Katherine Cramer: Listening to Strengthen Democracy

Katherine Cramer explains what she heard while inviting herself into the conversations of people in small communities in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. October, 2019.

Transcript:

I'm Tom Ivacko with the

State & Urban Policy.

It's better known as CLOSUP,

one of the research centers

here at the Ford School.

It's my pleasure to

introduce today's

speaker.

I'm going to start with

a few notes about the

fornat of our event.

We have time at the

end for questions.

Please write your

questions on the index

cards that have been

handed out.

If you need another

one flag down Bonnie

here and We'll keep an

eye out and We'll

collect those starting

at about 4:30

or so.

For those of us

joining online, please

tweet your questions

using the hash tag

policy talks and We'll

transcribe those on

the cards here

ourselves.

Joining us to present

the questions is the

students.

First it Richardson

and lily Alexander.

They will ask the

questions to our

speaker today and will

be assisted by a

university of Michigan

student Michael wolf

who will be assisted

by Sarah mills our --

our senior project

manager.

Sarah has been leading

an effort on campus to

bring together

faculty, staff and

students from across

the campus to look at

issues across the

urban rural divide.

They take particular

approaching looking

more along a spectrum

as opposed to

conceiving them as

across a divide.

So we close our event

today with a couple of

notes about a

following event.

Finally I like to

thank Bonnie Roberts,

our events manager for

pulling together for

you today, great job,

thank you Bonnie.

I'm Tom Ivacko with the Urban Policy.

Today's talk is

about listening to

strength in democracy.

It is sponsored by

close-up and the Ford

school.

As part of the

initiative of

differences.

I think we feel the

strain that our

country is under,

trib

tribalism plaguing our

politics.

The Ford school is

committed to playing a

leading role in public

discourse that is

nonpartisan and

evidence based and

inclusive.

We host public events

that model reason and

evidence based debate

and to explore issues

around identity and

difference.

We developed new

student programming

and curriculum to

train our students in

how to bridge

difference,

productively discuss

contested topics and

negotiate.

We practice trust

building through a

problem solving and --

and procedural noev

-- innovation and

learning and solving

problems aCcross

differences.

We generate diversity.

The school has a deep

mission driven

commitment to the

values of scholarship,

respectful dialogue

and inclusive

community.

Our graduate and under

graduate students, we

help them to make

progress on difficult

problems through

constructive dialogue

and action across

divides.

So today's talk by

Kathy Cramer is a

perfect fit.

We're proud to

announce she earned

her Ph.D. and she's

the anatomy chair and

professor at Wisconsin

Madison and senior

adv

advisor at cortico to

foster public

discourse among the

public but with also

among the media to

help us develop a

better understanding

of one another.

Sheil talk about some

of this work today.

Kathy's work focuses

on the way that people

in the United States

make sense of our

politics and their

place in it.

She's award winning

author and known for

an innovative approach

to the study of public

opinion in which she

introduces herself in

to conversations -- of

groups of people to

listen and -- and get

a better understanding

of how they make sense

of public issues.

She's author of

"policies of

resentment" makes

sense of this

approach.

So rather than take

any more time from

Kathy's talk you could

read more of her

really impressive bio

in your program.

Please join me in

welcoming Kathy

Kramer.

I'm Tom Ivacko with the Urban Policy.

Thank you so much.

I'm Tom Ivacko with the Urban Policy.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you so much for

having me.

Bonnie Roberts, thank

you so much for all of

the logistics.

She's sort of amazing

person and if you need

Bonnie and

organization in your

life, talk to her.

I've only been here a

few hours but had a

fabulous visit.

Thank you so much.

Thank you Tom and

Sarah, thank you.

Yes, I am a proud

graduate of the

political science

program here at

Michigan and I want to

give out a shout out

to Don kinder who I

see in the room, a

dear friend that

taught me the value of

studying the things

you care most about in

the world.

You'll see in short

order I'm going to

tell a series of

stories.

You'll see in short

order that I was very

fortunate to -- to

study political

science here because

it was an environment

in which I learned all

of the cutting edge

skills and I also

learned ideas of

pursuing ideas I care

about and important to

the world and the

methods by which I did

that were less

important than

studying important

things and I owe a lot

of that, the courage

to do that to Don who

supported me from very

early on.

So, let me tell you

stories.

When I was a college

graduate student here,

I was fortunate to get

involved with Kent

Jennings who recently

retired from the

university of

California Santa

Barbara.

