They have had so dont turn your back from keeping in touch with everybody as your experiences progress. Host if you have been watching live coverage of the National Book festival you saw David Mccullough earlier in conversation with david rubenstein, 2500 people in a packed room waiting in line as you can see around the set, cried ground gathered to see David Mccullough. Raymond in delaware please go ahead. Caller an honor to speak with you, i have many of your books. Can you comment on the most recent elevated efforts to take down our national statues, those that have withstood time for over 150 years, thank you. Guest i find that a complicated and emotionally charged issue. I when the statue was built, when the edifice was created in memory of someone, has a great deal to do with whether or not it is something that ought to come down. The statues to the heroes of the confederacys that were put up in the 1890s were being put up at a time when racism was rampant in the south, black people were being handed by mobs. It was an ugly awful comment on the notion, the ideal of equality in our country. If it was a monument erected as per George Washington who owned slaves, and begun before the civil war then i say no, that is not how they felt about the subject zen was very different, keep in mind the civil war was far on the principle that slavery had to stop. Slavery was evil. Those who fought against that were saying no, slavery is all right. That is very very different and we lost more human beings in that war than any war we have ever been involved in and to ignore that as one side was right and the other was wrong is to live in a kind of haze of romanticism. Having said that i am more concerned about stages we havent raised. We are in our Nations Capital and there is no monument, no building in the memory of john adams, one of the most important figures in all of our history so we ought to be thinking more about people for whom we should be honoring. I think there ought to be statues to the most gifted and devoted and important and influential teachers in our country in every city we have and every town because they are doing the most important work of any of us and they have been doing it all along and they dont get enough credit. It isnt that they are not paid enough, we dont celebrate them enough for what they do for all of us, our children, grandchildren and us. Host last call for David Mccullough comes from big l in corpus christi, hour conditions . Good afternoon, thank you for asking. Things are good. We were fortunate, the storm went 30 miles west, north of us, we got some of it but unfortunately for the surrounding communities, we see houston, they got the brunt of it but thank you for asking. Guest the whole country is thinking about texas and will be for long time and all of us should chip in and contribute to help people who are in desperate need and we will, we do, that is the way we are as americans. Caller i also lived in houston for a while and houston is ethnically diverse city, and amazing city. My question is, his opinion regarding the electorate and how we select national candidates. Much has been written about the candidate nixon debate, how Television Changed how we vote for people and now we are in a situation where social media, television, generations of grown up with that and i wonder if the future, current president , when people vote in the future, has something changed in the electorate where what is valued in a candidate based on this host we are getting close on time. I we got enough to work with. David mccullough. Guest we will never understand the impact of television on all of us. It is here to stay, part of our life and i for one think the First Amendment is among the most important bedrock foundations of our way of life and system and the journalists who have been covering this presidency and the election that led to the presidency, journalists in print and on television and electronic means of communication have with some exceptions done a superb job and are doing a superb job and they are to get far more credit than they do. They are brave, they are professional and we have to remember that having that kind of coverage is essential to our way of life. Host this is his most recent book, the american spirit, who we are and what we stand for. David mccullough its next book on the northwest territory, the northwest ordinance. Live coverage from the 17th annual national for book festival now continues. New york times columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman. [inaudible conversations] the truth is the times succeeds on so many fronts and the central reason is it is home to outstanding journalists. A standout among them is Thomas Friedman. [applause] host there is a photo that purports to be Thomas Friedman. Tom is younger but it looks like he is accelerating in reverse in that photo. Tom spent his life getting out into the world. Thorough research and speaking to people in every station of life, every walk of life and around the planet. The result is something quite different from the cynicism and snark integration we encounter so often in todays media universe. What we get instead is a pair of rarities, insight and wisdom. They are the product of real reporting and serious reflection. Themselves all too rare. Those qualities could be found in his previous bestselling books and you can find them in his latest, thank you for being thank you for being late an optimists guide to thriving in the age of accelerations. When the editorinchief of bloomberg and former editor of the economist wrote his review of Thomas Friedmans book for the New York Times he rightly observed it is hard to think of any other journalist who has explained as many collocated subjects to so many people. Among the central subjects tom explains now is