WEBVTT

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All right, so let's take

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four subjects that obviously go together:

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big data, tattoos, immortality and the Greeks.

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Right?

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Now, the issue about tattoos is that,

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without a word, tattoos really do shout.

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[Beautiful]

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[Intriguing]

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So you don't have to say a lot.

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[Allegiance]

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[Very intimate]

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[Serious mistakes]

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(Laughter)

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And tattoos tell you a lot of stories.

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If I can ask an indiscreet question,

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how many of you have tattoos?

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A few, but not most.

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What happens if Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn,

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cell phones, GPS, Foursquare, Yelp, Travel Advisor,

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all these things you deal with every day

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turn out to be electronic tattoos?

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And what if they provide as much information

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about who and what you are as any tattoo ever would?

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What's ended up happening over the past few decades

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is the kind of coverage that you had as a head of state

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or as a great celebrity

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is now being applied to you every day by all these people

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who are Tweeting, blogging, following you,

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watching your credit scores and what you do to yourself.

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And electronic tattoos also shout.

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And as you're thinking of the consequences of that,

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it's getting really hard to hide from this stuff, among other things,

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because it's not just the electronic tattoos,

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it's facial recognition that's getting really good.

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So you can take a picture with an iPhone and get all the names,

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although, again, sometimes it does make mistakes. (Laughter)

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But that means you can take a typical bar scene like this,

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take a picture, say, of this guy right here,

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get the name, and download all the records

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before you utter a word or speak to somebody,

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because everybody turns out to be

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absolutely plastered by electronic tattoos.

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And so there's companies like face.com that now have

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about 18 billion faces online.

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Here's what happened to this company.

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[Company sold to Facebook, June 18, 2012...]

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There are other companies that will place a camera

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like this — this has nothing to do with Facebook —

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they take your picture, they tie it to the social media,

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they figure out you really like to wear black dresses,

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so maybe the person in the store comes up and says,

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"Hey, we've got five black dresses

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that would just look great on you."

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So what if Andy was wrong?

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Here's Andy's theory.

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[In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes.]

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What if we flip this?

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What if you're only going to be anonymous for 15 minutes? (Laughter)

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Well, then, because of electronic tattoos,

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maybe all of you and all of us are very close to immortality,

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because these tattoos will live

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far longer than our bodies will.

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And if that's true, then what we want to do

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is we want to go through four lessons from the Greeks

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and one lesson from a Latin American.

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Why the Greeks?

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Well, the Greeks thought about what happens

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when gods and humans and immortality mix for a long time.

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So lesson number one: Sisyphus.

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Remember? He did a horrible thing, condemned for all time

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to roll this rock up, it would roll back down,

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roll back up, roll back down.

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It's a little like your reputation.

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Once you get that electronic tattoo,

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you're going to be rolling up and down for a long time,

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so as you go through this stuff,

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just be careful what you post.

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Myth number two: Orpheus, wonderful guy,

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charming to be around, great partier, great singer,

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loses his beloved, charms his way into the underworld,

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only person to charm his way into the underworld,

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charms the gods of the underworld,

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they release his beauty on the condition

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he never look at her until they're out.

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So he's walking out and walking out and walking out

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and he just can't resist. He looks at her, loses her forever.

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With all this data out here, it might be a good idea

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not to look too far into the past of those you love.

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Lesson number three: Atalanta.

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Greatest runner. She would challenge anybody.

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If you won, she would marry you.

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If you lost, you died.

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How did Hippomenes beat her?

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Well, he had all these wonderful little golden apples,

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and she'd run ahead, and he'd roll a little golden apple.

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She'd run ahead, and he'd roll a little golden apple.

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She kept getting distracted. He eventually won the race.

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Just remember the purpose as all these little golden apples

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come and reach you and you want to post about them

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or tweet about them or send a late-night message.

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And then, of course, there's Narcissus.

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Nobody here would ever be accused or be familiar with Narcissus.

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(Laughter)

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But as you're thinking about Narcissus,

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just don't fall in love with your own reflection.

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Last lesson, from a Latin American:

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This is the great poet Jorge Luis Borges.

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When he was threatened by the thugs

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of the Argentine military junta,

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he came back and said, "Oh, come on,

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how else can you threaten, other than with death?"

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The interesting thing, the original thing,

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would be to threaten somebody with immortality.

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And that, of course, is what we are all

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now threatened with today because of electronic tattoos.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)