He had been engage in

a study of political

socialization.

In the 1997 I was

involved with that

pro

project.

It was a study of high

school seniors in 1965

and they were followed

over the course of

their life.

Part of my job was to

interview these folks

in rural areas of the

deep south.

So I was doing --

basically a survey, a

laptop based survey in

people's homes, asking

them questions like

this.

This is a famous

Michigan question

about identity.

Generally do you

consider yourself a

Democrat or republican

or what?

Republican, democratic

or what?

People record the

answers.

At the time a lot was

do not on paper and

you had to fill out

the paperwork and send

it back to the

institute here or the

survey research

center.

I was spending a lot

of time in post

offices.

So places like this,

mailing these things

back and rural areas,

post offices are

important hub of the

community.

Most people have post

office boxes and they

stop in about once a

day, maybe it changed

over time as surface

mail becomes less a

part of their lives,

they stop in and get

the news and move on.

I was interested in

the conversations I

was encountering in

those places as well

as the conversations I

was having with these

survey respondents

after the survey was

over.

From pretty early on

in my life as a

political scientist, I

knew I was interested

in conversation.

I knew I picked up a

lot about their lives

and about the way they

understood politics

from listening to them

talk with one another.

So again I owe a lot

of credit to this

university saying yes,

that's interesting and

we support glou

studying it in

whatever way you think

is useful.

So fast forward a bit.

Across the course of

my career this is

basically the question

I've been pursuing,

how do people

understand their

world?

And what is behind

this is this

recognition by many of

us that you can expose

people, two different

people, to the same

message, the same

speech and campaign ad

and they will come

away with two

different readings on

it, two different

interpretations.

They'll see different

things here.

What is that?

How does that happen?

It happens because we

all have different

lenses that we see the

world and filter

things and process

them.

I have found just in

different ways I've

been pursuing this

question.

I found it much more

rewarding than than

question which is

basically how could

people be so stupid?

How could people vote

against their

interests?

What is wrong with

them.

I like to ask not what

are people getting

wrong but how are they

getting it.

I just earned tenure

at the University of

Wisconsin.

I told myself you can

understand why social

class identities

matter.

So this was Wisconsin,

a bying background

here.

The blue areas are

more urban areas.

What is I did, I was

interested in this.

Bui areas are more you

are urb

I'm Tom Ivacko with the Urban Policy.

We're on the short end of

the stick in three main ways,

lots of ways that I I can't

characterize them.

One of this all of the decisions

that effect our lives are made

in Madison or Milwaukee which

are the two natural areas in the

state, the only two and

communicated out to us.

We don't -- people don't come

out here and ask us what we

think.

We're told what the rules are

going to be.

So we -- we're on the short end

of the stick in teams of power

basically and political power

and decision-making power.

We're on the short end of the

stick in terms of resources.

You know all of our taxpayer

dollars get sucked in and spent

on Madison and Milwaukee and we

don't see that money in return.

We're also on the short end of

the stick in terms of respect.

You all making the decisions

down there, you don't know us.

You don't know what life is like

in a place like this.

You don't like us.

You don't respect us.

You think we're racist and

sexist and homophobic and Islam

phobic.

That came out.

That's sobering.

I think it is important.

But as a political scientist it

seemed to me politically really

important.

This is a set of sentiments that

a savvy politician might tap

into, right, in the following

ways.

It has many layers to it.

You may have heard some already

just the way I'm explaining it,

it is resentment toward city and

city people and also toward

elites and one political party

more than another, perhaps

increasingly so since the time I

was in the field in early 2007.

And it is also racism and

resentment against minorities.

Wisconsin you may be familiar

with this is very segregated

Richellely.

When people talk about the

cities, oftentimes it is also a

conversation about race.

They can activate a component of

this and so potentially is

powerful.

It sets the stage for divisive

messages that clears out to

people who is us and who is

them.

People are like we're working

hard to make ends meet.

We're good, hard working

Americans and it seems to us

that our hard earned money is

going to -- to support people

who -- who -- who aren't as

deserving, aren't as hard

working whether it be you,

Kathy, you're a full-time

professor down at university of

Wisconsin Madison.

What are you doing driving

around the state and having

coffee with us?

How is that hard work?

Sometimes they would say when do

you take a shower?

I say before I go to work.

Exactly they would say, I work

so hard that the first thing I

do when I get home is take a

shower.

They would have -- they said

there hard workers and those

that sit behind desks.

They thought a lot of their

money was going to pay for

people like me.

That's one example because

sometimes the deservingness was

racialized, they would have a

stereotype of a welfare

recipient, someone that doesn't

deserve the public benefits.

Another way this was very ripe

ground for -- for a politician

to tap into is that it sets the

stage for someone to say, yeah,

let's have less government.

People would look around at

their communities and say

whatever government is doing, it

is not working for us.

It is not working people in

places like us.

It is not working for people

like us.

There's a sense that -- that --

that government folks were

people that didn't respect

people in the smaller

communities.

There's a sentence that it was

an urban thing.

Even for public employee living

in the community for example,

postschool educators and people

would sometimes say things like,

look, yeah, I know, he's lived

there the last 25 years, but the

testing, the decisions about

curriculum, all of that stuff is

decided by you all down in

Madison, in the by people here

and whether or not that's true,

that was perception that public

employees the way they do their

jobs were good urban values and

urban decisions.

So Lo and behold, Scott walker

comes on the scene.

Mind you, he was Milwaukee

county executive.

He ran for governor and won.

Shortly after he took office, he

proposed a piece of legislation

known as act 10 Wisconsin.

It was a budget addendum.

It was a budget repair ir bill that

would undercut public employee

unions to organize and bargain.

And also it required public

employees to pay in more of

their pay checks for pensions

and healthcare benefits.

This picture is a reaction in

Madison, how people were around

the state capital in Madison.

It seemed to be the most

unpopular legislation ever

proposed in the state.

But 20, 25 miles outside of the

city, the conversation, the

behavior was very different.

Instead people were saying

thing, not like let's impeach

the guy, but it is about time.

It is about time someone came

along and made those people pay

in more -- more to the pot.

I'm Tom Ivacko with the Urban Policy.

That was all very sobering

for those of us in Wisconsin and

those of everybody watching from

other parts of the country.

Then the 2016 presidential

election took place.

Right?

People started wondering wow,

what is going on in rural

Wisconsin?

Those of you watching election

crosses and you realize will be

the next president and Wisconsin

is in the middle of the night

the last state to clinch the

election for Trump.

It seemed quickly that whatever

was happening in Wisconsin had

some parallels to other parts of

the country as well.

And Donald Trump is a very

different politician than Scott

walker.

In his own way, he was saying to

people, you were right to be so

upset.

You are doing things as you

should, you are hard working.

You're a good American.

What you deserve is going to

other people or those people.

And for Scott walker, the target

of blame was basically public

employees.

That wasn't necessarily Donald

Trump's blame he said he was

pointing the finger at

immigrants and uppity women and

liberal elites and such.

In ways they were playing into

the same set of sentiment.

Now I don't want to convey that

it was -- it was rural

Wisconsin, rural Wisconsin,

rural Americans who -- who were

the -- the kind of -- the kind

of -- of -- of pivotal

population group in the election

of 2016.

But they were important to the

outcome of the election.

And my goodness, they received a

lot of attention since then.

Right?

One thing that happened to me,

this -- and personally, I

thought I was -- was starting a

corner of the world that I cared

a lot about.

Election -- that election

changed my life pretty much

overnight in terms of who was

asking me to share my knowledge

and -- asking me to commenTate

on the world around me.

One of my favorite stories, as

returns came in in 2016, I

turned to my daughter who is 12

and I said I think we should go

home.

I think I'm going to be busy

tomorrow.

And I'm checking my e-mail

before we went to bed and

there's an e-mail from the "New

York Times" saying, hi, we're

the "New York Times", we think

we know something, can we talk

to you tomorrow?

That was the start of a lot of

people saying what the heck is

going on in Wisconsin and what

can you -- can you help us

understand about rural America?

Part of what happened was many

people around the country and

around the world, but primarily

from the United States wrote

messages to me, primarily by

e-mail saying -- sometimes

asking questions but more often

than the no expressing things to

me.

They heard me speak or read

something that I wrote and --

and felt compelled to tell me

what was on their minds.

I'm turning to those messages

next to help -- to help -- to

help convey the importance of

perspective.

I think what I learned from --

from doing this work is that --

is that listening, taking the --

having the luxury of taking the

time to go into people and

sitting down with them and

listening to the way they talked

about politics opened my eyes to

all kind of things that I hadn't

even thought I -- I had been

looking for.

