 Aloha. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Tim Apachella, the new host for a new program and a new format. Instead of live streaming a show from the studio, our new show titled What's on Your Mind Hawaii will take place on the streets of Honolulu. This program is about hearing from you. We value your opinion and we want to hear from you. Topics will range from local, state and national headlines and issues. I will interview people that are willing to share their opinion about what is important to them, what is important to their families and what is important to their community. We believe what you have to say will be important. Following the tradition of Think Tech Hawaii, our new show What's on Your Mind Hawaii will strive to shine a light on and walk in the path of its mission. The mission of Think Tech Hawaii is clear and simple. It has erased public awareness for a better Hawaii and to be the leading digital media platform promoting civic engagement in Hawaii. We want to host a rational, thoughtful, open-minded dialogue that best envisions our best prospect for the future with due respect for lessons of the past. With this mission in mind, we hope you will join us to express what is best for Hawaii and how to improve it. With me today to introduce and discuss this new show in its new format is the founder and CEO of Think Tech Hawaii, Jay Fidel. Jay, thank you for helping me kick off this new show. Yeah, tell me how you really feel, Tim. I feel wonderful. No, I'm really excited about this. I think, you know, on the street you do a lot of on-the-street interviews and to dedicate a show just to getting people's opinion on the street. I think it's something that it's going to be a good thing. Yeah, it is. I think it's important to reach out. So often the media folds in on itself and they send it out, but they don't get it back. This is getting it back. This is finding out what people think. This is really important. In a community, in building community, you've got to have that kind of exchange. Well, that leads me to my first question, Jay. What is the state of civil discourse? Not only in Hawaii, but maybe in the country. Tough question. Well, I think a lot of people have turned off. They've abdicated, you know, from the conversation. And they grumble to their friends maybe, but they don't really speak out. They don't want to go public. They're afraid of going public. This gives them an opportunity, and it gives us an opportunity to hear from them. And I think it's really important to make them comfortable and involved in candor, you know, and expressing themselves on how they feel about things. And it is a valuable piece for us, because it allows us to hear from them. So I think it's good. I think there are going to be challenges with this show, though. You know, you've had experience on the street before, and you know that, you know, sometimes there's nobody around who wants to talk to you. It's a lonely place, Jay. It's a lonely place, and you've got to somehow pull it off. There you are in the street with, you know, in a good place in this street. You've got to choose a good place with a cameraman there, a camera operator. And you're ready. You're ready for content. And you've got to approach people or they've got to find you. They've got to know who you are and what you stand for and, you know, think tech and open platform kind of thing, Hyde Park, if you will, where they can say anything they want. And you've somehow got to connect with them. This is not so easy, especially when you're live. You know, we're going to use our live equipment on this. And so every second counts, you can't stand there in the street and look at the buildings, you know. We are going to do some tape segments, though. I guarantee you that. We have to, because I'm not like you, Jay. I'm not as glib as you are. And you can fill up a 29 minute segment with the greatest of ease, where some of us kind of limp along and struggle. Oh, you'll be fine, Tim. So I want to get back to the state of civil discourse, or non-civil discourse. Civility isn't always the order of the day. Do you think, because of our recent election cycle, that people have pulled way back because they think, giving an opinion about anything that's related to the state of affairs in this country directly correlates to the politics of the day? Do you think that's why people are a little reluctant to share their opinions? Some of them are. You know, I mean, Trump's presidency is a really strange duck when it comes to the kind of exchange you're talking about. I mean, he attacks the press. And that's because the press, you know, reports on him and he doesn't like hearing from them. He attacks anyone who is opposed to his views and people really after a while, you know, I don't know if it's fear or just I don't want to go there. It may be I don't want to get involved in this. I don't want to have the risk of him attacking me or his government attacking me. You know, if he attacks me, then God knows what he will cause his agencies to do to attack me. We are all as citizens vulnerable in some way. Nobody's perfect. You think there's some element of a perceived fear of retribution? Yeah, I do. Really? Yeah, sure. That's quite a statement. Well, he's shut the press out of the White House in many ways. He has blocked people he doesn't like from his Twitter feed, believe it or not. And that, you know, pervades down