 Thank you so much. In the interest of iteration, I'll tweak this talk a little, actually, on the basis of some of the stuff we've heard. And there are a couple of things in particular that, thanks so much, there are a couple of things in particular that kind of stood out to me this morning. The first was the description about the benefit of the city in terms of economies of scale. And we heard some great parts that there was culture, there was all of this good stuff. But to me, one of the biggest advantages in economies of scale, or maybe more appropriately, economies of density, is communication and creativity. So we saw a spike in the number of patents after the Industrial Revolution, as people came together first in coffee shops in the 1800s. The second, and I'd actually love to talk a bit about that and how technology's changing that. And secondly, the other thing was something that Saskia said this morning, which I fell in love with, the idea that cities talk back to us. And the more I've thought about it, the more I think it's citizens that talk back to us. And the city is an embodiment of what the citizens are. So I thought I could share a couple of topical examples of that. The first is one that Ricky introduced me to actually. I was talking with him about desire paths. And this is a perfect visualization of the fact that city planners get it wrong. So we understand Brasilia 1950s, topical given today's sad news. But you see here the desire paths of pedestrians that have rejected the idea that they use a city with no pavements and everyone will have a car in the future. Now this is interesting to me for two reasons. The first is these citizens must be borderline lunatics. They're walking across six lanes of traffic in half of these, sometimes many more. But they clearly have a real need to get fulfilled. But the second thing is the city planners haven't adapted on this emergent behavior at all. They've done nothing. They haven't built paths to accommodate it. There's actually one very close to where I live here in London, which I think is a better example. So here I think what's happened is the city planners said we had to walk in a giant zigzag. We said no, and at least they learn. They've laid gravel across. So to me, this is an interesting idea that perhaps we should be looking for these desire paths and maybe technology will make it easier to spot them. The next example I just wanted to share was another way that cities talk back to us. And this is something that I think Kent has already addressed, the idea that maybe the American dream has changed. So when I drive around London, this is the city talking back to me. The explosion of storage companies are a perfect sort of echo that we've all got enough stuff. We're all looking for something quite different. And if you look at this change, this change in cities, this reflection of our change in behaviors, I think it can become quite scary. The technological change we talked about can become quite scary, and that's why we have to anchor ourselves in something we know is true. And I would cite Maslow's hierarchy, which many of you know. So in the 40s, he presented this paper, and I think he's still right today. Human needs aren't changing, but technology is changing the way we fulfill them. Facebook addresses basic human needs, as does Twitter, all of these successful sites. CarterGo addresses basic human needs. And so if we start through the eyes of the citizen, it gives us an opportunity to perhaps predict what's likely in the future. And I think there's a couple of examples of that going on at the moment that inspires me. I think actually, citizens basically are generally good. We see Wikipedia as an example of that. People want to contribute. They want to contribute often unpaid. They want to improve their working environment, their own context. And a couple of examples, one that's very passive and one that's very active bring that to life for me. So the very passive one is a project in Boston as well, actually, which many of you, New Urban Center, part of the mayor's office, actually. Great example. So Street Bump is an app that you have on your iPhone and it passively monitors your travel around the city and every time the accelerometer goes bonkers because of a pot hole, it sends a signal centrally. So passively, the mayor's office are gathering data about which parts of the city are broken and this takes no citizen effort. So in this case, technology is enabling us to contribute to the greater good with zero additional work, perhaps a little cost because of the data you could argue, et cetera. But essentially, it runs passively. I think that's important because actually that data exhaust we all emit when brought together can actually sort of inspire us to make a difference, to change behavior, to design a new environment. The next example I'd like to share actually is the other reason I think this communication collaboration is important and that's, you know, some people call it the collaborative action dilemma or paradox and the short idea, in fact, it's probably best brought to life by Rosa Parks 57 years ago who went on the bus. She wanted to make a stand against racism and she refused to move. If she could have got everyone locally to act at once, there would have been no risk to her. The problem when mobilizing these systems is it's really tough to predict if everyone will behave the same way. You have a collective action dilemma. You don't wanna be the only person. You don't wanna be the Rosa that's actually persecuted as a result of your solitary behavior. And I think one of the wonderful things about technology is it's actually enabling us to make that collective action less scary, less intimidating and we've seen that with