 Cheers. Good morning, everybody. I can't see anybody. Literally, I can't see, like, there's three people down there. There's Lars. There's Lars. I can't see anybody else. Good morning. Congratulations. Congratulations. We won. We won. You might remember 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, some of you, when you were at school, you were told that you weren't going to win because everybody in this room was the nerd. You were the geeks. An awful lot of you didn't even stay in school. You didn't go to university. You dropped out. And undoubtedly, as I did, had large arguments with your parents about this internet thing that you were going to go and work on, this weird media thing you were going to go and play with, this toy that you were going to make a part of your life, and that wasn't a real job and what were you doing and you idiot. Well, congratulations. We won. It turns out that the 900 people in this room, and 900 people in Malmo, 900 people, it's like half of the city is in this building. 900 people here, as part of this whole new industry, this whole new thing that's taken over the world. We won. How awesome is that? Now, some of you, undoubtedly will remember the time that you and I said about picking up the phone and hearing the person upstairs swear at you for breaking their internet connection. And some people here will remember the time that a 28k modem was the fastest thing you could possibly ever imagine. And some of you might remember computer games which took up less memory than a single lolcat GIF. But that time has come and gone and it turns out that the world has changed completely and we are in charge of it. How awesome is that? Now, this, of course, is causing a lot of trouble. We live in the middle of a massive digital revolution. We know this. But there are people who have been in charge of the world for the past 20 or 30 or 50 years who haven't noticed this. We're living in that middle period, that strange period where the people who are in charge have forgotten to give up. They're not dying fast enough, quite frankly. Baby boomers, man. Seriously. Gotta get rid of them. And so they're looking at us and they're saying what a really strange world that we're living in today. So let's have a think about this. Have a think about the major trends that are driving this strange world that we're now the victors of. We live in a world governed by Moore's law. I'm sure everybody in this room knows what Moore's law is, but for the one person at the back who doesn't know, I'm going to remind you, Gordon Moore was the chief engineer at Intel, the people who make the microchips. And in about 1962 he was looking at the microchips they were making and he was looking at the price that they were selling them for. And he said, hey, this is weird. Every 12 to 18 months, you know, every year or so, for the same price, the number of components on one of our microchips doubles. He said, this is interesting. The power, effectively, the power of those microchips doubles every year for the same price. I wonder if this is going to continue. He wrote this down in a magazine article and a few years later they looked at it again and they found that this was true every year, more or less, the number of components on a microchip will double for the same price. Power doubles for the same price every year. And this has been true ever since the 60s. And it will continue to be true, we think, until about 2030. We are living in a time where our capability doubles and doubles and doubles and doubles every year for the same cost. Or the same amount of power halves in price every year. Now you all know this. You know this because it's that feeling you get when you buy a new laptop and then six weeks later you see the same laptop in the shops for half the price. Or you see the same amount of money being spent on something twice as good. It's that feeling you get when you see the Apple Keynote every year and you realize that the thing you have in your desk is now a piece of shit. Moore's Law is the fundamental driving force of society and it makes the life of most normal people very difficult. It makes the life of politicians and business people incredibly difficult. If you have to make plans, if you may have to make long-term plans, if you have to pass laws, which you think are going to be there for the next 10 or 20 years, Moore's Law makes the world very difficult indeed. As Joanna said, I'm the British Prime Minister's ambassador to Tech City. Tech City is a part of London where all of the start-ups are. And I act as a sort of translator between the hipsters and the House of Parliament. It's a very strange thing. They've all got the same moustaches, but other than that, they're very different. This is an expenseable. I can get my tax back on this. And you talk about Moore's Law to the politicians and you realize something. Imagine that you are a politician today and you get elected and in your pocket you have an iPhone 4s, say. One of these costs what? 5,000 crowns? More or less? Imagine you're going to be in power for ten years. Now when you leave power in ten years time, the phone in your pocket, the iPhone 15, will be 128 times as powerful as this. Maybe more, maybe 256 times. Maybe if you get an extra thing, maybe 512 times as powerful. Or if you decide you don't want the extra power, if you decide that Angry Birds is as far as you want to go. And let's face it, Angry Birds is as far as we want to go. Then one of