1 00:00:00,996 --> 00:00:05,802 So recently, we heard a lot about how social media helps empower protest, 2 00:00:05,802 --> 00:00:07,181 and that's true, 3 00:00:07,181 --> 00:00:08,836 but after more than a decade 4 00:00:08,836 --> 00:00:12,501 of studying and participating in multiple social movements, 5 00:00:12,501 --> 00:00:14,303 I've come to realize 6 00:00:14,303 --> 00:00:17,614 that the way technology empowers social movements 7 00:00:17,614 --> 00:00:20,720 can also paradoxically help weaken them. 8 00:00:20,720 --> 00:00:24,604 This is not inevitable, but overcoming it requires diving deep 9 00:00:24,604 --> 00:00:27,027 into what makes success possible 10 00:00:27,027 --> 00:00:28,887 over the long term. 11 00:00:28,887 --> 00:00:31,458 And the lessons apply in multiple domains. 12 00:00:31,458 --> 00:00:34,153 Now, take Turkey's Gezi Park protests, 13 00:00:34,153 --> 00:00:35,435 July 2013, 14 00:00:35,435 --> 00:00:38,680 which I went back to study in the field. 15 00:00:38,680 --> 00:00:40,943 Twitter was key to its organizing. 16 00:00:40,943 --> 00:00:42,817 It was everywhere in the park, 17 00:00:42,817 --> 00:00:44,126 well, along with a lot of tear gas. 18 00:00:44,126 --> 00:00:46,175 It wasn't all high tech. 19 00:00:46,175 --> 00:00:50,053 But the people in Turkey had already gotten used to the power of Twitter 20 00:00:50,053 --> 00:00:52,143 because of an unfortunate incident 21 00:00:52,143 --> 00:00:53,994 about a year before 22 00:00:53,994 --> 00:00:57,785 when military jets had bombed and killed 23 00:00:57,785 --> 00:01:01,874 34 Kurdish smugglers near the border region, 24 00:01:01,874 --> 00:01:06,618 and Turkish media completely censored this news. 25 00:01:06,618 --> 00:01:08,456 Editors sat in their newsrooms 26 00:01:08,456 --> 00:01:11,355 and waited for the government to tell them what to do. 27 00:01:11,355 --> 00:01:14,185 One frustrated journalist could not take this anymore. 28 00:01:14,185 --> 00:01:16,275 He purchased his own plane ticket, and went to the village 29 00:01:16,275 --> 00:01:17,957 where this had occurred, 30 00:01:17,957 --> 00:01:20,623 and he was confronted by this scene: 31 00:01:20,623 --> 00:01:26,021 a line of coffins coming down a hill, relatives wailing. 32 00:01:26,021 --> 00:01:28,462 He later he told me how overwhelmed he felt, 33 00:01:28,462 --> 00:01:30,183 and didn't know what to do, 34 00:01:30,183 --> 00:01:32,156 so he took out his phone, 35 00:01:32,156 --> 00:01:33,924 like any one of us might, 36 00:01:33,924 --> 00:01:37,122 and snapped that picture and Tweeted it out. 37 00:01:37,122 --> 00:01:40,849 And voila, that picture went viral 38 00:01:40,849 --> 00:01:45,237 and broke the censorship and forced mass media to cover it. 39 00:01:45,237 --> 00:01:48,418 So when, a year later, Turkey's Gezi protests happened, 40 00:01:48,418 --> 00:01:51,140 it started as a protest about a park being razed, 41 00:01:51,140 --> 00:01:53,443 but became an anti-authoritarian protest. 42 00:01:53,443 --> 00:01:57,601 It wasn't surprising that media also censored it, 43 00:01:57,601 --> 00:02:00,533 but it got a little ridiculous at times. 44 00:02:00,533 --> 00:02:02,603 When things were so intense, 45 00:02:02,603 --> 00:02:06,998 when CNN International was broadcasting live from Istanbul, 46 00:02:06,998 --> 00:02:09,908 CNN Turkey instead was broadcasting 47 00:02:09,908 --> 00:02:13,351 a documentary on penguins. 48 00:02:13,351 --> 00:02:15,404 Now, I love penguin documentaries, 49 00:02:15,404 --> 00:02:17,929 but that wasn't the news of the day. 50 00:02:17,929 --> 00:02:20,681 An angry viewer put his two screens together 51 00:02:20,681 --> 00:02:22,206 and snapped that picture, 52 00:02:22,206 --> 00:02:24,098 and that one too went viral, 53 00:02:24,098 --> 00:02:25,726 and since then, people call Turkish media 54 00:02:25,726 --> 00:02:28,570 the penguin media. 