Riots, Jobs, and Innovation

With the people of Egypt in open defiance of a corrupt autocratic regime, using new tools of social media to foment a resistance to government tyranny, it's important to understand that innovation isn't just about iPads. It's about freedom.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Tonight, I'll be doing a town hall from Colorado on jobs and innovation. Earlier this week, we heard Obama discuss the importance of innovation in the American economy. But with the people of Egypt in open defiance of a corrupt autocratic regime, using new tools of social media to foment a traditional resistance to government tyranny, it's important to understand that innovation isn't just about iPads and solar cells. It's about freedom. It's about meaning.

It's about allowing us as a society to employ people to do useful intrinsically valuable activities. We see that in places where that freedom is snuffed out, where innovation can't happen, where there are no jobs and no meaning, are places of unstable civil disorder. We must create a jobs movement here, we must allow innovation here.

Those are the themes I'm going to hit tonight. I'd like you to participate. Ask questions, using Skype. Email me at Dylan@DylanRatigan.com if you would like to participate.

The people of Egypt are showing us something that we might have forgotten: People can matter. Can we learn that lesson, again?

Tune in tonight:

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot