that amends how it works changes it works and actually puts us at the center. so an internet where where we are verifiable individuals on the internet, it's just not a complete chaos where anybody can be anybody. you can be as many people as you'd like can be a machine spewing out information and that imagine that there's integrity back in the internet where we are identifiable human beings. you can only be one person you can control what you reveal about yourself, but you can only be one person in your social graph is portable. the apps are interop operable. so imagine a internet where the the the new apps are clicking on our terms of use for our data. we're not clicking on the terms of use of these big platforms

that the data is actually part of the internet think of it as part of the internet. so it's a rather than billions of atomized social graphs that are being vacuumed up by some big platforms think of it as being a global social graph, universally accessible where we control our information. so it's maybe oversimplify. what a bit in the interest time, but it's actually a relative li relatively simple fix to to the problem of of individus is being abused taken advantage of and quite frankly i go back to this notion that it's please don't think it as your data because that feels like yeah what's data what does it mean it's just think it as you it's you are in a digital era the internet is is

is something that's not going away we depend on it we use it we're connected to it. morning, noon and night let's actually have it be human centric and human focused in the first instance and not be an internet of machines. we're in a room of people who are either ethicists themselves or deeply interested tech ethics. so it's probably safe to assume that most people here agree with you. the internet is broken in the ways that you describe and that it doesn't have to be that way. but we might also wonder how, practical this approach would be and what the adoption might look like. well, the reason michael and i used thomas paine as an inspiration in the book and thomas paine in 1775 wrote a pamphlet called common sense, and it was a time when he was actually reaching out to the his fellow. they weren't citizens yet.

they were settlers, i guess they were was the the. the actual existence of the united states. and he was calling out a question for know for folks. and he was saying, look, we a choice to make. we can either continue to be subjects of a monarch and just have, you know, few or no human rights own little and and really just by the by just, you know, fates born into a royal family and they only control me. and i'm you know, i get to in the case of my ancestors, you know, just work the land and maybe keep to survive. and the rest of what we they produced went to you know, went to the royal manor, so to speak,

or we could be citizens and with that came a whole list rights, right? that we could, which became known as rights in our declaration of independence. in other words, you're born with it, you have the same rights as the king or the queen. and and you, you, you, you're equal. and we create a government of them by people of and for people we can self-govern. we we actually are someone we have agency. we have a autonomy we have control. we can own things. we can we can live our life the way we want. we have choice and and this unlocked a whole this country and and what was built in a relatively short period of time and incredible incredible was built around that of liberty,

you know individual, rights. and by the way, a social which said for those rights to matter, we need to respect those rights in others. so and off we went and. this was a revolutionary right. so now we're living in a world where seeing massive innovation and strides with technology, which is, you know, quite breathtaking on the one hand. but as fast as the technology moving in in in just in terms of innovation, we're moving in the opposite direction we argue in the book when it comes to our rights, we're losing them. we're become subjects in the digital world and we should be digital, not now. subjects and owned by these platforms. why in the world would we

exchange all of our rights, everything we love, the health and safety of, our kids, the strength and sustainability of a democracy to get to use the internet. why not have an internet that actually is optimized for the things want as individuals and society and i and really comes right back to who's in charge, who owns the data we create and i think this is and we argue in state in the book this has become now a human right think of it as as a as a a human not just a digital right. a human right in this world we live in your digital dna, your lived experience, everything about is part you as much as

your biological dna is. and by the way, even biological dna is now digitized okay. so this is is our personhood. this is who we are. if we're going to really, really change what's going and reclaim, you know, our personhood from the machines of big tech. we need to think of this as social project, as a political project not just as a tech project. and that's why project liberty has three tracks, not just a tech track, although i do think it's innovation, it's important. and we people are now iterating and making better and better because without the tech, i don't think we can tackle all the big problems we have. but also need the social scientists involved. you know, the the psychologist the economists, the policy and governance expert to this time around not just move fast and break things let's let's move

deliberately and fix things and really optimize for what all want. and then lastly, we to get civil citizens involved, you know, just just men and women and of all ages who care about this issue to effect the change that we need, because i don't think it's necessarily going to come from the tech the big tech companies or are elected officials at the moment. and how would you envision shift taking place? because. right, it would seem unlikely for the big companies to begin to work against their own business models. yeah, it's it's unlikely. and but so what really i mean, we can all sit back and say, jesus, really big. this seems daunting. it seems like. i don't know. well, then our choices, we're stuck with it.

