The Future of Attention with Kara Swisher and Kevin Systrom

Over the course of their careers, Katie Couric and Kara Swisher have weathered (and thrived amongst) massive sea changes in the news industry–from network TV to streaming; the rise of mobile viewing; Twitter as the global newsroom water cooler; and now AI, polarization, and a serious crisis of truth. This makes Kara the perfect plus one for a discussion with Instagram founder Kevin Systrom. Kevin was the architect of some of those sea changes Kara and Katie documented, and with his new venture Artifact, a “fully machine learning driven, personalized newsreader,” he’s aiming to remedy some of the problems facing news and information today.

Katie, Kara, and Kevin go back to Kevin’s roots at Instagram and draw out what made that app great–its ability to evoke delight; its sense of discovery and community-building. They also discuss how those features, combined with a leadership ethos of responsibility and proactivity makes Artifact something beyond the headline aggregators you might think of when you hear “newsreader.” Can conscientious design create an app that genuinely informs you? Could it even solve the problem of social media echo chambers? Kevin Systrom thinks so! 

So come along on a little trip to how we got here, where we’re headed, and what we can do to make sure that the content we see online is vetted and true. Because facts we can rely on are crucial to our entire world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.