 Hi, I'm Gerhard Leonhard, Futurist and CEO of the Futurist Agency, together with Uri van Geest today. Uri is a good friend and colleague in the Futurist business, and today we're talking about the future of privacy. Uri wrote a book recently called The Exponential Organization, which is an interesting tangent would be to think about how privacy can be put into an exponential world. He's also the Ambassador for Singularity University in Holland. And so, the debate about privacy has been raging, and ever since the summer of Snowden and NSA, and yes, we scan and all these things, it's been a big topic, and now people are discussing whether Facebook is violating their privacy in a systematic way. Companies like LOF come up to take that up, didn't work out, but maybe there will be other ones in the future. So what is your view on is privacy actually something we should care for in the future? I mean, a lot of people don't seem to care anymore. Do we need anonymity? Do we need to be able to be separate or disconnected? Or what's your view? Yeah, so privacy, I think it will always stay a topic, right? I don't believe in the sense that privacy is dead, because if you ask people, okay, in this scenario, do you really appreciate this? Now they would say, well, I want some privacy, all right, because that's human nature. It will change over time in terms of the form and the way that it will impact your lives, but it won't be gone fully. What I expect is that people will become, as you can already see in young people across the world, become more aware about privacy. That means they make particular conscious decisions to manage their privacy. And for example, what I expect will be a lot of movement towards user-owned data and which people will monetize their personal data towards different stakeholders using different rights management systems. So right now, in most cases, I'm not owner of my own personal data. It doesn't make sense. Biomedical data, DNA data, or the data, whatever, whatever. That will change over time. I would like to monetize my data increasingly over time. Right now, it's a little skewed towards large corporations. Now we have kind of two models, we have the addiction model, which is we're so addicted to being on that paradigm because we're getting great service like Google Maps. And then the other one is that we're being abused with permission, even. So I think it will become a more diverse ecosystem of different privacy solutions. On the one hand, like today, some people are willing to share everything. Why? They get personalized content, advertising and services for free or for low fee. So you are a product, in some cases. Let's say the low end of the market. Let's say the high end of the market, the high end customers, they might be able to increase their privacy and pay for it. So they share less, but they pay a higher premium. Would it be privacy for the rich then? I think we will see that increasingly over time. That's a scary thought. I mean, think about this quantified self-movement in the way of monitoring my fitness and showing that data. There have been suggestions about insurances, taking that data and rewarding accordingly. Wouldn't that lead to a completely compliant society to where, for example, if we're going to have a beer after we talk, we would not want that to be known. It would have to be secret because our insurance would find out. And you said you don't drink, but you drink a lot. Wouldn't that generate all kinds of problems, like turning us into robots? Long-term could be, like there is a circle of day workers. I mean, if we don't have anonymity, we become pressure to comply. I don't believe in those dystopian or utopian visions, because if you look at the past in technology or privacy or even anonymity, what we see is, I call it, or Kevin Kelly calls it, a protopian vision of technology. That means we will move along, mumbling through small steps, small increments, small time changes. That means we will adapt to different privacy issues or solutions over time as opposed to more end-user. So it will change, but slowly, not like a very dystopian or dystopian future. I don't believe that. Yeah, but of course, in our exponential world, there will have been 5.5 billion people on the internet and 5.7. So the speed is mind-boggling, right? So I suggested several times, along with Tim Berners-Lagan, Mashable, or many others, to create a digital rights manifesto that outlines the most basic rules, not the library rules. Before that? I agree. Right now, the system doesn't make sense. Why? It's too secret and it's asymmetric. That means you have here the citizens or consumers, you have corporations and governments. It's asymmetric because they can watch us and we cannot watch them in return. It doesn't make sense. So that's Sue's fate. And on the other hand, it's done secretly. And then we have the rest between America and Europe, right? Yeah, so what I expect will happen over time, slowly, or maybe quickly, but I expect slowly, is that the system will become more symmetric in terms of tracking and monitoring. And also, it will become more open, transparent, let's say, relative to today. And this will become a more equal level and level playing field in more in favor of, let's say, consumers and users over time. If you look at anonymity, also your question, there's a big space right now with Whisper and Secret and Yik Yak and all those applications in Snapchat. This shows the importance of privacy, right, to young people. Well, I would say there, you know, that an anonymity shouldn't be attached to an app. Yeah, so I have some ethical issues there, right, because if not only in terms of anonymity, but in some darker human nature, but also in terms of how it will be monetized or using NSA or how people will be bullied. So there are some issues there with anonymity, even though I do understand the long-term value of anonymity, like for dissidents or political dissidents. So I think it will be a mixture over time. Well, this is a good discussion, it could go on forever, so I'm actually using a hashtag on Twitter for this called the hashtag data wars. I've been using that for a while and we're very interested from good steam here. So if you want to know more, Google us, Yuri van Geest, Gerd Leonhardt, and if you want to read more information about what we do, go to thefeaturesagency.com. Thanks very much for tuning in.