Four principles for the open world
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0:01 - 0:04Openness. It's a word that
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0:04 - 0:07denotes opportunity and possibilities.
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0:07 - 0:09Open-ended, open hearth,
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0:09 - 0:12open source, open door policy,
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0:12 - 0:16open bar. (Laughter)
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0:16 - 0:18And everywhere the world is opening up,
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0:18 - 0:20and it's a good thing.
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0:20 - 0:22Why is this happening?
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0:22 - 0:25The technology revolution is opening the world.
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0:25 - 0:27Yesterday's Internet was a platform
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0:27 - 0:30for the presentation of content.
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0:30 - 0:33The Internet of today is a platform for computation.
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0:33 - 0:35The Internet is becoming a giant
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0:35 - 0:37global computer, and every time you go on it,
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0:37 - 0:40you upload a video, you do a Google search,
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0:40 - 0:41you remix something,
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0:41 - 0:44you're programming this big global computer
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0:44 - 0:45that we all share.
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0:45 - 0:49Humanity is building a machine,
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0:49 - 0:52and this enables us to collaborate in new ways.
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0:52 - 0:53Collaboration can occur on
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0:53 - 0:56an astronomical basis.
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0:56 - 0:59Now a new generation is opening up the world as well.
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0:59 - 1:02I started studying kids about 15 years ago,
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1:02 - 1:04-- so actually 20 years ago now --
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1:04 - 1:06and I noticed how my own children were
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1:06 - 1:09effortlessly able to use all this sophisticated technology,
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1:09 - 1:10and at first I thought,
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1:10 - 1:13"My children are prodigies!" (Laughter)
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1:13 - 1:15But then I noticed all their friends were like them,
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1:15 - 1:17so that was a bad theory.
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1:17 - 1:20So I've started working with a few hundred kids,
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1:20 - 1:22and I came to the conclusion
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1:22 - 1:24that this is the first generation to come of age
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1:24 - 1:25in the digital age,
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1:25 - 1:27to be bathed in bits.
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1:27 - 1:29I call them the Net Generation.
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1:29 - 1:30I said, these kids are different.
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1:30 - 1:33They have no fear of technology, because it's not there.
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1:33 - 1:35It's like the air.
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1:35 - 1:39It's sort of like, I have no fear of a refrigerator.
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1:39 - 1:41And — (Laughter)
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1:41 - 1:43And there's no more powerful force to change
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1:43 - 1:48every institution than the first generation of digital natives.
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1:48 - 1:49I'm a digital immigrant.
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1:49 - 1:52I had to learn the language.
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1:52 - 1:55The global economic crisis is opening up the world as well.
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1:55 - 1:58Our opaque institutions from the Industrial Age,
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1:58 - 2:01everything from old models of the corporation,
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2:01 - 2:03government, media, Wall Street,
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2:03 - 2:07are in various stages of being stalled or frozen
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2:07 - 2:10or in atrophy or even failing,
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2:10 - 2:13and this is now creating a burning platform in the world.
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2:13 - 2:14I mean, think about Wall Street.
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2:14 - 2:18The core modus operandi of Wall Street almost brought down
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2:18 - 2:20global capitalism.
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2:20 - 2:22Now, you know the idea of a burning platform,
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2:22 - 2:26that you're somewhere where the costs of staying where you are
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2:26 - 2:29become greater than the costs of moving to something different,
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2:29 - 2:32perhaps something radically different.
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2:32 - 2:34And we need to change
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2:34 - 2:36and open up all of our institutions.
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2:36 - 2:38So this technology push,
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2:38 - 2:41a demographic kick from a new generation
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2:41 - 2:43and a demand pull from a new
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2:43 - 2:46economic global environment
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2:46 - 2:48is causing the world to open up.
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2:48 - 2:51Now, I think, in fact,
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2:51 - 2:54we're at a turning point in human history,
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2:54 - 2:56where we can finally now rebuild
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2:56 - 2:58many of the institutions of the Industrial Age
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2:58 - 3:00around a new set of principles.