through Ripple Effect through his government. He's planting political agents through his government. This morning, the news was that he's planted a political agent in the Census Bureau. My goodness gracious, which is supposed to be totally apolitical. Now he's going to have a political operator there. I mean, he's really, I don't know what the right word is, but he's violating the norms of how you make appointments all through the government. It's not just in the Supreme Court. It's everywhere. And the result is that people are concerned that he will do things that you don't like, including to them if they speak out, either for him, stroking him, or you're against him. And if you're against him, the message seems clear that he's going to go after you somehow, or at least he may. And that possibility, I think, changes the way people think about making public statements on their views of this administration. That is quite a statement, Jay, because what I kind of formulating is we've gone from a democracy, and within 12 months we've gone to a repressive regime. If that is truly on people's minds worrying about how the Commander-in-Chief could somehow in some way retaliate against someone voicing their opinion about something that's important to their lives and their community, in 12 short months. That is quite a statement to make. And I find it actually very troublesome. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know, do you sense it the same way? I mean, I don't know what people realize. Sometimes it's like subconscious. Why do I want to get involved in a conversation which could get me in trouble? The other thing that there are Trump supporters to, right, even in Hawaii, and the Trump supporters may not tell you they're Trump supporters. You have to say like the polls, like the polls show quite differently because they're not willing to admit that they're supporting a particular candidate here. So I think you may make a public statement and find that there's somebody out there who doesn't necessarily tell you he's or she is a Trump supporter, and then they, you know, it's politicized. And all of a sudden, you know, you're in a spot. So I think the conversation has been dampened, even on Thanksgiving. There was so many articles. There were, I've just mentioned, be civil in Thanksgiving. Don't get into a Trump argument that Thanksgiving. And you know what? They had Trump arguments on Thanksgiving. It was inevitable that there would be an argument about Trump at a lot of Thanksgiving dinners, because one side, the other side. And then people become reluctant to reveal themselves and express themselves when that kind of argument is going on. I know a lot of tables around the state, maybe in other states, there was an announcement that there will be no political discussion at this table. In fact, I was President one where that announcement was made. Yeah, but let's, let's call it a spade, a spade. It's not really a political argument. It's an argument about him. It's an argument about his policies and what he's doing. And people are polarized on that, on him. Yeah. So, you know, What's interesting how that subject of our President has actually in some ways stifled ability, people's ability to opine about many different things, many other things. But this seems to be dominating the plate, if you will, of public opinion. Yeah. And it seems to be dampening the ability to express one's opinion. Yeah, and it's sucking the oxygen out of the conversation. It's a good point. You can't feel free about it. So, that's why this is important, what you're doing, the idea is you're giving people an opportunity to make statements. And hopefully they will. Hopefully you'll have the charm that will permit this to happen. The big hope. Let me ask you a question. Let's say we're in a city, which there is only one news publication. And that would be the case here in Honolulu. If you had a choice, if there was the paper making a big decision to either have an editorial column or a political cartoon, what do you think is more important? Are you distinguishing this news market from other news markets? No, I'm just saying there's the political cartoon avenue of voicing an opinion and an expressed position on politics. Or there's the editorial column, where there's, you know, there's the written word is being used to express an opinion. But I both are very, very effectively very, very powerful. Very powerful. Very powerful. Look at Salman Rushdie, the author, who he made cartoons and was right around that time. And now these cartoons got people excited and death threats and the like. And you're in the hiding for years. They had to. Yeah. Yeah. He's coming out now. Yeah, he is. It's enough time has passed. The plot has been reduced. The danger has passed. But it was that whole era where there were books and cartoons, and Salman Rushdie was somehow in the middle of it. Hopefully we won't see that kind of reaction. But I would say that the newspaper has to have both. It has to have the cartoons, which are so powerful and draw certain people. They look at the cartoons first and not to say that's that's a bad way to communicate. It's a good way to communicate. But I would like to see the op-ed pieces. I'd like to see the editorials and I'd like to see them freewheeling. You know, we don't need editorials about how motherhood is good for you. You need editorials about the controversial issues, issues