Tonight's guests are Hillary Clinton on The Daily Show and Vint Cerf on The Colbert Report.
Hillary Clinton is the former First Lady, Senator from New York and Secretary of State (like I needed to tell you that :D). She is also the author of multiple books including her latest Hard Choices.
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s inside account of the crises, choices, and challenges she faced during her four years as America’s 67th Secretary of State, and how those experiences drive her view of the future.
“All of us face hard choices in our lives,” Hillary Rodham Clinton writes at the start of this personal chronicle of years at the center of world events. “Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become.”
To its credit, Clinton’s memoir is serious, sober and substantive. What it is not is revealing. Taking the reader along on her journey representing the United States as President Obama’s top diplomat, she provides a sophisticated analysis of many of the world’s most complicated hot spots, but no analysis of one of the world’s most complicated political figures. We learn about the progress of Botswana and the challenges facing the Democratic Republic of Congo, but we learn little about Hillary Clinton.
Clinton’s overarching philosophy as secretary of state seems primarily to involve engagement and hard work, the idea that showing up is as important as any treaty or ideology. Perseverance matters. Sometimes this pays off, as with the pressure campaign that eventually forced Iran to slow its nuclear program, temporarily at least. At times, though, this approach seems maddeningly inconclusive, as when Clinton works two mobile phones in the back of a car to hold together a peace deal between Armenia and Turkey, only to have it fall apart again later. She finds solace in the hope that someday the groundwork she laid will yield the breakthroughs that eluded her.
Rather than putting in place a new foreign policy, as Acheson did, Clinton portrays her tenure as a transition period and herself as just one runner in a relay race, passing along the baton. Acheson won a Pulitzer Prize for his memoir. Clinton seems to have a bigger prize in mind.
Calculated Risks: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ‘Hard Choices’
I think Jon will probably ask about that bigger prize, and I'm sure he won't get an official answer yet.
Vint Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. Vint Cerf is considered the Father of the Internet for codesigning the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet.
Answering questions about the disclosure of data to the U.S. National Security Agency, Google Vice President Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf says that Google was not the source of surveillance. A great deal of the information captured by the NSA "was obtained without our agreement or consent." Google was legally required to provide some information, he says, but the company's response has been to "encrypt everything … to protect our users."
However, he warns that increasingly intense tracking of people's daily activities "will be absolutely normal." Cerf insists that, "it's not Google that will be tracking you. It will be the cameras that are keeping track of the flow of traffic and your payment on the toll roads." It's unavoidable for an individual's location to be a lot more visible. "Your mobile phone needs to know where you are so it can connect you to the nearest base station, for example."
Cerf is convinced that global connectedness and accumulating digital documentation serves to "preserve culture" and makes it accessible to as many people as possible. Despite the shortfalls of global communication, in the long run he feels the Internet will improve our ability to understand other people's cultures, social norms and conventions.
Vint Cerf: "It’s not Google that will be tracking you. It will be the cameras
He also commented on the new Thread standard
"Existing wireless networking approaches were introduced long before the Internet of Things gained ground," said Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist, Google, and advisor to the Thread Group. "The Thread protocol takes existing technologies and combines the best parts of each to provide a better way to connect products in the home."
Samsung, Nest and co launch Thread for better home automation
The houses of the future have always been portrayed as having interconnected smart devices and while you can do that today it requires computer knowledge or the cash to hire a company to build out your system. If there is a standard, you could simply go to a store and pick out what you want and not have to worry about whether it works with your smart system. I am conflicted, on one hand it would be great for me to get message up here at my computer telling me the wash is done in the basement. On the other hand more connections means more access points for those looking to enter the home, whether they are governments or hackers.
I hope they also touch on the opposition to the "fast lane" proposal from the FCC.
FCC delays net neutrality commentary deadline after 'overwhelming' response
The FCC announced on Tuesday that it would be bumping back the deadline for the first round of public commentary on the issue of an open Internet until midnight on Friday, July 18.
The comments session was originally scheduled to wrap up at midnight on Tuesday, July 15.
The delay follows news that the FCC's 17-year old Electronic Comment Filing System was swamped and eventually overcome by an last-minute wave of traffic before the original deadline was supposed to have gone into effect.
FCC press secretary Kim Hart confirmed as much in a statement on Tuesday morning.
"Not surprisingly, we have seen an overwhelming surge in traffic on our website that is making it difficult for many people to file comments through our Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS)," wrote Hart. "Please be assured that the Commission is aware of these issues and is committed to making sure that everyone trying to submit comments will have their views entered into the record."
That means you still have time to add your comments about Net Neutrality. Also the second most commented application on that page is the Comcast Time Warner merger. You might want to give your input on that as well.
This link goes to the list open for public comments.
This Week's Guests
THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
We 7/16: Jerry Seinfeld
Th 7/17: Emma Stone
THE COLBERT REPORT
We 7/16: Mayor Bill de Blasio
Th 7/17: Steven Wise
Next Week's Guests
THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
Mo 7/21: Sue Turton
Tu 7/22: Richard Linklater
We 7/23: George Takei
Th 7/24 T.B.D.
THE COLBERT REPORT
Mo 7/21: Rep. Nancy Pelosi
Tu 7/22: JR
We 7/23: Mary Mazzio, Oscar Vazquez
Th 7/24: Elon Musk
I have a meeting tomorrow evening. However I should be back in time for the TDS.