these phones of this power in ten years time will cost around ten crowns. They'll be giving them free with hot dogs. Which means in a world that we can easily foresee, in a world that we are currently planning for, in a world that laws being written today around the world will be in effect in that time. In that world in ten years time, very easily foreseeable time, a device like this, which five years ago would have been considered to be witchcraft. You know, if you went into the secret government time machine that... Oh, shit, I shouldn't have said... Okay, if you imagine that you went into a, if there was such a thing as a secret government time machine, this isn't being recorded, is it? Okay. If you got into the secret government time machine, you went back in time six years, and you had one of these devices, the thing that you've all got in your pocket today, and you showed this to somebody, you would have been burnt as a witch. These are impossible devices, right? These are absolutely magical. It's a small piece of black glass through which I can access all of the world's information, find myself in the universe within three feet, and watch television. And through moving my thumb, I can talk to one of any five billion people on the planet. It's a magical device. And these magical devices will be so cheap in the future that everybody on the planet will have two. We'll be building houses out of iPhones soon. They'll be so cheap. This makes the world very, very difficult to plan. It means that anybody who is trying to make decisions about the world in three or four or five or six or seven or eight years' time can't really do it. For the first time in human history, long-term planning is completely broken. And it's only we, 900, that really kind of understand that. And all of the people in the town hall and in Stockholm and in London and in Washington and Geneva and all of those other capitals, slightly confused by it still. And then Moore's Law, it gives you these incredibly powerful machines, ones in your pocket, the ones on your laps right now. And these incredibly powerful machines give you incredibly powerful capabilities. And this leads to the second big trend that we're seeing, the trend that I can't even pronounce. It's algorithmization. I'll try saying that after a couple of toasts with the mayor last night. Algorithmization is where you are replaced by an algorithm, where you realize that your job can be done by a computer and not by you. Now, 20 years ago, we were worried about blue collar workers being replaced by robots. You might remember there was once a time when cars were made by people and welding was done by a person. But that person, after a few hours, would get tired and the weld would get a bit wobbly and the car would fall apart. And then somebody realized that you could do this with robots and the robots would be absolutely perfect and they would never need a holiday and they would never go to the beach on the weekends and they would always be brilliant and they could work 24 hours a day. And we have now the modern industrial world. And all of the people in this room, all of the white collar people, all of the black collar people, all of the incredibly creative people in this room are sitting there very smugly going, Ha ha, nobody could ever replace me. I am a genius, creative person. I do not weld for a living. I will not be replaced by a robot. No, no. Well, actually, yes. What we're seeing now with this increased computing capability brought to us by Morse Law is the algorithmization of white collar workers. If you think of it, a lawyer or a doctor, very good examples, perhaps the sort of job that your parents wished you'd had. A lawyer or a doctor today is really just a big-ass flowchart. You know, you can see the flowchart that a doctor has. Is the patient dead? Yes, no, yes, continue. And you just work your way down the flowchart and at the end it gives you an answer. And if there's one thing that computers are really good at, it's flowcharts. It's decisions. And so with computing power today and with big data, an open source, databases of knowledge that you'll be hearing about in the next couple of days, you find that the professions, the white collar jobs are also being taken by computers. Lawyers. Lawyers are mostly flowcharts. Very well-paid flowcharts, but they're flowcharts. Is he a criminal? Yes or no? Work your way down. And the government, of course, is made up entirely of people who are lawyers and doctors and accountants. People who, if they look deep into their hearts, realize they are nothing more than an app you'll soon be able to buy for nine crowns from the App Store. What a weird world we're living in. And so, we as creative people, we as internet people, as digital people, as the media, we have to act as a translation layer between the young people and their new technologies, ourselves with our new technologies, and the old people who are running the world. We have, in many ways, through our politics, we have entrusted our future to people who are very confused by our present. And this is not a good place to be. And for those of us in this room whose job it is to tell people other stuff, you know, to give messages across, to teach people things, we are, it is our duty to tell people what is happening in the world today, what is really happening, what is driving these social forces forward. And over the next two days, you'll be hearing about all of these new movements, which