the more exhausting pace of technological change. There have to be many of you who, like me, wonder if they can keep up with the rush of the new technology we encounter every day and wonder what the seemingly endless revolutions of technology will signify for workers and kids and the entire human race. Tom explains how technology is changing with such speed, why things will get faster and where this appears to be taking us. When tom tells us things will get faster and reminds us there are 10 billion things connected to the internet that is less than 1 of the possible total, you may suffer the anxiety that this book seeks to cure but tom lets us know it is going to be okay. You will be hearing from an optimist. Lets see if he can make optimists of all of you. Than the other great forces, the global markets, speed and adaptability and finally and importantly, Climate Change. We can use those words here, by the way. [applause] bloomberg calls toms book and honest, cohesive explanation for why the world is the way it is with miracle cures, the Financial Times in its review notes that tom offers sensible solutions but, quote, does not offer easy, slogan friendly ideas. Imagines that. Someone has proposed ways to confront the challenges of our World Without slogans, miracle cures or scapegoats. That makes Thomas Friedman atomic for our times and it is my pleasure and honor to yield the floor to the great Thomas Friedman. [applause] thank you. Thank you very much. It is great to do a neighborhood concert. This is fantastic. Thank you, we are in a golden age of journalism as regards to newspapers, the New York Times and washington post. We are going at it every day. One of the people centrally responsible for that golden age is marty baron and it is an honor to be introduced by him. And if you would silence your cell phones or put them on stun i will be forever grateful. Thank you for being late an optimists guide to thriving in the age of accelerations. First question i always get from people when they hear the title is where from comes the title . Thank you for being late an optimists guide to thriving in the age of accelerations . It comes from meeting people in washington dc, for breakfast. I like to not waste breakfast eating alone, i like to learn from someone so i organize business breakfasts and every once in a while someone comes 10 or 15 minutes late. Sorry for the weather, traffic was so busy, and one day over three years ago my friends, and energy entrepreneur, came at the usual time, very sorry, the weather, the traffic, the subway, and i spontaneously said to him, actually, peter, thank you for being late. Because you were late, i have been eavesdropping on their conversation. Fascinating. I have been people watching the lobby. Fantastic. And best of all, best of all, i just connected two ideas i have been struggling with for a month. So thank you for being late. People started to get into it. They say you are welcome. Because they understood i was giving them permission to pause, slow down, reflect. My favorite quote from the book is from my teacher, when you press the pause button on a computer it stops. When you press the pause button on the human being, it starts. That is when it starts to reflect, reef and reimagine. Dont we need to do a lot of that . This book was triggered when i pause and engaged with someone i wouldnt normally engage with. I live in bethesda with my wife, once a week i take subway to work. That means driving from my home on bradley boulevard to bethesda hyatt in the Public Parking garage and take the red line into dc to the New York Times office not far from the white house. Three years ago i did that, parked my car, spend the day at the office, kicked the redline back, drove to the cashier, looked at it, and said i know who you are. Great. I read your column. I said great. He said i dont always agree. Get me out of here. I actually said that is good. It means you always have to check. I drove off thinking he reads my column. A week later i took my weekly trip to dc by subway, parking garage, redline, office, redline back, parking garage, car, timestamp tickets, cashiers booth, same guy is there. This time he says Thomas Friedman, i have my own blog, would you read my blog . I thought oh my god, the parking guy is now my competitor . What just happened . I said write it down and i will look it up. He tore out a piece of receipt paper and wrote on it, i got home, i fooled it up on my computer, turns out he is ethiopian and was writing about ethiopian politics from the perspective of a Democracy Advocate and it was pretty good, a pretty good blog. I thought about him for a few days and eventually concluded this was a sign from god that i should pause and engage this guy. The only way i could do it was park in the parking garage every day. That took three or four days. They opened at 7 00, i parked under the gate, got out of my car and said i would like your email, i would like to send you a message, which he gladly gave me and that night we began an email exchange, most of them are in the front of the book, kind of funny. Basically i said to him in essence i have a proposition for you. I will teach you how to write a column for the New York Times if you will tell me your life story and he basically said i fear proposing a deal, i like this deal. He asked that we meet near his office in bethesda across from the highest, send me a gift certificate, putting them in the book, which we did two weeks later. I came with 6 page memo on how to write a column and he came with his life story. His life story, and economics grad in addis ababa, a political activist, Democracy Advocate, his democracy activism earned him a 1way ticket out of ethiopia and we welcomed him here in our country as a political exile, yes, we did that. [applause] he told me he was blogging on different websites but they wouldnt turn his stuff around fast enough so he decided to start his own blog and now Thomas Friedman, i feel empowered. He is read in 30 different countries. He is a wonderful man. Anyone today can participate in the global conversation and he taught me so much about that in his own country, ethiopia. I just presented him with a 6 page memo on how to write home. The world is a big data problem, this is my algorithm, how i cut through it and i thought about some of this before but never put it together until i did it in a memo for you. Basically explained to him that a news story is meant to inform and it can do so better or worse, the post tomorrow will write a story about this festival and marty will tell them what they did better or worse. I never connected those things more life, this happened four times a year. Mr. Freeman, you said exactly how i felt, god bless you. I want to kill you dead, you and all your offspring, i get that. Thats usually heat and light also, okay. Actually required a Chemical Reaction and you had to combine three chemicals, the first is what is your value sets, what is the set of ideas, principles. What set of values . Second, how do you think the Machine Works . So the machine is my shorthand, what is the biggest shaping our things in more places in more ways in more days. Im always in my head in working theory of how they look, why, im trying to take values and push in their direction and if i dont know how the Machine Works, i wont push it, i will push nit the wrong direction. My books have been inspiration on how the Machine Works. Lastly, what did you learn about people and culture, how the machine affects different people and culture and how they come back and effect the machine no column without people and no people without culture. Stir those three together, mix it up, bake for 45 minutes and if you do it right, you will produce a column that produce heat or light. Well, the more i engage on this, we had three sessions at coffee house in and several emails in between, the more i step back and to say to anne wolf, thats what a column is about, what is my value set . Those of you read me know that i have a rather corky set of values, im not quite a libertarian, im certainly not a conservative. My values emerge from the Comal Community i grew up with in minnesota in the 1950s, 60s and 70s at a time in place where politics works. And that had a huge impact on me. How do i think the Machine Works today and what have i learned of people and culture . I decided that was the book i wanted to write. How the Machine Works and the second half is about how this machine today is not just changing your world, its reshaping your world and its reshaping the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics and communities. Let me try to give you a quick runthrough. How does the machine work today . Well, i think what its shaping more things and more places in more ways and more days its the fact that we are in the middle of three nonlinear federations all at the same time with the three largest forces on the planet which i call the markets, Mother Nature and more blog. And i should tell you that i mix the three together for a reason. One of my teachers in this book, lynn wells, something hes really taught me which is i think is essential to doing proper journalism today, is never think in the box and never think out of the box. Today you must think without a box. Okay, you need to be melding all of these Different Things together and in my case, they are the market Mother Nature. So market for me is leadership globalization. Digital globalization, through facebook or amazon or google or twitter or paypal, if you put that, it looks like a giant hockey stick. Mother nature for me is Climate Change by law and population growth in the developing world. You put that on the grass, it looks like a hockey stick. Slide up hire for a second, coin by gordon, the cofounder of intel in 1965, gordon moore positive that the speed and power of microchips would double every 24 months and the price would stay roughly the same. Moores law has held up for 52 years and it is the enginedriving all technological change today because moores law drives globalization and more drives more Climate Change. Now, about once a year for the last 52 years, someone has written an article, moore law is over. For 52 years what they all have in common is they were all wrong. Moores law is alive and well, not 30 months but your computer at home now is probably operating on an intel work course chip and has 37. 5 million transittors, intel introduced 10millimeter chips, it would have a hundred million transistors, selfdriving car that contain it is brain contains the brain of that car. Wait till the end of the year. 1971 volkswagen beetle, what would it be like today . That 1971bw beetle would go 300 miles an hour and would cost 4 cents. Youll be able to drive your entire life on one tank of gas. Thats the power of the technological exponential now driving our lives. What the hell happened in 2007, what the hell happened in 2007 . What is this guy talking about, 2007. Here is what happened in 2007, the year was kicked off in january of 2007 when one steve jobs introduced this, the first iphone at the Masonic Center in San Francisco beginning a process halfway throughputting into one of these putting into the hands of half now every one on the planet. That is a handheld computer with more compute power in it than the apollo station that doubles, thats how the year began. In 2007, a Company Called facebook which had been confined to high schools and universities in late 2006 opened platform to anyone with a registered email address and in 2007, facebook went global. In 2007 a Company Called twitter split off on its own independent platform and went