Uncover the deceptive practice of companies exploiting user data under the camouflage of free services in this transformative conversation as exposed in Frank McCourt's latest book, 'Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age.' Listen how Frank McCourt teamed up with hosts Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli embark upon a conscious initiative, Project Liberty, to alter the trajectory of the internet's influence on society and restore dignity, liberty, and humanity in the digital age.
Guest: Frank McCourt, Executive Chairman and Founder, Project Liberty [@pro_jectliberty]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-h-mccourt/
Project Liberty on LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/projectliberty/
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Hosts:
Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast [@RedefiningCyber]
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/sean-martin
Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Notes
In this thought-provoking and potentially life-changing conversation with hosts Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli, Frank McCourt discusses the necessity of prioritizing personhood in the face of increasing Internet surveillance. The trio discuss the deceptive practices of companies that extract user data under the alluring guise of free services. They explore the fundamental need for society to determine how to harness and utilize technology, which currently exists as an all-powerful, autocratic surveillance entity beyond individual control.
Recognizing the necessity of cultural shift to reclaim liberty, humanity, and dignity in the digital age, Frank emphasizes the urgency for society to take action. He presents Project Liberty as a conscious initiative to course-correct the trajectory of the Internet's effect on society and calls on individuals to raise their hopeful voices and make discerning choices. The narrative sheds light on how McCourt envisions restructuring internet governance, espousing a people-centric approach, ultimately promoting a more secure democratic digital world. To further this mission McCourt presents several ideals from his book 'Our Biggest Fight', emphasizing the necessity to reclaim control over personal data.
This is a conversation that must be heard — a discussion you want to be part of.
Key Questions Addressed
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Resources
Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, And Dignity In The Digital Age (Book): https://www.projectliberty.io/our-biggest-fight
Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, And Dignity In The Digital Age (Pre-Order Book): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/743398/our-biggest-fight-by-frank-h-mccourt-jr-with-michael-j-casey/
The proceeds from the book will be donated to the Project Liberty Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization working to advance the responsible development of technology and ensure that tomorrow’s internet is designed and governed for the common good.
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Book | Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, And Dignity In The Digital Age | A Conversation with Author, Frank McCourt | Redefining CyberSecurity and Society with Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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Sean Martin: [00:00:00] Marco.
Marco Ciappelli: Sean.
Sean Martin: You have a
choice and you'll make it
now.
Marco Ciappelli: Right now?
Sean Martin: Right now.
Marco Ciappelli: Can I have some information?
Sean Martin: No.
You'll just have to trust what I'm, uh, what I'm saying is, is real and, uh, you have to make some
decisions on it.
Marco Ciappelli: I'll just flip a coin and go with that.
Alright.
Is that where we're going nowadays? Is that where we're going nowadays?
Are you talking about the
internet?
Sean Martin: I think so. That's part of a quote that, uh, is in, it's in, I believe it's in the forward of a book we're going to talk about today. And, uh, the quote is much more eloquent. It's from music lyrics, I think. And we'll find out from our, our guest Frank McCourt. It's a pleasure to have you on the show today.
Frank McCourt: It's nice to be with you, Sean, as usual.
Sean Martin: It's really good. It's good to see you again. And, um, we had a chance to sit down and talk about a lot of this, [00:01:00] uh, in depth not too long ago. And I'm excited to have you on the show. And since we've spoken, you've actually Written a book and that book is coming out where if you're listening to this the book is available now It's published and we're excited to have the conversation.
It's rooted in the realities of what we call the internet and How it's impacting the way we live and more specifically How we manage democracy and how we make decisions in life policy and whatnot. So, uh, a lot to dig into here and I'm excited Marco and I get to have this chat with you. Because it's going to cover society and technology and cybersecurity and trust and you name it.
So many things. It's a big, big effort you're undertaking and, uh, I'm excited to get into it before we do that though. Frank, for those who don't [00:02:00] recognize the name, haven't seen you in a while, uh, a few words about some of the things you've been up to and, uh, then we'll, we'll lead off with the book.
Frank McCourt: Well, yeah, I mean, uh, I'm, uh, uh, I'm blessed in so many ways because I have.
A lot of different things going on, but I'd say first and foremost, you know, I'm a father of seven children. That's, uh, keeps me busy and, um, you know, fifth generation steward of a family business that started in Boston in the 1800s, the great grandfather started building roads when Henry Ford started building cars.
So, you know, we've been building ever since and, you know, over time the projects get, you know, bigger little by little and the geography gets bigger as well. And so we're. Plus to be doing big infrastructure and development projects around the world now. And, uh, that's kind of what brought me to the, to the big problem we have with the intranet because I, you know, I see it as a [00:03:00] engineering problem, you know, it's a, we have a problem with how the infrastructure is designed.
If we can fix that well, then we can fix a whole lot of things downstream. And it's, um, it's interesting in, in your introduction there, Sean, you talked about all the things that we could touch on in this conversation. Because the internet as it is now being used and experienced is, is connected to everything we do.
And that's the point that if, if this technology is designed correctly and optimizing for the right things, well, we're going to have awesome lives and strong democracies and healthy kids and great civil, you know, discourse. And if it's designed poorly, then, you know, we're going to do harm to kids and we're going to have.
A lot of, you know, uh, noise in the system because we're going to have a very, um, contaminated [00:04:00] information ecosystem and we're going to have democracy struggle and so on and so forth. So yeah, this is a big issue and if we can fix this and by the way, it is very fixable. Then we can, you know, just have better lives and, uh, as individuals and as members of, you know, our communities and as society at large.
So, yeah, that's what the project is about. And I'm, I'm really prioritizing my own personal time now in a way to spend, um, uh, in professional time, obviously on, on, on this project and stepped away a little bit from the business, hired a full time CEO. So that I could, um, have the gift of time and, uh, this is now, uh, my passion.
Sean Martin: And, and I think you make an interesting point, Frank, of course, uh, in that decades of investing in infrastructure to [00:05:00] support what basically allows us to get around and receive the things that we want in life. And that infrastructure wasn't, I'm sure it changed over time, right? And smaller cars, now bigger trucks, hauling, hauling, uh, tons of materials around.
Yeah, loads more people, more people with cars, we have self driving cars coming. The infrastructure has to accommodate and change to, to address these changes in life. So how, how do you see where things have come from with respect to the internet? Where we're still reliant upon the initial design, where it's putting us at, uh, I don't want to say at risk, but maybe at risk, um, at least putting us in a position where we not might, might not get the best out of it that we think we should or are.
Frank McCourt: Yeah, I, I, I don't think, you know, [00:06:00] the notion of being put at risk is at all an overstatement. And, you know, particularly if you look at it from the vantage point of, um, Uh, you know, the, the, the well being of, of young Children, right? We, we, we now have the research is in, uh, the way this technology is working.
I'm talking about internet technology and social media in particular. It's doing great harms, great, a great deal of harm to young Children. And, and we could talk about that further if you like. Um, I, I think we agree. And most of your listeners would probably readily agree that. You know, to really have a coherent, uh, society and, and, and, and community living that, that sharing a set of facts, you know, all having a view of the world where we could separate fact from fiction.
Uh, [00:07:00] and then we can disagree. By the way, we have different opinions about those facts and what to do. But having, you know, no agreement on what's a fact, what's fact and what's fiction. That's that's a problem. And, uh, it's a problem. If you, You want to have any kind of coherent civil discourse, and it's certainly a problem if you want to have a functioning democracy, because democracy is, is built on a very simple, powerful, important, yet fragile concept called trust.
And if you destroy trust, there's no way that democracy survives, uh, uh, nevermind thrives. And, and, um, and I would argue, by the way, the same thing for market economy. We have in the United States, uh, I mean, we are the, the, the most telling story ever, right? In, in, in terms of, uh, when you, when you, when you, uh, related to the time it took to accomplish it.
I mean, the United [00:08:00] States has built an economy, which is the most powerful in the world in a relatively short period of time. When you look at, you know, civilization, right, to do so in a couple of hundred years is amazing. And that was done because we build it. Built a trusted marketplace. And, uh, if you destroy trust, then tell me how, you know, market capitalism survives.
I, I just, I saw, I go back to your. You're framing. I don't think saying that this is all at risk is too is an overstatement. And I think this is the biggest issue of our of our time and because it's connected so many other issues and it's the underpinning of the operating systems, the real operating systems that we have, which is our political operating system and our economic operating system.
So, yeah, I think it's a huge issue. But, you know, but I'm not here to. Uh, just throw more logs on the fire of, um, you know, the, the, the world's coming to an end or we're all doomed. I, I actually think this is a [00:09:00] correctable problem. Uh, and, and, you know, that's what I want to talk about it. And once we correct it, then we can take advantage of generative artificial intelligence and all the other things that are happening.
But if we don't, I think we will rue the day. I think we'll regret it very, very much. Because we're not headed in a, in the right direction right now. Uh, and, and, you know, there's, of course the internet does, does good things, uh, along with the bad things. But we, we, we shouldn't be, you know, if we were to use a, some, what's a, what's a metaphor?
Let's say we had a plumbing system that pipe, you know, pipe water into the homes of a million people in the city, you know, if more than half of them got clean water and, and the remainder got toxic water, we wouldn't say that plumbing system is doing more, you know, good than harm. So let's keep it like it is.
We would, we would [00:10:00] all be working feverishly to rid the toxicity from the water that's killing people and poisoning people and so forth. So it's, uh, to me, a false Argument when when people say, well, it's doing some good things, too. Well, yeah, but that's that's not the point. We should have an Internet that's that really amplifies great behavior and optimizes for human beings and and really, really mitigates and minimizes bad bad things.
And that's not the Internet we have today. Unfortunately.
Marco Ciappelli: All right. So you Sean knows me. The audience knows what kind of conversation I have. It's my show is Um, we're defining society where we talk about technology and societies that when Sean told me you should come on on this podcast, I was pretty excited and all the things you're saying right now.
I'm like, I don't even know where to start because there's so many open can already in the way you presented it, uh, cans. [00:11:00] So I want to start from one thing that I saw is one of the chapter on your book, which is you mentioned the social contract. I bring it up all the time. My background is political science and sociology.
So the social contract always stays in my mind when we talk about technology. And I often say it's maybe time to renegotiate that contract. So, um, the way we interact with technology, uh, the way we put guardrail around technology, or maybe the way that we need to wipe out certain way that we've been doing things until now.
And just because we've done it like this in the past, that doesn't mean we should keep going. So, I'd like to start with that, maybe, with what you can see. As an important change that we can do in our society. And then I'm sure with Sean, we'll dig into the technology. Maybe vision for that.
Frank McCourt: Yeah, Marco. I think it's a it's a very good starting [00:12:00] place because, you know, I use the American project as the work Framing device for the book and, uh, and, and, and Thomas Paine and his pamphlet Common Sense that he wrote in 1775 as, as kind of the inspiration Thomas Paine pointed out before there was, you know, a, uh, a United States of America or a self governed democracy or a set of unalienable human rights that we had adopted.