and so, you know, i just i just can't see that honestly. i just. i think we're better than that. and we we know that things are not right, and we need to fix. i don't think there's a bigger issue. in our time. i think this is biggest issue of our time and it's not an issue that's being talked about in that, for instance, in this presidential, it should be the number one issue if we want to get really to the other issues. unfortunately, we're seeing the same technology and what it's optimizing for is the same dysfunction in our political system. so how do you change it? you change it by getting people involved who care deeply about the issue and and who get involved in a, you know, a cause or that's why i say it's a social. i, i don't want to say movement.

it sounds like, you know, no one creates a movement, movement movements, you know. and so but how our if if tech companies aren't going to change it and our elected officials going to change it, then it's left to us. it's left to us. so let's just cause the change it may be months who just are fed up, you know, who have tragically lost children or, afraid of losing children that are just saying enough is enough, not going to do this. and and we have, you know, something that looks like the mothers drunk driving, you know, that force forces this change. it may be people that are concerned about democracy. it may be know people that are concerned about missing just information or all of the above it's this is our lives. this is like why would we let everything we love be destroyed and harmed so we can we can be

connected to the internet. this is just a tool. it's tool that we can use to optimize all the great things. what right now, you ask kids, is your life going to be better than your parents? the majority of kids say, no, i don't believe so. if that isn't what like the ultimate metric for failure our our whole lives be built upon making the world better than we found it. making life better for our children than it was us. we're failing. we are failing so need to fix this and and if we fix it however, what's available with this technology and, the ability of being connected and have access to the data on a permission using it in a transparent where people actually know what's happening with their data. we those kids will be saying my

life is going to be way better than my parents. i'm going to live till i'm 150 and i'm going to be healthy. i'm going to do this. i'm going to and the economics that will be opened up by. a new data sharing economy will massive the innovators here the possibilities are massive we just need to have the will to change this and really make this a project that's of collective action and that's just a matter do we have the the will and the courage because there's plenty of means to do this and and the tech can it is it's it's but it actually turns out to be the easy part. the more difficult is like, can we get motivated? was there particular moment that drew you into work? how did you come to be doing this to found project liberty and to write the book? well, first of all, i see. and and and feel the same

things. i think most all all of you do that something is amiss. something is fundamentally broken and you, you know, without that, you know, without getting too carried away about, it i do i do immediately to my dinner table growing up you know i'm i'm one of seven children myself, a big irish family growing up in. and me and my my siblings were pretty good at, you know. defining problems and complaining like most kids. right. and not a dinner ended without, you know my mum saying, okay, you kids have done a good job of defining the problem. now what are you going to do about it and you know i think that's not a unique i think many of us are blessed with with parents that said like do something you're capable doing something, go do something. so it's kind of hard wired. but then i would i would i would to that i come from a a family

of of builders great great grandfather started building roads when henry ford started building cars and we've been building infrastructure and designing it for over 130 years. so i'm a fifth generation builder sort. come at these things from a problem solving perspective as opposed to a just a problem perspective and. yeah so i've i've seen a problem that i can't unsee and that's that's where i am right? i want to be conscious of time and we have stack of questions from folks in the audience the first one here is from ken anthony, who asks how can tech better support the journey humans to be more human not, increasingly tied to the latest tech tool. let's make the tech. let's make the internet a social internet. make it socially aware. make it give us control. ownership of us. you know reclaim our personhood

take it back from the machines of big and then build from. kimberly wright asks how at all has heritage affected your and your position on tech? well, i think i just was alluding to that. i mean, we all come from someplace with that perspective and i refer to my my my mother's dining room table and yeah, i'm blessed because come from a family of inherited image of of building and problem solving and you know, this is at end of the day, a infrastructure or engineering problem. and we can fix that. as i said earlier at the the bigger challenge, i think, is going to be the how do we create momentum around, you know, adopting an alternative to the current internet and really people understand how they fit in know really and the reason we wrote the book is really as a call to action. it's really to say you know,

this is and please spend a couple of hours reading it won't take long it was written in kind of a thomas paine style it's a couple hundred words. the language is intended to be accessible. but i did ask tim berners-lee to read it. and and he he said i kept putting red checkmarks in the margin. agree agree. agree, agree. so i felt really good about that that it's michael we didn't dumb it down too much so i think we we passed that that test i read this weekend and would agree it's a it's a quick and easy and quite interesting the related question down here and ella drury asks do you believe that our technology drives our cultures and norms or is it the other way around? yeah, tech definitely, in my opinion, drives our cultures and norms. and it's it's it's and we talked a lot about this david mentioned unfinished which is sort of that the the parents of project liberty are this unfinished project that we started i saw apollo richard here who and laura who deeply in within

finish and now are part of project liberty unfinished was something we started five or six years ago which was to really begin to understand what the heck was going on because just things felt very and you know things we really, really care about and we our first project was an unfinished project and we crowdsourced questions around the world and technology kept coming up and so forth. so we really started to in on technology and that really burst. this project and it was really we talked a lot about like how does how do we get here? and if you think about it, culture which is really what houses are our norms, our behaviors and our beliefs really affects kind of who we

eventually elect right to? represent us and what we stand and then we expect to go ahead and put policies and so forth into place. well, we have the most arguably the most powerful technology that we've ever had in connecting our culture right now. right it's actually profound the it impacting what is talked about or about. and by the way, in a way i just described really in a very manipulative way as well and it's, you know, we were talking just earlier about the media you know, went from being one business to something that was just following search engine optimization. right so it just what's trending well that doesn't mean that's well sourced or or the most important news. so we we're really have become almost victims of of this omnipresent ubiquity technology which is driving our culture and that everything downstream from

that so we're getting the we're getting the sign that we need to wrap this up but i want to squeeze in a few more questions if we can quickly, when talking about responsible technology, how do you think artificial can be used responsibly without causing harm to someone's privacy? and this comes from past batavia. yeah, i think this is. i hope that i you all are reflecting on how important our our social graphs our personal information is to to how the internet and, how it is operating. and i say that because we can see now the exploitation in manipulation and how what was decentralized became centralized and it's surveillance based. it doesn't feel at all like a democratic thing. if i said central surveillance based autocrat technology, i don't think you'd say, well, that's a great thing for

democracy. i awesome autocracies. right. which could would would use that so we have this broken thing we talked about the harms to kids etc. so why why we take something broken, make it powerful, you using generative ai language models without fixing the problems. let's fix the problems and then enjoy the benefit of generative ai. but. but i don't. there's only one reason why would not stop fix the problems now knowing they exist and that if just going to be dragged into this future by the same companies that are the only companies that can benefit from these large language models because you need massive datasets and huge compute power that resides in essentially

platforms. so for them, i understand why they want to rush and move forward and you see them all now just frantically, you know, pushing and shoving to see who's going be the dominant player. but, you know, let's make no mistake about it. algorithms are artificial intelligence, generative ai. this is just a more powerful version. the same thing i've been describing, which is an exploitive technology. what is what's going what what data is being trained in these large language models? it's your data that's being trained. i mean that the static like books and journals and all that that's been ingested by these machines long time ago we're seeing ingested right now is what's on the internet and without to who created it could care less it's just ingest all of human creativity right up to the present moment and train and profit from it and i'm a

capitalist i'm all for people making profit, but not at the expense of the things i love and the things i care about. so there's a direct correlation between artificial intelligence and in our data, and that's what we need to fix. and again, the passive equities are awesome and. it could be great, but not the direction we're going now in thinking about ai in this conversation and, in the book, you cite the tech ethicist tristan harris who said that tech can get new forms of rights. right? you think the right to be was not a right we had or until, you know basic changes within tech brought to us but with a.i. you also oh is it going to be possible to be forgotten i think is something we're all going to think about a lot more in the year ahead. right yeah, well, i'd certainly like to have models that were built where i was in control of my data.

i got to decide who got to use it for what purpose if it's in a large language model? i want to know it? i want to have transparency. if people are going to make $1,000,000,000, i want to participate. okay. so it's it's in and i but i agree with tristan and we've talked about this. there are new rights that get created as technology and evolves. right. the rights i described going all the way back to 1775 and the founding of this country were there there were rights that exist and then there were rights that were created. and then along the way there were adjustments to that right there were women got the right to vote the the, you know, the the original sin of the us, you know, around slavery and so forth was was addressed sort, you know, and we've, we've, we've created as we've gone along and things changed and, and so on and so forth.

but i would, i would also connect the following to to what's broken here. the the the u.s. project has been moving a in a direction. it's empower effect. and we can sit and talk about the things that we haven't done right. but we were moving in a direction where it felt like we were all together in a direction that was positive, that was getting closer, closer to the to the words that were written. and now we see things we see right being taken away and we feel like we're moving backward. and i would argue it's it's connected to the same thing. we're being ripped apart by technology that not optimizing for us. it's just being it's optimizing the machines and of data if we can want to squeeze in one more. thank you, everybody, for all these questions. there's so many great questions that not going to get to but to close on. think this one is particularly relevant from. a delicate time to our biggest

fight here may be motivating people to take action to reclaim digital freedom. how do you think will achieve this? do you think achieve this? yeah, i will. first of all, it's not my biggest fight. it's our biggest fight. so i we will achieve it if we decide to all all really what's at stake and embrace this set issues and and get involved and so i said earlier that if we don't fix the tech, i don't think we can fix lots of other problems that we have address in the world but i also don't believe that the tech alone will solve the problems. we now know how powerful the internet is and what promise it holds. imagine we get to reset how. it works. we get to actually now embed values and principles that weren't embedded in a move fast and break things you know kind

of era we get to re decentralize we get to put people first to own and control your data we get to use the technology for society's sake and optimize for what we all really care about and protect our children and so on and so forth. if we can get a the kind of the people involved moved in this to really reclaim future, then i think can win this fight. if we just new better tech to do i think we lose the fight because it's these platforms are so big and powerful that there's one thing that's going to change and that's when we insist that it be changed. thank very much. thank you all for being. all right. let's keep it goingood evening,d

welcome. my name is brant rosen. i'm the rabbi esthetic chicago and a member of the chicago chapter of jewish voice for peace. two of the co-sponsors of evening's program. i'd like to first thank and honor our event's primary sponsor, rights watch. as i'm sure many of you may know of nathan thrall appearances have been canceled recently. and the fact that we are here at all this evening is due the principles and quite the courage of rw and our good friends here at temple. please, let's show some appreciation to those who made

this evening possible. we're gathering together this evening. as we all know as a horrific tragedy continues to unfold in gaza and israel. i'm tempted to say that when program was first scheduled, none of us could imagined the terrible circumstances in which we now find ourselves. but i'm not so sure that's completely true. palestinians, their allies and numerous human organizations, including human rights watch have long been sounding the alarm that israel has been subjecting palestinians for decades to a apartheid regime of occupation over and over, been warned that there could violence, even cataclysmic violence, if israel was not

held, account. and now, tragically, that moment has arrived over the past. the horror of this violence has unfolded. and many of us have been asking how could it have come to this? and while our program this evening does focus specifically on the terrible ongoing violence in gaza, i'd submit that the book about to discuss and highlight in its way offers important insight into the current moment. on the surface, you could say that a day in the life of salama is a story of a tragedy that befalls one palestine. he and family living under israeli occupation just one story among so many. but as nathan's book demonstrates so powerfully if we truly seek to understand israel's oppressive architecture of occupation, we must first and

foremost understand its impact on everyday. on parents and children, on husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, on community members who live a system of structural violence every day. an oppressive occupation that thwarts attempts to live their lives simply every turn. as we all know, there is a cottage industry of books, articles and think pieces that analyze israel's occupation. but in its microcosmic way. i believe this book about this one jerusalem tragedy helps us gain a much and more valuable understanding than most books you'll find on subject. those you who have read the book undoubtedly know what i mean. in short order, nathan allows us an intimate perspective into abed's reality, his daily struggle, and ultimately his unbearable heartbreak.

and in the end, we away with a deep and invaluable not just of his life, but of so many palestinians like him. and yes, we begin understand how it all could have come to this. i've always felt that if we are ever to find our way forward through the tragic injustices that have gripped israel palestine for far long, it will only happen by summoning up our deepest reservoir, empathy for our collective humanity in the current when such a goal seems more painfully remote than ever, it will be books and, testimonies such as this that will point the way forward for us. all this to say. i'm grateful to nathan for his book to the sponsors of our program for making tonight possible and to all of you for being here tonight. i've been asked to let you know where the exits are. they're back here and over there

helpfully, marked by the signs that say exit and i have also been asked that our conversation this evening, it should go without saying. i will abide by our guidelines of civil discourse. we are all here not necessarily to completely agree with one another, but to share with one another and be open to one another and to hear one another and to express ourselves honestly and openly and ultimately and truly be open to what nathan thrall has to teach us. so with no ado, i will step down and i would like to turn things over to my good friend and comrade dr. barbara ransby. if you like. thank you, brant, and thank you for your exemplary leadership,

which is always an inspiration to all of us. thank you all for coming out on a monday night to have this conversation. us. we gather tonight as are dropping on gaza. the subject of this book nathan's book takes us into a conversation about the region about politics, about what's right and wrong in this moment. but it does it in a very special way. and i'm going to introduce both of my interlocutors here, omar shakir and and nathan thrall. but i want to say, as a preface you know, many of us have been gripped and strained and stressed and in in tears about the situation, palestine and israel since october and on college campuses where i teach, where many of my colleagues teach, it's been very difficult to have conversations and been very painful, emotional exchange. and it's almost like rational

discourse has taken a backseat to what side one is on. i feel like this offers an opportunity to wade in, to walk in, to lead with our hearts, to open hearts, to learning about the experiences of palestinians in occupied palestine. but doing it in a way that invites into our largest humanity. and so i'm i met nathan actually reading an article that he wrote that was a prelude to the book, and i didn't know him. i, you know, didn't know anyone who knew him. and i wrote him an email and he responded and a year or so later, the book came out. he asked me to to moderate this. as it turns out, we have many friends and comrades and colleagues in common. but but that openness, i think, is reflected in how this book is written. so i'm looking forward this conversation. and let me just introduce the two people i'll be talking to. so nathan thrall is an and a journalist, obviously, the

author of a day in the life of ahmed salama anatomy of a jerusalem tragedy, but also has published in the new york times magazine. the guardian the london review of books in new york, review of books and was for a decade. the director at the international crisis group of the arab israeli project. he also taught at bard college, originally from california, but now living in jerusalem. our second speaker is omar shakir and omar serves as the israel and palestine director at the human rights watch. he investigates human rights abuses in israel, the west bank and gaza, and has authored several major reports. in 2021, a report a threshold crossed, which is a 200 page report with graphic illustrations that give a kind of context and background to the to the occupation and to the situation we see in palestine, particularly in gaza right now.

so i want to start with, nathan and, you'll have opportunity to ask questions the end, but i want to start, nathan and just ask you about your choice to write this book. you could have written this story, you know, with a number of entry points, but you chose this particular family, the story of a father, the tragedy that befell his son and its family. and then you introduce us to many, many other issues and and provocations. so why this story and what is a journey been like for you? and welcome to chicago. thank you. thank you, barbara. thank you all for coming. so, you know, this story, there are a number of different ways to answer that question. one of them is a more emotional answer, which is that, you know, i live in jerusalem and my work

for the international crisis group took, me to the west bank. you know, nearly every day. and as i would drive north from from my apartment close to the walls of the old city. i would pass by a walled enclave that contained within many residents of jerusalem the had to main communities within it. the shuafat refugee camp and the town of anata. and this community was surrounded by walls on three sides. a 26 foot tall, gray wall. the separation barrier. and on the fourth side was a different kind of wall which is the wall, route 43, 70 more famously known, the apartheid road, a segregated road with