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3:00 - 3:02Now, what is openness?
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3:02 - 3:04Well, as it turns out, openness
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3:04 - 3:06has a number of different meanings,
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3:06 - 3:09and for each there's a corresponding principle
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3:09 - 3:11for the transformation of
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3:11 - 3:13civilization.
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3:13 - 3:16The first is collaboration.
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3:16 - 3:19Now, this is openness in the sense of the boundaries
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3:19 - 3:22of organizations becoming more porous and fluid
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3:22 - 3:24and open.
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3:24 - 3:25The guy in the picture here,
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3:25 - 3:26I'll tell you his story.
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3:26 - 3:28His name is Rob McEwen.
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3:28 - 3:31I'd like to say, "I have this think tank, we scour the world
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3:31 - 3:32for amazing case studies."
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3:32 - 3:34The reason I know this story
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3:34 - 3:38is because he's my neighbor. (Laughter)
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3:38 - 3:40He actually moved across the street from us,
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3:40 - 3:41and he held a cocktail party
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3:41 - 3:44to meet the neighbors, and he says, "You're Don Tapscott.
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3:44 - 3:45I've read some of your books."
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3:45 - 3:46I said, "Great. What do you do?"
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3:46 - 3:47And he says, "Well I used to be a banker
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3:47 - 3:48and now I'm a gold miner."
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3:48 - 3:51And he tells me this amazing story.
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3:51 - 3:54He takes over this gold mine, and his geologists
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3:54 - 3:55can't tell him where the gold is.
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3:55 - 3:57He gives them more money for geological data,
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3:57 - 3:59they come back, they can't tell
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3:59 - 4:00him where to go into production.
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4:00 - 4:04After a few years, he's so frustrated he's ready
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4:04 - 4:07to give up, but he has an epiphany one day.
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4:07 - 4:10He wonders, "If my geologists don't know where the gold is,
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4:10 - 4:12maybe somebody else does."
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4:12 - 4:14So he does a "radical" thing.
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4:14 - 4:15He takes his geological data,
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4:15 - 4:18he publishes it and he holds a contest on the Internet
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4:18 - 4:20called the Goldcorp Challenge.
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4:20 - 4:23It's basically half a million dollars in prize money
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4:23 - 4:26for anybody who can tell me, do I have any gold,
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4:26 - 4:30and if so, where is it? (Laughter)
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4:30 - 4:32He gets submissions from all around the world.
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4:32 - 4:34They use techniques that he's never heard of,
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4:34 - 4:36and for his half a million dollars in prize money,
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4:36 - 4:41Rob McEwen finds 3.4 billion dollars worth of gold.
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4:41 - 4:42The market value of his company
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4:42 - 4:45goes from 90 million to 10 billion dollars,
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4:45 - 4:47and I can tell you, because he's my neighbor,
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4:47 - 4:51he's a happy camper. (Laughter)
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4:51 - 4:55You know, conventional wisdom says talent is inside, right?
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4:55 - 4:58Your most precious asset goes out the elevator every night.
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4:58 - 5:00He viewed talent differently.
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5:00 - 5:03He wondered, who are their peers?
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5:03 - 5:07He should have fired his geology department, but he didn't.
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5:07 - 5:09You know, some of the best submissions
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5:09 - 5:11didn't come from geologists.
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5:11 - 5:14They came from computer scientists, engineers.
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5:14 - 5:15The winner was a computer graphics company
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5:15 - 5:17that built a three dimensional model of the mine
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5:17 - 5:19where you can helicopter underground
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5:19 - 5:21and see where the gold is.
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5:21 - 5:24He helped us understand that social media's becoming
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5:24 - 5:26social production.
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5:26 - 5:28It's not about hooking up online.
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5:28 - 5:31This is a new means of production in the making.