He pointed out that, you know, his fellow people, Settlers in the colonies had a choice to make they could continue to be subjects of a monarchy or they could decide to be citizens and meaning they have all the same rights that [00:13:00] their king had and that they, this, this, you know, fluke of nature of someone being born into a family and having all the power.
And everybody else being subject to that, it's maybe not the best, um, structure for, for human beings. What about a different model where we're all created equal, right? And we create a government of, by, and for people. And we have a set of human rights. Um, you know, liberty, freedom, agency, choice, uh, and a set of property rights as well, where we can own things and, and, and do business and trade things and, and, uh, we're not just working the field for, um, enough crops to sustain ourselves and giving all the rest to the manor lord or ultimately to the king, but rather we could own the land and do with it what we, [00:14:00] what we can.
to create value for ourselves, our family, our community, our country and so forth. So this was radical in a way, but quite simple in, in the way Thomas Payne put it forward to his fellow colonists. And, um, and you know, I'm glad people chose the latter. They chose to be citizens and, and, and step away from subject to it because my forebears came to this country, you know, from a place where they had very few rights.
And really couldn't own anything. And they came because of the dream, the so called American dream, where they could have those rights, and they could make something better of their lives, and they could leave poverty behind, and leave this idea of oppression behind. And, um, and by the way, they came as a result of a potato famine in Ireland, you know, where they were, um, people were dying by, [00:15:00] in great numbers.
And the king didn't much didn't seem to much care. Right. And so people took matters into their own hands in my, my family's case to come to America to make a better life. And I'm the beneficiary of all that. And the, the, the point in the American project is not just this idea. And by the way, the book, you know, has in its, um, uh, It's called our biggest fight, but it's it's reclaiming liberty, humanity, dignity in the digital age.
And those are those are that's part of who we are as human beings, right? The human set of rights that are for forefathers and mothers gain gain for us. What we also talk in the book about though is that those rights don't matter unless you respect them in other people. And so the social contract that you refer to is a, is, is a [00:16:00] contract that for me to have rights that matter and for those rights to be, you know, to be worth something, I have to respect those same rights in you.
And there, and it's that social contract that's the That's the connective tissue that pulls all this together. So I would say that it's not so much that we need to throw everything out and start over again. I think we need to go back to the basics, understand what's made, for instance, the American project successful and other.
Other similar projects around the world successful and then recalibrate for the internet age because we have a whole structure that was built pre our digital lives and now we've digitalized fully everything is about us is digitized, right? It's collected in it and it goes somewhere and I'm sure we're going to talk about that in a moment.
And the [00:17:00] punch line here is I don't want to give up all my rights. Just to use the internet and on the internet. I don't have rights, right? I'm not treated as a person with dignity and with Liberty, you know, and and in a way that I'm not even treated as never mind. I'm not even treated as as a human being never mind with humanity I'm treated as just just data.
And so what's happened here is we're we're we're moving rapidly in the opposite direction of Of what I just described with the American project, i. e. that move from subjecthood to citizenship, we're moving from citizen citizenship to subjecthood in the digital age and the powers, the power that be in this digital age are just, they're not men and women with crowns and robes, they're these, these individuals that control these large platforms that control our lives.[00:18:00]
And that's what we need to fix. And that's what is fixable.
Marco Ciappelli: Um, and I, if I may comment on this, I shown, I didn't meet with you like Sean did, and Sean shared a, an article I think was on times magazine. And you use this mantra that the technology world have been using for a long time, which is let's move fast and destroy everything.
And, uh, and I feel I want to connect it with this. And maybe with this, we jump into the technology because imagine if, uh, the Thomas Paine discourse was more based on let's change thing in a constructive way. Into let's just destroy everything because we disagree, right? And in a way, what I'm what I'm trying to say is the Internet maybe moved without a plan of certain guardrail and and company maybe took advantage of it and and they ended up destroying these [00:19:00] rights that we could have built in a much better way.
And I agree with what your vision of it's not too late. We can do something about it.
Frank McCourt: You know, I have a utmost. Respect for a gentleman by the name of Tim Berners Lee, who created the World Wide Web and, you know, I've talked to him about this and, and because I wanted to be clear on his intentions and what he set out to build and what he gifted to the world, you know, he didn't invent something and then say, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to make a trillion dollars, regardless of the impact on society.
He, he, he created something that was intended to be You know, uh, very creative, you know, an equalizer, a way to give people access to others, knowledge and information to, you know, the so called tide that lifts all boats. Right. And, and that's not what's happened here. [00:20:00] And, and so if we step back, Marco, and just think about, you know, the, the intranet as it evolved, you know, it's not it, it 1989 is, is basically when it A few, you know, researchers agreed to adopt a, you know, it's two co joined protocols.
We, it's now known as TCP IP. And, and what that did is it connected devices. So their devices kind of talk to each other. Now, they knew at the time that who was on the other end of those devices. I mean they, they, they, they knew that there were people involved and quite frankly they were trusted counterparts because everybody knew everybody else and they knew who they were exchanging these large data sets with over what device.
I think it is worth noting at this point though that we remain a device on the internet to this [00:21:00] day. We have an IP address, right? It's not Marco, Sean, and Frank on the internet. It's the device that we're on that's on the internet. It's the machine. And then, in 1989, Tim, you know, put forward another protocol, Thin Layer, called HTTP, and that is, uh, a protocol that once adopted at scale, connected all the data, all the data that we create.
Was now connected regardless of what device it sat on, no longer was, was, you know, constrained to a, to these, uh, singular devices and that, that was a, a huge revolution, right? Of possibilities. And it set that in motion, uh, 35 years ago. Um, uh, by the way, same, same birth, birth date as the launch of the book, you know, March 12th, uh, in 1989 was the birth of the World [00:22:00] Wide Web.