55 00:02:28,570 --> 00:02:30,751 But this time, people knew what to do. 56 00:02:30,751 --> 00:02:33,710 They just took out their phones and looked for actual news. 57 00:02:33,710 --> 00:02:35,854 Better, they knew to go to the park 58 00:02:35,854 --> 00:02:38,162 and take pictures and participate 59 00:02:38,162 --> 00:02:40,125 and share it more on social media. 60 00:02:40,125 --> 00:02:46,675 Digital connectivity, that was used for everything from food to donations. 61 00:02:46,675 --> 00:02:51,947 Everything was organized partially with the help of these new technologies. 62 00:02:51,947 --> 00:02:56,153 And using Internet to mobilize and publicize protests 63 00:02:56,153 --> 00:02:58,609 actually goes back a long way. 64 00:02:58,609 --> 00:03:02,044 Remember the Zapatistas, the peasant uprising 65 00:03:02,044 --> 00:03:08,269 in the southern Chiapas region of Mexico led by the masked, pipe-smoking, 66 00:03:08,269 --> 00:03:11,240 charismatic Subcomandante Marcos? 67 00:03:11,240 --> 00:03:12,599 That was probably the first movement 68 00:03:12,599 --> 00:03:14,970 that got global attention thanks to the Internet. 69 00:03:15,690 --> 00:03:20,098 Or consider Seattle '99, when a multinational grassroots effort 70 00:03:20,098 --> 00:03:25,041 brought global attention to what was then an obscure organization, 71 00:03:25,041 --> 00:03:26,936 the World Trade Organization, 72 00:03:26,936 --> 00:03:31,367 by also utilizing these digital technologies to help them organize. 73 00:03:31,367 --> 00:03:33,902 And more recently, movement after movement 74 00:03:33,902 --> 00:03:36,740 has shaken country after country: 75 00:03:36,740 --> 00:03:41,872 the Arab uprisings from Bahrain to Tunisia to Egypt and more; 76 00:03:41,872 --> 00:03:45,164 indignados in Spain, Italy, Greece: 77 00:03:45,164 --> 00:03:46,736 the Gezi Park protests; 78 00:03:46,736 --> 00:03:50,968 Taiwan; Euro Maidan in Ukraine; Hong Kong. 79 00:03:50,968 --> 00:03:55,680 And think of more recent initiatives, like the "Bring Back Our Girls" hashtags. 80 00:03:55,680 --> 00:03:59,306 Nowadays, a network of tweets 81 00:03:59,306 --> 00:04:02,556 can unleash a global awareness campaign. 82 00:04:02,556 --> 00:04:06,454 A Facebook page can become the hub of a massive mobilization. 83 00:04:06,454 --> 00:04:08,224 Amazing. 84 00:04:08,224 --> 00:04:12,538 But think of the moments I just mentioned. 85 00:04:12,538 --> 00:04:17,203 The achievements they were able to have, their outcomes, 86 00:04:17,203 --> 00:04:22,013 are not really proportional to the size and energy they inspired. 87 00:04:22,013 --> 00:04:26,034 The hopes they rightfully raised are not really matched 88 00:04:26,034 --> 00:04:30,502 by what they were able to have as a result in the end. 89 00:04:30,502 --> 00:04:32,914 And this raises a question: 90 00:04:34,204 --> 00:04:38,429 as digital technology makes things easier for movements, 91 00:04:38,429 --> 00:04:42,452 why haven't successful outcomes become more likely as well? 92 00:04:42,452 --> 00:04:48,017 In embracing digital platforms for activism and politics, 93 00:04:48,017 --> 00:04:52,251 are we overlooking some of the benefits of doing things the hard way? 94 00:04:52,251 --> 00:04:53,468 Now, I believe so. 95 00:04:53,468 --> 00:04:55,273 I believe that the rule of thumb is 96 00:04:55,273 --> 00:05:00,000 easier to mobilize does not always mean easier to achieve gains. 97 00:05:00,610 --> 00:05:03,503 Now, to be clear, 98 00:05:03,503 --> 00:05:06,357 technology does empower in multiple ways. 99 00:05:06,357 --> 00:05:07,817 It's very powerful. 100 00:05:07,817 --> 00:05:11,863 In Turkey, I watched four young college students 101 00:05:11,863 --> 00:05:16,093 organize a countrywide citizen journalist network called "140 Journals" 102 00:05:16,093 --> 00:05:20,524 that became the central hub for uncensored news in the country. 