0:00:01.440,0:00:03.805
Openness. It's a word that

0:00:03.805,0:00:06.884
denotes opportunity and possibilities.

0:00:06.884,0:00:08.924
Open-ended, open hearth,

0:00:08.924,0:00:12.277
open source, open door policy,

0:00:12.277,0:00:15.813
open bar. (Laughter)

0:00:15.813,0:00:18.333
And everywhere the world is opening up,

0:00:18.333,0:00:19.833
and it's a good thing.

0:00:19.833,0:00:21.609
Why is this happening?

0:00:21.609,0:00:24.573
The technology revolution is opening the world.

0:00:24.573,0:00:27.118
Yesterday's Internet was a platform

0:00:27.118,0:00:29.710
for the presentation of content.

0:00:29.710,0:00:32.965
The Internet of today is a platform for computation.

0:00:32.965,0:00:34.572
The Internet is becoming a giant

0:00:34.572,0:00:37.173
global computer, and every time you go on it,

0:00:37.173,0:00:39.830
you upload a video, you do a Google search,

0:00:39.830,0:00:41.484
you remix something,

0:00:41.484,0:00:44.031
you're programming this big global computer

0:00:44.031,0:00:45.271
that we all share.

0:00:45.271,0:00:48.505
Humanity is building a machine,

0:00:48.505,0:00:51.579
and this enables us to collaborate in new ways.

0:00:51.579,0:00:52.895
Collaboration can occur on

0:00:52.895,0:00:55.869
an astronomical basis.

0:00:55.869,0:00:59.277
Now a new generation is opening up the world as well.

0:00:59.277,0:01:01.966
I started studying kids about 15 years ago,

0:01:01.966,0:01:03.925
-- so actually 20 years ago now --

0:01:03.925,0:01:05.520
and I noticed how my own children were

0:01:05.520,0:01:09.037
effortlessly able to use all this sophisticated technology,

0:01:09.037,0:01:10.254
and at first I thought,

0:01:10.254,0:01:13.219
"My children are prodigies!" (Laughter)

0:01:13.219,0:01:15.345
But then I noticed all their friends were like them,

0:01:15.345,0:01:17.289
so that was a bad theory.

0:01:17.289,0:01:20.284
So I've started working with a few hundred kids,

0:01:20.284,0:01:21.879
and I came to the conclusion

0:01:21.879,0:01:23.937
that this is the first generation to come of age

0:01:23.937,0:01:25.071
in the digital age,

0:01:25.071,0:01:26.692
to be bathed in bits.

0:01:26.692,0:01:29.028
I call them the Net Generation.

0:01:29.028,0:01:30.378
I said, these kids are different.

0:01:30.378,0:01:33.256
They have no fear of technology, because it's not there.

0:01:33.256,0:01:34.717
It's like the air.

0:01:34.717,0:01:38.540
It's sort of like, I have no fear of a refrigerator.

0:01:38.540,0:01:41.070
And — (Laughter)

0:01:41.070,0:01:42.908
And there's no more powerful force to change

0:01:42.908,0:01:47.616
every institution than the first generation of digital natives.

0:01:47.616,0:01:48.970
I'm a digital immigrant.

0:01:48.970,0:01:51.911
I had to learn the language.

0:01:51.911,0:01:55.180
The global economic crisis is opening up the world as well.

0:01:55.180,0:01:58.210
Our opaque institutions from the Industrial Age,

0:01:58.210,0:02:00.579
everything from old models of the corporation,

0:02:00.579,0:02:03.060
government, media, Wall Street,

0:02:03.060,0:02:06.636
are in various stages of being stalled or frozen

0:02:06.636,0:02:09.562
or in atrophy or even failing,

0:02:09.562,0:02:12.572
and this is now creating a burning platform in the world.

0:02:12.572,0:02:14.401
I mean, think about Wall Street.

0:02:14.401,0:02:17.612
The core modus operandi of Wall Street almost brought down

0:02:17.612,0:02:20.110
global capitalism.

0:02:20.110,0:02:21.673
Now, you know the idea of a burning platform,

0:02:21.673,0:02:25.843
that you're somewhere where the costs of staying where you are

0:02:25.843,0:02:29.044
become greater than the costs of moving to something different,

0:02:29.044,0:02:32.217
perhaps something radically different.

0:02:32.217,0:02:33.945
And we need to change

0:02:33.945,0:02:36.038
and open up all of our institutions.

0:02:36.038,0:02:37.720
So this technology push,

0:02:37.720,0:02:40.612
a demographic kick from a new generation

0:02:40.612,0:02:43.480
and a demand pull from a new

0:02:43.480,0:02:45.907
economic global environment

0:02:45.907,0:02:47.600
is causing the world to open up.

0:02:47.600,0:02:50.720
Now, I think, in fact,

0:02:50.720,0:02:53.923
we're at a turning point in human history,

0:02:53.923,0:02:55.868
where we can finally now rebuild

0:02:55.868,0:02:58.306
many of the institutions of the Industrial Age

0:02:58.306,0:02:59.863
around a new set of principles.