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5:31 - 5:35And this Ideagora that he created, an open market, agora,
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5:35 - 5:38for uniquely qualified minds,
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5:38 - 5:43was part of a change, a profound change in the deep structure
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5:43 - 5:45and architecture of our organizations,
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5:45 - 5:49and how we sort of orchestrate capability to innovate,
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5:49 - 5:51to create goods and services,
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5:51 - 5:52to engage with the rest of the world,
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5:52 - 5:56in terms of government, how we create public value.
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5:56 - 5:58Openness is about collaboration.
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5:58 - 6:01Now secondly, openness is about transparency.
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6:01 - 6:03This is different. Here, we're talking about the communication
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6:03 - 6:07of pertinent information to stakeholders of organizations:
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6:07 - 6:10employees, customers, business partners, shareholders,
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6:10 - 6:11and so on.
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6:11 - 6:16And everywhere, our institutions are becoming naked.
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6:16 - 6:18People are all bent out of shape about WikiLeaks,
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6:18 - 6:21but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
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6:21 - 6:23You see, people at their fingertips now, everybody,
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6:23 - 6:25not just Julian Assange,
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6:25 - 6:28have these powerful tools for finding out what's going on,
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6:28 - 6:30scrutinizing, informing others,
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6:30 - 6:33and even organizing collective responses.
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6:33 - 6:35Institutions are becoming naked,
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6:35 - 6:37and if you're going to be naked,
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6:37 - 6:40well, there's some corollaries that flow from that.
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6:40 - 6:41I mean, one is,
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6:41 - 6:44fitness is no longer optional. (Laughter)
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6:44 - 6:48You know? Or if you're going to be naked, you'd better get buff.
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6:48 - 6:51Now, by buff I mean, you need to have good value,
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6:51 - 6:53because value is evidenced like never before.
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6:53 - 6:54You say you have good products.
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6:54 - 6:55They'd better be good.
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6:55 - 6:57But you also need to have values.
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6:57 - 7:00You need to have integrity as part of your bones
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7:00 - 7:03and your DNA as an organization,
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7:03 - 7:05because if you don't, you'll be unable to build trust,
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7:05 - 7:09and trust is a sine qua non of this new network world.
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7:09 - 7:12So this is good. It's not bad.
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7:12 - 7:15Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
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7:15 - 7:19And we need a lot of sunlight in this troubled world.
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7:19 - 7:22Now, the third meaning and corresponding principle
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7:22 - 7:24of openness is about sharing.
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7:24 - 7:26Now this is different than transparency.
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7:26 - 7:29Transparency is about the communication of information.
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7:29 - 7:33Sharing is about giving up assets, intellectual property.
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7:33 - 7:35And there are all kinds of famous stories about this.
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7:35 - 7:38IBM gave away 400 million dollars of software
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7:38 - 7:40to the Linux movement, and that gave them
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7:40 - 7:43a multi-billion dollar payoff.
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7:43 - 7:45Now, conventional wisdom says,
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7:45 - 7:48"Well, hey, our intellectual property belongs to us,
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7:48 - 7:50and if someone tries to infringe it, we're going to get out
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7:50 - 7:53our lawyers and we're going to sue them."
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7:53 - 7:56Well, it didn't work so well for the record labels, did it?
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7:56 - 8:01I mean, they took — They had a technology disruption,
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8:01 - 8:04and rather than taking a business model innovation
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8:04 - 8:08to correspond to that, they took and sought a legal solution
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8:08 - 8:10and the industry that brought you Elvis and the Beatles
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8:10 - 8:12is now suing children
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8:12 - 8:16and is in danger of collapse.
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8:16 - 8:19So we need to think differently about intellectual property.
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8:19 - 8:20I'll give you an example.
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8:20 - 8:23The pharmaceutical industry is in deep trouble.
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8:23 - 8:26First of all, there aren't a lot of big inventions
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8:26 - 8:28in the pipeline, and this is a big problem for human health,
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8:28 - 8:33and the pharmaceutical industry has got a bigger problem,
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8:33 - 8:35that they're about to fall off something
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8:35 - 8:37called the patent cliff.
