 Alright, so this is Gerard Leonhard Futurist, keynote speaker here at Digital London, mediafuturist.com. You were talking about the impact that data is going to have and certainly the role social media networks are going to have there. Could you tell us how you see that progressing? Well, that's what this is about. I think what's happening in the last few years is that users are becoming the content of these services. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, we are essentially the content there, much like eBay. We are also the content. So the data that we contribute becomes worth a lot to the companies having it. And therefore the likes of Google and Twitter and Facebook have to incentivize us using it, but they also have to give us control over what it means. But basically data has become the new oil, as I like to say. This is not for me, actually, from somebody else, but it's a good sort of meme. It basically means that data is worth so much now that you can ask for stuff in return, as we've been asking for you, for Google. But in a way, data is also becoming sort of a faustian bargain because we're giving a lot and sometimes we don't exactly know what comes back and we may actually have made a deal with somebody that is going to ask for a lot more than we're willing to give. And how do you see that progressing then? Do you feel that people will be more open to giving data or will people receive the amount that they wish to offer? I think the trend is undeniable that when five billion people are connected to the internet, the data flood is going to be among us, and they'll be worth more than oil really. The companies that are entitled to drill into that data, to use it, to harvest it, to mine it, to give us stuff back, they're going to have to be very good at creating value for us, otherwise we'll reject them, or we'll get rid of them because they are essentially, it's like taking oil and putting it into my bathtub rather than making gas for my car. They have to really create value. So this is for marketing people, what that means is that unless they really are responsible and they're really offering good value, so targeted advertising that is completely synchronized with what I like, we're going to reject them. So the bar is going up for marketing, clearly. And in terms of the brands that you see that are already adopting this, is it very much going to pick up the pace quite quickly, or is it going to be a long period where this develops? How quickly do you think this will happen? I think for a lot of brands it especially means that the empowerment of the consumer and the business partners is going to be your mangas, right? And basically they have to embrace the idea that they can't sometimes control what people do there, they have to let them go ahead and trust the user a lot more. For example, Fiat has done this in Brazil where they let people design the next car, and that was the Mio, Fiat Mio was a very important campaign, Pepsi Refresh Project. I mean these kind of ideas are going in this direction, right? Basically when the user is contributing data and I have to synchronize with the user and the customer, then it makes them more powerful. So that removes my sort of idea of buying media, becoming more earned media, but I still have to buy them, right? Because I have to use the data tools. This is a major change in terms of the paradigm. Does that mean that you foresee crowdsourcing becoming a staple of all marketing? I think that term crowdsourcing is a little bit misleading there because we have been doing this for a long time, right? It's going to become a complete standard, right? Because basically crowdsourcing means I'm really synchronizing with the user that I'm interested. So the reason Kickstarter has raised money for 27,000 people is not because somebody is forcing them, or somebody is enticing them in some way, right? It's because they believe in the product, and marketing is the same thing. Ideally speaking, marketing would be the people believing in the product telling others, right? So it's the same principle in general. As a futurist then, where do you see social networks going? Do you see them working together more, becoming what is the future for them, and where do you think they'll all lead in the next few years? Well, social networks are highways now, right? If we don't have highways, we can't drive. So we're driving on these huge highways on Twitter, Facebook, Google, Tencent, QQ, Orkut, you know, whatever it is, right? And that's really crucial for us, right? But they're going to have to work really hard to create a standard, like, you know, on a highway you can't pass on the wrong side of the, on the emergency lane going two on the miles, and how you have to have some rules, right? So they have to have standards, they have to have visibility, transparency, they have to add value, and some of them may even charge for the highway or the bridge, right? Which wouldn't be unreal. So I think quality is going to be a major issue here, quality of the experience, right? So the noise is going to be humongous. So filtering the noise will be a big role for broadcasters. Broadcasters are going to overlap with social media, right? I mean, essentially you could argue Facebook is the next BBC. I mean, they are a broadcaster. So in five years we're going to see a lot of broadcasters merging forces with social media platforms, and of course using APIs and so on. It will be easy. You were talking about the role of paywalls and you didn't seem to keep on the idea where do you think paywalls will end up going? Well, I'm convinced that basically you can't force people to pay on the Internet. You either get them to pay and attract them to pay, or you don't get the money. Forcing people to pay is a scenario that comes from the cable business, you know, cable TV. You don't get to see the program if you don't have the cable, mostly, right? Or buy a CD, you know. In a digital society that is a useless concept. So there's no such thing as forcing them to pay. I always say, I got this from somebody else, I forgot, I think it was Jeff Jarvis, who said it's not about the pay, it's about the wall. We find a smarter way to collect money through bundles, through upsetting, through freemiums. People will pay. I mean, clearly people are paying, right? So it's not the people's fault that people aren't paying for movies or music, right? It's a systems fault of not having the right process and the right packaging. So I think for newspapers and news, clearly if we take away the word paper and put that over here and say, we don't, we need paper, but we need news. People are willing to pay for news in all different sort of permutations and embodiments. You know, because the main thing is for us to get good information in a short period of time for value. The question is about value. Final question. You're talking about telecommunications companies, working with travel companies. Why do you foresee that? Well, telecoms and ISPs and mobile operators are running the network for us, right? And everything we're doing is becoming dependent on the network. I mean, when you Google something, when you use an app, when you, I mean, you need the network, right? It's cloud computing time, right? So basically the telecoms are going to get involved with all of those businesses because they are able to bundle education, virtual transportation, telepresence, media, you know. And so you'll see all the telecoms creating really interesting scenarios there because if they don't do that, everybody else makes the money and they just have to pay for the shipping.