Tech innovation is moving fast, and Senator Booker wants us to keep up.
U. S. Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey isn’t ready to talk about his rumored campaign for presidency in 2020, but he did sit down with Google’s senior counsel on civil and human rights Malika Saada Saar at South by Southwest on Friday to talk about the power of human connection and social justice. Oh, and tech’s influence on modern-day politics during, what he called, one of the most fear-based eras he’s ever seen.
“These [last few months] are some of the darkest moments of my political career, but also some of the most inspiring, thanks in part to social media and other communication tools,” Booker said.
Despite this fear-based climate, we now have access to information quicker than ever thanks to our always-on connected culture, but the key is engagement and what we do with this awareness. Here are three key takeaways of Senator Booker’s SXSW kickoff keynote.
The combination of smartphone video and social media spreads rapid-fire awareness to issues that Booker has been working on for years. He mentioned the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, as an example: Police and criminal injustice has long been a problem, but smartphone videos and social media have brought it into the spotlight.
