 Sure, I am a professor of philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. My name is Vincent Hendricks. Thank you all for having me here today see Now I understand that that I might not look like a philosophy professor and some of you might have thought who invited a baseball player or a bouncer or a Convict in combat fatigues and I'll return to that in a second I'll take you back to attention for a second. I'll take you to the back to What it is we do and why it is important? See one of my sons not too long ago. Oops Right there So one of my sons told asked me in 2008. He asked me I was winning a big award and he asked me Listen, I gotta ask you a question pop. What is it? What what? What is it really that you do? Which in and by itself of course is a pretty good question But the follow-up is even better. He goes and why is it important? And that's the kind of question I've been trying to answer ever since Why is it important what we do and Before I get to exactly why it's important What it is that we do and what it is that you do in the restaurant business besides serving good food nominates Let's go back for a while Actually, many of you today or yesterday went through Copenhagen Airport. I've been there too and For years. I was always stopped in the airport And they were looking through my luggage in the customs and they couldn't find no dope and no guns And then the end of it they were go so what it is it really that you do and I would tell them Well, look, I'm a professor of philosophy at the University of Copenhagen and the custom officers would go Sure you are and if you're a professor of philosophy that would make me Napoleon Ponabart and For years that really bothered me until I realized That what seems to be our greatest downfall might actually be our greatest asset The interesting thing is not to get people what they expect The ambitious thing is to give them what they expect and then a little of what they don't expect And another thing about Copenhagen Airport. I Don't know if you know this but for years the primary reason for private jets to land and Copenhagen Airport was Noma I'll let you tell you one thing What we operate on on a daily basis is my narratives Okay Because narratives of what we use to navigate in this world And if I get to and if I get the piece of information that the primary reason why people get To Copenhagen is to visit Noma and private jets my narrative will immediately be it's for the posh It's for the preppy is for the elite It is it is excluding rather than including and that I will have nothing of But narratives don't have to be true to catch attention They could be very wrong and it is wrong that no more is just for the prep and the posh But narratives are what we use to navigate in this world. So if you have to worry about not what we think of ourselves What was others think about us? And if you look at the restaurant business from that perspective things might change a little bit so if you look at What is valuable besides children? Then in the information age what is valuable is not money It's not immediately what you could talk about as there's something wrong with my slides Okay What is not immediately valuable the information age is not money or oil or micro chips and whatnot back in 1971 and I was one years old at that time Herbert Simon who was Nobel Prize laureate in economics said prophetically about the information age to come he said in an information-rich world You're gonna find a scarcity of something else a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes But what in friend but in what information consumes is rather obvious It consumes the attention of its recipients and that will tell you that the number one asset in the information age is really attention and Attention is something that is being allocated or caught based on information and the narratives that goes along with these things So Attention is the primary asset. That's what everybody is fighting for Because look if it was only about the money What are you doing in the restaurant business if I was only about making money? I would be making these guys Landmines they're great They stack easily they can put transport all over the world at relatively low cost and it's great about the customers because they don't ever complain They're either dead or they don't care And if I was all about the money, I would top it up with something else You realize that 10% of all bandwidth online is allocated to one and one topic only which topic porn porn takes 10% of all traffic online So I would combine landmines with porn because in comparison Political debate and dispute online Only reserves zero point zero one percent of all traffic And all do respect for the restaurant business. You're not gonna get 10% immediately. I'll tell you that much for sure But you realize of course that good business is not the same as right business So how do we get to right business? What is right business? What is right business when you are in the restaurant business? I Certainly appreciate a good meal, but it can't carry on forever So if you don't have ambition that goes beyond cooking good food I'll take a hot dog stand if I'm really hungry and I can't afford no money daily basis. I'm out So what is it that we do and why is it important in the restaurant business? Well, let's look at it and see what's there But before we get to that there is a certain similarity between landmines and some food you can get look at the colors at least So where to go to for a good idea? Why do this we do and why it is important? Well, I urge you to look at say world economic forum tense challenges to the world Look at him food security inclusive growth Employment climate change global finance the internet gender equality global trade long-term investment in health care That's by the world economic forum Of course the UN has 17 goals that we have to fulfill None of those goals can be satisfied or met if we do it on an individual basis We have to do it collectively so even the restaurant business if you want to make more than money You have to feed into an agenda that is bigger than yourselves You got to be ambitious on a goal that goes beyond serving good food and having a good food experience and you can eat the cake and have it There are many ways in which you could feed into that look at this food security that goes for you. I could come to think of Gender equality. I think you might have an issue there and since you have such a bullhorn to the world Since jets are landing in the Copenhagen Airport to get to No more that means that there's something called food tourism and It's growing So your bullhorn is growing accordingly and since the bullhorn is growing accordingly You have a civil responsibility to do more than just serve food You have to feed into a gender that's important to this world because I'll tell you one thing I Have children and I cannot bear to be the first generation in humankind To leave a world which is worse off than the one I received from my parents and you might say all Vincent That's dystopia and I'm saying to you look we got Donald Trump And if you're not careful, we're gonna get Kanye West for president and Kim Kardashian for secretary of state And then they have to worry about these issues Run for cover So