Opinion

Don't forget these on your next trip to the library

I recently posted about five of my must-read books. Here are a few more that have really made a difference in my life:

1) 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute

What is it?

If you like this blog, you’ll love this book. Richard Wiseman takes psychology research and tells you how to use it to improve your life in a straightforward (but entertaining) way.

What did I learn from it?

A ton. I learned that:

• Best genre of movie to see on a date? Suspense-thriller.
• Thinking about death helps you identify long term goals.
• Humor and dog ownership reduce stress.
• And a lot of other stuff.

This video describes some of Wiseman’s work.

Check out the book here.

2) Creativity

What is it?

For his book Creativity, noted professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did interviews with 91 groundbreaking individuals across a number of disciplines, including 14 Nobel Prize winners. What do they have in common? What does it take to be a successful creative professional?

What did I learn from it?

They weren’t stars in school. Almost all have IQ’s over 130 — but once past the 130 threshold, all that mattered was effort. They were all curious and driven. They take their intuition seriously. More here.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studies creativity, happiness, and flow. Here’s his TED talk.

Check out the book here.

3) Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

What is it?

Brian Wansink studies our behavior around food. And his work is fascinating. You eat for a lot of reasons — and hunger is rarely the primary one.

What did I learn from it?

• Dessert tastes better on fine china than a paper plate.
• Big plates make you eat more.
• Wine from California tastes better than wine from North Dakota — even if it’s the same wine with different labels.
• And a lot more.

Wansink discusses his research here.

Check out the book here.

4) Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t

What is it?

Want to understand how office politics works? Want to learn how to get better at playing the game? This is the book. Combines research with examples to give you a modern Machiavelli’s The Prince. Even if you don’t work in an office it’s a must-read because these factors are fundamental to human nature.

What did I learn from it?

I did a whole post about the book here.

Author (and Stanford MBA school professor) Jeffrey Pfeffer discusses some of the book’s ideas in this video.

Check out the book here.

5) Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

What is it?

How can you spur innovation and creativity in your life without taking big risks? Little bets are the answer. Author Peter Sims lays out a system for pushing the envelope without danger, pulling from scientific research and great examples (like how Chris Rock develops his comedy routines.)

What did I learn from it?

It’s an excellent system to make sure you keep learning and growing in almost any area of your life. I posted about the book and similar theories here.

Peter Sims spoke about the book at Google.

Check out the book here.

Again, they are:

• 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute
• Creativity
• Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
• Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t
• Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

Related posts:

What are the top five books you must-read?

What 10 things should you do every day to improve your life?

What five things can make sure you never stop growing and learning?

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

Sorry, Chuck Todd—you're wrong about Hillary

During an interview with Charlie Rose this week, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd said, “If [Hillary Clinton] were running to be the second woman president, I think she would not even be considered a frontrunner.”

While I’ve always had deep respect for Chuck’s reporting and analysis, to imply that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic frontrunner only because she’s a woman is not just offensive, it is flat-out wrong.

Writing off Hillary Clinton’s accomplishments and credentials as merely a result of her gender undermines the progress we’ve made toward equality in this country and is indicative of just how far we have to go. Nearly a century after women earned the right to vote, there still seems to be an underlying presumption that we aren’t as capable as our male counterparts. Even though women make up 60% of our college graduates and 70% of our high school valedictorians, they hold just 18.5% of the seats in Congress, 4.8% of Fortune 500 CEO positions, and earn just 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. The numbers get even more disappointing for women of color.

This systemic inequity is felt throughout our society, but especially in the media and especially with regard to Hillary Clinton.

While I do believe the country would benefit from having a female president, being a woman does not guarantee anyone frontrunner status. If that were the case, Michele Bachmann would have been the Republican frontrunner in 2012, but she didn’t even come close.

Why is that? Because the American people are smarter than that. The American people don’t vote on gender alone. They vote for the person they believe is the most qualified to lead our nation – gender, race and religion aside. The media needs to start giving Americans a little more credit for their decisions.

Americans know that Hillary Clinton is ready to be the next President of the United States. The enthusiasm behind Hillary Clinton is a result of her years of hard, incredible work serving this country and her fellow Americans. The fact that she’s a woman is just icing on the cake.

Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez represents California’s 46th Congressional District.

“Choose a challenge instead of competence”

LinkedIn Influencer Paula Kerger published this post originally on LinkedIn. Follow Paula on LinkedIn.

While preparing for the premiere of our newest program, I was shocked to learn that many of my younger colleagues were only vaguely familiar with the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt. For so many women of my generation, she was a seminal figure who led the way in showing that women have a responsibility to play an active role in public life.

Although she was of another era, I think that her example can serve as a powerful lesson in leadership, especially for young women today. Here are three things I think my younger colleagues should learn from Eleanor Roosevelt, in her own words:

1. “Choose a challenge instead of competence.”

Born into a prominent family, Eleanor Roosevelt could have lived a life that was expected of her generation. Instead, she chose to dedicate her life to public service, and fought tirelessly until her death to advance social equality and ensure that all people were granted basic human rights. Very often, we are faced with a choice between the familiar path, and the challenging road ahead. Choose the challenge.

2. “Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”

As leaders, sometimes it can be hard to make decisions that go against tide. It is critical to stick to your convictions, recognizing that the outcome might be uncertain, but the risk is worth taking. We regularly make decisions to air programming of significance recognizing that it may not attract the largest audience, or the content may be provocative, but the work will play an important role in civic discourse. This may lead to criticism from some, but I feel it’s extremely important for public television to use its platform to tell important stories, not just popular ones. Staying true to your mission and convictions makes it much easier to stand up to potential critics.

3. “Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.”

Sometimes it can be tempting to be overwhelmed by the many things that seem to work against us. But how powerful, and how important it can be, if we don’t give in to this temptation. As a woman born before women even had the right to vote, Eleanor Roosevelt chafed against the limits placed on women. But instead of bemoaning women’s second-place status, Eleanor worked tirelessly to change it, holding press conferences open to female reporters only, submitting a list of candidates for leadership positions to her husband, and tirelessly crusading for equal rights and representation for women. There are many pockets of darkness in our world today. Rather than feel that any change is hopeless, why not light a candle?

When I watched a screener of Ken Burns’ The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, I thought how powerful their stories are for today’s leaders in business, government and the non-profit sector. They teach us powerful lessons about leadership, service, and vision. And all women –and men – should look to Eleanor Roosevelt’s powerful example: embracing challenges, following her own conscience, and fighting to bring positive change to the world.

Paula Kerger is the CEO of PBS.

The entire shopping experience will change radically

LinkedIn Influencer Charlene Li published this post originally on LinkedIn. Follow Charlene on LinkedIn.

While most of the tech and business press focused on the functionality of the Apple Watch (digital crown, battery life, taptic engine, yadda yadda…) discreetly milling around the event were the fashion press, invited by Apple’s new fashion and design team. The fact that Apple Watch comes in three distinct collections — Apple Watch, Sport, and Apple Watch Edition — mirrors how fashion targets different demographics and tastes with separate lines.

To date, merely owning an Apple iPhone or iPad says something about who you are. With only a few choices on colors (black, white, neon, etc.), the only way you could customize Apple products to suit your style was to entomb their beauty with covers and cases. These items lived in the back of the store, hung up as general merchandise and an add-on to the core experience of the products.

But with Apple Watch, Apple now has to change the shopping experience as well — and not just sell a luxury product but also create a luxury fashion experience. When Apple Watch launches next year, look for former CEO Angela Ahrendts to make her mark as the new head of Apple Store. Here’s the challenge — Apple Watch will launch with 3 collections, 2 sizes, and 6 bands styles in 18 colors, 2 sizes = 108 permutations of Apple Watch. An entire section of the store will be dedicated to people not just looking at the watches, but also looking at it on themselves. New salespeople will have to be hired — people who understand both technology and fashion. If you get a chance, go visit a Burberry store and marvel at the level of attention and discretion that is paid to you as you shop. Part of the fashion buying experience is knowing when to step forward and help — and also when to step back and wait.

The breakthrough of Apple Watch isn’t in its form or function — but the fact that wearable technology for the first time is truly being treated as a fashion item. I’ve been buying alternative holders and bracelets for my FitBit on Etsy, in a desperate attempt to marry my fitness and fashion goals — and left wholly unsatisfied with the experience. I’m looking forward to buying the Apple Watch — the actual act of buying it as I would an expensive purse or pair of shoes. When would I wear it? What image do I want to be sending when I’m wearing the watch — or not wearing it?

The Apple Watch is still in its 1.0 origins and it has a long way to go before it becomes a beautiful, desired item. And that’s a good thing, because Apple will need time to transform itself into the truly luxury fashion retailer and brand that it wants to be. At stake is Apple’s business model — Android will always be the low-cost leader so Apple has to continually deliver a premium experience to deserve the premium price it demands. I look forward to parting with a serious chunk of cash next year — but only if Apple Watch matches my new spring wardrobe.

Charlene Li is the Founder and CEO of Altimeter Group.

It turned out pretty well actually

Recently, I decided to contract out the only thing I still do myself: write this column. You probably know about services like Uber, Amazon Fresh, and TaskRabbit that let you get Downtown Abbey-style service at budget prices. Now, through the magic of income inequality, web site Fiverr.com offers millions of services people will do for just $5.

Things went slowly at first—to read about my experience click here. But, eventually, like a robber baron eyeing a boat full of laborers, I really started making it rain $5 bills: I got a logo, a press release, a ukulele jingle, 500 copies posted around the University of Chicago, a translation into Chinese and a rap song by J.P. from L.A.

Here’s just a sample of what you can do in the new new economy:

Not one, but TWO Awesome Column songs

The Awesome Column Rap, Released: 2014.

The Awesome Column Jingle, Released: 2014.

Some Awesome Column in Chinese

外包曾经是你只从大公司所做的事情中听到。你可能会听到“我们刚外包到我们的服务支持台了”，或“我们需要和外包公司谈一下我们的设计工作。”

我没有写那一段。因为，在新经济中，对我来说没有必要努力做任何事情。当一个美食博客邀请我去一间很酷的中国餐馆时，我想通了这一点，当时她告诉我不要担心排队，因为她已经“TaskRabbits”了。这意味着她已经在TaskRabbit.com的网站上付了某人$35在外面排了2个小时的队，这样她就不会浪费她发美食博客的宝贵时间了。

在那一刻，我瞬间就明白了，革新很快就要到来了，我公开在冷压果汁里冲浪，不如就使用一下TaskRabbit好了。我付了出租车一半的价钱给Uber司机，让他带着我绕城一圈，通过亚马逊，$4小费可以其他人为我采购食品。我还有一个园丁，清洁工和一个保姆，这些都是《唐顿修道院》版本的仆人文化。现在，要感谢那些收入差距，我可以去另外一个叫“Fiverr”的网站，它提供百万种服务，并且只需要支付$5。这可能看起来比较奇怪，因为当列出所有付$5我就肯做的事情，其实与那些我完全可以免费做的事情完全相符的。

An Awesome Column press release

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TIME MAGAZINE COLUMNIST OUTSOURCES WRITING OF COLUMN

Joel Stein Hires Fiverr Writer to Help Pen Column on Subject of Gig Economy

New York — Sept. 15, 2014 — Time Magazine humor writer Joel Stein wanted to tackle the subject of the “gig economy” in his weekly piece “The Awesome Column.” The gig economy is a term used to describe the increasing number of professionals opting to pursue freelance work rather than 9-to-5 jobs in the wake of the Great Recession.

Stein decided it would be fitting, in a column about the gig economy, to outsource the job of writing the column to a freelancer. So he turned to Fiverr, an online marketplace through which freelancers of all stripes offer various services for $5 a job.

But because finding a worthy writer on Fiverr was work in and of itself, Stein outsourced the job of finding a writer to another freelancer via the website TaskRabbit. That task was outsourced to actor, writer and jack-of-all-trades MacLeish Day, who helped Stein locate the Fiverr content writer Jeff Butts.

Stein didn’t just stop at one Fiverr gig. After hiring Butts to write the first paragraph of his column, he decided to order other Fiverr gigs and “make it rain $5 bills” on Fiverr freelancers.

In the column, Stein details his misadventures purchasing a variety of additional Fiverr gigs, from editing of the column to pictures of Serbian model Ivona Vračević holding a sign that says, “The Awesome Column by Joel Stein,” an original Awesome Column jingle by Orange County-based ukelele player and songwriter Ryan Heenan, and more.

Even this press release was a product of Fiverr.

“I believe, per amount of work I put in, this is my best column ever,” Stein said.

Stein’s Awesome Column on the gig economy will appear in print edition of Time Magazine on DATE. All of the outsourced work can be viewed at LINK.

Read Joel Stein’s Awesome Column at http://time.com/tag/the-awesome-column/. Follow Stein on Facebook and Twitter.

And, of course, an entirely outsourced Awesome Column

Outsourcing used to be something you only heard about big companies doing. “We just outsourced our help desk,” you might hear, or “We need to talk about outsourcing our design work.”

Recently, though, it’s become almost common for individuals to outsource their own work. Got some shopping you want to do, but just don’t have the time? A site like TaskRabbit can help you find someone else to handle it for you at rock-bottom prices. Need to find someone to fix that leaky toilet? Once again, TaskRabbit to the rescue.

If your needs are more design or technical oriented, that’s not a problem, either. Freelancers hire themselves out on sites like Fiverr, where you can get a 500-word blog article written or a graphic drawn for just five bucks, less than you might spend on lunch at McDonald’s.

What does it mean when you can outsource your own work for much less than you get paid to do it? It becomes pretty lucrative to have someone else write that report for you, freeing you up to do other things. However, how fair is this for the freelancer who is doing that work for what seems like pennies?

I could even hire someone from Fiverr to write this column for me, if I really wanted to. Would that be fair to the Fiverr seller, though, since I’m getting a salary here and that seller only makes 4 bucks off the article (Fiverr takes 20% of the price for their own pockets, leaving sellers with 4 out of 5 bucks.)

Fiverr freelancer clefmeister says that it isn’t all that bad. “Most of the things I do for $5 only take me ten or fifteen minutes to do, so I’m really making 20 bucks an hour,” he said. He also said that it can be interesting, the kind of things people ask him to write about.

“I’ve got one gig right now asking me to write about premature ejaculation. I don’t know what it’s for, though. It’s too early to tell,” he quipped. Too early, indeed.

While a site like Fiverr advertises that you can get anything for a five-spot, sellers can earn the right to charge more. “I have gigs that net me as much as a hundred bucks, with Gig Extras,” clefmeister told me. He pointed out that it takes time to build up to being able to charge that much, but there are ways to turn selling on Fiverr profitable.

This ability to outsource our work to others is a different twist for the economy. Many of the sellers on places like TaskRabbit and Fiverr are 100% freelancing, either because they prefer it or because they can’t get a job in today’s economy. Some, though, just do it for extra cash.

Also, there are the freelancers signing onto the site from other countries, where $5 American is actually a hefty salary. Whether it’s a fair price or not really depends on how you look at it. If the freelancers are willing to do the work for so cheap, why not take advantage of the opportunity?

Our tolerance for privacy infringement is based on the likability of the targeted celebrity

Why are conversations Donald Sterling had in the sanctuary of his home fair game to pick through and ridicule, but if someone steals nude celebrity photos and posts them on the Internet, a crime has been committed against humanity?

The recent photo hacking scandal involving Jennifer Lawrence and a hundred other celebrities has put America at great odds with itself. It has pitted our feeling of overwhelming entitlement to other people’s private information in direct contrast with our mortal terror that any of our own private information may somehow be made public.

And just as ugly as the scandal itself is the unquestionable revelation that Americans have become increasingly comfortable drowning in double standards and hypocrisy.

Don’t get me wrong. The national disgust over these hacked photos is completely appropriate. I guess I’m just not used to us actually caring.

Whoever is responsible for this hacking crime robbed these actresses of a lot more than a few pictures; they were robbed of the very basic ability to control what confidential and personal information was shared publicly. It’s a right most of us undoubtedly don’t appreciate until someone removes it by correctly guessing one of our passwords.

The only problem I have with this perfectly appropriate outrage is how it unintentionally holds up a mirror to the completely inappropriate lack of outrage to an infinite number of other privacy violations.

Is our tolerance for privacy infringement based solely on likability?