103 00:05:20,524 --> 00:05:23,921 In Egypt, I saw another four young people 104 00:05:23,921 --> 00:05:27,458 use digital connectivity to organize the supplies and logistics 105 00:05:27,458 --> 00:05:31,529 for 10 field hospitals, very large operations, 106 00:05:31,529 --> 00:05:36,530 during massive clashes near Tahrir Square in 2011, 107 00:05:37,500 --> 00:05:40,057 and I asked the founder of this effort, 108 00:05:40,057 --> 00:05:42,300 called "Tahrir Supplies," how long it took him 109 00:05:42,300 --> 00:05:47,327 to go from when he had the idea to when he got started. 110 00:05:47,327 --> 00:05:49,686 "Five minutes," he said. Five minutes. 111 00:05:49,686 --> 00:05:52,234 And he had no training or background in logistics. 112 00:05:52,234 --> 00:05:55,957 Or think of the Occupy movement which rocked the world in 2011. 113 00:05:55,957 --> 00:05:57,935 It started with a single email 114 00:05:57,935 --> 00:06:03,176 from a magazine, Adbusters, to 90,000 subscribers in its list. 115 00:06:03,176 --> 00:06:06,160 About two months after that first email, 116 00:06:06,160 --> 00:06:12,509 there were in the United States 600 ongoing occupations and protests. 117 00:06:12,509 --> 00:06:14,889 Less than one month, less than one month 118 00:06:14,889 --> 00:06:18,333 after the first physical occupation in Zuccotti Park, 119 00:06:18,333 --> 00:06:25,174 a global protest was held in about 82 countries, 950 cities. 120 00:06:25,174 --> 00:06:27,919 It was one of the largest global protests ever organized. 121 00:06:27,919 --> 00:06:32,205 Now, compare that to what the Civil Rights Movement had to do 122 00:06:32,205 --> 00:06:36,296 in 1955 Alabama to protest 123 00:06:36,296 --> 00:06:40,743 the racially segregated bus system which they wanted to boycott. 124 00:06:40,743 --> 00:06:42,435 They'd been preparing for many years 125 00:06:42,435 --> 00:06:44,461 and decided it was time to swing into action 126 00:06:44,461 --> 00:06:46,764 after Rosa Parks was arrested. 127 00:06:46,764 --> 00:06:48,330 But how do you get the word out 128 00:06:48,330 --> 00:06:50,293 -- You know, tomorrow we're going to start to boycott -- 129 00:06:50,293 --> 00:06:56,001 when you don't have Facebook, texting, Twitter, none of that? 130 00:06:56,001 --> 00:07:01,171 So they had to mimeograph 52,000 leaflets 131 00:07:01,171 --> 00:07:04,364 by sneaking into a university duplicating room 132 00:07:04,364 --> 00:07:06,905 and working all night, secretly. 133 00:07:06,905 --> 00:07:10,398 They then used the 68 African-American organizations 134 00:07:10,398 --> 00:07:14,365 that criss-crossed the city to distribute those leaflets by hand. 135 00:07:14,365 --> 00:07:19,335 And the logistical tasks were daunting, because these were poor people. 136 00:07:19,335 --> 00:07:21,425 They had to get to work, boycott or no, 137 00:07:21,425 --> 00:07:24,327 so a massive carpool was organized, 138 00:07:24,327 --> 00:07:26,443 again by meeting. 139 00:07:26,443 --> 00:07:28,838 No texting, no Twitter, no Facebook. 140 00:07:28,838 --> 00:07:32,407 They had to meet almost all the time to keep this carpool going. 141 00:07:32,407 --> 00:07:34,679 Today, it would be so much easier. 142 00:07:34,679 --> 00:07:39,667 We could create a database, available rides and what rides you need, 143 00:07:39,667 --> 00:07:42,949 have the database coordinate, and use texting. 144 00:07:42,949 --> 00:07:45,503 We wouldn't have to need all that much. 145 00:07:45,503 --> 00:07:47,779 But again, consider this: 146 00:07:47,779 --> 00:07:50,773 the Civil Rights Movement in the United States 147 00:07:50,773 --> 00:07:55,267 navigated a minefield of political dangers, 148 00:07:55,267 --> 00:07:58,400 faced repression, and overcame, 149 00:07:58,400 --> 00:08:00,843 won major policy concessions, 150 00:08:00,843 --> 00:08:04,006 navigated and innovated through risks. 151 00:08:04,006 --> 00:08:07,539 In contrast, three years after Occupy sparked 152 00:08:07,539 --> 00:08:10,145 that global conversation about inequality, 153 00:08:10,145 --> 00:08:13,970 the policies that fuel it are still in place. 