And here we are 35 years. Later and, and his intention was to create something that was very utopian, really, as I said, something that was a gift to humanity that lots and lots of people could Ben benefit from. What happened fairly quickly, however, was yeah, the move fast and break things phase, which was the phase that you refer to, which was the, the, the app age or the app era.
Right. Where big apps got were built. That were designed to do what suck up our data and aggregate it and apply algorithms to it to optimize for whatever these companies decided to optimize for. And we were dragged into a world where we're surveilled 24 hours a day. Our data is scraped and somebody else is deciding what to do to manipulate us to target us [00:23:00] to trigger us.
To get us to buy things and get us and behave in certain ways and and kind of hurt us into these echo chambers and so forth all without regard to impacts. It's having on children or impact. It's having on society or impacts. It's having on democracy and this is when you look back at this move, you know, this, you know, pithy phrase move fast and break things that came out of Silicon Valley and You know, Facebook and so forth.
In, in, in, in retrospect, it's just irresponsible. It's just irresponsible to take something as powerful as the internet, connect billions of people without regard to the impact you're having on people. And, but that's what was done. And because people didn't understand the harms part of the equation, they kind of went along with it and said, well, this is kind of interesting.
We're all connected by the internet. This is amazing. This is gonna be great. Well, we learned [00:24:00] fairly quickly on, it's not so great because it's, it, it actually amplifies bad behavior and at the expense of good behavior. Most people, you know, presumably the three of us aren't on the internet today thinking about how we're going to You don't mess with other people or or steal something from people or hurt hurt people.
We we use it as a tool, right? To have this conversation, for instance, and it enables it and it's wonderful. But there are lots of people who are on the Internet looking to hurt other people and scam other people and and they don't care if they're putting out information. That's that's totally false. And corrupting our information ecosystem or doing things with, I mean, look at the, look at what we've learned about, you know, Facebook, knowing about algorithms that were harming kids, but, you know, but Zuckerberg went forward with, with an anyway, it's just, it's just wrong and how, [00:25:00] how much longer are we going to put up with it?
You know, that's the question. Once again, like Thomas Paine said, and like Sean said, at the beginning of this interview. We have a choice. We can either continue to go down the path we're going on now, be dragged into this future that none of us wants, you know, watch things that we, the things that we love and care about be destroyed.
For what? The ability to use the internet. That's a silly deal. Let's go down a different future and have an internet that actually optimizes for what we love and makes life better for people.
Sean Martin: So you've heard the use the word people many times here, and there's a chapter in your book called personhood.
So you described, we are the device and we are the data and organizations are using that to determine who we are. And yes, we get value out of it. But I [00:26:00] don't think, and you mentioned people using the internet to compromise or take advantage of other people. I don't, my point I'm trying to make is, I don't think people are understood or are a recognized entity in the internet.
I think it still is. Systems or devices and data. And if I'm an attacker, I'm attacking a device and data and I'm using that to my advantage. If I'm a company, I'm using, I'm using a device, an app and some data to make some money. Yes, I might, might be trying to connect people on a social platform, but the ultimate goal is to provide a marketing machine.
That people can, can target, uh, folks with different, different, uh, ads. So I guess we were, we're losing the sense of, or never had the sense of [00:27:00] what a person is in the internet. And I think we, in recent years, we're trying to apply, I'll call it a patch. To the internet in the form of some laws and regulations, GDPR and, and, uh, Europe for privacy, things like that.
So, but I don't know that applying a patch like that's going to solve the problem of we are people on the internet.
Frank McCourt: Yeah, I, I'm, I'm in massive agreement with you and hopefully, um, when people read the book, they'll, that point will come across, you know, uh, clearly. It's. We are people that, uh, you know, benefit from a set of human rights.
We've proven that, right? We are people that want as individuals, liberty, for instance, but we are also people that understand and respect that in others because of the [00:28:00] social contract. And we understand that we can do so much alone, but we don't live on islands. But if we do develop community standards and norms and behaviors, we can actually, you know, do great things.
Um, when we're, when we collaborate, and by the way, it takes a market, right, to sell things to, so of course, we need to have a, a communal sense of, of, of society and so on and so forth, but these are all people principles, as you're pointing out, the internet, you know, built, uh, to connect devices, and then data, is not at all built for people, and it actually dehumanizes us, um, Because it's, it sucks all the valuable information out of us, and then somebody else decides what to do with that information.
We are digital beings in this world, right? Our, think of it like you're born with [00:29:00] biological DNA, and then your life now is captured digitally, and that's your lived experience is your digital DNA. It is you. In this world. There's no separation between the biological, biological Sean and the digital Sean.
It's one in the same. That's why I urge people when they hear the word data. Don't think about it as this abstract thing that doesn't matter. Think about it as your personhood. It's who you are in the digital age. So why not another protocol that we all adopt, which actually for the first time connects us as people on the Internet.
as opposed to, you know, connecting data or connecting machines. So DSNP, which is what we've put forward as an idea, would, would work with TCP IP and HTTP. But for the first [00:30:00] time, now we would be in charge of our digital lives. We would own and control our data. We own us again. We, they don't own us, we own us.
That's This is very Thomas Paine esque, isn't it? Right? The king doesn't own me. I own me. We're not the subjects in this game. That's right. Exactly right. So now imagine an internet where we're not clicking on the terms and conditions of use of a few big platforms, but the new apps are clicking on our terms and conditions of use for our data.