One thing in particular, you

know, the -- the way that people

were turning to me and saying

can you help me explain taught

me that we really don't know

much about the perspectives that

people are using to think about

politics in rural America but in

many different parts of our

society.

It is not just rural Americans

that are feeling as though

they're unheard and not unseen

or they're overlooked or

disrespected.

Many people express those

sentiments.

As a social scientist or

political observer we're often

asking the question, how can

people do that?

There's part of you us that

wants to know more.

How are they understanding the

world?

It helps to listen to people to

talk to people in their own

lives to get a better sense of

that.

It also taught me that there's

more to know about political --

people's political beliefs and

partisanship, because I would

ask people, so tell me which

party best represents the

interests of the people around

here.

Almost always they would say,

neither party.

None of them are paying

attention to us.

Their attachment to the parties

was much more complicated than

leaning towards republican or

Democrat but it -- it was

intertwined with the sense of --

of where -- where some of the

parties -- it helped to listen

to them to talk about the parts

to understand that.

I want to know one thing I think

these conversations did for me

was to see the complexity of the

way, when people are talking

about those people and who is

observing that -- economics and

racism and cultural anxiety and

whatever you want to call it are

intertwined in the way people

are perceiving candidates and

policy.

I turn now to the letters to

dive into these letters more.

I want to share with you some of

the words that I received but I

think these are all from e-mail

from people who were -- were --

were reading stuff I wrote and

hearing things and responding to

the people I had been studying.

Primarily the people we assume

voted for Trump in the election.

They say things like, you know,

I don't know what they're paying

attention to.

But this seems to be from

another universe.

They would say things like,

don't they get that they're

getting going and support too.

That they're getting government

benefits themselves and how is

it that they want to undercut

government and why Scott walker

and why smaller government.

Sometimes they would say things

likes -- they have the

opportunity to move.

They can move to where the jobs

are.

The people in the communities

are people that are left behind

and wallowing in their own

resentment.

Harsh, right?

What is harsh and troubling to

me is all of that stuff sounds

so much like the comments that I

heard Trump supporters saying

about who we presume to be

Clinton supporters.

I want to share those with you.

Sorry to make you even more

depressed.

For example, I would hear

oftentimes, or Democrats they

cannot decide can for

themselves.

They being fooled and

hoodwinked.

One guy saying, this Democrat

said he basically even if Hitler

he would vote for him just

because he's a Democrat.

They can't make their own

choices.

Here's another set of things.

They would say things like, you

know, not just based on par

partisan, they just vote for

Barack Obama because he's black

or Hillary Clinton because she's

a woman.

Or they only vote for Democrats

because they're on a government

program and want the money to

continue.

They would say they're

hypocritical.

Oftentimes this comes up when I

go back after the 2016 campaign

to some groups and say -- it

would come up the way before the

gain who did I vote for?

I would say Hillary Clinton.

I would say why?

I would say I saw the videotape

and access video and I have a

daughter.

What about bill Clinton?

They criticize Trump for things

they don't criticize their own

people.

Another thing that would come up

is just the -- the perception of

Democrats being intolerant.

So this person is talking about,

you try to have a conversation

with them, they won't listen to

you.

Okay.

Now I thoroughly depressed you.

What is troubling is there's

energy being spent on what is

wrong with each other, what

needs to be fixed in those

people, while we're focusing on

the flaws of each other as

opposed to focusing on the

things that are more

fundamentally wrong.

Why is it that our attention is

drawn to -- to what is wrong

with each other.

Why is that the conversation?

And what happens is that we get

so frustrated with one another,

right?

We think that -- that the

problem is those people and

clearly they're not paying

attention to the right news on

any information that you give

them will not change their minds

so it is hopeless.

We throw up or hands and turn

away and we don't engage and

don't get involved.

The result is that the policies

that are getting us to these

places whether we're talking

about economic policy or

otherwise continue.

So the people in power have the

ability to continue passing

legislation that actually isn't

helping the people who are

complaining about the state of

affairs.

I'm wondering these days, is the

question, what is wrong with

these people or those people?

Or instead, should we be asking

what is wrong with our overall

system?

What is wrong with the democracy

that we're in the state of

affairs that we're in?

We can ask, so what is it that

with need or probably a question

that is more familiar to a lot

of you, a question I've been

asking myself since the campaign

is what is it that I should be

doing with my talents at this

point in time?

Given our state of affairs, what

do I do to contribute to a

solution.

