was published, we've been so preyed upon by ‘swiftly evolving algorithms that I've had to reconsider what I mean by “deserve,” and “we.” ‘When I said “our enemies are not the digital bits that dance across our screens but the neural impulses that animate our lizard brains,” I couldn't foresee how ruthlessly and efficiently ‘those bits would commandeer our impulses. When [first embarked on The Influencing Machine, Facebook was only about four years in to empire building beyond the college campus. Reddit was just on the verge of a big breakthrough. YouTube was five and already thriving; Twitter was four and still learning to ‘walk, WhatsApp was one, Snapchat and Instagram didn't exist. Now they all rely on business models hazardous to our individual and collective health, ‘which is why Chamath Palihapitiva, Facebook's former vice president of user growth, said in 2017 that he felt “tremendous guilt” because “the short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works." Dopamine is the brain chemical that pleasures us. We crave it. Cocaine makes dopamine ‘more available. So does social media. Online validation gives us a dopamine bump: O = Bump. ch = Bump. B= cRasH, ‘The bump gets bigger when we're talking ebout ourselves. In real lf, that's around 30 to 40 percent ofthe time. A lot, right? On social media, it's 80 percent!With each bump we carve smoother, deeper neural pathways, so the elect intensifies each ‘time we trigger it, And the apps’ “pull to refresh” feature uses our love of chance as a bait—it offers the possibilty of a bump—much like a casino slot machine, But instead of quarters, the ‘owners extract data about what we see and do, so as to hook us longer and sell us beterto other dealers Acults—on average—tap, type, or swipe their phone over 2,600 times a day. Roughly three-quarters of us feel something like panic when we can't find our phone. Most of us feel them vibrating even when they aren't there. Social medie chemically pleasures us when we show off, photo shoot our faces, photoshop ‘our lives. We also score gratifying bumps when we engage in online sneering, cruelty, and belligerence (rage supercharges retweets). We rarely face consequences. In shore, the last decade has seen us rewired to seek the cheapest and easiest of this, Some of us quite literally are addicted to platforms that make a killing from exploiting our inner demons and burying our better angels. Facebook's founding president Sean Parker noted that embezzling (not his word) our time and attention with dopamine was “exactly the kind of thing a hacker lke myself would come up with, because you're explotting a vulnerability n human psychology. ... The inventors creators—it's me, its Mark (Zuckerberg), it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’ all ofthese people—understood this consciously. “And we did itanyway.” SO DO LAB RATS GET THE MEDIA WE DESERVE? Getting to that, bt first. How do dopanain Sean Parker says it start bees ANNOYING APP \ Wants your e attention Press for more peorle.* - alittle unpacking,How do dopamine-dependent platforms “destroy how society works”? Sean Parker says it starts by “eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and ‘between each other” Here's how, according to social scientist Joe Edelman: | + “The coded structure of push notifications males it harder to prioritize a value of ( ‘personal focus .. | + “The coded structure of likes makes it harder to prcrtize not relying on others’ opinions © + “And sini structures interfere with ther values like being honest or kind to people.” Extrapolate just a litle, and what follows would seem to be a gradual, unconscious separation of ourselves from our own inclinations, interests, and even mental rhythms, as when | we used to choose the moment for a break, a distraction, or shopping. ‘As we protong our time online, jolted and jerked by buzzes and flashes, reliant on search engines ruled by algorithms invented by people that can never EVER be neutral, as we simmer {na world thus mediated, we become untethered from our own values, leaning instead on ‘mental shortcuts framed by the praise or opprobrium of our tribe. (Our attention strays from the world outside. We don’t hear the cracking of the ice we mistook for solid ground, We don't really belleve what we see coming. What a shock when it comes. WE CAN'T HOLD FACEBOOK RESPONSIBLE forthe naying of our democracy. But Facebook and its ilk dd claim Free Speech to defend hosting lies and libels that were among [the most-viewed stories of the 2016 presidential campaign. | They did amplify COVID-19 pandemic | conspiracy theories that cost lives. ‘They did peddle their staggering reach to : er aris bad actors here and abroad, and they certainly watch it play out, clung to the idea that profit is the paramount | virtue, As I write this, Facebook, under pressure from its board, is beginning to change. We'll see. In the meantime we contend with the repercussions: Our institutions on trial. Our Common humanity on tril. Reality itself on trial ‘Which—betng long overdue—is the best Possible outcome. As [like to say...IN THE PLAGUE SUMMER OF 2020, we saw en unprecedented effort to transform a \hite supremacist system and a white-donsinated culture. It began with waves of youth and then people of all ages and ethnicities, including noteworthy numbers of les young white People, joining the Black Lives Matter Movernent in the streets to protest systemic racism in ‘American policing, Then it spread around the world. ‘The fire was ignited by an old truth, made visceral and viral by social media, in a video of the gut-wrenching murder of George Floyd by a police officer who stared down the cell phone cameras with chilling complacence. ‘This long-deferred reckoning with the disease gnawing away at America's guts would not, have been possible without social media. I suspect it would not have been possible without three years of Donald Trump and the pandemic, ether It seemed suddenly urgent that something, maybe everything, had to chenge. So do we get the media we deserve? It depends. After al, we contain multitudes. Do you pay for media you truly need? Have you paid anything a alin the last several years for local news directly affecting you and your community? No? ‘You're getting the media you deserve. Do you retweet cool assertions you agree with, even if you suspect they're wrong? OVER 1,600 AMERICAN 5 i ‘ADULTS who normally used Infact, a ssticaebieehdashe 7 Facebook for upto ar hour before reposting things? Yes? No? Sach day ware eked ts You're definitely getting the media you deactivate their accounts deserve, Do you ever click on links from people forthe four weeks leading up to the 2018 ‘midterm elections: eactivating Facebook made them outside your tribe? ‘happier, less lonely, and even less. You're already finding your way tothe |. Boitally polarized —presumably because media you deserve. they were reading less news from their tribe, or generally about Trump. After the Have you made a genuine effort to be ‘month, they were also a litte Behind on. mindful of “time well spent”? Have you ever een, anes san ba Ting : ; Journalist) taken a serious vacation from your phone, ‘Their time off Facebook was replaced deleted an addictive social media platform, ‘by solitary and social aetivity offine app. or game, despite the twitchy FOMO, ‘After the experiment they continued to use Facebook less. because it was chewing through your precious, ‘ever-shrinking time on Barth, now lost forever? ‘Then you deserve better.THE RENOWNED BIOLOGIST E. 0. WILSON FAMOUSLY SAID, “The real problone of humanity is the folowing: we have paleoitic emotions: medieval institutions: and god-ka technology. And if 18 terrifically dangerous, and ft is ‘now appraaching 8 point oF criss overall Unt we answer ‘those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers ‘abandoned a cousle of generations ‘ago --"Where do we come From? Viho are we? Where are we a0ing?" rationally, we're on very thin ground, Harvard conflict resolution expert Donna Hicks, having tracked violence around the worl, found a pattern suggesting that conflicts arise from assaults on uman dignity Strife is fueled by the rage and the pain that come from being treated as if you have no worth, as if you don't ‘matter. Research shows that socia! exclusion is felt in the same part of the brain as a physical ‘wound, and likely triggers the same threat-defense mechanisms. ‘Author and activist El Pariser drew on Hicks's work in a Time magazine essay calling for restoring human dignity to technology. He invoked Immanuel Kant’s credo that people should bbe treated as ends, not as means to ends, because human beings are capable of making moral decisions. But, as I write this, we are purely “means” to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, ‘Snapchat, Instagram ‘They have no interest in helping us reach the goal we choose, to lead us to what we seek. ‘To the contrary—they prod and distract us, nudge us off the chase with the digital equivalent of sex, drugs, and candy. We are eyeballs, eager or angry, all worth the same. Beyond that we do not matter.‘That's true online and off, in Washington and on Wall Street, Bither we are monetizable or wwe are worthless, used to blame human nature entirely for the messes we made, but I've begun to ‘understand that our natures are plastic. Digital media companies could help us to be better than we are, instead of worse, but then we wouldn't be worth as much to them. 1 DON'T KNOW WHAT WILL BECOME OF US in the next few years. Prediction is a ‘mugs game. But what was hidden online and off is not hidden anymore, “The fact that we have come to understand the method behind the business model has | leveled the playing field for us and our would-be new-media handlers, t's prime ground for ! pushing and prodding advertisers, shareholders, and boards, These media, ike all media, ere | still essentially fmhouse mirrors. Without cur attention they disintegrate into gaudy junk. ‘Now, as the nation convulses, itis being forced to reckon with some of the systemic {injustices and poisonous principles on which it stands, starting with the notion of “natural ‘market forces.” Supply and demand. But when there is an endless supply of what we do not demand, effective marketers find ways to make us demand it. Market forces have never been natural. They are relentlessly engineered. But we move them, either passively like oxen, or } ‘purposefully like human beings. | ‘What I'm saying is—the time is ripe to raise the price of dishonoring our choices, disrespecting our dignity, and failing to reflect our moral capacity along with our vices and follies ‘Using the reach of technology to aggregate the power of our wallets and voices and bodies, we can rage effectively against their machine and compel it to give us what we deserve.