It's our data. It's not their data. Now, of course, we want to aggregate it and do great things with it, whether it's economically or for the, for the common good. But let's do it with permission, where we'll decide who gets to use our data for what purpose. And if we don't like what they're doing, we're going to rescind the permission.
We have agency again, we have control again, we have liberty again. Oh, and by the way, if there's trillions of [00:31:00] dollars of value created. We get to share in the value that's created. That's a data sharing economy imagine what the world would look like then and how many people who are on the outside looking in would now be on the Inside and be able to benefit because we're all We're all human beings with value and right now we're all being treated not as human beings And being scraped of whatever value we have in the digital world.
And it's, it's, uh, it's not correct. It's not correct morally, most importantly. It's not correct legally or, or in just in a sense of fairness in my opinion either. But just, it's, it's just a, morally it just, it's, it's all wrong. It's all upside down. And as I said earlier, we don't, we shouldn't be giving up all of our rights and giving away our property.
Marco Ciappelli: Frank, what's your take on, on the, kind of like the deception that we've been subject to, uh, with the, with the free services, where [00:32:00] it almost made me think about the, the, the king owning the land you cultivated for him, and then you share, you keep what you need for a living, how you started, which was the entire system of the middle age in Italy as well, uh, in Europe.
Uh, and, and, But you were not even on the internet. You were not even informed that this was going to happen, right? So here's your social media platform. It's free. Have fun. Connect with your friends. Do what you want. Meantime, we're gonna scrap everything.
Frank McCourt: So it's what's really interesting Marco is and it's connected to the prior point about human beings on the internet.
Yeah. What we've learned in the kind of the off the tracks Internet, the so called what? Let's call it the, you know, let's call it [00:33:00] phase one of the Internet was TCP IP enabled. That's machines or devices phase two World Wide Web, you know, enabled by HTTP. That's the World Wide Web. Okay? And then suddenly we're brought into this different world.
I'm gonna call it the app era, which we live in now, which the first two were decentralized. The third one is highly centralized, highly autocratic, surveillance based, right? And what did we learn? What we learned is that the value in the internet, the so called network effect, is in people's relationships with one another.
It's actually not in the data that we keep on referring to. It's actually in people's social graphs, and that, that now are the property You know, in the minds of these big platforms, their property, they have a a a social map. [00:34:00] You know, they've mapped us all and tens of thousands of attributes about each of us.
And who we connect with, what we do, how we feel, what we're going to do. And it's now become a predictive model, right? It's so much information. They can predict what you're going to do when fed something or, or, or given something. So it's highly, highly manipulative, but the value is in the people part of the intranet.
Not the machine or data part of it. And that's why we're, it's so urgent that we make this a, a people centric internet, but with people in charge of themselves and their data and what's done with it, as opposed to having that be, you know, be kind of lulled into thinking. that they're getting some free app and therefore it's worth it and don't worry about your quote data what what they what people should be worried about is that they're being surveilled 24 hours a day and everything about them is [00:35:00] being recorded digitally and then they're being and then that's being fed back in a way that optimizes not for their health and well being and safety it optimizes For whatever these big platforms want to optimize it for.
And that's how we entered this world of an attention economy and an ad tech economy. Call it what you will, which is about selling things and ads and and so forth and so on. Which, by the way, in the new Internet, we're all going to want to be able to buy things and have them delivered to our house the following morning.
Don't get me wrong. But why not have an Internet where rather than me being targeted morning, noon and night, I just get on the Internet And tell, tell everybody else who's on it. Establish that I'm a real person, by the way. That's first step. And then I tell everybody I'm gonna, that I wanna, I wanna buy something or I wanna do something and I'm a real person and I'm actually really wanna do this.
Isn't that more valuable to, to advertisers and companies than [00:36:00] having to guess what I might be interested in or might what I might want? So we're gonna have the benefits of the internet without the, the, the, the negatives. You know, believe me, if the government said, I'm gonna deliver your mail for free and no more postage stamp, but I'm gonna put cameras in every room of your house and I'm gonna, and in your car and in your office, and I'm gonna.
Uh, open your mail, and I'm going to read, read it, and if there's anything valuable in there, I'm going to, I'm going to, it's mine now, I'm going to use it, and I'm going to, oh, and by the way, if your young daughter is worried about her weight, I've got something for her, right, to, to, to prey on her, and if you have a good business idea, I'm going to go ahead and replicate that, and, oh, and your relationships are now my relationships.
If the, if the government came to you and said you can have free mail, free mail for those things, you'd think they were out of their minds, but that's what we've let happen. It's just not the government, right? It's, it's the, it's, it's these big companies. And I, I just say centralized autocratic surveillance technology, [00:37:00] whether it's the Chinese communist party and the Chinese government that controls the information or whether it's five platforms for me as an individual, it's the same, it's, it's the same thing.
I don't want anybody controlling me. And, you know, king, queen, you know, uh, a political party or, uh, or, or a big company. I want to, I want to be in charge of myself. I want to own me. Now, in, in, in, in, in, in just again, I want to highlight, however, though. It's so easy to rotate around the damages and the harms.
This could be incredible for humanity with a fix of the infrastructure. And again, you know, distributing water to millions of people in the city is a really great innovation. We need water to live. Distributing clean water and healthy water is, is, is imperative, not just water.
Sean Martin: I couldn't help, but as you were talking, thinking [00:38:00] about some of the positive points as well, Frank, we want access to financial services and resources to live our lives.
We want access to healthcare to benefit from precision, precision care and societal care, whether we see trends and we can look for ways to help. People live happier, healthier lives using information that we have, but that we still maintain. I know there's some, some projects underway for those two sectors in particular, but they don't address the bigger problem.
