Future Hindsight

Billy Bragg is an acclaimed songwriter, activist, and author. We recently sat down in front of a live audience at Columbia University’s Holder Initiative to discuss his latest book, The Three Dimensions of Freedom, the current state of Western Democracy, how we got here, and what we can do to make it better.

Engagement and Representation

There are a multitude of ways to become an engaged citizen. Often people think of civic engagement as an overwhelming and high-level concept. In reality, civic engagement can be performed on any level, from lowering the speed limit on your street and participating in a protest, to joining a local advisory council or parent-teacher organization. The important part of civic engagement is not what we do, but that we actually do something to make our voices heard. We can only be represented when we are engaged in our democracy.

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Mila Atmos is the founder, host, and executive producer of Future Hindsight. She seeks to promote civic values and social engagement through thought-provoking interviews with citizen changemakers. Previous guests include presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer, Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin, and Robin Steinberg, founder and CEO of The Bail Project.

You can follow her on Twitter @milaatmos

Myriam Zümbuhl serves as Future Hindsight's associate producer. A veteran reporter and producer at Swiss Public Radio, Myriam recently starter her own media company, Harvest Productions. Skilled in the arts of storytelling and scriptwriting, Myriam is also a passionate chef and gardener. She lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

Mila Atmos is the Founder and Host of Future Hindsight, this very podcast whose mission is to spark civic engagement. In this mini episode with Associate Producer Myriam Zumbühl, we discuss what the term civic engagement means, and why we can only be represented if we participate in our society.

Since the 2016 election, it has become increasingly imperative that we participate in our democracy as citizens. There are many ways to be civically engaged beyond voting and running for office, from being mindful about civic actions to passionately advocating for an issue. Our society and our social contract are only as strong as those participating in them, and the more you can get involved —- and inspire others to do the same -— the more our democracy represents us.

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Mila Atmos is the founder, host, and executive producer of Future Hindsight. She seeks to promote civic values and social engagement through thought-provoking interviews with citizen changemakers. Previous guests include presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer, Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin, and Robin Steinberg, founder and CEO of The Bail Project.

You can follow her on Twitter @milaatmos

Myriam Zümbuhl serves as Future Hindsight's associate producer. A veteran reporter and producer at Swiss Public Radio, Myriam recently starter her own media company, Harvest Productions. Skilled in the arts of storytelling and scriptwriting, Myriam is also a passionate chef and gardener. She lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

Mila Atmos is the Founder and Host of Future Hindsight, this very podcast whose mission is to spark civic engagement. In this mini episode with Associate Producer Myriam Zumbühl, we discuss how the podcast came to be and why we all need to participate in our democracy.

Democracy Reform

When American democracy was conceived, the US was comprised of 13 states on the Eastern Seaboard, with a population of just over 2.5 million. The 18th and 19th century version of our democracy was meant for a smaller, less populous, and overwhelmingly whiter nation than the America we live in today. In order to preserve and strengthen our democracy for the future, we must engage in progressive reforms. One example is removing outdated and arbitrary procedures like the filibuster, which enables a slim minority to hold up meaningful policy changes for all.

Grassroots Organizing is Key

Representative democracy ultimately means governmental power is held by the people, not just those elected to represent them. The most effective way to get your voice heard is to organize like-minded individuals, or join groups that share your values, and set out to make a difference on national, regional, or local issues. When many voices join together to demand change, it's often impossible to ignore. Organized, grassroots activism has the power to sway elections and elected officials in ways that individuals do not.

From Anti-Trump to Pro-Democracy

At its inception, Indivisible was a direct response to the 2016 election: it was an anti-Trump movement that gained widespread support around the country as a platform dedicated to defeating the Trump agenda. Since then, Indivisible has evolved into a wide-ranging pro-democracy movement. Defeating the Trump agenda is now seen as a facet of progressive democratic reform. The goals have changed into a well-rounded effort to stem anti-democratic practices throughout our government and ensure progressive reforms are made to safeguard a fair and free future.

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Ezra Levin is the Co-Executive Director of Indivisible, which he co-founded with Leah Greenberg in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. The Indivisible Project's mission is to cultivate a grassroots movement of literally thousands of local Indivisible groups to elect progressive leaders, realize bold progressive policies, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda.

Previously, he worked as an Associate Director of Federal Policy for Prosperity Now, a non-profit, anti-poverty organization. Before that, he held the post of Deputy Policy Director for Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), and served in the Congressman's election campaign.

