 Aloha and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Outside In, the show that examines how the external world can help shape Hawaii's future. I'm your host, Pauline Shaktmakjian. And today we're going to be discussing broadening the scope of the Hawaiian media. And here to help me do this this morning is a gentleman who I'm sure is familiar to all of you. He is Mr. Jay Fidel, the founder and president of Think Tech Hawaii. Good morning, Jay. Good morning, Pauline. Nice to be here with you. Oh, thank you for inviting me to start this new show. You've broadened the scope of Think Tech Hawaii itself. So we're going to be discussing the Hawaiian media this morning and some of the ways that we can help improve it. And I just wanted to ask you, for those viewers and listeners who aren't as familiar with the history of Think Tech, why did you decide to start your own media outlet in the first place? Okay. It was 2001. It was not too long after 9-11. We had a small group of four of us who were interested in getting out with news about technology because that was all the rage right then. And it was the last few months of 2001 when we set up a website about technology, ThinkTechHawaii.com. And since I knew some of the people at Hawaii Public Radio, we decided, I remember where and when in the restaurant and all that, we decided that we wanted to try to make a pitch to have a radio show about technology. And we called them up and we pitched this to them and they said, oh, okay. It took a while to evolve the concept and the way it worked in the format of the radio show. But by very early 2002, we were rolling. And we had a weekly radio show, 5 to 6 p.m. every Wednesday. We maintained that for eight years. So it was the beginning of a new experience for all of us. We all knew it was going to change our lives. And it did. And I think it also changed the lives of the people we invited onto the show, our guests, from all walks all around technology mostly. Okay, brilliant. And for those less familiar with the history, can you give us sort of a potted timeline of the crucial events and how ThinkTechHawaii progressed from this original idea in a restaurant all the way up to what you've got now, which are a lot of hosts. You were getting more and more hosts hosting different shows on different subjects, not just technology. So if you could just sort of do the leaps of progression. Well, we were bursting at the seams with things other than technology, you know, at the end of the throw in our original radio show. We were covering all kinds of things. And we had the ability to connect things up with technology, you know, because you always can somehow. But in fact, we were looking at other areas and trying to reach other listener groups. So in 2008, we left Hawaii Public Radio, and we started doing AM Radio. We had a show on AM Radio for a while. And then we started doing, we actually broadcast from my law office. We set up equipment in my law office, and that's what we broadcast from. And around 2009 or 10, we started doing video. We realized that video was the future of citizen broadcasts, you know, citizen journalists, if you will. And we had a camera set up in my office. And then we got a studio in my office building, courtesy our landlord. And then we moved to another building, this building actually, in the lower level of this building, which was a small space. And I think it was a 2014 or so that we, maybe halfway through 2014, we actually took this space. And this space has been really wonderful. You can see the green screen. There it is. You can see the green screen. And we had more space to work with, more equipment, more underwriters, God bless them. And we could do more with more people to help us. And we gradually increased the number of hosts and guests. And your number of viewers is also increasing, is that right? Yes, oh yes, of course. And can you detect where the viewers are watching from? Are they necessarily always from Hawaii or are you getting international? Oh, it's definitely international. Yeah. Because, I mean, our original broadcasts are on livestream.com, which is a, you know, a provider that allows you to broadcast on the internet. But we post everything on youtube.com. And YouTube, and both of them are international, you know, it's the internet. But YouTube goes far and wide. And sometimes it becomes viral, and it's amazing. We had a show last week that has already had something over 40,000 hits. Wow, that's brilliant. What was the subject on that? It was Asia, politics in Taiwan. Yeah. Okay. And I was just interested, because that's wonderful what you're doing with Think Tech Hawaii. But it started very recently, because as we discussed when we met previously, the major print newspaper here is the Star Advertiser. So there was sort of a rage for newspaper reading towards the latter half of the 19th century. And that's where newspapers really took off. Because I took the Royal History Course at Eolani Palace, which I think they do every year. And I took it a few years ago. And we were all noticing, those of us who were on the course, that whenever there was a lavish party, or some entertainment for some visiting dignitary by the king and queen of Hawaii, that there would be several newspapers reporting on this. There were quite a few of them. It wasn't just one newspaper. So I was just wanting your opinion about what actually happened to cause all those newspapers to die out. And then you just had the Star Advertiser for a long time until things like Civil Beat appeared, until things like Think Tech Hawaii appeared, or things like Pacific Business News, which is a smaller publication geared to the business community. But you know, there were a lot more options previously. So what do you think happened there? Well, I think there's probably a, it's a dynamic formula out there, as to how many print newspapers a given community can support. And the dynamic part of it is that the technology changes, the educational level, the interest of the public changes, the availability of journalists change, the way people see newspapers as part of their lives or not over the years. So yeah, I imagine the turn of the, you know, the 20th century 1900, there were a lot of newspapers as they were all over the country, probably over the world. It didn't take too much to have a newspaper. I mean, it's quite fun to have a variety of newspapers, because for example, in London or in the United Kingdom, we've got several different options for newsreaders to select from in terms of the print newspaper. So for example, you've got the Independent, you've got the Times, you've got the Daily Telegraph, you've got the Guardian. So it's interesting because a lot of people do read the paper were on while they're on their commute on the rail or on the underground, or even when they're in the street just waiting around for somebody. You see a lot of people reading the paper, not so much nowadays, but in the past 10 years or so before YouTube emerged. I think people do not read print press very much anymore. Well, in England, they still do. We still do. It's very, very common in the private clubs. There's always a selection of newspapers for you to select from. It's very nice. It's very interesting because you can identify the political persuasion of somebody because of the choice of newspaper that they've selected. For example, by and large people who read the Daily Telegraph will be more conservative in their political leanings. People who read the Guardian will most likely be Labour voters. Sometimes people read more than one paper to get the different viewpoints. So that's true. Yeah. So that's quite interesting when that happens. And you get the sort of selection that's available. And it's a bit like playing poker. You can identify the political persuasion. It's like everybody's playing a game of poker, but they're showing their cards, so to speak. It's quite interesting. We live in a little bubble of what we read. But the same process, the same phenomenon, exists with television news, don't you think? If somebody tells you they take a regular diet of Fox News, you know what bubble they live in, or CNN, or PBS, the news hour, you get different viewpoints expressed on a fairly consistent basis. And you can get what you want. And when you reveal what you're looking at, people know a lot about you, really. And what do you think about civil beat? Because that's appeared in the past seven years or so. And it's quite interesting because it's an online format of news. And they've got very quick because people's attention spans have sort of plummeted in the past few years with all the electronic technology. So what do you think about that quick news? People just want to hear a quick headline and want to see something quick and just the facts. And they do that quite well. Yeah, a quick local news. That's what they're, although they do have national news sometimes, and especially in the day of Trump, the age of Trump here, everybody wants to cover him. But they, they roll it out at like four a.m. in the morning every day. And if you're on their list, it's easy to get on because it's free now. You can, you can see their view of local news. They have what I would consider citizen journalism, you don't have to be professional to write for a civil beat. And they cover local stories. And I think it's a real contribution to the community. Yes, I like it because of the quickness as well, not necessarily because I have a short attention span, but because it's quick. There's a variety of different things. The homepage is neat so you can pick which headlines you're looking at. People do comment on them. They do censor comments quite a bit because I think people get impassioned sometimes with particularly sensitive issues. But I think they're doing pretty well. So again, it's an outside idea by Omidyar, who is... Yeah, well, it's a new idea. And I, you know, you could, you could do what he is doing so many different ways. This is his brand of how you do this. And I think it's basically working. It's a, it's a good contribution to the community. And the other thing, if we could just move away from the print media, we go to the television. And you've got a few channels here. And I remember you told me when we first met that you had sat on the board of one particular news channel. I was just a member of an advisory group. Okay, so you were a member of the advisory group. And you had suggested making the Hawaiian news a little bit more international. For example, Australia is an excellent example of a country that has a variety of news from different countries. So I was doing one of my lecture tours in Australia last year. And I had a weekend off in Sydney, which is a fantastic city. A lovely way to spend a weekend. Yes, and I had a little