And one might say, to address the bigger problem is Too big of an undertaking, but you, you believe that it is possible and you have project liberty that you started to help move the needle there. And I think there was another quote in the book. I'm going to, I'm going to take me one second. I'm going to go back to that because I think it's an important part here.
[00:39:00] Uh, apologies, everybody listening and watching. Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible and suddenly you're doing the impossible. I love that quote, especially in the context of this, clearly you chose that purposefully for the book. Take a moment to describe Project Liberty for us, why you founded that, what its objectives are, how you're starting to move the needle with what's necessary so that we can achieve what's possible.
Frank McCourt: Well, you know, we've talked a lot about technology and its impact on society and, you know, our individual lives and well being. So, at the core, Project Liberty is solution to the infrastructure problem, right? So DSNP, uh, it, it, it, it, which enables a, uh, let's call it a universally accessible global social graph, as opposed to what we have now, which is billions of [00:40:00] atomized graphs being sucked up by.
Some big platforms. Imagine now the data that we all create every day is part of the Internet itself, and we all get to benefit from that with permission of the person who controls their piece of the data in that mass, mass ocean of data. By the way, not only a mass, massive ocean of data, it grows every, every minute of every day.
And that's the point, right? The value is just growing and growing. And we all know that there's tremendous Benefit and value that can be, uh, achieved and realized by aggregating the data and then, you know, solving problems. I mean, this it's, it's, it's a digital form of collective genius, right? And that's, that's what it is.
So, Project Liberty has at its core a tech track. Uh, but beyond that, um, and I think Marco, this goes back to the point you made earlier, Around move fast and break things [00:41:00] like, like when you change things, you have to have in mind, where are you going? Right? What are you changing to not just tear it down?
And, you know, and we all get to live in the rubble of it. So in the move fast and break things era, it was just some technologists You know, you know, the image is a technologist and a t shirt and a whiteboard and figuring out what's good for society, right? I, I don't think that's a winning formula. Let's, let's invite the social scientists into the conversation this time and and be inputting when it comes to how the tech is developed and what principles and values are being embedded and what we're optimizing for.
So we've, we have five different universities involved now and that number will grow, focused on the, the, the research, you know, the policy expertise, the governance expertise, and the, [00:42:00] and the social science expertise generally, right? And ethicists, behavioral economists, um, psychologists, all the people that, that are needed to build good tech.
And then, uh, uh, side by side. There's a track that focuses in on, uh, building out the commercial ecosystem so that millions of builders will get involved in, in building this new evolved, better internet, because nothing's going to happen if there isn't an alternative, right? People are going to stay and live where they live now on the bad internet if they don't.
If there's not a better one, and then thirdly, and I think perhaps the most important is the, is the track, which is, which turns this from a tech project to a societal project, it's the tack. It's, it's, it's the track that says, this is really a, a [00:43:00] civic project, a social project, a political project, not a tech project.
The tech is just a tool. To advance society. It's not it's not the be all end all that society has to react to. And that's where we're at right now. We're all reacting to this tech because it's so powerful and in trying to put these regulatory band aids on it and trying to make it less harmful and a little bit more safe.
You know what? The biggest industry in the current in the current version of the Internet is what's the biggest single industry? We all know, Frank, it's, it's, it's security, cybersecurity. And, and I would argue that when you need so much, so much effort. To mitigate damages, right? And to make something safer and better because it's so porous and, and hackable because of its, you know, the data is all stored in, in, in these, [00:44:00] you know, singular places.
And so it's very vulnerable. Why not? Why not take advantage of current technology and have shared state have this data stored in a decentralized way. So it's not hackable and that we get to, you know, we get to be in charge. It's just, We, we, we have technology now available that we didn't have 20, nevermind 35 years ago.
So let's, let's use it. And the only impediment to this. Is the big tech companies aren't going to want it to happen because you know, they're not going to want to give up their control. But I look, I'm a capitalist. I'm all for people making money and generating things. I'm just I draw the line when it's destroying everything I love, you know, when it's destroying democracy, destroying civil discourse, completely destroying our information ecosystem, harming young kids.
And I said earlier, I have I have, I have seven and three of them happen to be young and are, and are, are going to be impacted mightily [00:45:00] by this. It's it's, this is enough is enough. Enough is enough where we hear, we read, you know, not only do we, we don't even need to read about it or hear about it. We all know and can see the differences in our own lives, our own behavior, and that of our children.
Those of us that have kids. We have all the evidence we need because we have eyes and we have brains and we have our own awareness of what's right and wrong in the world. And we all know something is broken. And so the point the book makes is it all gets connected to the tech because the tech is now ubiquitous in our lives.
We are digital citizens or digital subjects, and we need to fix this. And if we fix this, We won't solve every problem in the world, but we'll have a shot. We'll now be back on track where we have a massively powerful tool that can solve problems at scale and share wealth with people and do really, really great things.
And we won't be spending our time and [00:46:00] energy putting out the fires and the, and, and, and the heart and dealing with mitigating the harms that, um, that the current technology is creating. And I think it just, it creates a brighter, more hopeful future. And that's what I want for my kids and all kids. I mean, isn't that our job as human, as adults is to, and isn't that the only metric that matters?
Are we, are we leaving a world better than the one we found or worse? It's pretty simple. And is it safer and healthier and better for the next generation or worse? Very, very basic metrics. And right now we're, we're failing.
Sean Martin: And, and the reason I laugh, 'cause I didn't wanna cry on camera when you mentioned the cybersecurity, uh, expenses, it's, it's a core topic of my show, redefining cybersecurity.
