CUNY journalism professor, blogger and social media gadfly, Jeff Jarvis, is not stranger to controversy. And he was in characteristically outspoken form when I caught up with him at the NYC DLD conference to talk about the 2016 election.
Jarvis — who is a Hillary supporter — told me that Trump, “is the emperor troll”. And Bernie Sanders isn’t much different, he insists.
Both Trump and Sanders, Jarvis argues, are tied together by their anger and their narcissistic use of traditional political platforms and parties to get individual attention.
So when can we expect the digital revolution to have a healthily innovative impact on politics? Here, Jarvis — who has written extensively about Johannes Guttenberg’s 15th century invention of the printing press — takes the long view.
We are still “quite early” in a digital revolution, he insists, which may take a century or two to fully work itself out. So for those of us horrified by today’s selfie-politics, he suggests patience. Meanwhile, don’t feed the trolls. And vote for Hillary in ’16, Jarvis says.
As always, many thanks to the folks at CALinnovates for their support in the production of this interview.