break and I was looking at their television and they reported on the American elections when that was going on. They were talking about Cameron in the run up to the Brexit vote. This was around March, the same time around last year. And they also reported on the adorable little new species of octopus that was found in deep in the Hawaiian waters, which I think ThinkTech did do a show about here. So it's that adorable little lilac-colored ghost-like octopus with the little beady black eyes that they called Casper because of its ghost-like appearance. And every hour on the hour they're talking all these serious things with the Brexit and the American elections. And then you had this octopus appearing from Hawaii. I said oh, that's very sweet of them to report on the Hawaiian news as well. So wouldn't be interesting, for example, if the Hawaiian news channels talked about Australia a bit so we know about our Pacific neighbors. I agree with you absolutely Paulie. That's what we should be doing. But you know it's the old question of can a given community afford? Can it support news like that? And I think from a business point of view the answer is no. We have three channels that cover the news here. And it's just in my view not enough. It's not broad enough. It doesn't cover international news except maybe very secondhand. And what we need to do is provide people with more information about the world in which we live. We are remote. We're an island in the middle of 2600 miles is the closest landmass. And we need to be informed. We need to be an exchange of information. We need to be a center of something. We need to be part of the Pacific Rim, Pacific region. And to do that we all have to be informed. So I'm not sure how you do it, but I think it's not what you perceive the people want. It's what you decide the people should have. That's different. And I think that's what we need to do. Okay. Well, I'm sure there's a way to do it. It's just difficult when you're an isolated island chain that you have to have reporters on the ground. And even if we confine it to the Asia Pacific region, they have to be there to get the first hand. Well, it doesn't take that much. I mean for example we've had correspondence in Asia. We've had we was non-profit with nothing. We've had a regular correspondence in Asia. We've had regular correspondence in Europe. We've had regular correspondence in the Middle East. We can reach out and we can find volunteers. That's our model. Volunteer hosts just like you. All over the place with Skype. This is wonderful that we can do this because we offer them a platform and we offer people an opportunity to see what a wide variety of hosts can think of and connect with. Gee whiz. And we don't censor them in any way. They can talk about whatever they want. Within reason, yes. And speaking of which, the only time I have to silence a guest is when we have to take a break. So we will be right back after this short break. Aloha. This is Kelea Akeena with the weekly Ehana Kako. Let's work together program on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network Mondays at 2 o'clock PM. Movers and shakers and great ideas. Join us. We'll see you then. Aloha. Aloha and happy new year. It's 2017. Please keep up with me on Power Up Hawaii where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future. Please join me on Tuesdays at one o'clock. Mahalo. My name is Mark Schlauwe and I'm the host of Law Across the Sea. And Law Across the Sea is a program that brings attorneys who have traveled across the sea and live in Hawaii or are staying in Hawaii for a time to talk about their travels, where they're from, where they're going, and bring it all together because really we're all connected some way although we travel across the sea. So I hope that you'll tune in and watch our program. Thank you very much. Welcome back ladies and gentlemen and after that short break we're going to now get into some satire. This is the comical version of the media that we want to explore because I just wanted to ask you Jay, when we meet sometimes one of your pet peeves about society in general and perhaps the method of communication the media is that things are being dumbed down. You get the sense that things are being dumbed down and if it makes you feel any better, actually for a very long time for thousands of years since recorded history, I mean most people have been dumb. I've been in a kind of unconscious state and it's only in the past really 200 years that you know the masses have had this semi-consciousness arise and that comes from more print, more news, more communication outlets being made available to larger numbers of people. So are you a little bit more optimistic when you hear something like that even though for a long period of time there was nothing. I'm not optimistic. Sorry I mean I'm optimistic. I believe that humankind is perfectible ultimately but right now I'm not particularly optimistic. I feel that people are not getting enough news. They're not well educated about the things that matter and worse you know it's the old thing about the fish. Don't give a man a fish. Tell him how to fish so he can catch his own fish and that means critical thinking and we have to you know teach and focus on critical thinking especially in the world of the internet where you get disparate sources, you do get fake news, you get silly news, you get good news is