Événement

Bellingham City Club Program July 23rd

For our July 2014 program, City Club will host Nicco Mele, one of America's leading forecasters of business, politics and culture. In his book The End of Big, he offers a fascinating, sometimes frightening look at how our ability to stay connected constantly, instantly, and globally is dramatically changing our world. Governments are being upended by individuals relying only on social media. Major political parties are seeing their power eroded by grassroots forces. Universities are scrambling to preserve their student populations in the face of less expensive, more accessible online courses. Print and broadcast news outlets are struggling to compete with citizen journalists and bloggers.
Our traditional institutions are being disrupted in revolutionary ways, some for the better. But, as Nicco Mele argues, the benefits of new technology come with unintended consequences. He contends that unless we exercise caution in our use of these new technologies, we risk a dark and wildly unstable future, one in which our freedoms and basic human values could be destroyed rather than enhanced.

Nicco Mele: Named by Esquire magazine as one of America's "Best and Brightest," he served as webmaster for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign and popularized the use of technology and social media for political fund-raising. Mele's firm, EchoDitto, is a leading Internet strategy company working with nonprofit organizations and Fortune 1000 companies, among them Google, AARP, the Clinton Global Initiative and the United Nations. He serves on the board of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, is a cofounder of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and is on the faculty at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.