Donald Sterling’s plight was easy to ignore because he’s not a particularly likeable guy. Okay, fine, he’s reprehensible. He’s an entitled old billionaire racist who sounds like a parrot when he speaks. But it’s situations like his that show exactly how wavering we are with regards to our principles. Our lack of tolerance for these intrusions should not be based on ideological agreements or popularity.

It’s easy to defend the people we like.

What makes us truly great is to stand up for people we find fairly repulsive. We cannot continue to randomly decide whose secrets deserve to be kept and whose don’t.

If we truly intend to stop this invasive, creepy voyeurism, the first important step we need to take is to finally admit to ourselves how much we all enjoy it. Admit that we are addicted to seeing into other people’s living rooms, and admit we are comfortable judging them based on what we see.

We must also make the embarrassing and completely hypocritical admission that if we catch them looking into our living rooms, not only do we expect not to be judged by what they find, we expect them to be punished for looking in the first place.

Until we at least attempt to protect and value the privacy of each of our fellow citizens, each and every one of us will continue to feel vulnerable and exposed. And until that day, it’s exactly how we deserve to feel.

We have created quite a dilemma for ourselves.

I don’t remember any national outcry about the obscenity of personal information being leaked while we were all enjoying the clumsy, embarrassing text messages sent by Tiger Woods. Or the overtly humiliating – albeit hilarious – phone calls made by Mel Gibson, or the delightful answering machine messages left by Pat O’Brien or Alec Baldwin.

At times I’ve been indifferent to it as well. When my SiriusXM cohosts Opie and Anthony effectively put the final nail in Anthony Weiner’s coffin by tweeting out the photo of his erection, the only outrage I felt was a self-centered fear we were going to get fired.

I was as big a hypocrite as anybody reading this.

Some people will respond to the argument I’m making in grouping all these celebrities privacy invasions together by insisting that, ‘These women did nothing wrong at all, while Donald Sterling, Tiger Woods, Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin were doing something wrong, so they deserved what they got.”

Making a point like that is a great way of convincing yourself that certain privacy violations are acceptable, simply because doing so exonerates us of any wrongdoing as we greedily gobble up the salacious information.

Keeping the onus on the likability of the victim allows us to convince ourselves that our collective snooping is at times justified. This need for self-convincing is easy to understand. No society wants to be confronted with the idea that one of its most guarded principles is very possibly nothing more than a transient façade.

For far too long, we have been saying that some forms of privacy transgression will be tolerated while other forms will not. We have also conveniently avoided writing down the rules as to which ones we will or will not stand for. There is no set of guidelines.

Depends on our mood that day, I guess.

Hopefully, the amoral pigs who stole these actresses’ photos will be caught and given at least 10 years in prison, like Christopher Chaney got for hacking into the email of Scarlett Johansson and others.

With the growing fears of electronic government intrusion into our lives, the last thing any of us needs is a constant reminder that our personal stock of intimate photos has the potential to be distributed as masturbation fodder to anyone with access to Wi-Fi.

And it’s not going to change anytime soon. The next step I’m sure will be to hack into celebrity Apple Watches and post their heart rates online.

But let’s not be so naïve as to alleviate ourselves of all guilt simply by blaming anonymous hackers. That’s too easy. The true culprit has been our collective silent complicity. We have not, as a group, stood up and said, “This will not be tolerated.” We have allowed it to exist on a “want-to-know” basis.

Whether the information we’ve learned has served to titillate or disgust us is irrelevant. It wasn’t ours to have in the first place.

President Obama hoped to repeal the Bush-era authorization declaring war on al Qaeda—instead he's expanded it without bound

Future historians will ask why George W. Bush sought and received express congressional authorization for his wars (against al Qaeda and Iraq) and his successor did not. They will puzzle over how Barack Obama the prudent war-powers constitutionalist transformed into a matchless war-powers unilateralist. And they will wonder why he claimed to “welcome congressional support” for his new military initiative against the Islamic State but did not insist on it in order to ensure clear political and legal legitimacy for the tough battle that promised to consume his last two years in office and define his presidency.

“History has shown us time and again . . . that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch,” candidate Barack Obama told the Boston Globe in 2007. “It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.” President Obama has discarded these precepts. His announcement that he will expand the use of military force against the Islamic State without the need for new congressional consent marks his latest adventure in unilateralism and cements an astonishing legacy of expanding presidential war powers.

