Communication

In this new Aspen Ideas format, all attendees gather each morning to kick off the day by exploring a current issue of deep complexity. The rapid growth of generative A.I. — surpassing expectations with over 100 million users of the technology in a short span of time — is a testament to its distinct intelligence and unique approach to problem-solving. There are many upsi...

While internet connectivity, technology, and digital skills are central to every part of modern life, the unfortunate reality is that millions of Americans have been left behind. We’ll discuss how transformational investment in digital equity and inclusion is helping close the digital divide.

The older we get, the more we need our friends — but the harder it is to keep them. This is an aphorism in the best of times, but it’s tragically true after more than two years of pandemic. Jennifer Senior's story, "It's Your Friends Who Break Your Heart," published in The Atlantic last winter, touched a nerve and went viral. Are we seeing a fundamental shift in the nature...

Intelligence is more than the gray matter sloshing around in your skull, and more than the nerves that make sense of your environment. Your mind utilizes extra-neural resources, including the perceptions and knowledge in the minds of others — so the more people you surround yourself with, the bigger your brain is. In this session, we’ll dive into the research that shows ho...

Kai-Fu Lee, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, gives AI a B- for its performance during the pandemic. It’s far from perfect, he says, but gets a solid pass for its contributions to contact tracing and containment in China, where Lee lives and works. Importantly, he says, advances in artificial intelligence give us plenty of reasons to believe that the next...

This session considers the importance of trust, and a healthy distrust, in the well-being of a democracy and the role of the press in this equation drawing on the report of the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy released Feb. 5, 2019 titled, “Crisis in Democracy: Renewing Trust in America.” What measures should local journalism, social media, and the public ta...

Studies completed after the 2016 election show that media coverage of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was overwhelmingly negative, extremely light on policy, and disproportionately focused on sideshows. What’s more, all of the major prediction models that use polls to game out election outcome probabilities predicted a Clinton victory. Could these entities, which are...

As humans, we have an inherent and intense desire for connection. Social media and our always-on devices have simultaneously fulfilled and thwarted this desire, so what comes next as artificially intelligent companions become even more integrated into our lives? In this interactive conversation, two tech journalists will explore and demonstrate the technology that wants to...

As consumers increasingly get their news online, and many news outlets shift from advertising-based business models to digital subscription-based business models, what role should tech platforms like Facebook play in supporting quality journalism? How do publishers tackle the challenges of breaking through various online channels to establish trust and relationships with r...

Every major social platform has to wrestle with its influence on society and how its leaders’ decisions affect people. But one site that hasn’t made many headlines is Reddit, a network of hundreds of thousands of communities for people to connect across shared interests, in politics, jokes, hobbies, life struggles, and countless other topics. From new content policies to p...

Bots — accounts with no human oversight — rule Twitter. According to a Pew Research analysis of more than 1.2 million public tweets, an astounding 66 percent of links tweeted are shared from bots. Enter accidental tech superheroes Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte who, in the spring of their sophomore year at UC Berkeley, launched a counterattack called Botchek.me. Hear how two 20...

For our annual signature event in the Benedict Music Tent, the 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival hosts former secretary of state John Kerry in a candid conversation about geopolitics with Andrea Mitchell. Immediately afterward, in collaboration with Theatre Aspen, Ideas Festival presents a live performance by Broadway actors followed by panel discussions examining the historical a...

An opportunity to hear Axios Founder and Executive Editor Mike Allen discuss journalism and politics of the day with documentary filmmaker and journalist Perri Peltz.

As of this writing, 28 journalists have been killed in 2018, 262 were imprisoned in 2017, and 58 are currently marked as missing. Every day in countries across the globe, journalists put their lives at risk to expose the truth: truth about human rights, political corruption, drug trafficking, environmental crime. What can journalists (and the rest of us) do to secure their...

Readers, viewers, and subscribers want and need accurate news and information, but as we attempt to navigate among publishers and platforms and networks, who is ultimately responsible for telling us the truth? Who should be held accountable for information that is inaccurate, intentionally misleading, or straight-up fake? And what can media and information organizations do...

The impacts of cybercrime and the proliferation of cyberattacks are unsettling at best and very dangerous at worst. Not only are we experiencing increases in nefarious activity for personal gain, we are seeing threats against nation-states, the likes of which society has not experienced before. Is it time for the world’s governments to implement international rules to prot...

Technology may teach the pleasures of controlled exchanges—admit it, texting is often so much easier than real-time talking. But here is what we know about life: We lose out as individuals and as citizens in a democracy when we don’t take the time to talk to each other and when we don’t learn how to listen to each other, especially when it comes to talking and listening to...

We love the convenience of living online. But we want more control over where our personal information goes and who can see it. Manoush Zomorodi, creator of the Privacy Paradox experiment on WNYC’s “Note to Self,” along with ProPublica senior reporter Julia Angwin and tech entrepreneur and writer Anil Dash, illuminate practical ways to reign in control of your personal dat...