And where almost every guest I asked, I asked them, could you not eliminate. Spend on team technology processes, angst, [00:47:00] burnout, paying for cyber insurance policy. If he just did this differently from the beginning, if you eliminated the exposure, eliminated the risk, eliminated the impact that this can negatively have on the business and then on your customers and society, potentially, even if we're talking about companies that reach those folks, you can eliminate a lot of that negative stuff that could be put back into something else to have.
Better society to have better services, to have better products, whatever it is that we want to achieve, but we're spending so much money. Just plugging the gaps, patching the holes, uh, trying to pretend that everything is okay. And it's. We're wasting a ton of money and a ton of time
Frank McCourt: and time and we're wasting time and it's, this is, this is the ultimate for me, the, the, it's, it's so ironic because we, our [00:48:00] political system is broken, uh, and in large measure because of the same technology, right, because right now you've got the extremes dominating on both sides, uh, because that's what, that's what's sticky.
That's what's, that, that, that, that's what gets likes and followers and, and, and, and, and clicks and so forth.
Sean Martin: Those, those have the barbs that catch under our clothes, Frank.
Frank McCourt: Yeah. And, and, but your point about rather than spending all this investment in mitigating harms, right. And trying to make something that's very insecure, secure, what if we just fix it?
at the at the core infrastructure level and then redeploy all that brilliant talent to actually build a better, better version of the internet. [00:49:00] And, you know, wouldn't, wouldn't we be able to do a lot of things in life? More inexpensively, wouldn't we able to, wouldn't we able to, wouldn't we be able to remove a lot of bureaucracy and, and by the way, we'd have to have a plan to do that because you just don't eliminate all of it because there are jobs at stake and not everybody can be trained to, you know, who's pushing paper somewhere to be trained to be a, you know, a, a technologist or, or trained to be, you know, this.
So we need to be, that's why I say it's a social project. This is a political, this is about advancing you. Humanity advancing us and, and, and, you know, as a proud American, I want America to show the way as to how this can, what, what is the 2. 0 version of democracy look like? What is the 2. 0 version of capitalism look like?
That's what I want to, I want to be part of that conversation. And instead of, you know, uh, you know, I don't want to [00:50:00] get too far onto the geopolitical track here, but it's, You know, I think we all know at this stage of the game that autocratic centralized surveillance technology is probably going to work better for China.
than democratic societies, right? If I asked you to give me three phrases or words to describe democracy, I don't think you'd pick centralized autocratic surveillance based as the first three things that would pop into your mind. So we have technology that is not in harmony with our values and our political, supposedly, you know, our political ideals and, and the political system we have.
So we need to get technology to support. and strengthen our democracy. And, you know, sadly, You know, one of the great secret sauces of, of, of the American project is we created, we created models that people wanted to replicate and we let, we, we exported those models and let people replicate them. Recently, we've created a model and we've [00:51:00] exported it to democracies around the world.
And unfortunately, it's destroying those democracies as well, because we've, we've exported it and, uh, a killer for, um, you know, fact based information ecosystems. We've allowed myths and disinformation to proliferate in a way that it's undermining democracies everywhere, and we have an obligation to fix that because I'm not saying that was the intention, but I'm saying that's the result, and we need to go fix that as Americans because it's our tech that's doing the harm.
I don't think most democracies are gravitating towards Chinese I think they would prefer to use America, America, but both of them are, neither of them is healthy for democracy or healthy for young kids, you know, and, and that's my point. So let's, let's not be stuck with these two choices. Let's go ahead and create a, uh, you know, technology that we can all be proud of and, and it's solving problems [00:52:00] and strengthening society and strengthening, uh, democracies and, and is really super helpful to kids.
And, and, and by the way, I don't want to lose sight of it. And shares the economic benefits more broadly.
Marco Ciappelli: Well, I'm, I'm gonna end with a thought. I have many, but I'm gonna choose this, which is, maybe technology's been leading because it's easier than culture and society. It's faster. And, uh, and we kind of got used to follow that without questioning it.
And I agree with you. I mean, we need to start the other way around. I mean, the process needs to be inverted, right? I mean, you start with what do we need? Is there the technology to achieve what we need to do? And not, here's all the technology we have. Let's pick what's going to make us money. And, uh, and then eventually if it does something wrong, we'll just patch it.
It's, [00:53:00] it's just not the good way of thinking. And, and I think it's, it's the easy way of thinking. The easy way to make money and the easy way to allure people and make them happy. It makes me think about the Roman, you know, Panem and Circensis, where you give entertainment and And basic food and uh, and they do metal with the with the politics So, I don't know that that's the negative view maybe but uh, sometimes I feel like that's really what this is But there is a lot of people like you out there Uh, that that are fighting this fight.
I mean, in our little we tell stories and we have this conversation and you created, you know, a structure and organization that it's that is really focused on this. So there is hope. Even if I said something very negative, I still stay hopeful.
Frank McCourt: Yeah, me too. I, I think there's, uh, I think there is hope and I think all of the, what you're, what you all are doing to, to [00:54:00] kind of socialize this and, and, um, what I hope Project Liberty is, is, is really mostly about.
It's about creating the, you know, coalescing people, really bringing people together. We, we don't, we don't have all the answers and, and, uh, and we're not looking to do anything that anybody else is doing. What we're looking to do is find all those people that you refer to, Marco, that are out there and bring them together under a common banner.
And I could care less what it's called. It's just, let's all align and fix this. This is, this is why we're, this is. This is exciting. This is fun. This is why we all should be. Aren't we all kind of looking for a project right now that it actually is, is fun and exciting and where we can make a difference and make the world better and make our lives better instead of this, you know, mindless, you know, scrolling and, and, and, and it's just, I think we're all getting the picture like this.