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8:37 - 8:37Do you know about this?
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8:37 - 8:40They're going to lose 20 to 35 percent of their revenue
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8:40 - 8:42in the next 12 months.
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8:42 - 8:43And what are you going to do,
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8:43 - 8:47like, cut back on paper clips or something? No.
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8:47 - 8:51We need to reinvent the whole model of scientific research.
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8:51 - 8:55The pharmaceutical industry needs to place assets
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8:55 - 8:59in a commons. They need to start sharing precompetitive research.
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8:59 - 9:01They need to start sharing
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9:01 - 9:02clinical trial data,
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9:02 - 9:07and in doing so, create a rising tide that could lift all boats,
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9:07 - 9:09not just for the industry but
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9:09 - 9:11for humanity.
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9:11 - 9:14Now, the fourth meaning
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9:14 - 9:16of openness,
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9:16 - 9:18and corresponding principle, is about empowerment.
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9:18 - 9:20And I'm not talking about the motherhood sense here.
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9:20 - 9:24Knowledge and intelligence is power,
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9:24 - 9:27and as it becomes more distributed, there's a
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9:27 - 9:29concomitant distribution
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9:29 - 9:33and decentralization and disaggregation of power
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9:33 - 9:35that's underway in the world today.
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9:35 - 9:38The open world is bringing freedom.
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9:38 - 9:40Now, take the Arab Spring.
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9:40 - 9:42The debate about the role of social media
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9:42 - 9:44and social change has been settled.
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9:44 - 9:47You know, one word: Tunisia.
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9:47 - 9:50And then it ended up having a whole bunch of other words too.
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9:50 - 9:52But in the Tunisian revolution,
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9:52 - 9:54the new media didn't cause the revolution;
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9:54 - 9:56it was caused by injustice.
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9:56 - 10:00Social media didn't create the revolution;
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10:00 - 10:02it was created by a new generation of young people
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10:02 - 10:04who wanted jobs and hope and
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10:04 - 10:08who didn't want to be treated as subjects anymore.
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10:08 - 10:11But just as the Internet drops transaction and collaboration
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10:11 - 10:14costs in business and government,
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10:14 - 10:16it also drops the cost of dissent, of rebellion,
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10:16 - 10:18and even insurrection
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10:18 - 10:20in ways that people didn't understand.
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10:20 - 10:22You know, during the Tunisian revolution,
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10:22 - 10:25snipers associated with the regime were killing
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10:25 - 10:27unarmed students in the street.
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10:27 - 10:30So the students would take their mobile devices,
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10:30 - 10:32take a picture, triangulate the location,
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10:32 - 10:34send that picture to friendly military units,
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10:34 - 10:37who'd come in and take out the snipers.
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10:37 - 10:39You think that social media is about hooking up online?
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10:39 - 10:42For these kids, it was a military tool
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10:42 - 10:46to defend unarmed people from murderers.
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10:46 - 10:48It was a tool of self-defense.
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10:48 - 10:50You know, as we speak today, young people
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10:50 - 10:52are being killed in Syria,
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10:52 - 10:54and up until three months ago,
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10:54 - 10:56if you were injured on the street,
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10:56 - 10:58an ambulance would pick you up,
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10:58 - 11:00take you to the hospital, you'd go in, say, with a broken leg,
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11:00 - 11:03and you'd come out with a bullet in your head.
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11:03 - 11:06So these 20-somethings created
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11:06 - 11:08an alternative health care system,
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11:08 - 11:10where what they did is they used Twitter and basic
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11:10 - 11:14publicly available tools that when someone's injured,
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11:14 - 11:16a car would show up, it would pick them up,
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11:16 - 11:19take them to a makeshift medical clinic, where you'd get
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11:19 - 11:23medical treatment, as opposed to being executed.
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11:23 - 11:26So this is a time of great change.
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11:26 - 11:28Now, it's not without its problems.
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11:28 - 11:31Up until two years ago,
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11:31 - 11:34all revolutions in human history had a leadership,
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11:34 - 11:37and when the old regime fell, the leadership
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11:37 - 11:38and the organization would take power.
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11:38 - 11:40Well, these wiki revolutions happen so fast
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11:40 - 11:42they create a vacuum, and
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11:42 - 11:44politics abhors a vacuum,
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11:44 - 11:46and unsavory forces can fill that,
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11:46 - 11:49typically the old regime,
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11:49 - 11:51or extremists, or fundamentalist forces.
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11:51 - 11:54You can see this playing out today in Egypt.
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11:54 - 11:56But that doesn't matter,
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11:56 - 11:58because this is moving forward.
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11:58 - 12:01The train has left the station. The cat is out of the bag.
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12:01 - 12:04The horse is out of the barn. Help me out here, okay?
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12:04 - 12:06(Laughter) The toothpaste is out of the tube.
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12:06 - 12:08I mean, we're not putting this one back.
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12:08 - 12:12The open world is bringing empowerment and freedom.
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12:12 - 12:15I think, at the end of these four days,
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12:15 - 12:18that you'll come to conclude that the arc of history
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12:18 - 12:21is a positive one, and it's towards openness.
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12:21 - 12:24If you go back a few hundred years,
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12:24 - 12:26all around the world it was a very closed society.
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12:26 - 12:28It was agrarian, and the means of production
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12:28 - 12:30and political system was called feudalism, and knowledge
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12:30 - 12:34was concentrated in the church and the nobility.
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12:34 - 12:36People didn't know about things.
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12:36 - 12:38There was no concept of progress.
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12:38 - 12:40You were born, you lived your life and you died.
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12:40 - 12:45But then Johannes Gutenberg came along with his great invention,
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12:45 - 12:48and, over time, the society opened up.
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12:48 - 12:50People started to learn about things, and when they did,
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12:50 - 12:52the institutions of feudal society appeared
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12:52 - 12:56to be stalled, or frozen, or failing.
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12:56 - 12:58It didn't make sense for the church to be responsible
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12:58 - 13:01for medicine when people had knowledge.
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13:01 - 13:03So we saw the Protestant Reformation.
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13:03 - 13:04Martin Luther called the printing press
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13:04 - 13:07"God's highest act of grace."
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13:07 - 13:10The creation of a corporation, science, the university,
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13:10 - 13:12eventually the Industrial Revolution,
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13:12 - 13:14and it was all good.
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13:14 - 13:16But it came with a cost.
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13:16 - 13:19And now, once again, the technology genie
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13:19 - 13:22is out of the bottle, but this time it's different.
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13:22 - 13:25The printing press gave us access to the written word.
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13:25 - 13:29The Internet enables each of us to be a producer.
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13:29 - 13:32The printing press gave us access to recorded knowledge.
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13:32 - 13:33The Internet gives us access,
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13:33 - 13:35not just to information and knowledge, but
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13:35 - 13:38to the intelligence contained in the crania of other people
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13:38 - 13:40on a global basis.
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13:40 - 13:43To me, this is not an information age,
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13:43 - 13:46it's an age of networked intelligence.
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13:46 - 13:50It's an age of vast promise,
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13:50 - 13:53an age of collaboration,
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13:53 - 13:57where the boundaries of our organizations are changing,
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13:57 - 14:00of transparency, where sunlight
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14:00 - 14:03is disinfecting civilization,
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14:03 - 14:07an age of sharing and understanding
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14:07 - 14:09the new power of the commons,
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14:09 - 14:11and it's an age of empowerment
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14:11 - 14:14and of freedom.
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14:14 - 14:18Now, what I'd like to do is,
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14:18 - 14:20to close, to share with you
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14:20 - 14:23some research that I've been doing.
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14:23 - 14:25I've tried to study all kinds of organizations
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14:25 - 14:28to understand what the future might look like,
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14:28 - 14:32but I've been studying nature recently.