the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring and it's something that we're learning fast through a platform which is the last example I'll share. We believe heartfelt in the power of collaboration, diversity of input. So we decided to create a platform that enables people to work together through challenges for social good. The platform's called Open IDEO. There's 40,000 people from 160 countries on it and we worked through a design thinking process. So we set a challenge. I think this one's relevant for us today because Steelcase, the furniture company that many of you will know, set a challenge on the platform asking how we might restore vibrancy in cities. The topic that we're all passionate about here. We start that challenge not by just leaping straight into solutions, ideas, but we start with a period of inspiration where we try and drive up collective action. We try and help everyone understand the context. So we set missions for people to share stories that will help us understand what it's like to be a citizen in one of these cities. In this case, Rebecca has actually shared a story of she followed a cow through an Indian city sharing the experience of the cow, which as deity in that specific city was treated particularly well, as you can imagine. In this case, 30 people commented and shared their own thoughts. So we try and get the whole community up to a certain hygiene factor of knowledge before jumping into ideas, which is what we do next. And the community self-forms groups around this. So whereas previously we had to self-form groups in coffee shops, you can self-form groups online now. And you can actually, in forming those groups, you can actually reduce the collective action dilemma because you increase your confidence that you can work together to something good. So in this case, Sarah Fatala contributed a great idea actually about a toolkit to help people in inner city Detroit solve the challenges of redundant space to re-energize those spaces. And it was actually a challenge that was built on repeatedly. There were 329 ideas in this one, but this was one of the winning concepts, which she merged with a series of other contributors to form a project in Lower Eastside, Manhattan to actually bring this idea to life. They recently won a grant as a result of this. But to me, the platform is as good or as bad as the impact it creates. And I suspect overcoming the collective action dilemma is the way that we drive towards impact. We actually have, I just share a final point, we have currently very relevant challenges up there, one sponsored by the Singaporean government, which I think speaks to exactly this stuff, restoring community in these local environments. So just to sum up, I think it's very easy for us to think of technology as changing human needs. It's absolutely not, it's a tool, and it's for us to use it and harness it to meet our existing needs in lower friction ways. Thank you. Thank you. John, we have just seen an incredibly convincing presentation on how technology or technological system can facilitate collaboration, something we all cherish. If you wear your most critical social science hat, is there anything wrong with it? Is there anything that should worry us? Besides that there are lots of logos of private companies. Well, yes, that. Also, of course, cooperation isn't necessarily productive of a fair society, let alone a just society. Cooperation can be, of course, there are all sorts of very non-benign uses of cooperating, corporations between people, all sorts of illegalities. In fact, some people say that some of these networking is particularly significant for issues, obviously, we've been much in the press recently of sort of tax questions, also of crime and the kind of networks, illegal or semi-legal networks. So there's something about the content of cooperation, which is a significant issue. But also, of course, we need to think about the kind, to what, well, we haven't actually, of course, talked about the environmental cost of computing and the huge data factories, but also the costs of e-waste, which is also a very interesting and significant question. So we're worried about other kinds of waste, food waste, we're worried about the cost of various kinds of transportation waste, but e-waste is something we haven't and the ways in which it gets offshoreed and deposited elsewhere. So there are some sort of other sides to the sorts of things which I'm sure you're well aware of. So to be particularly collaborative from now on, I'd like the light to be turned on and I'd really like everyone to be invited to comment and use the last eight minutes for observations, comments and questions. We'll start here and I'll slowly move around. One, two, three. These are the first three in this block, please. Hi, Joanna Abley from Land Aid. I'm really curious about whether some of these changes bring redundancy into bits of our cities and whether we're actually the built form can move quick enough. The office block as we know it, is it going to be redundant and how fast we have to move to retrofit and do something quite different. Kent, let's keep it very brief, the answers, but then also the questions, please. Well, I think that what we are trying to research is agility. I think that's the key, providing solutions that allow people to experience a lot of different things, to move to where the jobs are, to change their apartment when their kids go off to school or they fall and break a hip. It's sort of dynamic transformation and life transformation, accommodation, and I think you can take that up to the scale of the cities. Some of the most productive buildings are the old mill buildings here in London because they're big open space with big windows, so that's an example