The Interview:

On this episode of Big Table, J.C. Gabel talks with We Transfer co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Damian Bradfield about his first book The Trust Manifesto: What You Need to Do to Create a Better Internet (Penguin Press), which imagines and outlines a path toward a better internet experience than exists today. Bradfield knows that most of the big data being compiled online is misused and deceptively collected using legalese, “accept terms,” and disclaimers that no one reads. The Trust Manifesto unpacks what many of us users assume is going on behind the scenes of surveillance capitalism. Bradfield is right: To regain some credibility in an age of tech monopoly normalcy, the industry needs to build a bridge of trust with its users again. Not a month goes by without another revelation by a former employee of one of these tech behemoths, exposing profit-over-safety, profit-over-common-sense, and (of late) profit-over-democracy itself. The Trust Manifesto is a wake-up call, and a road map to a better internet, and, one hopes, a better post-digital-age future.

The Reading: 

Technology writer and critic, Joanne McNeil reads from her debut Lurking: How a Person Became a User (MCD/FSG Books), a concise but wide-ranging history of the internet from—for the first time—the point of view of the user.

Music by Vangelis