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14:32 - 14:35You know, bees come in swarms
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14:35 - 14:38and fish come in schools.
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14:38 - 14:41Starlings, in the area around Edinburgh,
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14:41 - 14:42in the moors of England,
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14:42 - 14:44come in something called a murmuration,
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14:44 - 14:47and the murmuration refers to the murmuring of the wings
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14:47 - 14:49of the birds, and throughout the day the starlings
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14:49 - 14:51are out over a 20-mile radius
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14:51 - 14:53sort of doing their starling thing.
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14:53 - 14:55And at night they come together
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14:55 - 14:57and they create one of the most spectacular things
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14:57 - 14:58in all of nature,
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14:58 - 15:00and it's called a murmuration.
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15:00 - 15:03And scientists that have studied this have said
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15:03 - 15:05they've never seen an accident.
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15:05 - 15:07Now, this thing has a function.
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15:07 - 15:09It protects the birds.
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15:09 - 15:10You can see on the right here,
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15:10 - 15:15there's a predator being chased away by the collective power
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15:15 - 15:18of the birds, and apparently this is a frightening thing
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15:18 - 15:21if you're a predator of starlings.
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15:21 - 15:24And there's leadership,
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15:24 - 15:26but there's no one leader.
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15:26 - 15:28Now, is this some kind of fanciful analogy,
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15:28 - 15:31or could we actually learn something from this?
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15:31 - 15:34Well, the murmuration functions to record
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15:34 - 15:35a number of principles,
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15:35 - 15:36and they're basically the principles that
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15:36 - 15:38I have described to you today.
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15:38 - 15:41This is a huge collaboration.
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15:41 - 15:43It's an openness, it's a sharing
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15:43 - 15:45of all kinds of information, not just about location
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15:45 - 15:50and trajectory and danger and so on, but about food sources.
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15:50 - 15:55And there's a real sense of interdependence,
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15:55 - 15:58that the individual birds somehow understand
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15:58 - 16:01that their interests are in the interest of the collective.
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16:01 - 16:04Perhaps like we should understand
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16:04 - 16:08that business can't succeed
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16:08 - 16:10in a world that's failing.
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16:10 - 16:11Well, I look at this thing,
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16:11 - 16:14and I get a lot of hope.
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16:14 - 16:19Think about the kids today in the Arab Spring, and
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16:19 - 16:22you see something like this that's underway.
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16:22 - 16:26And imagine, just consider this idea, if you would:
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16:26 - 16:30What if we could connect ourselves in this world
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16:30 - 16:34through a vast network of air and glass?
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16:34 - 16:37Could we go beyond just sharing information and knowledge?
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16:37 - 16:39Could we start to share our intelligence?
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16:39 - 16:42Could we create some kind of
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16:42 - 16:43collective intelligence
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16:43 - 16:47that goes beyond an individual or a group or a team
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16:47 - 16:52to create, perhaps, some kind of consciousness
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16:52 - 16:53on a global basis?
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16:53 - 16:56Well, if we could do this, we could attack some big problems in the world.
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16:56 - 16:58And I look at this thing,
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16:58 - 17:01and, I don't know, I get a lot of hope that maybe this
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17:01 - 17:05smaller, networked, open world
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17:05 - 17:08that our kids inherit might be a better one, and that
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17:08 - 17:11this new age of networked intelligence could be
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17:11 - 17:14an age of promise fulfilled
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17:14 - 17:17and of peril unrequited.
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17:17 - 17:20Let's do this. Thank you.
-
17:20 - 17:30(Applause)
- Title:
- Four principles for the open world
- Speaker:
- Don Tapscott
- Description:
-
The recent generations have been bathed in connecting technology from birth, says futurist Don Tapscott, and as a result the world is transforming into one that is far more open and transparent. In this inspiring talk, he lists the four core principles that show how this open world can be a far better place.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 17:50
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Four principles for the open world | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Four principles for the open world | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Four principles for the open world | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Four principles for the open world | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Four principles for the open world | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Four principles for the open world | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |