WEBVTT

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So this is Ana Hazareh.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Ana Hazareh may well be the
most cutting-edge

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
digital activist in the world today.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And you wouldn't know it by looking at him.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Hazareh is a 77-year-old Indian anti-corruption
and social justice activist.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And in 2011, he was running a big campaign

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to address everyday corruption in India,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
a topic that Indian elites love to ignore.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So as part of this campaign,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
he was using all of the traditional tactics

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that a good Ghandian organizer would use.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So he was on a hunger strike,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and Hazareh realized through his hunger

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that actually maybe this time,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in the 21st-century,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
a hunger strike wouldn't be enough.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So he started playing around 
with mobile-activism.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So the first thing he did, he said to people,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"okay, why don't you send me

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
a text message if you support

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
my campaign against corruption?"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So he does this, he 
gives people a short code,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and about 80,000 people do it.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Okay, that's pretty respectable.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But then he decides,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"let me tweak my tactics a little bit."


99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
He says, "why don't you leave
me a missed call?"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Now, for those of you who have
lived in the global south,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you'll know that missed calls

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
are a really critical part
of global mobile culture.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I see people nodding.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
People leave missed calls all the time:

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
If you're running late for a meeting

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and you want to let them know 
that you're on the way,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you leave them a missed call.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
If you're dating someone and 
you just want to say "I miss you"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you leave them a missed call.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So a note for a dating tip here,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in some cultures,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
if you want to please your lover,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you call them and hang up.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So why do people leave missed calls?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Well, the reason of course is that

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
they're trying to avoid charges

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
associated with making calls
and sending texts.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So when Hazareh asked people 
to leave him a missed call,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Let's have a little guess how 
many people actually do this?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
35 million.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So this is one of the largest coordinated
actions in human history.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It's remarkable.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And this reflects the extraordinary strength 
of the emerging Indian middle class,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And the power that their
mobile phones bring.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But he used that,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Hazareh needed up with this massive 
v-file of mobile phone numbers,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and he used that to deploy

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
real people-power on the ground

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to get hundreds of thousands of
people on the streets in Dehli

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to make a national point on 
everyday corruption in India.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It's a really striking story.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So this is me when I was 12-years-old,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I hope you see the resemblance,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I was also an activist,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I've been an activist all my life.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I had this really funny childhood

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
where I [tropsed?] around the world

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
meeting world leaders and 
Noble Prize winners

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
talking about third-world debt,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
as it was then called,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and demilitarization,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I was a very, very serious child.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And back then,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in the early 90s,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I had very cutting-edge
tech-tool of my own:

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the fax.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And the fax was the 
tool of my activism.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And at that time, it was the best way

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to get a message to a lot of people

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
all at once.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I'll give you one example of a fax
campaign that I ran.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It was the eve of the Gulf War

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I organized a global campaign 
to flood the hotel,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the Intercontinental in Geneva,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
where James Vacar and [name]

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
were meeting on the eve of the war,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I thought that if I could 
flood them with faxes,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
we'll stop the war.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Well, unsurprisingly,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that campaign was wholly unsuccessful.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
There are lots of reasons for that,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but there's no doubt that 
one sputtering fax machine

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in Geneva was a little bit
of a bandwidth constraint

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in terms of the ability to 
get a message to lots of people.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And so, I went on to 
discover some better tools.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I co-founded Avaz that uses the 
internet to mobilize people

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and now has almost 
40 million members,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I now run Purpose, which 
is a home for these kind of

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
technology-powered movements.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So what's the moral of this story?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Is the moral of this story,


99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"you know what, the fax is kind of
eclipsed by the mobile phone?"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This is another story of 
tech-determinism?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Well, I would argue that there's 
actually more to it than that.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I'd argue that in the last 20 years,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
something more fundamental has changed


99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
than just new tech.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I would argue that there has
been a fundamental shift

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in the balance of power

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in the world.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You ask any activist how to understand the world,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and they'll say,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"look at where the power is,


99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
who has it,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
how it's shifting?"


99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I think we all sense that something
big is happening.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So Henry Tims and I,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Henry's a fellow movement builder,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
got talking one day and 
we started to think,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"how can we make sense of this new world?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
how can we describe it and give

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it a framework that makes it more useful?"


99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Because we realize that many

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
of the lessons that we were
discovering in movements

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
actually applied all over the world

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in many sectors of our society.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So I want to introduce you to
this framework:

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Old power, meet new power.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And I want to talk to you about
what new power is today.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
New power is the deployment

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
of mass participation and peer coordination,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
these are the two key elements,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to create change and shift outcomes.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And we see new power all around us.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This is bile grio

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
he was a populist Italian blogger

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
who with a minimal apparatus
and only some online tools,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
won more than 25 percent of the vote

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in recent Italian elections.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This is air b&b,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
which, in just a few years,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
radically disrupted the hotel industry

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
without owning a single
square-foot of real estate.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This is Kickstarter,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
which we know has raised over a billion dollars

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
from more than 5 million people.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Now, we're familiar with all of these models.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But what's striking is the commonalities,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the structural features of 
these new models

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and how they differ from old power.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Let's look a little bit at this.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Old power is held like a currency.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
New power works like a current.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Old power is held by a few.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
New power isn't held by a few,
it's made by many.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Old power is all about download,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and new power uploads.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And you see a whole set of characteristics

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that you can trace,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
whether it's in media or politics,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
or in education.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So we've talked a little bit about

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
what new power is,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
let's talk for a second about what
new power isn't.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
New power is not your Facebook page.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I assure you that having a 
social media strategy

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
can enable you to do

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
just as much download

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
as you used to do when you had the radio.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Just as Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Asad,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I assure you that his Facebook page

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
has not embraced the power
of participation.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
New power is not inherently positive.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
In fact, this isn't an normative
argument that we're making,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
there are many good things 
about new power,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but it can produce bad outcomes.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
More participation, more peer coordination

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
sometimes distorts outcomes

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and there are some things,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
like things, for example, in the medical profession

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that we want new power to get 
no where near.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And thirdly, new power is not
the inevitable victor.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
In fact, unsurprisingly,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
as many of these new power
models get to scale,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
what you see is this massive push-back

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
from the forces of old power.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Let's look at this really 
interesting epic struggle

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
going on right now between 
Edward Snowden and the NSA.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You'll note that only that


99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
only one of the two people on this slide

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is currently in exile.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And so, it's not at all clear

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that new power will be 
the inevitable victor.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That said, keep one thing in mind:


99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We're at the beginning of a
very steep curve.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So you think about some of 
these new power models, right?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
These were just like someone's

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
garage idea a few years ago,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
now they're disrupting 
entire industries.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And so, what's interesting
about new power,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is the way it feeds
on itself.