The surprising need for strangeness
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0:01 - 0:04"Don't talk to strangers."
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0:04 - 0:06You have heard that phrase uttered
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0:06 - 0:11by your friends, family, schools and the media for decades.
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0:11 - 0:13It's a norm. It's a social norm.
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0:13 - 0:16But it's a special kind of social norm,
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0:16 - 0:18because it's a social norm that wants to tell us
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0:18 - 0:23who we can relate to and who we shouldn't relate to.
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0:23 - 0:25"Don't talk to strangers" says,
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0:25 - 0:29"Stay from anyone who's not familiar to you.
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0:29 - 0:32Stick with the people you know.
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0:32 - 0:35Stick with people like you."
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0:35 - 0:37How appealing is that?
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0:37 - 0:40It's not really what we do, is it, when we're at our best?
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0:40 - 0:43When we're at our best, we reach out to people
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0:43 - 0:45who are not like us,
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0:45 - 0:48because when we do that, we learn from people
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0:48 - 0:50who are not like us.
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0:50 - 0:54My phrase for this value of being with "not like us"
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0:54 - 0:56is "strangeness,"
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0:56 - 1:00and my point is that in today's digitally intensive world,
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1:00 - 1:03strangers are quite frankly not the point.
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1:03 - 1:05The point that we should be worried about is,
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1:05 - 1:08how much strangeness are we getting?
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1:08 - 1:11Why strangeness? Because our social relations
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1:11 - 1:14are increasingly mediated by data,
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1:14 - 1:19and data turns our social relations into digital relations,
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1:19 - 1:21and that means that our digital relations
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1:21 - 1:25now depend extraordinarily on technology
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1:25 - 1:28to bring to them a sense of robustness,
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1:28 - 1:29a sense of discovery,
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1:29 - 1:33a sense of surprise and unpredictability.
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1:33 - 1:34Why not strangers?
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1:34 - 1:37Because strangers are part of a world
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1:37 - 1:39of really rigid boundaries.
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1:39 - 1:42They belong to a world of people I know
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1:42 - 1:44versus people I don't know,
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1:44 - 1:47and in the context of my digital relations,
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1:47 - 1:51I'm already doing things with people I don't know.
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1:51 - 1:54The question isn't whether or not I know you.
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1:54 - 1:57The question is, what can I do with you?
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1:57 - 1:59What can I learn with you?
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1:59 - 2:03What can we do together that benefits us both?
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2:03 - 2:06I spend a lot of time thinking about
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2:06 - 2:09how the social landscape is changing,
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2:09 - 2:11how new technologies create new constraints
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2:11 - 2:14and new opportunities for people.
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2:14 - 2:17The most important changes facing us today
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2:17 - 2:19have to do with data and what data is doing
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2:19 - 2:21to shape the kinds of digital relations
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2:21 - 2:24that will be possible for us in the future.
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2:24 - 2:26The economies of the future depend on that.
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2:26 - 2:29Our social lives in the future depend on that.
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2:29 - 2:32The threat to worry about isn't strangers.
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2:32 - 2:34The threat to worry about is whether or not
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2:34 - 2:37we're getting our fair share of strangeness.
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2:37 - 2:40Now, 20th-century psychologists and sociologists
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2:40 - 2:42were thinking about strangers,
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2:42 - 2:45but they weren't thinking so dynamically about human relations,
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2:45 - 2:46and they were thinking about strangers
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2:46 - 2:49in the context of influencing practices.
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2:49 - 2:52Stanley Milgram from the '60s and '70s,
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2:52 - 2:54the creator of the small-world experiments,
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2:54 - 2:57which became later popularized as six degrees of separation,
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2:57 - 3:00made the point that any two arbitrarily selected people
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3:00 - 3:04were likely connected from between five to seven intermediary steps.
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3:04 - 3:07His point was that strangers are out there.
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3:07 - 3:09We can reach them. There are paths
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3:09 - 3:11that enable us to reach them.
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3:11 - 3:15Mark Granovetter, Stanford sociologist, in 1973
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3:15 - 3:18in his seminal essay "The Strength of Weak Ties,"
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3:18 - 3:21made the point that these weak ties
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3:21 - 3:23that are a part of our networks, these strangers,
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3:23 - 3:26are actually more effective at diffusing information to us
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3:26 - 3:31than are our strong ties, the people closest to us.
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3:31 - 3:34He makes an additional indictment of our strong ties
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3:34 - 3:37when he says that these people who are so close to us,
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3:37 - 3:39these strong ties in our lives,
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3:39 - 3:42actually have a homogenizing effect on us.
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3:42 - 3:45They produce sameness.
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3:45 - 3:48My colleagues and I at Intel have spent the last few years
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3:48 - 3:50looking at the ways in which digital platforms
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3:50 - 3:52are reshaping our everyday lives,
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3:52 - 3:55what kinds of new routines are possible.
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3:55 - 3:56We've been looking specifically at the kinds
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3:56 - 3:59of digital platforms that have enabled us
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3:59 - 4:02to take our possessions, those things that used to be
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4:02 - 4:05very restricted to us and to our friends in our houses,
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4:05 - 4:09and to make them available to people we don't know.
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4:09 - 4:12Whether it's our clothes, whether it's our cars,
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4:12 - 4:14whether it's our bikes, whether it's our books or music,
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4:14 - 4:17we are able to take our possessions now
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4:17 - 4:21and make them available to people we've never met.
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4:21 - 4:24And we concluded a very important insight,
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4:24 - 4:25which was that as people's relationships
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4:25 - 4:28to the things in their lives change,
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4:28 - 4:31so do their relations with other people.
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4:31 - 4:33And yet recommendation system
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4:33 - 4:37after recommendation system continues to miss the boat.
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4:37 - 4:40It continues to try to predict what I need
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4:40 - 4:43based on some past characterization of who I am,
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4:43 - 4:45of what I've already done.
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4:45 - 4:48Security technology after security technology
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4:48 - 4:50continues to design data protection
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4:50 - 4:52in terms of threats and attacks,
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4:52 - 4:56keeping me locked into really rigid kinds of relations.
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4:56 - 4:58Categories like "friends" and "family"
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4:58 - 5:01and "contacts" and "colleagues"
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5:01 - 5:05don't tell me anything about my actual relations.
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5:05 - 5:07A more effective way to think about my relations
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5:07 - 5:09might be in terms of closeness and distance,
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5:09 - 5:13where at any given point in time, with any single person,
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5:13 - 5:17I am both close and distant from that individual,
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5:17 - 5:21all as a function of what I need to do right now.
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5:21 - 5:24People aren't close or distant.
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5:24 - 5:27People are always a combination of the two,
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5:27 - 5:31and that combination is constantly changing.
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5:31 - 5:33What if technologies could intervene
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5:33 - 5:37to disrupt the balance of certain kinds of relationships?
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5:37 - 5:39What if technologies could intervene
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5:39 - 5:43to help me find the person that I need right now?
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5:43 - 5:46Strangeness is that calibration
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5:46 - 5:48of closeness and distance
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5:48 - 5:52that enables me to find the people that I need right now,
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5:52 - 5:55that enables me to find the sources of intimacy,
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5:55 - 6:00of discovery, and of inspiration that I need right now.
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6:00 - 6:02Strangeness is not about meeting strangers.
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6:02 - 6:04It simply makes the point that we need
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6:04 - 6:07to disrupt our zones of familiarity.
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6:07 - 6:11So jogging those zones of familiarity is one way to think about strangeness,
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6:11 - 6:14and it's a problem faced not just by individuals today,
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6:14 - 6:16but also by organizations,
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6:16 - 6:21organizations that are trying to embrace massively new opportunities.
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6:21 - 6:23Whether you're a political party
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6:23 - 6:26insisting to your detriment on a very rigid notion
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6:26 - 6:28of who belongs and who does not,
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6:28 - 6:29whether you're the government
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6:29 - 6:32protecting social institutions like marriage
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6:32 - 6:36and restricting access of those institutions to the few,
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6:36 - 6:38whether you're a teenager in her bedroom
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6:38 - 6:42who's trying to jostle her relations with her parents,
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6:42 - 6:45strangeness is a way to think about how we pave the way
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6:45 - 6:47to new kinds of relations.
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6:47 - 6:51We have to change the norms.
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6:51 - 6:54We have to change the norms in order to enable
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6:54 - 6:56new kinds of technologies
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6:56 - 6:58as a basis for new kinds of businesses.
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6:58 - 7:02What interesting questions lie ahead for us
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7:02 - 7:05in this world of no strangers?
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7:05 - 7:09How might we think differently about our relations with people?
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7:09 - 7:12How might we think differently about our relations
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7:12 - 7:14with distributed groups of people?
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7:14 - 7:18How might we think differently about our relations with technologies,
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7:18 - 7:21things that effectively become social participants
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7:21 - 7:23in their own right?
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7:23 - 7:27The range of digital relations is extraordinary.
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7:27 - 7:32In the context of this broad range of digital relations,
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7:32 - 7:35safely seeking strangeness might very well be
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7:35 - 7:37a new basis for that innovation.
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7:37 - 7:38Thank you.
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7:38 - 7:43(Applause)
- Title:
- The surprising need for strangeness
- Speaker:
- Maria Bezaitis
- Description:
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In our digital world, social relations have become mediated by data. Without even realizing it, we’re barricading ourselves against strangeness -- people and ideas that don't fit the patterns of who we already know, what we already like and where we’ve already been. A call for technology to deliver us to what and who we need, even if it’s unfamiliar. (Filmed at TED@Intel.)
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 08:00
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Why we need strangeness | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Why we need strangeness | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Why we need strangeness | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Why we need strangeness | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Why we need strangeness | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Why we need strangeness | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |