Will 2020 Change American Tech?

New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter and LinkedIn co-founder and New America Board Member Reid Hoffman will discuss to what extent this eventful year will revolutionize American Tech.

If we needed any reminders of the tech sector’s outsized power to shape how we live, 2020 has provided us with an avalanche of them, from the global pandemic to a social justice movement to address systemic racism and pressing debates about the boundaries of free speech in an election year. On the innovation and competition front, we have seen the rise of some interesting newer players — think of TikTok or Zoom — in markets that seemed dominated by a few incumbent behemoths. And yet many Americans continue to feel uneasy about their growing level of dependence on tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Google, even as employees within these companies engage in social and political activism. The tech sector in this country is unlike any other in terms of the power it wields to improve and/or control our lives, and the amount of scrutiny devoted to its motives, the sense of its own identity, and its ability to sustain American economic competitiveness. How will 2020 shift our answers to these questions, if at all?

Join Future Tense on Tuesday, June 30 for less than an hour at 4:00 pm EDT.

Featuring:

Anne-Marie Slaughter, @SlaughterAM
CEO, New America
Author, The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World

Reid Hoffman, @reidhoffman
Co-founder, LinkedIn
Partner, Greylock Partners
Board Member, New America

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