are creating massive social change. And it's your job after this conference to go home and tell everybody about it. Because this is the world we're living in, the world we're computing power in your pocket, it's doubling every year. Now, it's all very well to talk about society as being this thing that stuff is happening to, but that's really ignoring the people, the humans. And we're all human in this room, apart from a couple of you at the front here. It's suspicious looking. We've all got one of these in our pockets. Yes, has everybody got a phone with them? Can you hold your phone in the air, please? Can you throw them at me, please? No? Okay. And there's a reason why you didn't do that. Quite apart from, it would hurt and you're nice. Your phone has become an incredibly intimate part of your existence. I would say that everybody in this room is in fact, as of a few years ago, you became, without you realizing it, a cyborg. You are all in fact cyborgs. You have become part man, part iPhone. This is perhaps a tragic thing to realize, but it is true. We have seen over the past few years massive changes to the fundamental, fundamental humanity of people in the developed world through these devices. I can prove this to you. Nobody here knows more than three phone numbers. They know their own, they know their lovers, and they know their own when they were 10 years old. Because you have all of the other phone numbers stored in your cyborg brain. Now, your cyborg brain is never more than three feet away from you, right? It's never more than a meter away from you. It's either in your pocket or it's by the side of your head, you know, it's next to your head when you're asleep or it's on the shelf in the bathroom when you're taking a shower. It's never more than three feet away from you because if it was, it would be like losing half of your brain. You can experiment, that's right. You know, anybody here, hand your phone over to the person next to you and let them walk away. Fuck off. We've become cyborgs. We've become cyborgs in the way that we learn things. You might remember being at school and being taught facts, you know? You'll be taught a fact about something. It was very important. It seemed teachers were really very, very concerned about you learning facts. We don't learn facts anymore. We learn pathways. You don't remember things, you remember how to find things. You don't have to remember who starred in what film or who was the director of what film. You just have to remember how to get to YMDB on your phone quickly. You don't have to remember who was the captain of the 1983 Cup-winning Bandy side, you know? Because you can just Google it. And you can Google it with your cyborg brain that is never away from your body. And we're finding now that people don't learn facts. They learn these pathways instead. It's a complete change in the way that we think as humans. A change, it's the first change of this sort since the beginning of writing. When writing was invented, Plato, ancient Greeks, Plato basically said everything. You can bullshit your way through this bit, okay? So Plato said, it's true, he actually, Plato said that he didn't want young people of Greece to learn writing. Because if they learned writing, that meant writing and reading, it meant that they wouldn't have to memorize poetry. And if they didn't memorize all of these long poems, then they would become stupid. But writing enabled you to create a paper-based outboard brain. It enabled you to remember a lot more. And we've done the same thing, but we've pushed it on. We now no longer have to remember facts at all. We just have to remember how to get out them. This makes pub quizzes very, very difficult. But it makes everything else change completely as well. Education, the way we can learn new facts, the way we can learn new skills. There isn't a single person in this room, for example, who has a job which even existed five years ago. There isn't probably a single person in this room who, if you went back in time, again, in the secret time machine, you went back in time and you explained to yourself 10 years ago what it was you do today. There isn't a single person in this room who wouldn't have been put in hospital. I'm a social media expert for a live TV stream. So what happens is, okay, so it's like television, but it's on a laptop. Yeah, a laptop's like a computer, but it's like a magazine that you sit and... Okay, right. So they're watching television and they're sending each other, at the same time, they're all sending each other messages on their phone. Yeah, the phone's on... Okay, so the phone isn't connected to the wall. No, no. And these messages are 140 characters each. No idea why that's... Yeah. And they're talking to each other about game of thrones. There isn't a single person in this room who has a life that could be explainable to somebody 10 years ago. We have become completely different people. Thirsty people, in fact. Another example of being a cyborg is, put your hands in the air if you felt your phone ring in your pocket in the past week when it wasn't ringing. Put your hand in the air if you felt your phone ring in your pocket when you were holding your phone in your hand. I said with cyborgs, you're just not very good cyborgs. So it's very important to understand. So we have created a new type of human. A new type of human that is capable of accessing all of the information pretty much in the world very, very quickly, through