He is the co-author of We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump, which hits stands on November 5, 2019.

Follow Ezra Levin on Twitter @ezralevin

Ezra Levin is the Co-Executive Director of Indivisible, whose mission is to cultivate a progressive grassroots movement. We discuss the urgency of democracy reform, structural issues that relate to our nation’s history, and how we can achieve a democracy that truly reflects the will of the people.

Fourth Amendment

The Fourth amendment protects people from unlawful searches and seizures. For example, in the 1970s the Supreme Court ruled that a warrant is necessary in order to listen in on telephone conversations, but not to collect the phone numbers. This is the precedent that allows for big data to collect a vast amount of information about people on the internet. Further, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has determined that the legal analysis for the Fourth amendment is the same, whether the right is applied to millions of people or to just one.

Data privacy and literacy

The issue with collecting data at scale is that it becomes granular and social. At that point, the data is no longer innocuous but is invasive of privacy. It turns out that our every-day seemingly trivial interactions matter profoundly in the aggregate, and our habit of almost blindly agreeing to arcane privacy policies on the internet is misguided. We need newer forms of transparency that really tell us how the data is being used and how it affects our online profile, as well as a collective effort to prioritize data and technological literacy. We also need to have a conversation about what kind of analyses are and are not allowed.

Technological Determinism

Technological determinism is a vision of history in which technology leads the way and pushes a narrative that certain changes in technology are inevitable to the point of altering the people's expectations. It's also a reminder that decisions are always being made along the way, whether consciously or not, to yield the current system. We now accept the model of advertising services based on the surveillance of users' everyday interactions, but there were actually technological developments in the 1990s that would have made cash transactions largely anonymous. The internet could have developed differently.

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Matthew L. Jones is the James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University. He studies the history of science and technology, focused on early modern Europe and on recent information technologies.

A Guggenheim Fellow for 2012-13 and a Mellon New Directions fellow for 2012-15, he is writing a book on computing and state surveillance of communications, and is working on Data Mining: The Critique of Artificial Reason, 1963-2005, a historical and ethnographic account of "big data," its relation to statistics and machine learning, and its growth as a fundamental new form of technical expertise in business and scientific research. He was also a Data & Society Fellow for 2017-2018 and authored numerous other papers.

Follow Matthew L. Jones on Twitter @nescioquid

Matthew Jones is a historian of science and technology at Columbia University. We examine the moral and ethical elements of big data, the big business of the surveillance of our personal information online, and how we can demand solutions that reflect our collective values.

Tolerable climate and economic conditions

Lamontagne's study defines tolerable economic conditions as follows: the present value of abatement costs would not exceed 3% of gross world product and climate damages would not exceed 2% of gross world product. Current gross world product is estimated to be$80trillion, so 3% of that would be $2.4 trillion. Although this a large dollar amount, it would be a reasonable investment as a percentage of gross world product. Tolerable climate is defined as limiting warming by 2 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Robust Abatement

Abatement costs that range between 3% and 5% of global world product would be considered both aggressive and yet also uncertain in terms of limiting warming. However, because not taking action guarantees failure, immediate action is the best shot at having a tolerable future. The cost of alternative energy sources and how quickly abatement efforts take placewill determine the eventual, actual cost. In addition, actions that are important for the climate in the near term will not be important fifty or a hundred years on. Whatever climate abatement initiatives we undertake today, and which will surely be expensive, will primarily benefit future generations.

Window for Action

The study used a model that explored 5.2 million alternative scenarios. Limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius is possible, but only feasible in the most optimistic scenarios. Further, the analysis shows that in order to have at least a 50 percent chance of achieving a tolerable climate and economic future, net zero CO2 emissions need to be reached by the year 2030. The window for action is narrow: time is running out to reduce emissions and avert really significant climate impacts.

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Jonathan Lamontagne is assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University School of Engineering. He researches water resources, decision-making under uncertainty, hydrologic statistics, and integrated global change assessment. His study, Robust abatement pathways to tolerable climate futures require immediate global action,was published in Nature Climate Change.

He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental water resources systems analysis from Cornell University. His graduate studies focused on flood frequency analysis and the incorporation of uncertainty in hydropower systems planning. Following his graduate studies, Lamontagne worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University, studying uncertainty and robustness issues for models of the integrated human-climate system. He joined the Tufts Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2017.

Follow Jonathan Lamontage on Twitter @jr_lamontagne and Tufts University School of Engineering @TuftsEngineer.