that have to be resolved for the benefit of our society. So the newspaper's got to step up sometimes and hit those issues. Well, that's why I'm hoping this new program, What's On Your Mind Away, will actually try to get to that point. I know people reluctant sometimes to to opine about something that's controversial in fear of alienating their friends or families. And I hope that we can get past that because I really do want to hear what people are thinking. Now, some of these interviews may take the form of tourists on the streets of Honolulu, down in Maikiki. They may have an opinion that and they have no fear of someone, you know, here that might be offended by what their opinions are. So it's possible I will, from time to time, be talking to tourists and getting a read on what they think is going on. Well, it is kind of anonymous because you don't ask them their names or anything. You don't ask their background. I usually ask for a first name. Well, that's OK. Yeah. But, you know, that makes it a little easier for them to speak freely. And tourists have very interesting opinions sometimes. The problem is that sometimes you talk to people and they haven't read the paper in a long time and they're not really aware of some of these issues, not really informed about them. And we need to know that, too. We need to know the level of awareness. I mean, some people feel that this community has adequate awareness of public issues. I don't. I don't think think tech does. We believe that we have to raise the level of public awareness and that the media should be doing that all the time. And so you'll be doing that when you ask a question. You're, you know, you're raising awareness, not only by having this individual think about your question, but by having others see the engagement that you have. Right. And I think also, which has always been the case, and I think even more so now is that the level of public awareness is there's a direct correlation to how busy people's lives are. You know, do they even have time to, you know, either pull a newspaper or get online and check. That's true in Hawaii if you have three jobs. We have a low unemployment rate, but gee whiz, we have too many jobs and too little pay for those three jobs. And and, you know, with all the obligations in life, people with three jobs don't have a lot of time to read the newspaper or get anything but the six o'clock, ten o'clock news, which doesn't tell you a lot. Or by then they're still trying to make dinner, try to put the kids to bed. And by the time they get to all that's being done, they may have, you know, five minutes to sit down and think before they have to get up and do the next chore. Yeah, so that's a lot of challenge for you. You've got to try to find people, A, who are willing to talk at people who have something to say, or who can listen to the question and learn something in the process. But you know, there's unfortunately a lot of people, including tourists, who just are not not not aware. Yeah. And I think you're going to run into the, you know, the Trump polarization issue too. Yeah. If you ask questions around national politics. We're going to get back to sources of media when we come back from our commercial break. I'm Tim Apachella. This is What's on Your Mind Hawaii and we'll be right back. I'm Dave Stevens, the host of the Cyber Underground on ThinkTechHawaii.com airing every Friday at 1 p.m. And I love ThinkTechHawaii because it allows me to get the word out about cybersecurity and how dangerous this world can be with technology. Well for the first time, ThinkTechHawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. Give thanks to ThinkTech will run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate, which can, so that ThinkTechHawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming like mine. I've already made my donation and look forward to yours. So please send in your tax-deductible contribution by going to this website. It's on the screen right now. www.thanksforthinktech.cozvox.com. On behalf of the community enriched by ThinkTechHawaii's 30-plus weekly shows, mahalo for your generosity. Hi, welcome back. I'm Tim Appachella. I'm here with the founder and CEO of ThinkTechHawaii. And today we are kicking off a new show called What's on Your Mind, Hawaii? The show is dedicated to getting your opinion and rather than do the show in the studio. I'm going to be out on the streets of Honolulu, asking people on the street what their opinion is about subjects that are important to them, whether it be a local issue, a state issue, a federal, national issue, things that are important to them, to their families, and to their community. So Jay, thank you again for joining me to kick off this show. Appreciate it very much. I really like the idea of you going out. So where do you plan to go? I mean, you can go downtown, you can go to Waikiki, you can go to the university, you can go to the legislature, city hall, you can go points west also. I mean, what's the plan, at least in the near term? I think the near term is I'm going to go probably in a more urban district. It depends kind of what the news of the day is. I mean, I'm going to be looking at the headlines in the newspaper, what's on, you know, the major news channels, and say, okay, what's important? And then figure out, you know, am I going to be on the beaches of Waikiki as people stroll by? Am I going to be down in the central business district of Honolulu? Am I going to be out in Manukuni? One never knows. One never knows where I'm going to be. Well, I hope you'll identify yourself with a hat, some kind of logo thing to indicate that. You've got to talk to you about that. I mean, hats just don't wear well with me or they don't fit well. You're a poor guy. I know, it's a tragedy. A shirt, something, logo, something. Yeah, we'll have something there. We have the flag on the microphone. I'll have that. That helps to some extent. I'll have that. I think people should, you know, get to know you and sort of see you coming. Yeah, I'm not sure I would talk to someone looking like me without proper identification on the logo, so be warned out there in the public. Be warned. This is the whole question about how you approach somebody. I mean, some people are really good at it. I think you're good at it. You know, you can't make it formal. You've got to say, hi. How are you doing? I got a question for you. Would you talk to me? No, we won't talk to you. Well, someone will say no to you. It happens all the time. It goes back to what I was talking about before. There's a certain concern about being involved in the public conversation. It's really too bad. But, you know, I think that's part of the program that, you know, some people that you approach will not want to talk to you. They will, and you can tell because they look away. They don't, you know, they don't walk away from you. They ignore your, you know, you're looking at them. They speed up the gate in their step. Yeah, that's right. Go to the other side of the street. The problem in a live show, we should talk about that, the problem in a live show, is how do you deal with the time? And the answer I suggest to you is you keep on talking about what you're talking about. You never stop, even if you don't have a guest in front of you at that minute. Yeah, well, that's the art form. Yes, it is. That's why you're so good at it, because talk about something that's not in front of you, yet you're still walking, looking for a new person to interview. That is the art form. You should be prepared. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to talk about a given issue, if you're going to talk about the census, for example, you should know about the census. You should know what the news is and what it means. And then so, you're walking down the street, hopefully somebody will come and engage with you, but in the meantime, you're telling people, because it's live, what about the census? Let me ask you this. Given the fact that some of our news services, be it CNN on one spectrum and Fox News on the other spectrum, do you think that opinions that are obtained by those news agencies somehow clouds the opinion? Do you think it diminishes the value of a person's opinion because of a new source of one flavor or another? I heard a piece on that or a comment on that this morning on NPR about how experts are no longer held in the same stead. We have so many experts, and some of them are, what do we call it, fake experts. They pretend to be experts, but that you hear all these experts yelling at you involved in these multiple guest conversations of all of the news conversation channels on television that you start questioning all of them, and you start questioning the conclusions. It just seems like a fest of some kind, rather than a rational discussion, and then they grab on some point something had happened, and they work it until you say, do I need to know this much about this one point? Right. So I think the answer is there's a crisis of confidence in that kind of media, and people are kind of looking for some kind of stable, you know, a thoughtful discussion, a person like you who's reasonable and willing to hear all sides, and a conversation that doesn't get polarized. I think this is really important now, especially now. Well in media we've always had this perception, and I don't think it's an accurate perception that your newscasters and your those out in the field were completely unbiased, but I don't think that's humanly possible. I know you try to do your best to be unbiased over a particular topic and issue. Look at Walter Cronkite in 1969, when he came out vehemently against and on a news show against the Vietnam War. That was really earth-shattering for Walter Cronkite and CBS News. Could you tell me enough about it? You know I was watching and it was actually produced by Tom Hanks and others on NPR, was it NPR, a couple of days ago, and it was the story of the 90s, the story of the 90s. It was really a fabulous program. It went on for hours. They do decades, right? This happened to be the 90s. Talk about the political threads of the 90s, and the terrorist threads of the 90s, and the social threads of the 90s, three or four different subjects, and that way they sort of sliced and diced the 90s so you can go back. And you had a handful, I would say six or eight or maybe ten newscasters. The Walter Cronkite said their day, I suppose, who were always giving the news through that decade. And I thought to myself, gee, they're fairly credible. I liked them. I believed them then and I believed them retrospectively. And those guys were national icons, some of them, not all of them, but you had the feeling that they were really trying hard to give you a fair shake on the news. Clearly, do we have that now? With some maybe, but I think in general, people don't feel the same way that they felt about these newscasters back in the 90s. And that's only what? That's only 20 years ago, right? But most of it. I think there's a perception that the media has a loaded bias, and it just depends on what station you're tuned into. And either that bias does support my belief system and my values and my attitudes, or it doesn't. And so I'm going to tend to tune in for those news stations that support what I believe and what I think is of value. That's unfortunate, because if you never hear what the other side is saying on a particular issue, that's where the polarization of the United States becomes so dramatic and so pronounced. But if you find a given media is always selling you something you can't believe, that you logically cannot believe, and I don't want to name media here, but everybody knows that happens, then you're going to tune off on that. You're going to be offended. You're going to feel your intelligence is being insulted, and you're not going to listen to them. Of course, the argument is made that in doing that, you're putting yourself in your own bubble and only listening to what pleases you. So there's an issue and everybody has to solve that for himself. We have a few minutes left, and I would like to, yeah, go ahead. Well, I just wanted to talk about where things have been in the last 10, 15 years about media blogs and the ability to opine on a blog and how that is either enhanced or diminished. One's opinion and you had mentioned about experts, so-called experts. Well, people who blog sometimes aren't experts, yet they are blogging as if they are an expert on a particular subject or a whole variety of subjects. I just want to get your opinion about blogs and what you think. Well, my blogs and for that matter social media, it's abbreviated and it's from people that you don't know except that person is a blogger. Now, if you know, you know, the credentials, if this is a national figure and he teaches at a reputable school and, you know, you have information about him, beyond the fact that he's just writing, that he's writing a blog, then I think you have to take that into account. But, you know, we need to apply critical thinking on the information sources we have or you all do. And, you know, they teach that in school now. I saw a piece about how they teach that in school. They teach kids critical thinking. I'm glad. And we're ready to get that actually. Well, I think that otherwise they're... We may not get civics one-on-one, but at least we're getting on how to evaluate what they see on the online... Right. I find inconsistencies and find outrageous statements and, you know, treat them as such. But I just want to talk about, you know, the live aspect of this, okay? So, we have live view. We have an LU 500 transmitter. And it works on bonding technology. It's Israeli technology, interestingly enough, so that our cameraman would go with you on this, as he has in the past, and carry a little wee backpack. And the backpack is this transmitter. It's sort of got batteries. And it bonds up as many cell phone broadband signals as it can find. It has multiple modems in it, okay? And it sends us back. And we get really crisp video and sound from you. So, it's not just that the camera operator is taking, you know, the video of you. He's sending it back real time. Now, I mean, it's quite amazing, this technology. It hasn't been around that long. I mean, other people have it, but it replaces, you know, the truck affair. Right. The satellite dish and all that, you know, 100,000 miles worth of gear in the truck. Everything is different. Just as social media is different now, and you get all these short tweets from people, and you're expected to accept that. And people, some people do accept that. Now, we have citizen journalists. In fact, Think Tech is a citizen journalist organization. Oh, excuse me. That's okay, Jay. Well, I'm going to formulate my next question. And we don't have much time left. But the question is, has Facebook, Twitter become the avenue of venting, whether logically or illogically, whether it's an argument or a quarrel, have these social media become the forum of venting? We have a Commander-in-Chief that vents almost daily on Twitter. So, what's your opinion about that? What do you think? Do you think that's taking place of the man on the street interview and getting someone's opinion, or has Facebook and Twitter replaced that with their online venting? Well, I sure think there's a lot of venting, and there's not that much news. And you've got to, like those kids in the class on social media, they've got to identify when it's venting and a blather, or when it's real news or real thoughtful opinion. You've got to make those distinctions. But I feel what's happened is the President in venting and making random statements, I guess he would say from the heart, but it's really not from his mind, you know, on Twitter, has changed the way people get and consume news, especially from the government. And we have to really be careful about that. I'm going to have to stop there. We're out of time, Jay, unfortunately. Maybe it'll be one of my first people I interview on the street to follow on that concept and that thought. So, this is Tim Apachele with Jay Fidel. The new show is What's on Your Mind Hawaii and our next show will be on Tuesday, December the 5th at 12 p.m. We hope to see you and we look forward to it. Aloha.