their cyborg brain. A new type of human which is able to connect to millions of people around the world with their thoughts very, very quickly, through their cyborg brain. A new type of human that is able to know where they are on the planet to within 30 centimeters at all times. A new type of human that is capable of forming groups of like interest, no matter where those people are in time or space. We've created a new type of human which gets its information from all over the planet and no longer from a hierarchy somewhere in the capital city. We have created a new type of human which spends most of its time at dinner praying. You've seen it all. We've become extremely pious in our old age. And with this new type of human that we have all become, we are able, we have an opportunity to create a new type of society. It's very lovely in here. It's a lovely boat with the gorilla playing the accordion. I always thought, I thought there was King Kong for a moment and it's not. We've created a lovely room here today and tomorrow as well with like-minded people all together. But the world outside is quite difficult. We're facing enormous problems, as was said earlier. We have an economic crisis. We have a climate crisis. There isn't any Olympics anymore so we have a sports watching crisis. I mean, what are we gonna do? If I can't watch horse dancing in the middle of the afternoon, I literally don't know what to do with myself. It's a terrible thing. We have these massive crises and we have the opportunity to redefine society. Over the next couple of days, you will be hearing about and hearing from a whole group of people, all of whom are changing the world in their own special way, using these new capabilities that we have. You're gonna be hearing about what's happening in China. You're gonna be hearing about what's happening with collaborative consumption. You're gonna be hearing about what's happening with open source satellites, putting stuff into space. Humanity, a couple of weeks ago, took a picture with a spaceship that was going around another planet. Of another thing that we made, landing on that planet by parachute was explosions and rockets and all of that. And sent that picture back via another spaceship that was around that planet, back to here, and then sent it as a live picture to a whole load of people who were on the bus and going through London and looking at a magical piece of black glass. We're living in a world of incredible, amazing technology and amazing achievement, but also one of huge problems. The people we've put in charge of the world at the moment don't understand the world they're living in. You can see this from the laws they're passing and from the way they talk about the internet. That's an example. And it's people in this room and the learnings that you'll get for the next two days that you can take away from here that will start to change that. That will start to give the possibility of creating an awesome future, a future where we would much rather be putting robots on Mars than sending people to war. A future where the climate might be changing, but everything's gonna be okay. A future where our cyborg brain enables us to bring social justice and to alleviate poverty and all of those other things that we want to do. This is a very special part of the world. Nobody in this part of the world would ever say it is and that's one of the reasons why it's so special. This is a very special part of the world because it is dedicated to social justice and to creating a better society. And we have in our pockets and in our minds and in our capabilities the possibility of taking that good society and spreading it all the way across the planet. And that work begins today. Over the next couple of days, you're going to hear people talking about how to use these new technologies to unleash social potential, to take these new behaviors, to enable people to become better than they've ever been before, to teach, to share, to create new societies, to create new communities. So pay attention. Learn everything you can that is told to you from these stages. And then when you go home, tell your friends, tell your partners, tell your children, tell your boss, tell your employees, tell your politicians, tell them about the conference, tell them about the time that you all decided about all the things you wanted to learn about and tell them about these movements that you'll be told about yourself today. It's only through these new technologies and through these new ideas that we will be able to create a new and better future. And as the only people who understand those technologies and understand those movements, it turns out that it is our job. As I said right at the beginning, we won. We proved them wrong. All of the times you were teased at being a nerd, you've had your revenge. We rule the world now. It's time to do something really, really cool with it. Thank you very much everybody and good luck. Go on then. It's early in the morning, nobody's had any coffee. Oh yeah, oh no, about what you're saying man. Oh good, okay. And I'm gonna like to start with two questions and then I'd really like for those of you who feel critical and for those of you who are super excited to formulate your own. So just start thinking about that. I'll start with this, with what is true and what is right. You're being like Spider-Man I guess with great power from greatest people. And now you want us to go out and save potential of