There's not a real there there, right? It's just, it's pretty vacuous. So let's fix it and get it right. [00:55:00] And get it right. And yeah, so Project Liberty wants to, and by the way, the title of the book is not My Biggest Fight, it's Our Biggest Fight. And the reason, you know, I use that terminology is it's got to be many of us.
And it is going to be a fight. Let's face it. I mean, people aren't just going to the big tech isn't going to just, you know, roll over and say, you know what? You're right. This is healthier for kids and and it's, you know, better to and of course, it's more consistent with democracy. And yes, as a as a moral matter, of course, this data is part of someone's personhood and we're stealing it and all that.
So we but at the end of the day, it will change if people want it to change. And I I'm with you to that. If we really look, civilization has been built. On a pursuit of, of knowledge, right? And that is a deliberate process, right? Where we try to find and create the best version of truth. As we know it right now, right?
And it might change in the future when more information is available. But it's a [00:56:00] deliberate slow process. It's not like a, you know, spin up an answer tomorrow type process. By the way, democracy is also a deliberative process, I might add. But, you know, if we were living in a world where somebody came forward and said, you know, the The earth is, is not flat.
It's round. And we spent all of our time putting together fake videos proving that it's flat. You know, uh, and somebody else who's putting together true videos, proving that it's round. But we're all just stuck in that loop in that argument. And by the way, the algorithms designed to keep us there because they want 50% of us on the side of round and 50% of us on the side of flat, because that's gonna, that's is what's going to keep us debating it, keep us triggered, keep us online so that what more ads can be sold.
Are you kidding me? This is this is so your point about the need for culture. This is a cultural shift. We get we need to get [00:57:00] realize that the shift that was caused by the technology was not a great one for humanity. So now we need to take control of our lives again and do something positive. You know, Cedric Price and I'm gonna screw up the quote, but said something like this.
If if technology is the answer. Then what is the question
Sean Martin: exactly? And Frank, I mean, I love that you said this is an exciting time. I mean, it's easy to be less than enthused about where we are and just kind of go about our business and hope that maybe not even hope that somebody else takes care of it for us. But just hope that we don't, uh, don't have too negative of an impact that, uh, that we can't live our lives.
Um, but. I love that you can view this as a positive, exciting time, and I share that enthusiasm with you. I want to go back to my beginning as we wrapped here, because I, [00:58:00] I opened this with a portion of a quote that you have in the book, which is from Glenn Hansard and Marquette Araglova, the Falling Slowly song.
I only used the two, second and third. Sentences of the quote, which is you have a choice and you'll make it now and I left out the first part Purposefully and I'm going to bring it in purposely now, which is raise your hopeful voice. You have a choice you'll make it now and we are the people in this equation and Without us in that equation, then we're just stuck with the 50 50 choice And yes, we'll continue to make it, but we're not going to have any, any positive longterm impact if we don't realize that we have a voice in this, in this party as well.
So, um, I'm thrilled that you wrote the book, uh, which let me just, uh, Get the full title for everybody. It's called Our Biggest Fight, Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the [00:59:00] Digital Age. Uh, Frank, congratulations. Uh, you with, uh, Michael Casey, I believe, uh, participated in that. Congratulations on Project Liberty.
I was really intrigued when we had a chance to meet about that, uh, previously, and I'm excited to share a little bit about it here. We're gonna include links to the book, links to the project, and, uh, a call to action for everybody now. To have that voice and to view this as an exciting time, I'm going to add that last bit along there with you, Frank.
So, thank you for joining us. Frank, any final words before we, uh, wrap up?
Frank McCourt: No, uh, well, you're, you're welcome and it was a pleasure to be with you, with you both. I, as I said earlier, I really appreciate you socializing this. I think that's what really has to be done. We each have to take our own spheres of influence and our own networks and share the information because the ultimate network effect.
And it over time and for humanity is the is the human network effect. And we talk a lot about the tech network effect. [01:00:00] Well, let's, let's, let's click into gear our human networks and let's deal with this set of, you know, this, this. Yep. It's a daunting problem, but we can fix it. And let's all raise our hopeful voices right now.
Marco Ciappelli: Try to take the human out of the tech, uh, Conversation, it's going to be an empty, empty space,
Frank McCourt: and that's where, you know, that's where we're headed was we'd be, you know, and we talk a lot about, um, I'm sure in the next time we're together, we'll talk about AI and, you know, generative AI and, and, and eventually artificial general intelligence.
If it's not, if it's not for people here, then, you know, we're going to all just look back and say, what, what did we, what were we thinking? Right? And, and, uh, uh, so we, yeah. And by the way, same technology, right? It's, it's a basically predictive technology with more bigger data sets and more compute power, but it's the same broken model.
Why would we ever make it more powerful without [01:01:00] fixing it first? I, I can't even imagine that.
Sean Martin: Full of bias and Frank, if I recall, I, I believe after our first meeting, I had a list of about 10 episodes we could record just because this is such a big, big and important topic. But, uh, I'm thrilled to get this first one on the books with you and connecting it to the launch of your book.
And I do encourage everybody to connect and be part of Project Liberty and, and share their voice. So. With that, uh, we'll say goodbye until next time. And, uh, please do subscribe to redefining cybersecurity podcast, which is my show redefining society podcast, which is Marcos and, uh, have this conversation, uh, share it with your, with your friends and your peers.
It's time to make a change.
Thanks everybody.
Frank McCourt: Thank you guys. Our biggest fight. com.