distracting and if you don't watch out you become ignorant. A lot of people get confused. We cannot afford that. We need to be intelligent voters and look what happened in the last election. It's the barometer. Yeah it's interesting the last election something new, something different so that we'll have to wait and see what becomes of it. But do you know what it is? Sorry. Let's wait let's wait and see and so do you think small island communities like Hawaii particularly those are that are very isolated in the middle of an ocean. They suffer from brain drain a lot of the time so do you think if there was more news better analytical news here that it would draw the people who leave Hawaii get them to come back more would communication be one of the things that would induce people to take a greater interest in Hawaii? What do you think about that? Well I think it's possible. I think we need to focus on it. Last night I attended the annual Board of Governors meeting of the Pacific Forum CSIS if you know about that and there were five six hundred people there who I consider all well engaged and well aware of international events as they affect the Pacific Rim and Hawaii and I think that's what we've got to do. 500 or 600 people is not nearly enough. The whole state should be aware of these things. We live in that world and our future is dependent on understanding that world so I'm impatient about people a learning about that understanding how important it is and using critical thinking to discern the wheat from the chaff. So one of the ways that European communities sometimes deal with this problem is to develop satirical press so because comedy sometimes works if you make fun of something people will become more engaged with the subject. That's why that's why not only Saturday Night Live but the Italian politician for example is very popular in Italy and he's a professional comedian. So if you make fun of something if you look at one of my favorite comedians is George Carlin and sadly he died way too young and he's no longer with us but if you look at his later work as he aged it got very serious and political actually and we live in a society where everything is more casual it's more relaxed it wasn't serious like it was two thousand three thousand years ago because if you remove George Carlin's clothes and put him in a toga he look almost like a Greek philosopher or Roman senator or something like that and he has to do it through comedy because people want to be entertained now they don't want to think necessarily it's too much work and you can get your message across through comedy and the Europeans picked up on that because we've got satirical press for example private eye in the United Kingdom which is kind of schoolboy humor but they actually do very serious pieces of investigative journalism as well in addition to the sort of silly absurdist humor that they've got and you've also got the print media like Le Canard en Genet in France that makes political commentaries analyzes the corporate world what's going on in business and politics mostly so do you think something like that could emerge in Hawaii or do you think comedy really only works in really miserable places like large cities such as New York and London you know they used to be a number of stand-up comics here and they would make fun of things in Hawaii they would make fun of politics in Hawaii and they were wonderful because you know in all of comedy Pauline you knew this already there is truth yes in fact there is tragedy in you a comedy and so when these stand-up comics Frank DeLima was one of them but there were others too Andy Bumatai was another one what happened to them well they're not performing anymore for one reason or another they're not performing they're doing one of them does tech Andy Bumatai does tech and Frank DeLima does television ads for taxi cabs and the like maybe he does stand up somewhere but I haven't seen it has there been any attempt in Hawaii to do any sort of news media in the form of print or YouTube videos or something like this on a satirical scale on a sort of comedic scale you think that's a good idea everybody has a more relaxed attitude in general so you know what are the problems about say Frank DeLima is that his a lot of his humor was based on the the melting pot of the plantation and comparing contrasting racial you know cultures in Hawaii and there's a lot of fun there but it was politically it became not originally but it became politically incorrect so you know there was a problem of criticism over jokes he was making yeah I had heard that that's commonplace in Hawaii because everybody's mixed here you know you have people who's what one parent is Korean the others Japanese one is Chinese the others who I so everybody kind of takes that very likely here that's what I was well they do but you know I think the whole notion of political correctness has entered hard to it's hard to make in public on in the media joke that's not politically correct and a racial joke is not usually politically correct it's funny people like it I like it but but you can't do that on a regular basis in the media and that's probably one of the principles of think tech Hawaii for example you don't want any shrill commentary or rude anything that offend somebody else so we try to keep it polite but at the same time you you can strike a balance and making a little bit provocative right so you can get more viewers and more discussion going on a particular issue I don't think we seek provocative and I don't think we seek politically correct or not politically correct what we seek is the truth what we seek is candor what we seek is people telling honestly how they feel about something and we achieve that in many cases in many ways with many hosts and guests and that's tremendously valuable it's a contribution also so I would say you know if we were out to entertain specifically entertain I wouldn't feel the same way about it I just want people to tell the truth okay brilliant and can they handle the truth that's a lot that's the that's the question so just on a final note I want to discuss what you think is the future of Hawaiian media there are some sources that predict that within the next 10 years in about 2028 or so newspapers will be obsolete everybody will be getting their news from some sort of electronic resource or something like in Elysium where we can download news automatically into our brains or something like that because the technology you know that the military are 50 years ahead in terms of technology over everybody else it's like the internet the internet was originally a military project and then it we get the sort of bones that they throw so while those things look scary the people do actually use them that when they catch on after a long period of time is passed so once the fear is gone you have things like that so I just wanted your opinion of what you think is going to happen to the media here what do you think would happen to the star advertiser what do you think will happen to things like civil beat or even think tech Hawaii yourself hmm that's an interesting question for me well I I think of a brave new world and what was the other one brave new world and 1984 1984 exactly I think of the futuristic situation where there's somebody big brother is up there manipulating the news and I think we're tending to that I mean the original news is only from a very few sources and a lot of news is you know it's it's questionable whether there's an agenda there trying to pitch you a certain way of thinking and you know it's being controlled by a smaller number of capital concentrations all the time the old you know 1900s kind of you know arrangement where there were lots of news organs all around you and they all very independent and they would disagree with each other that's I don't think that's the case for the future I think what's going to happen though is the internet is going to be the tumultuous area and although these big capital concentrations will offer us as you know a lot of pablum or a lot of you know agenda type news I think the internet is the upstart and I think it will continue and I think there'll be lots of sources lots of opinions lots of wild things happening on the internet it's at least so far it's really not controllable not controlled it's a wonderful you know example of conversation in its most liberated form on the other hand as I said before we have got to be doing critical thinking about what we get off that and we've got to decide which sources to look at what reports to believe or not believe and we all have to work together to use that you know that source of knowledge there's various knowledge various channels of knowledge and if we don't do that our democracy is threatened and this this kind of approach might help with the apathy in Hawaii among Hawaiian voters for example a lot of people don't vote here very much and I think one gentleman in the house proposed a bill doing the conscripted voting like Australia has forcing people to vote and that I don't think that's the best way forward you can't force people to do things particularly Americans and especially Hawaiians I don't think that's the right approach but if we had more dialogue that was not not necessarily rude or trying to troll people this more thought-provoking type of media then it might improve that situation you know democracy and patriotism true patriotism instead of you know desperate patriotism begins in school it begins with teaching children who are going to be citizens what their obligations are as citizens it begins teaching them you know that there's a social compact between every citizen and the country and they are responsible for the country just as a country is responsible for them and I think in large you know large countries large population groups that has been forgotten and certainly I believe it's been forgotten in the U.S. people do not see themselves as part of the government they do not see obligations to the government the government is you know an adverse party and some presidents think the press is an adverse party that we have got really gotta get over that if we want to if you want to retain our democracy well very wise words things to think about Jay thank you for being my first guest on outside in and just to let everybody know I have to like Casper the friendly octopus I have to disappear for several months but I will be back in the new year and that's when we'll start a more regularly scheduled programming for outside in and we're going to be discussing a range of subjects from history philosophy art and architecture all the way to robotics biotech bitcoin things like cryptocurrency and digital currency which are all very exciting and until I see you in the new year safe travels and aloha everybody