Former President Barack Obama believes civilization’s most-challenging issues are climate change, income inequality, and an increasingly polarized society, driven in part by the rise of social media.
The 44th president of the United States discussed those issues in San Francisco on Wednesday at conference put on by Splunk, an enterprise software company.
Obama generally avoided speaking about the current administration or hot-button political issues like whether the technology industry should be regulated. But he did take a subtle swipe at President Donald Trump’s social media and television watching habits, when he explained how he dealt with the constant stream of information he received during his presidency.
“The other thing that’s helpful is not watching TV or reading social media,” Obama said. “Those are two things I would advise if you’re president to do, because it creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment.”
During his talk, Obama also said he was “proud of the fact we didn’t have indictments” during his administration and “that is pretty rare.”
Here are some of the biggest takeaways from Obama’s speech:
Obama said he recently met with Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who has gained worldwide renown for her environmental activism. Thunberg asked the former president whether the world leaders he has met were aware of the science that backs climate change. The “clarity with which she recognizes the urgency of this is powerful and it becomes a moral force,” Obama said of Thunberg.
He added: “We have to get our arms around [the problem of climate change] and I do think technology can play a role in problem solving, but ultimately it is a moral decision that we make that we are going to as much as possible mitigate this problem we created so our kids, grandkids, and the human family can manage.”
Although Obama said he is a “strong believer in markets,” he added that income inequality can lead to divisiveness in nations, essentially separating the haves from the have-nots and creating discontent between societal classes.
He said if he were to send his kids to a “school in this private place” or only allowed them to play in a “private park,” then he would be walling his family from the rest of society. “That’s destabilizing for democracy and it’s not healthy.”
Obama said he’s concerned about the “degree of which we have become more tribal, more polarized, less willing to hear each other.” Although “that predated social media,” he noted, “social media has accelerated that and the degree that everybody now lives in a sort of bubble that’s reinforcing biases and viewpoints [is] not healthy for democracy.”
The former president added: “That’s how war gets started and bad things happen.”
The former president believes that “health data is an area of extraordinary promise” and that analyzing the data could lead to more effective healthcare and research.
In the current healthcare research system, all data from one area of research can be “controlled by one university and one researcher and it’s sort of hoarded because it’s valuable and they’ll dig in for years because that’s what they’re getting the grant for.”
Instead, Obama believes organizations should open those data sets to more universities and researchers, making it far more possible for pioneering research to take place.
The challenge, he said, is to be more open with health data while protecting patient privacy and navigating the different incentives of doctors or hospitals. But Obama added that finding that balance is a hard problem “and rightly so.”
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