The legacy began in 2011 with the seven-month air war in Libya. President Obama relied only on his Commander in Chief powers when he ordered U.S. forces to join NATO allies in thousands of air strikes that killed thousands of people and effected regime change. His lawyers argued beyond precedent that the large-scale air attacks did not amount to “War” that required congressional approval. They also blew a large hole in the War Powers Resolution based on the unconvincing claim that the Libya strikes were not “hostilities” that would have required compliance with the law.

Although he backed down from his threat to invade Syria last summer, President Obama proclaimed then the power to use unilateral force for purely humanitarian ends without congressional or United Nations or NATO support. This novel theory, which removed all practical limits on presidential humanitarian intervention, became a reality in last month’s military strikes to protect civilians trapped on Mount Sinjar and in the town of Amirli.

Yesterday’s announcement of a ramped-up war against the Islamic State in Iraq and possibly Syria rests on yet another novel war powers theory. The administration has said since August that air strikes in Syria were justified under his constitutional power alone. But yesterday it switched course and maintained that Congress had authorized the 2014 campaign against the Islamic State in the 2001 law that President George W. Bush sought to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The administration’s new approach allows it to claim that it is acting with congressional approval. It also lets it avoid the strictures of the War Powers Resolution because that law does not apply to wars approved by Congress.

The problem with this approach is that its premise is unconvincing. The 2001 law authorized force against al Qaeda and its associates. The Islamic State once had associations with al Qaeda, but earlier this year al Qaeda expelled it and broke off ties. The administration nonetheless insists that the 2001 law applies to its new military action, primarily because the Islamic State claims to be “the true inheritor of Usama bin Laden’s legacy” and is supported by “some individual members and factions of [al-Qaeda]-aligned groups.” But if this remarkably loose affiliation with al Qaeda brings a terrorist organization under the 2001 law, then Congress has authorized the President to use force endlessly against practically any ambitious jihadist terrorist group that fights against the United States. The President’s gambit is, at bottom, presidential unilateralism masquerading as implausible statutory interpretation.

The largest irony here is that President Obama has long hoped to leave a legacy of repealing the Bush-era authorization and declaring the “war” against al Qaeda over. “I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal” the 2001 law’s mandate” he said in a speech last May at the National Defense University. “I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further,” he added, before insisting that “history” and “democracy” demand that “this war, like all wars, must end.”

President Obama never did engage Congress to refine the 2001 law. The violent reality of the Islamic State has quickly belied the supposed demands of history and democracy. And the President, all by himself, has now dramatically expanded the 2001 mandate.

Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, served as Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, from 2003-2004, in the George W. Bush Administration.

The rise of digital technology has changed the way we use public squares, parks and the streets

Public squares and parks are the sites of some of history’s most memorable moments: the beheading of Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution at the Place de la Concorde (then known as the Place de la Révolution) in Paris in 1793; the March on Washington in 1963, where a crowd filling the National Mall heard Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; the pro-democracy protests in 1989 in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, bringing us the indelible vision of the single man standing in front of a line of tanks. These public spaces have also traditionally hosted markets, outdoor concerts, and cafés.

Enter the Digital Age, where every kind of information can be translated into bits and transmitted to mobile phones, computers, and TV screens. We can catch up on the news, buy goods, listen to music, watch webcams, and sign petitions – all without meeting in person. What is to become of these storied public spaces? In advance of the Zócalo/Getty “Open Art” event, “Is the Digital Age Killing Public Space?”, Zócalo asked experts: How has the rise of digital technology changed the way we use public space?

1. Losing One Kind of Entertainment, But Gaining Another

Yi-Fu Tuan

I was drinking tea at a sidewalk café when three young women, no doubt University of Wisconsin-Madison students, walked in. I immediately looked forward to eavesdropping on them when they sat down, for that’s how I learn about student interests and life. But no such luck, for the three women immediately took out their iPhones and started texting. How curious, I thought. On the one hand, there was physical intimacy, for I could see that their kneecaps touched under the table. On the other, they ignored one another in favor of someone in another part of town or out of town altogether.

Were the three women philosophy students, I wondered? After all, Jean-Paul Sartre said that real conversation is impossible in a group of three and can only occur between two individuals in private space. But weren’t the women conversing one-on-one in private space when they texted? My answer is no, if only because text messages are more likely to be factual than discursive, and yet texting does have a moral plus in its favor: it encourages people to be honest—honest as machines are honest. If the three women chatted instead, the content of their chatting might still contain facts, but the facts will be qualified and even undermined by the tone with which they are delivered—that is, by body language.

Public space is body-language space, and as such provides endless entertainment. People watching, we say. Everyone is part of the show—the baby soundly asleep in her stroller no less than the mother feeding the pigeons, and as supporting extras the pedestrians parading back and forth. If more and more people are locked into the private worlds of their earphones and iPhones, will that not diminish—or kill—public space, which is space that justifies itself by, among other things, its power to entertain?

But the digital age can enliven and promote public space and do so without radical change in social habits and tradition. Think of Chicago’s Millennial Park, which draws a large crowd by means of the projection of the faces of ordinary citizens on giant screens. Or think of how this essay, so ineffectual when read in the private space of the library carrel, can woo an audience in an auditorium when it is supplemented by electronically projected images, even one of me—a feeble-voiced, octogenarian American-Chinese.

Yi-Fu Tuan is a philosopher, author, and emeritus professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

2. Public Squares Are More Vital Than Ever as Our Public Conversation Expands

Setha Low

Many social scientists predicted that, with the Internet, public spaces would stop being used. Instead, we are finding that the Internet (and especially Twitter and Facebook, which allows for rapid communication) can produce very large audiences involved and concerned about an issue, and they are showing up in public spaces. The Internet has expanded the public sphere—the political realm of ideas and conversation that is outside of the control of the domestic and “private” spheres of home and business. Many more people than ever before are included in the public sphere because they can comment on and even direct political conversations in ways that previous generations were not able to do except through newsprint, television, and book writing. It’s hard to keep this kind of energy constrained only to the virtual sphere of cyberspace.

Social movements and political uprisings belie arguments that public space and the public sphere have ever been separated. The centrality of a public square, park, or street as a place to come together to struggle, celebrate, grieve, and collaborate remains as vital as ever. Think of how people take to the streets or a square to express their rights to participate and be represented in the public sphere. The Arab Spring and the global Occupy movements drew inspiration from the jubilant atmosphere and contagious energy emanating from the crowds, from the urban design and siting of the public spaces where they occurred, and from the digital technologies that connected people through mobile phones and websites that alerted people to what was happening and where.

The end result is that digital technologies and the Internet are making dissent particularly visible and widening the political realm of ideas to include diverse publics and counter-publics.

Setha Low is director of the Public Space Research Group at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Recent books include Politics of Public Space; Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity; On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture; and Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America.

3. If Cyberspace Were Enough, Why Would I See People Fishing, Picnicking, and Stealing Kisses at the Park?

Steve Hymon

A few days ago, I rode the Metro Gold Line to the park next to the East L.A. Civic Center.

The park is one of those L.A. places most people probably have never visited unless their car broke down nearby or they served jury duty in the adjacent courthouse. It’s a neighborhood place, featuring a nice (albeit manmade) fishing lake, a small amphitheater and inviting green lawns and shade trees.

On this beautiful August evening — I was at the park for work purposes — there was no shortage of people. Sure, some stared blankly into Vader-black rectangles glued to their palms. But most park-goers, to my eye, were doing the kind of things people have always been doing in parks: picnicking, playing games, snoozing under a tree, stealing a kiss from the girlfriend. A young guy caught a smallmouth bass, then made his buddy remove the hook. The height of masculinity it was not. But it wasn’t a video game. It was man versus beast.

The so-called Digital Age may be in the process of unrepentantly swallowing whole newspapers, bookstores, libraries, and attention spans. But public space and all that goes with it seems quite immune to digital’s charms. On any given day, I can take a bus or train to a variety of plazas, squares, parks, beaches, piers, esplanades, walking paths — whatever you want to call them — and find plenty of people using public space as they always have.

If anything, the existence of cyberspace, which isn’t really space at all, makes most of us eager to see, touch, and feel anything that isn’t a 1 or 0. I don’t see that changing except for one thing: smartphones guarantee a future with more pics of people using public space.

Steve Hymon is a former journalist and the editor of Metro’s blog, The Source.