I'm Tom Ivacko with the Urban Policy.

One thing I've been working

on since early 2017.

This is a project that I've been

working on with a colleague of a

dear friend, he's a director of

the lab called the laboratory

for social machines.

They create a nonprofit

organization called cortico

which helps them deploy what

they invent.

I've been in the lab.

It is a group of designers and

computer engineers and analogy

language processing people and

machine learning folks.

What we came up with is

basically our answer to how do

we scale up the listening that I

did in Wisconsin on a national

scale, perhaps international,

We'll see how it goes.

But this is where a conversation

we started along this

recognition that the way in

which we communicate with each

other, whether we're talking

social media and traditional

immediate yeah, typically it is

loud and shallow and divisive

and reactive and it is just not

nuanced and it is often

disconnected from the things

that we're -- that we care about

and are in our every day lives.

If you go to a friend and say,

what are your biggest concerns

these days?

More often than not it is

thought going to be the stuff

that is getting talked about in

the news but instead it is jobs

and paying off your school loans

and healthcare, maybe the

environment.

What we're aiming for is a kind

of communication in which we

lift up the voices of the people

who are under heard.

People that don't fool listened

to.

People that feel they're

overlooked and disrespected or

ignored.

Communication that is more

nuanced as opposed to putting us

in boxes in corners.

Instead it enables to see the

complexity of each other's views

and not SisiSisimply say he's one of

them.

He's more grounded in our every

day concerns.

So we came up with a thing that

we call the local voices

network.

It is to foster constructive

conversations that help us each

other.

We're aiming for simply a way in

which we can listen to one

another and understand the per

spktives of people who are

unlike us or don't live near us

or that we haven't had

interaction with.

We have grounded our work in

these five values.

We keep these front and center

in our design decisions.

The first one is we're trying to

get people to talk about their

stories and their personal

experiences as opposed to their

bullet points.

We want people to come into a

conversation and share their

lives rather than their

arguments.

I'm understanding that it is --

it is -- when you have the

opportunity to hear other people

stories that you can actually

understand their lives better.

Another way of putting it is if

you bring people into a

conversation and say, we're

going to have a conversation

about climate change, people are

going to show up with their --

their points in mind, their

bullet points, their arguments

in mind.

As soon as you sit down in that

conversation and people start to

talk, you will though who is on

which side of what.

And more likely than not your

defenses are going to go up.

You won't hear.

You won't actually listen to

what other people have to say.

We're trying to foster people

talking about their stories.

We're also trying to engage as

many different types of people

as possible primarily for the

purpose again of lifting up the

voices of people that are not

normally heard and also called

public conversation project.

We're grounding our work in

their particular communities in

which we're trying out the local

voices network so -- so every

place we are we are working with

the community asking them what

is it you want to the

communication to look like?

How do you think this should

should work here and tailoring

to each community as we go?

We're trying to be as

transparent as possible, where

the data is going, because we're

merging people and technology

here.

And that hasn't gone so well in

many aspects.

Finally we want it to matter.

We hope to have measurable

impact.

These are the key things we're

focusing on as we keep these

values front and center and

create a new public conversation

that we're -- again, we're

trying to lift up the voices of

people who are not normally

heard and we're trying to get

people to listen and learn.

You could see affinity for the

work you're doing here.

And again, we're trying to get

people to share their own

stories, their personal

concerns.

So we call the public

conversation network because at

the core our small group

conversations much like the kind

I was encountering in gas

stations and designer where

we're aiming for about six

people to be led in a

conversation by a facilitator,

all of these folks are

volunteers from the community,

and it is public that -- that

the conversations are recorded.

Everyone knows they're recorded.

They know they're going to be

recorded from the moment they

volunteer to participate.

And the conversations are shared

across the community and

neighborhoods in the community

and space.

This is possible through what

they have invented.

It is a scalable technology

platform that is tech lingo, not

so familiar to me, meaning this.

They invented a thing called a

digital hearth.

It is size of a hug.

What is inside eight

microphones, raspberry pie and

computer and enables this thing

to communicate with the

controller which I'll show you

as well as a speaker.

During the conversation which is

open-ended and yet structured

which I'll say a lot about in a

minute, the facilitator can say,

I talked about affordable

housing.

Imagine there's other people in

the room with us.

Let's play this from Paco,

Wisconsin and people are talking

about affordable housing and

once you hear the conversation

we can reflect together and

through this thing we can bring

in voices from other people who

these folks may not have

encountered before.

Here it what it looks like.

We put it in a box so it doesn't

feel like a phone during can a

conversation.

These are the principles that

guide the script and the guide

that the host uses to guide the

information, but basically the

conversation goes like this.

Share your first name, tell us

the value that is important to

you and that is related to why

you're here today.

Tell us a story from your

background that helps us

understand the person you've

become.

Tell us what do you love about

living here?

And then what are are you

concerned about in this

community and then let's listen

to a voice from another place.

And then what do you wish would

be different five years from

now?

What do you wish they knew about

your life?

Finally what is one thing you're

going to be taking away from the

conversation?

Simple questions that so far

have sparked some thoughtful

conversations and -- and about a

wide variety of -- of issues.

So we're not telling people what

to talk about.

Part of the idea is people --

people have the power to -- to

set the agenda, to say what is

important in their communities.

So it is community power to

understanding and it is benefit

driven and it is in particular

geographies.

We started in Madison.

This is a group of people

training to be facilitators in

Madison.

You see the hearth at work here.

We're working with the library

and they're a huge part of the

local voices network.

These hearts live in the

libraries meaning that's where

they get recharged and that's

where the data gets uploaded to

a cloud.

Also, they help us do

recruiting.

But importantly and by design,

these things can go anywhere, so

librarians taught us early on if

you want to engage a wide

variety of people you need to go

through them, right, which I

think I learned as well that if

you really want to listen to

people and understand how they

think about their community, you

need to go to where they are in

the course of their every day

lives.

These things are portable and go

to where people are and they

come back.

Here's -- here's shots from the

library and they're -- they're

tagging it and circulate with

the books.

Here's very first hearth

checkout by a host that owns a

pancake restaurant.

Went back to the restaurant and

had a conversation and to the --

to the much chagrin of the

engineers placed a cup on top of

it.

Okay.

So all of this data, then what?

Part of the idea is people

encounter the speaker playing

parts of the conversation but

also there's a great web

interface that if you're a

participate, you can log on and

hear and see your own

conversation but also hear and

see the conversations of other

people and -- and you can easily

search through and find

conversations about a particular

topic.

This is going to give you a

quick overview of what the

website looks like.

This is the website for Madison.

When you open it up, there's a

map and the bar shows you where

conversations have taken place

and how many.

Along the side, snippets of

different conversations.

Dive into one particular

conversation here is that the

blue spot is -- is where it took

place.

When you open up a given

conversation, there's a --

there's a -- a bar that shows up

that shows you who has

participated along the left

here.

And then across the top are key

words that pop up.

It is showing you what is

getting talked about where in

the conversation.

You could see that's where

shooting was mentioned.

That's where school district is

mentioned, the suppreme court and

immigration.

Highlights by volunteers as well

and people are fascinated by the

conversations.

You click on one part and hear

it.

I don't have the audio linked to

this right now.

As it plays it highlights the

words that are being said so you

can follow along visually pretty

easily as well as hear the

person's voice, let's see you

the full transcript and read

through and again at any point

what you want to hear the person

saying you'll click on it and

they'll play the transcript.

It is all -- it is all by -- you

know, it is all an experiment

and -- and we are -- we are

improving things as we go.

On that I was shog you we now

expanded to Boston, New York

City, Birmingham, Alabama, which

is just starting up, so there

aren't conversations up on the

website and as well as as apple

ton in Wisconsin.

And peck.

Peck is a smaller community.

What we're showing you is a

topic index that went up maybe a

few weeks ago that is the result

of -- of me highlighting parts

of a conversation saying, these

are conversations about

education, and then the machine

learning folks teaching,

teaching the machines to look

for more conversations about

education and now you can go

into the page and say I want to

see conversations about the

environment, show them to me.

They'll pop up.

In other words there's much more

to say here.

It is an awesome tool for being

able to search through the

conversations and -- and now,

what we're working on is how do

you meld the human ability to

interpret conversational data

along with a capability of

machines.

We have a long way to go.

It is my hope that we can find a

way to go from post-notes to

using machines to be able to

understand conversations about

politics on a larger scale than

I was able to go in my

Volkswagen or Prius.

Media outlets are amplifying

these conversations.

It is one thing for a volunteer

to log in and listen.

It is another for the local

media to say hey, look, a lot of

people seem to talk about

policing in schools.

What are they saying?

And let me as a journalist

follow up with that and have a