Keen On America

Time waits for no one. As 2024 winds down, what are the key moments of a year that perhaps overpromised and underdelivered? According to the Brookings scholar Jonathan Rauch, six events in 2024 captured the year’s zeitgeist. There’s the November election and the tumult in the Middle East, of course. Then there’s the ongoing lawfare between Trump and the legal establishment as well as the Supreme Court’s creeping power. But Rauch ends his summary of 2024 more positively, finding two examples - one from the public sector, the other from private enterprise - suggesting that America can, indeed, continue to rebuild and reinvent itself in 2025.

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program and the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer of The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His many Brookings publications include the 2021 book “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth”, as well as the 2015 ebook “Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy.” Other books include “The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better after 50” (2018) and “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America” (2004). He has also authored research on political parties, marijuana legalization, LGBT rights and religious liberty, and more. Although much of his writing has been on public policy, he has also written on topics as widely varied as adultery, agriculture, economics, gay marriage, height discrimination, biological rhythms, number inflation, and animal rights. His multiple-award-winning column, “Social Studies,” appeared from 1998 to 2010 in National Journal. Among the many other publications for which he has written are The New Republic, The Economist, Reason, Harper’s, Fortune, Reader’s Digest, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Public Interest, The Advocate, The Daily, and others. In his 1994 book “Demosclerosis”—revised and republished in 2000 as “Government’s End: Why Washington Stopped Working”—he argues that America’s government is becoming gradually less flexible and effective with time, and suggests ways to treat the malady. His 1993 book “Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought” (the University of Chicago Press) defends free speech and robust criticism, even when it is racist or sexist and even when it hurts. In 1992 his book “The Outnation: A Search for the Soul of Japan” questioned the then-conventional wisdom that Japan was fundamentally different from the West. Rauch was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and graduated in 1982 from Yale University. In addition to the National Magazine Award, his honors include the 2010 National Headliner Award, one of the industry’s most venerable prizes. In 1996 he was awarded the Premio Napoli alla Stampa Estera for his coverage, in The Economist, of the European Parliament. In 2011 he won the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association prize for excellence in opinion writing. His articles appear in The Best Magazine Writing 2005 and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004 and 2007. He has appeared as a guest on many television and radio programs.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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As both a much published poet and cultural critic, Adam Kirsch brings an etymological sensibility to the great issues of our day. In his new book, On Settler Colonialism, Kirsch excavates the nonsense now taken for granted by many academics about the supposedly twin intrinsic evils of American and Israeli history. Unlike the European colonialists in America, Kirsch reminds us, Jewish settlers in Palestine didn’t wipe out the “indigenous” peoples of the region. While that doesn’t necessarily excuse the violence of the Zionist state, Kirsch acknowledges, it does remind us that packaging America and Israel as the evil “settler colonial” twins of world history is both childishly simplistic and wrong. Words matter in politics, Kirsch reminds us. Particularly in a conflict as irresolvable as the Palestine/Israel tragedy.

Adam Kirsch is the author of several books of poetry and criticism. A 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, Kirsch is an editor at the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review section and has written for publications including The New Yorker and Tablet. He lives in New York.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Bloomberg columnist, Parmy Olson, won the FT Business Book of 2024 for Supremacy, her story of the race between Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Demis Hassabis’ Google DeepMind for control of the AI ecosystem. Given that Parmy Olson finished writing Supremacy at the end of 2023, I asked her what she would have added to her narrative with the hindsight of knowing what actually transpired in 2024. And what, exactly, does Olson expect to happen in 2025 - a year which will, no doubt, rival 2024 in determining which multi trillion dollar Silicon Valley behemoth will control our collective AI fate.

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.” which won the Financial Times best business book for 2024.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Yesterday, we featured a conversation between Andrew and That Was the Week newsletter publisher Keith Teare looking back at the major tech events of 2024. Today, Andrew and Keith look forward to the upcoming year for big tech. What will be the fate of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Microsoft in 2025? And who, if anyone, will win the multi trillion dollar race for AI supremacy in 2025?

Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

So how will future historians think about 2024? In tech terms, 2024 will probably be remembered as the year when AI began to become ubiquitous. Although, as Keith Teare and Andrew discuss in this special 2024 edition of THAT WAS THE WEEK, only hardcore techies like Keith are currently making the use of AI central to their lives. For mainstream users like Andrew, AI in 2024 remained an abstract promise. More concretely, however, 2024 - in Trump’s gamble that the multi billionaires of Silicon Valley can make America Great Again - has set the stage for 2025. So 2024 - in the most compelling narrative tradition of Trumpian reality television - has set the stage for 2025. 2024, then, will be remembered as the year before 2025. A prelude to the sequel.

Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

As Elon Musk continues to plot, with Trumpian glee, against the American Federal government, it is important to remind ourselves of the essential value of this state bureaucracy. As the founding president and CEO of the Washington DC based Partnership for Public Service, Max Stier has spent the last quarter century focused on making American government more efficient and accountable. And Stier’s warning about the incoming administration is critically important. Yes, he acknowledges, some of Musk’s misgivings about the inefficiencies of the Federal bureaucracy are fair, but that isn’t an excuse for a descent into what Stier describes as the patrimonial politics of MAGA in which the interests of Trump and of the American state are treated identically. The American Republic was founded against the 18th century absolutist conceit that L'État, c'est moi. So all Max Stier is doing, at the Partnership for Public Service, is defending the values of the Founders who, wanted to protect the Republic from a patrimonial state.

Max Stier is the founding president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. Under his leadership, the Partnership has been widely praised as a first-class nonprofit organization and thought leader on federal government management issues. Max has worked previously in all three branches of the federal government. In 1982, he served on the personal staff of Congressman Jim Leach. Max clerked for Chief Judge James Oakes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1992 and clerked for Justice David Souter of the United States Supreme Court in 1994. Between these two positions, Max served as Special Litigation Counsel to Assistant Attorney General Anne Bingaman at the Department of Justice. In 1995, Max joined the law firm of Williams & Connolly where he practiced primarily in the area of white collar defense. Max comes most recently from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, having served as the Deputy General Counsel for Litigation. A graduate of Yale University and Stanford Law School, Max is a member of the Inaugural Advisory Council of the National Institute of Social Sciences, the National Academy of Public Administration, the Administrative Conference of the United States and the National Advisory Board for Public Service at Harvard College.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The supposed “science” of eugenics is one of the most dangerous myths of the modern age. As Erik Peterson, author of The Shortest History of Eugenics explains, it not only was used by Nazi thugs to justify the Final Solution, but also has been deployed by American racists to justify slavery and inequality. And today, in a brave new world increasingly shaped by advances in biotech, Peterson warns, eugenics persists, having adherents who mistakenly believe that it can be used for the betterment of society.

Erik L. Peterson, PhD, is Associate Provost and Associate Professor of the History of Science & Medicine at The University of Alabama. He publishes and teaches about the historical relationship between race and science in the United States and abroad.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

There is a counter intuitive school of thought - represented by Tyler Cowen, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen - which suggests that America, for all its technological innovation, remains trapped by long term economic stagnation. So it’s no coincidence that the Austin based investor, consultant, and writer, Byrne Hobart’s co-authored new book, Boom, comes with enthusiastic blurbs from Cowen, Thiel and Andreessen. If we are to escape our current stagnation, Hobart explained to me when we met in Austin, then we might welcome economic bubbles such as our current AI craze. To get to a boom, he even seems to suggest, borrowing from the ideas of the great economic historian Carlotta Perez, we may even need to celebrate bubbles.

Byrne Hobart is an investor, consultant, and writer. He is the author of The Diff, a daily newsletter covering inflection points in finance and technology. He is also a founding partner at Anomaly, a frontier tech investment firm.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The iconic DLD conference will be holding its twentieth annual event in Munich next month. Founded in January 2005, DLD has hosted many of the world’s leading tech thinkers and entrepreneurs from both Europe and the United States. What most distinguishes DLD, however, is its community of loyal regulars whose presence in Munich in January promises a degree of certainty in an increasingly uncertain world. One of the most loyal DLDers is Jeff Jarvis, the prolific tech gadfly, always to found in the front row of the DLD auditorium, listening with great care to all the speeches. And in this conversation in celebration of DLD’s 20th anniversary, Jarvis both looks back to evaluate how the world has changed since January 2005 and looks forward to imagine the next twenty years.

Jeff Jarvis is a national leader in the development of online news, blogging, the investigation of new business models for news, and the teaching of entrepreneurial journalism. He writes an influential media blog, Buzzmachine.com. He is author of “Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News” (CUNY Journalism Press, 2014); “Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live” (Simon & Schuster, 2011); “What Would Google Do?” (HarperCollins 2009), and the Kindle Single “Gutenberg the Geek.” He has consulted for media companies including The Guardian, Digital First Media, Postmedia, Sky.com, Burda, Advance Publications, and The New York Times company at About.com. Jarvis was president of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications, which includes Condé Nast magazines and newspapers across America. He was the creator and founding managing editor of Entertainment Weekly magazine and has worked as a columnist, associate publisher, editor, and writer for a number of publications, including TV Guide, People, the San Francisco Examiner, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Daily News. His freelance articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country, including the Guardian, The New York Times, the New York Post, The Nation, Rolling Stone, and BusinessWeek. Jarvis holds a B.S.J. from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He was named one of the 100 most influential media leaders by the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Yesterday, we ran Bethanne Patrick’s five best novels of 2024. Today, we feature her top non-fiction of the year including new books about reality television, Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife and Handel's Messiah. ‘Tis the season. Enjoy!

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.