154 00:08:13,970 --> 00:08:16,845 Europe was also rocked by anti-austerity protests, 155 00:08:16,845 --> 00:08:21,237 but the continent didn't shift its direction. 156 00:08:21,237 --> 00:08:24,173 In embracing these technologies, 157 00:08:24,173 --> 00:08:30,581 are we overlooking some of the benefits of slow and sustained? 158 00:08:30,581 --> 00:08:32,450 To understand this, 159 00:08:32,450 --> 00:08:35,573 I went back to Turkey about a year after the Gezi protests 160 00:08:35,573 --> 00:08:37,850 and I interviewed a range of people, 161 00:08:37,850 --> 00:08:41,557 from activists to politicians, 162 00:08:41,557 --> 00:08:46,174 from both the ruling party and the opposition party and movements. 163 00:08:46,174 --> 00:08:49,480 I found that the Gezi protesters were despairing. 164 00:08:49,480 --> 00:08:51,511 They were frustrated, 165 00:08:51,511 --> 00:08:54,567 and they had achieved much less than what they had hoped for. 166 00:08:54,567 --> 00:08:57,105 This echoed what I'd been hearing around the world 167 00:08:57,105 --> 00:09:00,891 from many of the protesters that I'm in touch with, 168 00:09:00,891 --> 00:09:03,177 and I've come to realize that part of the problem 169 00:09:03,177 --> 00:09:05,168 is that today's protests 170 00:09:05,168 --> 00:09:09,067 have become a bit like climbing Mt. Everest 171 00:09:09,067 --> 00:09:11,524 with the help of 60 sherpas, 172 00:09:11,524 --> 00:09:14,941 and the Internet is our sherpa. 173 00:09:14,941 --> 00:09:18,964 What we're doing is taking the fast routes 174 00:09:18,964 --> 00:09:22,303 and not replacing the benefits of the slower work, 175 00:09:22,303 --> 00:09:24,309 because you see, 176 00:09:24,309 --> 00:09:27,787 the kind of work that went into organizing all those daunting, 177 00:09:27,787 --> 00:09:29,650 tedious logistical tasks 178 00:09:29,650 --> 00:09:32,279 did not just take care of those tasks, 179 00:09:32,279 --> 00:09:35,244 they also created the kind of organization 180 00:09:35,244 --> 00:09:36,843 that could think together collectively 181 00:09:36,843 --> 00:09:39,238 and make hard decisions together, 182 00:09:39,238 --> 00:09:43,175 create consensus and innovate, and maybe even more crucially, 183 00:09:43,175 --> 00:09:46,542 keep going together through differences. 184 00:09:46,542 --> 00:09:51,150 So when you see this March on Washington in 1963, 185 00:09:51,150 --> 00:09:52,924 when you look at that picture, 186 00:09:52,924 --> 00:09:55,215 where this is the march where Martin Luther King 187 00:09:55,215 --> 00:09:59,207 gave his famous "I have a dream" speech, 1963, 188 00:09:59,207 --> 00:10:03,649 you don't just see a march and you don't just hear a powerful speech, 189 00:10:03,649 --> 00:10:09,122 you also see the painstaking, long-term work that can put on that march, 190 00:10:09,122 --> 00:10:10,917 and if you're in power, 191 00:10:10,917 --> 00:10:15,216 you realize you have to take the capacity signaled by that march, 192 00:10:15,216 --> 00:10:16,498 not just the march, 193 00:10:16,498 --> 00:10:19,724 but the capacity signaled by that march, seriously. 194 00:10:19,724 --> 00:10:23,727 In contrast, when you look at the Occupy's global marches 195 00:10:23,727 --> 00:10:25,369 that were organized in two weeks, 196 00:10:25,369 --> 00:10:26,753 you see a lot of discontent, 197 00:10:26,753 --> 00:10:30,787 but you don't necessarily see teeth that can bite over the long term. 198 00:10:31,617 --> 00:10:35,710 And crucially, the Civil Rights Movement innovated tactically 199 00:10:35,710 --> 00:10:42,496 from boycotts to lunch counter sit-ins to pickets to marches to freedom rides. 200 00:10:42,496 --> 00:10:46,311 Today's movements scale up very quickly without the organizational base 201 00:10:46,311 --> 00:10:48,900 that can see them through the challenges. 202 00:10:48,900 --> 00:10:52,700 They feel a little like start-ups that got very big 203 00:10:52,700 --> 00:10:54,705 without knowing what to do next, 204 00:10:54,705 --> 00:10:57,362 and they rarely manage to shift tactically 205 00:10:57,362 --> 00:10:59,859 because they don't have the depth of capacity 206 00:10:59,859 --> 00:11:02,151 to weather such transitions. 207 00:11:02,151 --> 00:11:07,218 Now, I want to be clear: the magic is not in the mimeograph. 208 00:11:07,218 --> 00:11:13,489 It's in that capacity to work together, think together collectively, 209 00:11:13,489 --> 00:11:16,671 which can only be built over time with a lot of work. 210 00:11:16,671 --> 00:11:18,997 To understand all this, 211 00:11:18,997 --> 00:11:22,571 I interviewed a top official from the ruling party in Turkey, 212 00:11:22,571 --> 00:11:26,029 and I ask him, "How do you do it?" 213 00:11:26,029 --> 00:11:28,442 They too use digital technology extensively, so that's not it. 214 00:11:28,442 --> 00:11:30,372 So what's the secret? 215 00:11:30,372 --> 00:11:31,896 Well, he told me. 216 00:11:31,896 --> 00:11:38,532 He said the keys is he never took sugar with his tea. 217 00:11:38,532 --> 00:11:41,593 I said, what does that got to do with anything? 218 00:11:41,593 --> 00:11:44,409 Well, he said, his party starts getting ready for the next election 219 00:11:44,409 --> 00:11:46,170 the day after the last one, 220 00:11:46,170 --> 00:11:50,281 and he spends all day every day meeting with voters in their homes, 221 00:11:50,281 --> 00:11:52,863 in their wedding parties, circumcision ceremonies, 222 00:11:52,863 --> 00:11:55,818 and then he meets with his colleagues to compare notes. 223 00:11:55,818 --> 00:11:58,188 With that many meetings every day, 224 00:11:58,188 --> 00:12:01,984 with tea offered at every one of them which he could not refuse, 225 00:12:01,984 --> 00:12:03,736 because that would be rude, 226 00:12:03,736 --> 00:12:08,379 he could not take even one cube of sugar per cup of tea, 227 00:12:08,379 --> 00:12:10,185 because that would be many kilos of sugar, 228 00:12:10,185 --> 00:12:12,101 and he couldn't calculate exactly how many kilos 229 00:12:12,101 --> 00:12:15,979 and at that point I realized why he was speaking so fast. 230 00:12:15,979 --> 00:12:20,942 He had met in the afternoon, and he was already way over-caffeinated. 231 00:12:20,942 --> 00:12:25,000 But his party won two major elections 232 00:12:25,000 --> 00:12:29,278 within a year of the Gezi protests with comfortable margins. 233 00:12:29,278 --> 00:12:31,397 Now, to be sure, governments have different resources to bring to the table. 234 00:12:31,397 --> 00:12:33,007 It's not the same game. 235 00:12:33,007 --> 00:12:35,154 But the differences are instructive, 236 00:12:35,154 --> 00:12:38,899 and like all such stories, this is not a story just of technology. 237 00:12:38,899 --> 00:12:44,091 It's what technology allows us to do converging with what we want to do. 238 00:12:44,091 --> 00:12:47,877 Today's social movements want to operate informally. 239 00:12:47,877 --> 00:12:50,147 They do not want institutional leadership. 240 00:12:50,147 --> 00:12:52,418 They want to stay out of politics, 241 00:12:52,418 --> 00:12:55,213 because they fear corruption and cooptation. 242 00:12:55,213 --> 00:12:56,666 They have a point: 243 00:12:56,666 --> 00:12:57,851 modern representative democracies 244 00:12:57,851 --> 00:13:01,414 are being strangled in many countries by powerful interests. 245 00:13:02,244 --> 00:13:05,518 But by operating this way makes it hard for them 246 00:13:05,518 --> 00:13:09,268 to sustain over the long term and exert leverage over the system, 247 00:13:09,268 --> 00:13:12,530 which leads to frustrated protesters dropping out, 248 00:13:12,530 --> 00:13:15,889 and even more corrupt politics. 249 00:13:15,889 --> 00:13:20,977 And politics and democracy without an effective challenge hobbles, 250 00:13:20,977 --> 00:13:25,769 because the causes that have inspired the modern recent movements 251 00:13:25,769 --> 00:13:27,400 are crucial. Right? 252 00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:30,465 Climate change is barreling towards us. 253 00:13:30,465 --> 00:13:35,348 Inequality is stifling human growth and potential and economies. 254 00:13:35,348 --> 00:13:37,633 Authoritarianism is choking many countries. 255 00:13:37,633 --> 00:13:40,384 We need movements to be more effective. 256 00:13:40,384 --> 00:13:43,062 Now some people have argued that the problem is 257 00:13:43,062 --> 00:13:49,521 today's movements are not formed of people who take as many risks as before, 258 00:13:49,521 --> 00:13:51,299 and that is not true. 259 00:13:51,299 --> 00:13:54,131 From Gezi to Tahrir to elsewhere, 260 00:13:54,131 --> 00:13:57,769 I've seen people put their lives and livelihoods on the line. 261 00:13:57,769 --> 00:14:00,188 It's also not true, as Malcolm Gladwell claimed, 262 00:14:00,188 --> 00:14:02,930 that today's protesters form weaker virtual ties. 263 00:14:02,930 --> 00:14:08,161 No, they come to these protests just like before with their friends, 264 00:14:08,161 --> 00:14:09,333 existing networks, 265 00:14:09,333 --> 00:14:11,295 and sometimes they do make new friends for life. 266 00:14:11,295 --> 00:14:14,221 I still see the friends that I made 267 00:14:14,221 --> 00:14:17,643 in those Zapatista-convened global protests more than a decade ago, 268 00:14:17,643 --> 00:14:20,615 and the bonds between strangers are not worthless. 269 00:14:20,615 --> 00:14:22,899 When I got tear-gassed in Gezi, 270 00:14:22,899 --> 00:14:28,171 people I didn't know helped me and one another instead of running away. 271 00:14:28,171 --> 00:14:31,398 In Tahrir, I saw people, protesters, 272 00:14:31,398 --> 00:14:34,108 working really hard to keep each other safe and protected. 273 00:14:34,108 --> 00:14:36,097 And digital awareness-raising is great, 274 00:14:36,097 --> 00:14:39,836 because changing minds is the bedrock of changing politics. 275 00:14:39,836 --> 00:14:42,296 But movements today 276 00:14:42,296 --> 00:14:47,216 have to move beyond participation at great scale very fast 277 00:14:47,216 --> 00:14:50,715 and figure out how to think together collectively, 278 00:14:50,715 --> 00:14:52,827 develop strong policy proposals, 279 00:14:52,827 --> 00:14:54,626 create consensus, 280 00:14:54,626 --> 00:14:58,890 figure out the political steps and relate them to leverage, 281 00:14:58,890 --> 00:15:01,813 because all these good intentions and bravery and sacrifice by itself 282 00:15:01,813 --> 00:15:03,485 are not going to be enough. 283 00:15:03,485 --> 00:15:05,381 And there are many efforts. 284 00:15:05,381 --> 00:15:09,520 In New Zealand, a group of young people are developing a platform called Lumio 285 00:15:09,520 --> 00:15:12,771 for participatory decision-making at scale. 286 00:15:12,771 --> 00:15:16,046 In Turkey, 140 Journals are holding hack-a-thons 287 00:15:16,046 --> 00:15:19,879 so that they support communities as well as citizen journalism. 288 00:15:20,619 --> 00:15:23,725 In Argentina, an open-source platform called Democracy OS 289 00:15:23,725 --> 00:15:27,133 is bringing participation to parliaments and political parties. 290 00:15:27,133 --> 00:15:30,518 These are all great, and we need more, 291 00:15:30,518 --> 00:15:34,694 but the answer won't just be better online decision-making, 292 00:15:34,694 --> 00:15:40,247 because, to update democracy we are going to need to innovate at every level, 293 00:15:40,247 --> 00:15:44,740 from the organizational to the political to the social. 294 00:15:44,740 --> 00:15:48,692 Because to succeed over the long term, 295 00:15:48,692 --> 00:15:51,064 sometimes you do need tea without sugar 296 00:15:51,064 --> 00:15:52,697 along with your Twitter. 297 00:15:52,697 --> 00:15:55,809 Thank you. 298 00:15:55,809 --> 00:16:01,010 (Applause)