doing this technology. However, I also think that it's possible that the powers for good are being outspent by the powers for profit. So how do we start with the fact that that's still innovation and power in the shape of humans and in the shape of hardware is being bought up by big corporations who may pretend not to be evil, you know, but. Well, so I, so I, you know, I think, okay, I think there are a couple of interesting points there. The first one is that it's not necessarily true that big corporations are evil, right? I mean, most of them. I mean, they might want to be evil. An awful lot of them aren't very good at being evil. So there's a lot of hope there, right? Eventually most evil corporations tend out to be a bit rubbish at being evil. But actually I think it doesn't matter. I think the world is big enough, right? The world is big enough and there are enough people and there's enough possibility in your local area to do good anyway. The idea is saying I can't possibly improve my street or I can't possibly create an online community to help people who have the same disease as I do or I can't possibly connect with people who have the same interests as I do around the world because there's Coca-Cola. Is silly, right? Of course you can. And Coca-Cola or whoever is your, you know, your favourite evil corporation of the week will continue doing its evil and good for them. But in the meantime, you will have made your good thing. There's this ongoing... So I live in London and we just had this big sports day thing, you may have noticed. And all the way through, up to the beginning of the Olympics there was lots of complaints about the fact that the Olympics was sponsored by all of these evil corporations. And there's the world's biggest McDonald's in the Olympic Park, which is considered to be this terrible, terrible thing. And everybody who watched the Olympics will have had their favourite moment, but I can guarantee you that everybody in this room cried at some point in the past three weeks. That everybody in this room watched something that happened at the Olympics and saw somebody do something fucking amazing. And saw the individual achievements of that person or that team. And the fact that they were in a stadium that was paid for by Dow Chemical, or paid for by McDonald's, or paid for by Adidas or whoever, so what? They still did their good thing. And we can live in a world where the internet might be paid for by an evil telecom firm or it might be run off oil, which is, of course, but that doesn't stop us from doing good stuff in any way. It's just an excuse, I think. Thank you. The other... the other nervous minority felt that there's a danger in saying we're special. We got these Twitter accounts early, so now we're super humans. And I know that for a lot of geeks, it's true that there has been an almost a revenge aspect. And I love that you say, well, okay, I mean, because what you ultimately said, of course, is, yes, well, you won, so now let's be responsible about this. Let's stop the pissing contest. But do you think... I mean, there's also... I mean, I don't even know quite how to say it. I want the next iPhone, too. I mean, I want that as well. And I find it, like, ethically very difficult to combine with my other convictions. And it's very Swedish to say, to be terrified by people pointing out how extraordinary you are. Yes, so this is... You know, this is the yantelaw, right? I mean, this is... Yes, indeed, I've done my reading. Yes. Hey, yes, very happy. This is the yantelaw, right? This is like, oh, you know, you are not special if you think you're special will have you shot. All of that. Well, you know what? Man up. You know? Tough shit, okay? Like, sure, if you were farmers in the middle of small land, right, and you were like, I'm special because my turnip is bigger than yours and you should make me king, then fine, all right? Well, that's obviously bullshit. But the thing is, there is a time and a place where some people have skills and other people don't. And you guys have the skills. So fucking man up about it, right? None of this, like, oh, you know, we're special. What are we supposed to do? We can't possibly take responsibility. We're going to leave it to those people over there who think a computer is something that their secretary has to print out their emails. Like, there comes a moment when you have to pick up the bloody sword, right? You know? What happened to the Vikings? Yeah, we figured out that rape and pillage isn't great, right? So we're still doing that. But the hats were cool, yeah. They were like, people don't want to be. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm with a superhero metaphor here, but you almost brought it on yourself with this message. So you want to be responsible about what you do. So you don't want to... No, I mean, no, of course you're right. I'm being an idiot. Of course, the very reason that we don't all stand up and say, okay, we're going to solve climate right now is out of sheer fear that somebody's going to think we're ridiculous. Okay. Okay, so no pressure. But would you like to ask some questions now? All right, could just... Oh, good luck. So can you... Now, there are hand mic runners. There are mic friends coming, and also it would really help if you were to stand up and wave your hands in the air, because, literally, we can't see anything. All I know is there's some pink... There are pink blobs. And where's... Somebody's getting... Yeah, yeah. Hi. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Yes, I can't see you. My name is Britt Staxson. I'm one of the nervous ones. You're over there? Yes. Oh, hello. Hi. Hello. Hi. I'm a bit sad. Oh. And I'm a bit sad when Johanna sort of summarized my... some of my tweets as being nervous or thinking that we are not very special. I think we all are extremely special that are here. I know we are awesomely fucking fabulously good at what we're doing, but what I also know, and that's when you make scared of shit out of me, is the fact that there are so many other people that are equally as smart and fabulous and everything, and they might not everybody have open Twitter accounts yet, but they are not totally stupid, and I'm getting so scared and actually so... I'm so mad I want to leave because this is not what we have time for now, because you have politicians, you have big companies. Everybody has these tools in their hands, in their pockets, and we have come so much further than feeling that we only in here, and God help us not be the ones that rule the future. Thank you. So, elitism. What do we do about that? I want to give you a hug. Are you an elitist, Ben? Am I an elitist? Yeah. Well, yes, in a good way, right? In the... So, we have all of these big problems, yeah? We have this technology that will help us to be able to solve these big problems. We have, at the moment, a smaller group of people who know how to use these technologies to solve these problems. So, we're all part of that smaller group. We have two jobs, therefore. One is to make that group bigger, and the second is to solve those problems, right? Now, if at the moment, by recognizing that we have certain skills that other people don't have, that makes me elitist, fine. But my job isn't to remain part of the elite. My job is to make myself incredibly boring, right? I want to get to the point where I will walk on stage and tell people about, you know, new technologies or whatever. I want to get to the point where every speaker at this conference is incredibly dull, because everybody in the city knows what they're going to say, because everybody has been doing it for ten years. Now, at the moment, we're not in that position. At the moment, we've only been doing this for a short time. For most people outside on the street, the internet is 500 weekends old, right? It's not that big a thing for them, and they're not that skilled, and they don't have the tools. You're right. And so, for those of us who are that skilled and do have the tools at the moment, one of the jobs is to take them to the people, and it's to undo our elite-ness. So, yes, absolutely. I'm massively elitist. I don't want to be. And so the work is to make sure that I'm not. But you can't do that without first acknowledging that we have things we can teach other people about this. Now, I know that they can teach me about lots of other things, and I'm great, so we'll swap. And that'll be one of the things you hear about in the next couple of days, about the sharing of knowledge. But you have to acknowledge that you have knowledge that is worth sharing with people, and many of you in this room have the capability of doing that sharing. If you genuinely believe that social media, for example, will change the world, and you make TV programs, or you make radio, or you make magazines, or you make websites, then use that to teach them that. I think the story that you told us also about the geeks, and of course that's also generalization. Of course it's a generalization. Of course there are people in this very room who were like handball stars. You can do both, right? But even though, and these industries are so huge, and many parts of the media industry, of course, are hundreds of years old. So of course there are people with all kinds of backgrounds. But in the internet-oriented media communities, there is this narrative that you also reminded us of, of outsider-ness and opposition-ness and of payback time in some senses. But especially of being... Since you can't succeed in the hierarchy, you'd rather stand outside it and amaze people with your awesomeness. So there's a resistance to taking a leadership position, I think, because we many of us work and live in communities where we love flat organizations. So this is the new society that's being created at the moment. I didn't talk about it today, but I will now. This is one of the major social movements that we're starting to see. And in some countries it's further on than others. But I think when we look back in 30 or 40 years' time at today, what we'll see is the transition from hierarchies to networks. You know, if you remember... So I split the world very crudely into people who did most of their intellectual development before 1989 and after 1989. And all of you are doing those sums right now. Nobody in this room. That doesn't count for anybody in this room. But before 1989, the world was bipolar. There was NATO and there was the Warsaw Pact, and we looked over there and they looked at us and we were never going to fight, really, but it was good fun to sort of go... And we could understand them because we could send them Christmas cards and they could send us May Day presents. And it would, you know... We had an address for the bad guy. It was very useful. And there was no internet, and when you left school you would then go to university and you would then go into like a trainee scheme at a bank and you would work your way up