of something that can transform. Next question. My name is Matias and in the beginning of the panel you said there would be a more speculation about the future, what eventually happened. Because one thing I find particularly interesting is sort of this adaptive city planning, using all this data or what you said Tom with these kind of paths of desire. Do you see this kind of adaptive city planning coming in the future, that cities will really change, be like liquid cities according to how we as citizens use them or is that just a science fiction wet dream or something? I'll take these questions now in blocks and we'll move on to Saskia, please if we could have the microphone here. So you said the city talks back, but really it is the citizens. But don't you think that it is people in particular spaces that can contribute to the effort, so it makes a difference if you're in a city, then in a certain kind of space and if you are not in a city. I completely agree, but I think wherever we are, whenever we are, we're a function of our context. So if I go back to our basic human needs, I think they're unchanged, and we take design paths through our everyday lives, everything we do is a desire path towards our goal. The best environments in city, you look at tech city at the moment, we see these emergent behaviors, these emergent needs, and technology almost gives us a API, like a programming interface into the city, so that those that create some infrastructure can then shape it around us. I think the big question I ask, and I think it dovetails these two questions, is when technology is accelerating at the rate of Moore's law and our behavior is slightly slower, our challenge is technological infrastructure changes way slower again, so how do we tackle, how do we deal with that sort of widening gap, and that's why I was so interested to hear Kent's work. Okay, so the next round over there. Yes. Yes, please, go ahead. Carl Cedric, City of Stockholm. I would like to elaborate a bit of what John Erie said about, because I think it's absolutely crucial. I have an experience at conferences like this, when you talk about new technology and the digital world, everybody is, everything is fantastic, everybody's flabbergasted, there are no problems, the world is being shaped, but we all know, and as Tom always said on home, that remember we're talking about the technology, we're not talking about the behavior of people, people are about the same as they were during the Roman Empire. So I would like to say that, and I will just point, I have had a thought lately with Facebook and Twitter and everything and all the, some scandals around that, what would have happened if Stalin and Hitler had Facebook and Twitter? I think we would have been living in a completely other society. So who is going to monitor? My question is, who is going to monitor that the technology is not used for evil purposes and that it's concentrated on what we want, that it being used to make life for people better? And I'm a bit surprised that Facebook owns, a private company owns all the information, which is very sensible in many cases, but we put on Facebook that that is owned by Facebook and not by ourselves as member of Facebook. I think there is something for the politician and the legislators to tackle in the future. Thank you. Let's collect a few more questions, please. Yes, Sophie, please. And just a brief question because I share your view, so it's very, very exciting to hear you all, but I am very concerned about inequalities. It's very obvious that everyone will be able to reach these new technologies and that there will be a lot of frustrations for those who cannot be into this global world and they are in cities, so what do you do about it? I've been very biased to this block. Is there anyone in the back? Yes, very much in the back, please. Could you bring the microphone? Raise your arm because we can't see you otherwise. Thank you. There's been so much enthusiasm for cities, but no addressing the sort of anti-urban attitudes of much of our populations. Thank you. So these were three very clear questions. Let's just see. Tom, you desperately want to respond. Come on. Which one? They're all fantastic. You choose. So I'm interested in the first question, I really am. Again, and it's actually an argument that we heard and John made rightly that you can always point to technology and say that sites the evil examples, the extreme cases, et cetera. I think that's true with anything that we've ever had in human history. It's always gonna be true. It's a basic, humans use it as required, it's a tool. In the case of the data and Facebook, I genuinely think that open business in the future will enable transactions around our personal data and the companies that do well out of it will be offering us a choice, a transaction where we feel comfortable with the trade-off. So every time you enter a search query in Google, you're making Google cleverer. You feel that marginal unit of effort, you get enough back in return. The challenge arises when companies start using the data in ways that we don't envisage. And I think that's the pressure that Facebook's feeling at the moment. We've seen some interesting examples about companies in the States targeting new mums because of what they bought when their families didn't even know that they were pregnant. Just extraordinary examples of this. So I hope that, I don't think we're gonna ever have an international regulatory body for the internet. However, I mean, there's some argument we may, but I do believe that actually through this idea that we can form collections, we can group together, I do believe we can exert enough pressure on particularly private companies, but to a lesser extent, governments so that they start to make all of this more transparent. Thank you. So, Sophie, the question you raised, we'll get back to in the next session as well. So there are three more, and Farke, I'll take you then, but let's, or is it directly? It's a direct response, so it will be quick. I just wanted to say that there are a lot of efforts in that area to have something like a personal data account pretty much like we would have a personal bank account where we would have much more control over our data and how we share it and how people make money off it. So that's just something interesting to keep in mind. And another very quick one is that, for example, in terms of other bank accounts, namely mobile banking, for example, Africa is miles ahead of us, so they do people that never had bank accounts in their lives now do most of their banking online. So I think we have to kind of get away from the idea that we are always leading with all these technologies. We are like 10, 15 years behind with mobile banking, for example. Okay, so three more from the audience. Be aware that we're all waiting for coffee, so keep it as brief as possible. Yes? Over there, please. And Jones, I can tell, these are great ideas, but the point is that in cities, there's so much grounded capital, and the interface between good idea and action is money. So I just wonder whether anybody has an idea about how the funders in this environment, where there's not much money around, can be persuaded to take up some of these fantastic ideas that change this grounded capital idea of cities as they are. No one else over there? Nope, then we have the last question, please. My question was just taken, but I'll, in any case, say to Tom, who I generally agree with, it's Hanif Khan, I'm a fellow technologist, agree with everything he says, but going back to what Diane did this morning, it gave me a real doubt about my future in terms of technology, because we think about it too much. The point is, a fear of collectivism. If it was for X Factor, we wouldn't have a Bob Marley, or the concern I have is that we technologists are creating a collective lesser average in the city all of the time. Okay, thank you. So we have Kent. Well, I'd like to go back to the data issue. Because there is even more than personal data accounts, which will happen, I think there's a movement towards data bill of rights, and it equates data and money, and you have contract law, this is the proposal, there was a lot of talk about this at Davos last year, you would have contract law and technical safeguards equivalent to the whole Swift code transaction protocols for wiring money, and you'll be able to establish how people can use their data and who benefits from it. And there's a lot of complexity, but I think it will happen mostly because the companies need that in order to make money and to reduce liability. Yeah, I just wanted to pick up the point about some dire futures, and one of the problems about the sorts of systems that we've been discussing is that they tend to get set up, and the initial conditions are very influential, and then they get set upon a path. So although we might wanna say, well, you know, governments or policy makers or whatever, ought to start thinking about this and dealing with it, it may be too late. And so the question of trajectory is very significant. It also means that we need to do a lot more futurology and futures, which are not extrapolations from present trends, but which kind of consider the kinds of various sorts of possible futures, and indeed to backcast from some of those futures and to imagine what could or couldn't bring each or some of those futures into being. Great, final. Wrapping up two questions on this side about financing and about the liquid city, which was unjustly overlooked. I'm very skeptical, and I think there's a gap in when we think about the internet of things. There's the whole starting proposition that of course the transistors will get so cheap that we'll put them into everything, which is an acceptable proposition on its face. But when we look at that and we contrast it with automotive technology, there's been a hundred years of developments in the internal combustion engine, but I don't think asphalt got quite the same investment. And asphalt, fortunately, is a very dumb surface. You can lay it down and you don't have to tear it out. And I'm very dubious that if we begin putting sensors into everything, we begin putting chips into everything, does that mean we put cities on the same upgrade path cycle? Does the entire urban fabric become e-waste ultimately? And there's a number of thinking in this. I've spoken to smart city startups that literally see buildings as you would see a server rack at Google and the Googleplex, and when it dies, you rip out the building just like you rip out a dead server in a data center. So I question whether we really want to apply that thinking to it. And then just as a touch briefly on the data question, I mean, right now we're operating many of these startups, including Sonar, the one I showed, of if the service is free, the product is you. Your data is the product being harvested and sold to people otherwise. The first step we need to think about is are we willing to pay to protect our data? And the second step is, is there another way? Is there another smart city? Is there another way where we can have a sort of collectivist purpose that goes beyond the market? And that's almost inconceivable. Thank you. We're coming to the end of this session and I'm not even going to attempt to summarize the massive amount of information we have just had. I'm only going to do two things. First, I'm going to thank our panel. And second, I'm going to invite you for coffee next door. Thank you very much.