Khalil: "It's not every day that a non-Googler gets to sit in a room full of people who work at Google, and are software engineers, and are advertising experts, and are you know market experts in different fields. Do you have anything that you'd like to ask us?"
As a context just before that NC was explaining how advertising leads to distortion in rational decision making which is the basis for all of the current economic free market system.
(Starts at 2:35, "and then a third thing happened..."; personally, I would suggest ignoring the various TV clips spliced in as that to me seems like the projections of the politics of the editor of the video and not necessarily the specific idea Chomsky himself intends to convey.)
To me this illustrates how those who actually "control" things in the US and the world have split those who should be allies into two camps. The perfect weapon in this strategy is the "proper" and well-intended anti-racist propaganda Westerners have been subject to for decades - combined with the dulling of the average Western mind to the point many are near incapable of critical thinking, the result is that perfectly common sense public discussions on incredibly important matters such as international trade and immigration can largely be stopped in their tracks by cries of "racism!"...and even better, the ones who are being most harmed, the younger generations of the (former) middle class, are the very ones who are stopping the dialogue that affects their future!
Human nature is really amazing if you step back and observe it critically.
It's a perfect example of the modern far-left and far-right convergence. Both have anti-globalist agenda, contempt for human rights and only slight disagreement over who exactly has to be eliminated for peoples' better life. Only now they were able to peacefully face off over the Internet and like each other's tweets.
> Chomsky explains his decision to focus on criticizing the U.S. over other countries as being because, during his lifetime, the country has militarily and economically dominated the world, and because its liberal democratic electoral system allows for the citizenry to exert an influence on government policy.
chomsky is incredibly smart and i love listening to what he has to say and agree with most of it, but this focus on criticizing US is definitely not one of them. i get the argument, but he's either blind to or doesn't care that his well intended criticism is more effective as a political tool in hands of enemies of the liberal democratic system which he supposedly wants to succeed.
not saying that US must not be criticized, it just feels very disproportionate compared to the amount of injustice and atrocities in other parts of the world. hell, on a majority of this planet's surface chomsky would have been disappeared long time ago for the kind of criticizm he directs at US - is that not a reason to begin your every speech with "keep in mind, matters are very much worse pretty much everywhere else but...".
20:00 has an interesting snippet where Chomsky relates the breakdown of working class cultural institutions and education then takes a stab at Google (one gets the sense the real audience response was edited heavily in post production).
"And they may not have gone to school. They certainly didn't go to Oxford, but the working class, the rising working class, had its own institutions of education and culture, which was significant. A lot of that has been destroyed in all kinds of ways. Google doesn't help."
Maybe there's some extra context in the minutes prior that gives this a different meaning but it sounds to me like he's saying that Google changed the way the middle class accesses information, which has destroyed the old ways. I did go back 20 or so seconds and he mentions that they read books, which I think backs this up somewhat (they used to go to libraries, now they don't need libraries, they have Google).
And the laughter doesn't sound edited to me, though there's clearly a cut there.
The world will lose one of the great modern-day thinkers when Chomsky is no longer with us. It's hard to fathom how he remains such a clear thinker at his age.
His contribution to linguistics is definitely great and no one can take that from him. But to call him a great modern-day thinker is a bit of a stretch.
Hey, if you haven't read any of his books, I would recommend it some time. He has a mind like a steel trap. His books are meticulously researched, and he has a sad dry humor.
But what you also get is hope. I've always felt that the reason he does what he does, is because we can point to openness, and draw a clear line between today and the past. Not recognizing what we do in the world leads to barbarism. The world has been rejecting barabarism consistently for centuries. Even a century ago, in america, the discrimination was horrendous. It is better because democracy allows us to question the implementation of government. And he asks the big questions.
Khalil: "It's not every day that a non-Googler gets to sit in a room full of people who work at Google, and are software engineers, and are advertising experts, and are you know market experts in different fields. Do you have anything that you'd like to ask us?"
Chomsky: "Why not do some of the serious things?"
:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C-zWrhFqpM&t=59m21s