through the bank and then at 60 you would retire and they would give you a watch and you would garden for 10 years Very easy hierarchy. And that was the hierarchy that we lived through. And if you were in an industry, there was the hierarchy there. If you were in academia, there was the hierarchy there. No matter what you're doing, there were these hierarchies. And now, over the past 10 years, because of these new technologies, because of the fact that we haven't... None of us have a job that even existed five years ago. Those hierarchies are falling apart. We don't work for one single company. We work for lots. We don't have jobs. We have work. We have projects. We work sideways. We collaborate, all of those things that you'll be hearing about in the next couple of days. And so the hierarchy is dissolving. And that's one of the reasons why politicians and so on are freaking out because they're the head of something which really no longer exists. Except it does because they do have law-making power, for instance. So shouldn't we also, as a sort of bridge, stop-gap bridging measure, position our knowledge, if not ourselves, in positions of actual real-world power? Yes, absolutely. And that's the whole point. It will be very good if everybody who left here adopted their own local politician. I mean, you just went to their house, knocked on the door, took some cinnamon buns, and just sat down and said, right, let me tell you about the 21st century. And maybe explain some stuff. And if it's not a politician, then maybe your boss, or the board of your company, it would have saved an awful lot of time over the past 10 or so years of most of the debates that we've had in this field. Copyright could have been solved 10 years ago if only the people in charge of that have been taken aside by people who speak to them in normal, non-technical language and explained to them that digital rights management is bullshit, right? If you'd actually done that, we could have gotten rid of 10 years of debate, and it's the same thing for cybersecurity, it's the same thing for internet censorship, it's the same thing for all of these big social questions around digital technologies. It requires professional communicators like these people to take those politicians and those business leaders and so on, sit them down, give them coffee, give them cannibal and say, like, you know... Translations and stuff. Translations stuff, yeah. Yeah. We have a question over there. There's a waving... Man, this was the microphone. Waving so hard. There's a microphone coming around there. Yes. No, yes. Otherwise it's going to be a rupture. Good morning. Thank you. Thanks, Ben, very inspiring. My name is Pastor Embeck. I'm the editor of Netopia, which is like a web magazine on digital society. And my question is, can everybody win? What I hear from your talk is that the only problem is that old farts don't get it, and if they would just jump on the bandwagon and embrace the digital revolution, all the problems of the world would be fixed. Aren't there no actual conflicts? Aren't there no real conflicts, producers? Isn't there a problem with North versus South or Center versus Periphery or the different industries fighting for money and all that stuff? Can everybody really win? Maybe not. But we can have a go, you know? I think this is very similar to the first question about should we even bother because the corporations are evil. Will we ever get to a world? Will we ever live in Star Trek where, you know, everybody's the same and brilliantly skilled and there aren't any pockets in our clothes? Will we ever do that? I don't know. Probably not, no. But there's a lot of space between here and there. There's a lot of stuff that we can fix between here and there. And we can do an awful lot of that with the technologies and the ideas and the concepts that you're going to hear about in the next couple of days. We can make the world a much better place. Can we make it perfect? Probably not. No. But can we get it somewhere closer than where we are today? Absolutely. And it's not getting people to jump on the bandwagon. I'm not saying, like, oh my God, if everybody had a Twitter account, because that would be terrible. I mean, it would just be awful. Subscribe to my mother's Twitter account. But if everybody understood how to use these modern tools, how to become part of their own online communities, how to share, how to learn, how to find facts, how to do all of the things which for most people in this room are perfectly natural, but for most people outside are not, if we have that capability in everybody's hands, then we can have a discussion about where are we going as a humanity. And we can use these fundamental ways that the digital networks change the way we relate to each other to make a much better world. Will getting everybody on Facebook create Paradise on Earth? No, not at all. Will getting everybody to know how to use the internet create the possibility for massive potential social change? Yes. Let's do a few more questions. We have five minutes left. Everybody puts up their hand. Hi, my name is Susan Cosell, and I'm at the Medea Collaborative Media Initiative at Malmo University, just over there. Thank you, Ben, for making me angry and inspired at the same time. What better way to begin a conference? My question relates to the theme that's been discussed really well by Johanna and others, but it's a bit more specific, which is that in your view, can the agenda