>>KC Estenson: Good morning, I'm KC Estenson. I'm the general manager of CNN Digital. We
had the good fortune of hearing from Ted Turner yesterday where he talked about his regret
of leaving CNN. And, unfortunately, it is now stuck with me and so are you.
[ Laughter ] I do want to talk today about something that's
very serious, since we're here in Arizona. The obligation of a news organization is to
maybe raise some of these points. Robert Frost said, "Good fences make good neighbors." I'm
asking a question to all of us today of, "Do they really?"
When we think about what's happening in our connected world, borders and national identity
is maybe thought about in some parallels that were brought up yesterday morning.
In many ways, we are more connected than we may think.
By way of getting into this, it is probably best if I go back to my roots where I was
educated at St. Mary's College by the Christian brothers -- maybe the cooler side of the order
in Catholicism, skateboarding priests. We studied the classics, people like John Locke
and Hobbs. [ Laughter ]
The nature of what man is in his natural state, is he good or is he inherently bad? Is life
brutish, nasty and short? These questions underpin what became our national identities.
What rights do we give to a sovereign state? When we think about our collection, and I
would say that our national identity is being replaced by our digital identity, and that
the obligations of a sovereign state are being passed now to some of these biggest brands.
Like, Microsoft, when Gates was cool and young and hip, right?
[ Laughter ] The friendly Microsoft, before Balmer. There
is an optimism there, right? There is an optimism to starting new enterprises. We had this same
thing with Google, right? Before the efficiency and the algorithms, there was two guys in
a garage with an idea about connecting the world and us to the world's information and
data. The high order of design and technology, the
crossroads of a liberal arts campus with the technology and engineering campus, it's is
embodied by Steve Jobs and Apple, right? And then, of course, you know, our friends
down the road in Palo Alto, Facebook, right? The sort of fraternity system, if you will,
right? What is the -- what is the obligation of these
companies, the social obligation? And, by the way, I work at CNN. And we're not exactly
clean on this either because there is other media, right? Other media is maybe represented
here by Murdock, Disney, and Time Warner and News Corps, we are all connected together
in this universe. The speakers yesterday challenged us to underpin
what I think is the social contract. We need to think of ourselves as a Jedi force, the
Jedi Council, right? Not to be pollyannaish, but when we are connected against a common
good and not fighting with each other, we are embracing an important element because
on the other side is this guy, our citizenry. Unfortunately, due to the nature of this presentation,
I cannot advance this slide fast enough. [ Laughter ]
But I will say that citizens have rights, and so I ask all of us, not the leaders of
these companies, but those of us here who are making the decisions in the middle day
to day what is our social contract between those of us who are the Jedi Council and our
society, our users? The first is freedom of speech, whether it's
Wikileaks or Craigslist or the events that happened in Tehran where a government clamps
down on freedom of speech. But our technologies enable people to get their messages out through
cell phones and through YouTube and iReport. A society might also be free. It must be mobile.
We must be able to port ourselves across these companies. That means I should be able to
maybe use Flash on Apple devices or that my Facebook identity can carry to Google, right?
And safety and security. When we are in this digital universe, we should
be free to know that we are safe and secure. And as part of that, I would also say before
all of this, we need easy -- and I would argue free access for all. There needs to be room
on the train. And the train must be free so that everybody can get onto the Internet in
their own ways, right? We have an obligation to our citizenry to do this.
And there is not meant to be an image behind this. We must be transparent and we must be
open, right? I must know what you're doing with my data and be able to opt in or opt
out of what you are doing with my identity. So I put to you this challenge, Can our actions
rise to our desire of a better society in this digital world? Thank you.
[ Applause ]