what I'm trying to say is that they are a lot of agendas You can actually feed into while you're serving the good food and the interesting thing about that is Even if it sounds pretty boring and unsexy, you can make it accordingly. So take two things that might siren extremely boring Water slides are fun the first couple of times and then you get cold and you want to get out of the water So that's not too interesting and also The ballistic trajectory of projectiles unless you're a physicist you're gonna find that very uninteresting But of course, you can't combine them in ways where you go that what I hadn't seen before and that is sort of interesting So this this video here has a viral life online and I can sort of understand why I look at this That is pretty funny and The good thing about a laugh is it's a way into people's consciousness And you know what that's the same with attention attention is a way into our consciousness So give people a laugh while you're saying something important is probably the best way to get them to get a new idea. I Found this quote by James Dean. There's always this idea that you should show him don't tell But he's actually a little more nuanced than that He says reality doesn't have any preconceived ideas. It's sort of as Robert De Niro says in casino. It is what it is You've got to learn how to smoke the cigarette not act smoking the cigarette You need to drink the drink not act drinking to drink You've got to do things not show them and the reason why you probably put him in that order is before you can show you have to do and Doing is the number one vehicle for change So when I heard the introduction that was given here is we are here to celebrate each other Good, I think you deserve it But I think you also have to celebrate something else What you do have to celebrate is also the fact that you have been working so hard and And you are spending so much of your prime effort Into the food and into getting people a good experience with food Now why also why don't you also take the derivative of that in making a change? So let me give you an example. I don't particularly care about Tommy Hill figures suits. I think they're too narrow I like the Godfather type better And I don't particularly care about Christian George's number five probably because my wife doesn't use it So I'd buy neither However, if it was such that after making perfume and on the other hand suits for men if Tommy Hill figure and Christian George joined hand and said besides making these two products. So we at least get people what they expect Let's do thing do something which they do not expect. Let's see if we can be part of Creating peace in the Middle East. I'll buy both and twice on Sunday Two suits and two bottles of perfume every Sunday because that is something that I'd like to buy into And I think it's fair to say that the next generation They are not going to be true to you just because they went there once If you change your profile, they're not going to come again And so what I'm saying with that is the following namely they are buying identity to they're not only stupid consumers like me They buy identity why they're at it They buy group belonging they buy ideology in the play They use the products and we have to figure in and figure out the way in which What sort of ideas what sort of ideology the next generation wants to push and while we are at it We have to help them get there Because if we were the ones who were going to leave a world worth of the ones we got from our parents Just look at world economic forum sentence challenges. You'll see we do have an issue here And there are many issues you can feed into um, I Know I know I know I've heard that there is an issue in the restaurant business about the hashtag me too It doesn't take much to create a problem or be part of it But it's sure as hell takes a long time to get out of it and to change it Now since the gender inequality in the restaurant business is so pronounced as it is Then one obvious way to actually feed into a grander agenda would be to say look We are gonna do something proactively About leveling out the differences between the agendas and while we are doing that We are also gonna get a different kind of alignment an Alignment to the effect that if the gender equality was more balanced then probably there would be less of this Probably that would be less than me too by the shared dynamics of the ways things would work in the kitchen So do me a favor Think about that's just one and If you decide to make your kitchen such that it seems as if that they see possess it It seems as if that you are part of the military barracks instead It's not gonna be an incentive to get women to work there It's not gonna happen So what that entails is that if you want to make the change you have to go all the way and Going all the way also means That you can't slip but then again once you don't slip you are part of an agenda That's much bigger than yourself, and then you are beyond the landmines and the porn and So I urge you to think about this namely whenever you walk into the kitchen ask yourself What is it that I do and that you can answer and you can answer it at length because it takes you half an hour to Do an omelet so there is no such thing as you don't knowing that part I also know what I do as a teacher at the University of Copenhagen But sometimes I forget what the greater picture is I'm worried about whether they know the existential quantifier or the universal quantifier This junction rule for elimination. What not? But sometimes I tend to forget what what am I doing? What I'm really doing is trying to be a little bit of a piece in a big mosaic that has to go to the end of Getting the next generation prep to take over Everything from the State Department to who works at the supermarket now once I think about it from that perspective It makes it particularly more meaningful than it was before And since you have a bullhorn that is so much bigger than mine I urge you when you walk into your kitchen going we're gonna have full plates tonight Every table single table is gonna be taken What am I serving besides serving them a good food experience and So my message to you tonight is Humbly that if you have a bullhorn this size you have to serve more than a good food experience You have to serve the world You are civil actors now if you have this kind of bullhorn to the world Now of course as I said before that's a big responsibility and tough That's just the way of the world and if you don't start making a change there We're gonna end in a zero-sum game where one wins and one loses or we're gonna end in the prisoners dilemma Which is gonna be sub-optimal for everybody? So we have to pool our wealth we have to pool our strengths between academics in one end and food in the other Politicians and scientists and whatnot and I know you even have food laboratories. So You are already in the game and my urge is just Take this responsibility with you to the kitchen make a difference to this world in such a way that we actually Have a chance of getting this place to be a better place to be and then we know exactly what it is that we do and Why it is important. I think I have to follow for us gum from that and saying that's all I have to say about that Thank you