for social justice, social transformation, can it be separated from Moore's Law? Because Moore's Law, of course, has been adopted by the consumerist capitalist economy, which wants us to buy more and more. So specifically, can we do what you have in mind that we might be able to do without being reliant on this? And a little side question relates to Tech City and the Houses of Parliament, which is that I'm wondering if the women also have mustaches, or if perhaps there aren't. And while Ben ponders this, let's get the microphone over there. Let's get the microphone up there. Up there, lady over there. Yes, you keep waving until you get a microphone. You answer the question. Do the women have mustaches only when they borrow mine? That's filthier than it meant to be. Can we... Let's pretend that didn't happen. Everybody goes into the secret time machine for like 15 seconds and then we start the question, the answer again. Can we separate social change from Moore's Law? No, but that's fine. What you have to understand about... I mean, a Moore's Law isn't a physical law. It's not like the law of gravity or something where, you know, it's inevitable that technology will double in power every 12 to 18 months for the same cost. It's not a physical thing. It's just a rule of thumb that has happened to be true and seems to be continually to be true. And it's because you use the older computer to make the faster computer, and then they use that faster computer to design the next one and so on and so on and so on. And that's a new thing. You didn't use a horseshoe to design the next best horseshoe. Technology that feeds on itself is a new thing. I think this is the dirty trick that we're capable of playing, which is using the gifts that the capitalist super-consumptive, you know, ideology that has given us, or that using the gifts that the industrial military complex has given us, to change society in the future. I think the idea of we shouldn't use these great things as they were once sold to us by people who wanted to make a profit, is really throwing the baby out with a bathwater. You know, it's a stupid sacrifice given the amazing possibilities that we can take from these technologies. And once we've used those technologies to teach people or to show people other alternative ideologies or other alternative ways of living their lives, then maybe the way that society... Well, hopefully the way that society works in general will change and the endless desire to have the latest and fastest and best laptop or whatever will die away. Maybe, I don't know. But the idea of... If you say they're not compatible, that sort of implies that you're not going to use those new technologies for good. And I think that would just be a massive waste. Last question over there. Hi, I'm Annika Gustavson, and my job didn't even exist six months ago. I am the Nordic Countries First Trans-Media Commissioner, which has a lot about the backwardness up here, but anyway, I'm the first. You've secured it really well in making people feel good about themselves in this room, and I think you've made 900 new friends, so I'm going to make 900 enemies right now. I think we're really stupid. I think we're sitting in a sandbox scratching each other back, feeling good about each other. Meanwhile, I grew up on a farm. I'm a farm girl. I think we're losing crucial knowledge. So my question to you, do you think we're even going to be around 50 years from now? I think we're fucked. I will add to that challenge by giving you 60 seconds to answer this question. Okay. Okay. Thanks. That's actually a really good point. And I don't think you're going to make any enemies at all. The reason is that, yeah, we would be entirely wrong if we all went away and went, you know, I work in the internet, and therefore I'm fine, and I will eat floppy disks for the rest of my life. I will subsist. My body gets its nutrition from the number of retweets I get. You know? Of course not. Of course not. We live in a massively interconnected world. Everybody in this planet is massively interconnected to everybody else. And everybody is going to have the same problems. And we all face the same challenges as farmers in Sweden or Masai warriors in Africa, or business people in Korea, or, you know, writers in London. Whoever it is, whoever you are, we're all facing the same major macro problems. The economic system is basically broken. The climate is basically broken. The planet wants to kill us. It's all bad. But we have the possibility to use these new tools that we have to make a dent in those problems, if not solve them completely. And so, yes, absolutely. 900 of us for the next two days are going to be sat in this room, scratching each other's backs, saying, aren't we terribly clever? Look at that person on the stage being very clever. I'm learning clever things. It's only I know, and I'm going to be really clever about it, and woo, and aren't we hipsters? That's true. And that's good. Because for the next two days, that's who you are. You are the 900 people who are getting the secret knowledge. And scratch each other's backs. Go for it. Because on Friday, you've got to go home. And you've got to take that knowledge and you've got to use it. Because the future, weirdly enough, is where we're going to be living for the rest of our lives. So sure, scratch away. Because it's going to get really, really itchy come the weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, Ben Hammersley. Thank you.