traffic for israelis on side, traffic for palestinians on the and a giant wall running through the middle of it. and you have. 130,000 people living in this very densely populated walled enclave without a single atm, without lanes in their streets, without sidewalks without playgrounds, and a great many of them are paying municipal to the city of jerusalem and getting almost no services so much that people are forced to burn trash in their streets in the middle of the day and night. and all this is sitting in plain view just underneath the manicured grounds of the hebrew university of jerusalem, israel's most prestigious university, and from the hebrew university of jerusalem, mount

scopus, you can look down and, you can see this walled enclave and you can see checkpoint through which parents are forced to send their children to school or to go to their jobs. the other element that the parents in this community face is a shortage of classrooms. there were at the time the accident that as at the center, the book, they were doing double shifts in the schools just in order to be able to to teach the students. so i would pass by walled ghetto and hardly pay any mind. i would pass by it on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. and i don't think i was alone in ignoring it. the whole landscape of this place is there are walls everywhere, there are segregation everywhere. it wasn't something that i dwelled on.

and after this tragedy occurred where a bus full of kindergartner was from this community was struck by giant semi-trailer wheeler and the bus flipped over and caught fire. six children died. one teacher. and of this is happening just on the other side of this wall where there there is a of deliberate neglect. there is a neglect. israel. there is. an inability of the palestinian authority to enter municipal jerusalem or area c, where the took place. that's than 60% of the west bank. that is under full israeli security control. and. and so the people who are left to deal with this accident were the palestinians who live this

state of neglect. on the other side of the wall and after the accident took place, i couldn't stop thinking about the parents and children and teachers who are affected by it. and i started when i decided to write the book, decided to reach out to everybody. i possibly could who was in one way or another connected to the crash from the settler who founded the settlement next, where the accident took place, to one of the teachers bystander who heroically rescued dozens of children. some of the social workers at the israeli hospital and so one answer to the question is that i was was moved by story of this accident, how it emblematic of

the total neglect of these hundreds of thousands of people on the other side of the wall. and i should say that also through through to enter these areas even within municipal jerusalem you know the emergency services require and an escort by the israeli army or security forces. and so the the fact that the israelis secure emergency services didn't arrive for a very long time was not unique to this accident. that's something that has happened many times in these areas on the other side of the wall and i saw the story, the ability to tell the larger story of israel through the jewish and palestinian characters. but i to say that there is a different way of answering that question, which is that i also was driven to tell a story of something that occurs every day

all over the world. i really didn't want to focus on something could be exceptional ized to focus on something that would be the more natural subject for a work of journalism. a war in gaza, an invasion of janine, suicide bombing. what i really was wanted was to show people what this system was, that these people live under and what it feels like viscerally to live within that system and my frustration for a years and working for the international crisis group and doing the kinds of journalism that i was doing was that whole world would pay attention to this issue. when there's a war in gaza, when there's a spike in violence and, everybody would call for calm and i wanted to show what that

calm looked like. i wanted to us to address calm, to understand that that calm was not actually calm, but was at deeply oppressive system. and that entailed a great deal of violence that produced violence and turned. and i wanted us to pay attention to that system so we are not only horrified when we see something. the war in gaza, but that we're also horrified that war ends. you know, the everyday violence. yeah. and i want to invite you and omar to talk a little bit more about what that looks like. i was i don't know. many people here have visited israel, palestine. how many visited occupied palestine? yeah. so. so, you know, i went in 2011 with an indigenous feminist color delegation and on our delegation was a woman who had grown up on an indian here.

so she described woman had grown up in the jim crow south and a woman who had grown up in apartheid south africa and what we saw resonated for all of them resonated for me in terms of the harassment and violence that was pretty routine and that our palestinian saw as pretty, pretty routine life under occupation, going through checkpoints, agents being, you know, harassed, just trying to go about your business. so what do we learn as readers in following of its dilemmas dilemma on that tragic day for, him as a dad looking for his child and you know, we get we get a sense of what that wall represents, what what occupation represents. and what that violence is about. so you want describe it a little bit more. and then, omar, i want to invite u.n. because you document it with a lot of ahmed salama. but tell us more.