0:02:59.863,0:03:02.227
Now, what is openness?

0:03:02.227,0:03:03.802
Well, as it turns out, openness

0:03:03.802,0:03:06.044
has a number of different meanings,

0:03:06.044,0:03:08.947
and for each there's a corresponding principle

0:03:08.947,0:03:10.616
for the transformation of

0:03:10.616,0:03:12.640
civilization.

0:03:12.640,0:03:15.915
The first is collaboration.

0:03:15.915,0:03:18.730
Now, this is openness in the sense of the boundaries

0:03:18.730,0:03:21.689
of organizations becoming more porous and fluid

0:03:21.689,0:03:23.553
and open.

0:03:23.553,0:03:25.089
The guy in the picture here,

0:03:25.089,0:03:26.218
I'll tell you his story.

0:03:26.218,0:03:28.123
His name is Rob McEwen.

0:03:28.123,0:03:30.705
I'd like to say, "I have this think tank, we scour the world

0:03:30.705,0:03:32.359
for amazing case studies."

0:03:32.359,0:03:34.017
The reason I know this story

0:03:34.017,0:03:38.178
is because he's my neighbor. (Laughter)

0:03:38.178,0:03:39.945
He actually moved across the street from us,

0:03:39.945,0:03:41.224
and he held a cocktail party

0:03:41.224,0:03:43.669
to meet the neighbors, and he says, "You're Don Tapscott.

0:03:43.669,0:03:44.578
I've read some of your books."

0:03:44.578,0:03:45.678
I said, "Great. What do you do?"

0:03:45.678,0:03:46.995
And he says, "Well I used to be a banker

0:03:46.995,0:03:48.443
and now I'm a gold miner."

0:03:48.443,0:03:51.433
And he tells me this amazing story.

0:03:51.433,0:03:53.924
He takes over this gold mine, and his geologists

0:03:53.924,0:03:55.211
can't tell him where the gold is.

0:03:55.211,0:03:56.938
He gives them more money for geological data,

0:03:56.938,0:03:58.567
they come back, they can't tell

0:03:58.567,0:04:00.429
him where to go into production.

0:04:00.429,0:04:04.409
After a few years, he's so frustrated he's ready

0:04:04.409,0:04:06.786
to give up, but he has an epiphany one day.

0:04:06.786,0:04:09.560
He wonders, "If my geologists don't know where the gold is,

0:04:09.560,0:04:11.930
maybe somebody else does."

0:04:11.930,0:04:13.933
So he does a "radical" thing.

0:04:13.933,0:04:15.440
He takes his geological data,

0:04:15.440,0:04:18.203
he publishes it and he holds a contest on the Internet

0:04:18.203,0:04:19.694
called the Goldcorp Challenge.

0:04:19.694,0:04:23.274
It's basically half a million dollars in prize money

0:04:23.274,0:04:25.986
for anybody who can tell me, do I have any gold,

0:04:25.986,0:04:29.922
and if so, where is it? (Laughter)

0:04:29.922,0:04:32.069
He gets submissions from all around the world.

0:04:32.069,0:04:34.326
They use techniques that he's never heard of,

0:04:34.326,0:04:36.494
and for his half a million dollars in prize money,

0:04:36.494,0:04:40.679
Rob McEwen finds 3.4 billion dollars worth of gold.

0:04:40.679,0:04:42.452
The market value of his company

0:04:42.452,0:04:44.770
goes from 90 million to 10 billion dollars,

0:04:44.770,0:04:47.462
and I can tell you, because he's my neighbor,

0:04:47.462,0:04:50.952
he's a happy camper. (Laughter)

0:04:50.952,0:04:54.640
You know, conventional wisdom says talent is inside, right?

0:04:54.640,0:04:57.751
Your most precious asset goes out the elevator every night.

0:04:57.751,0:05:00.256
He viewed talent differently.

0:05:00.256,0:05:02.552
He wondered, who are their peers?

0:05:02.552,0:05:06.621
He should have fired his geology department, but he didn't.

0:05:06.621,0:05:08.952
You know, some of the best submissions

0:05:08.952,0:05:11.183
didn't come from geologists.

0:05:11.183,0:05:13.679
They came from computer scientists, engineers.

0:05:13.679,0:05:14.930
The winner was a computer graphics company

0:05:14.930,0:05:16.746
that built a three dimensional model of the mine

0:05:16.746,0:05:18.569
where you can helicopter underground

0:05:18.569,0:05:21.239
and see where the gold is.

0:05:21.239,0:05:24.342
He helped us understand that social media's becoming

0:05:24.342,0:05:26.415
social production.

0:05:26.415,0:05:28.159
It's not about hooking up online.

0:05:28.159,0:05:31.234
This is a new means of production in the making.

0:05:31.234,0:05:35.231
And this Ideagora that he created, an open market, agora,

0:05:35.231,0:05:38.230
for uniquely qualified minds,

0:05:38.230,0:05:42.965
was part of a change, a profound change in the deep structure

0:05:42.965,0:05:45.423
and architecture of our organizations,

0:05:45.423,0:05:49.025
and how we sort of orchestrate capability to innovate,

0:05:49.025,0:05:50.725
to create goods and services,

0:05:50.725,0:05:51.848
to engage with the rest of the world,

0:05:51.848,0:05:56.253
in terms of government, how we create public value.

0:05:56.253,0:05:58.239
Openness is about collaboration.

0:05:58.239,0:06:00.605
Now secondly, openness is about transparency.

0:06:00.605,0:06:02.795
This is different. Here, we're talking about the communication

0:06:02.795,0:06:06.630
of pertinent information to stakeholders of organizations:

0:06:06.630,0:06:09.547
employees, customers, business partners, shareholders,

0:06:09.547,0:06:11.309
and so on.

0:06:11.309,0:06:15.582
And everywhere, our institutions are becoming naked.

0:06:15.582,0:06:18.069
People are all bent out of shape about WikiLeaks,

0:06:18.069,0:06:20.525
but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

0:06:20.525,0:06:23.230
You see, people at their fingertips now, everybody,

0:06:23.230,0:06:25.455
not just Julian Assange,

0:06:25.455,0:06:28.046
have these powerful tools for finding out what's going on,

0:06:28.046,0:06:29.503
scrutinizing, informing others,

0:06:29.503,0:06:33.093
and even organizing collective responses.

0:06:33.093,0:06:35.383
Institutions are becoming naked,

0:06:35.383,0:06:37.190
and if you're going to be naked,

0:06:37.190,0:06:39.905
well, there's some corollaries that flow from that.

0:06:39.905,0:06:40.768
I mean, one is,

0:06:40.768,0:06:43.549
fitness is no longer optional. (Laughter)

0:06:43.549,0:06:47.870
You know? Or if you're going to be naked, you'd better get buff.

0:06:47.870,0:06:51.335
Now, by buff I mean, you need to have good value,

0:06:51.335,0:06:53.315
because value is evidenced like never before.

0:06:53.315,0:06:54.279
You say you have good products.

0:06:54.279,0:06:55.320
They'd better be good.

0:06:55.320,0:06:57.271
But you also need to have values.

0:06:57.271,0:07:00.214
You need to have integrity as part of your bones

0:07:00.214,0:07:02.622
and your DNA as an organization,

0:07:02.622,0:07:05.095
because if you don't, you'll be unable to build trust,

0:07:05.095,0:07:09.084
and trust is a sine qua non of this new network world.

0:07:09.084,0:07:12.355
So this is good. It's not bad.

0:07:12.355,0:07:15.050
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

0:07:15.050,0:07:19.033
And we need a lot of sunlight in this troubled world.

0:07:19.033,0:07:22.029
Now, the third meaning and corresponding principle

0:07:22.029,0:07:24.159
of openness is about sharing.

0:07:24.159,0:07:25.880
Now this is different than transparency.

0:07:25.880,0:07:28.623
Transparency is about the communication of information.

0:07:28.623,0:07:33.041
Sharing is about giving up assets, intellectual property.

0:07:33.041,0:07:35.311
And there are all kinds of famous stories about this.

0:07:35.311,0:07:38.248
IBM gave away 400 million dollars of software

0:07:38.248,0:07:40.349
to the Linux movement, and that gave them

0:07:40.349,0:07:43.360
a multi-billion dollar payoff.

0:07:43.360,0:07:45.320
Now, conventional wisdom says,

0:07:45.320,0:07:48.055
"Well, hey, our intellectual property belongs to us,

0:07:48.055,0:07:50.358
and if someone tries to infringe it, we're going to get out

0:07:50.358,0:07:52.706
our lawyers and we're going to sue them."

0:07:52.706,0:07:56.119
Well, it didn't work so well for the record labels, did it?

0:07:56.119,0:08:01.223
I mean, they took — They had a technology disruption,

0:08:01.223,0:08:03.912
and rather than taking a business model innovation

0:08:03.912,0:08:07.864
to correspond to that, they took and sought a legal solution

0:08:07.864,0:08:10.177
and the industry that brought you Elvis and the Beatles

0:08:10.177,0:08:12.209
is now suing children

0:08:12.209,0:08:16.376
and is in danger of collapse.

0:08:16.376,0:08:19.217
So we need to think differently about intellectual property.

0:08:19.217,0:08:20.246
I'll give you an example.

0:08:20.246,0:08:23.128
The pharmaceutical industry is in deep trouble.

0:08:23.128,0:08:25.733
First of all, there aren't a lot of big inventions

0:08:25.733,0:08:28.087
in the pipeline, and this is a big problem for human health,

0:08:28.087,0:08:33.248
and the pharmaceutical industry has got a bigger problem,

0:08:33.248,0:08:35.171
that they're about to fall off something

0:08:35.171,0:08:36.692
called the patent cliff.

0:08:36.692,0:08:37.460
Do you know about this?

0:08:37.460,0:08:40.464
They're going to lose 20 to 35 percent of their revenue

0:08:40.464,0:08:42.091
in the next 12 months.

0:08:42.091,0:08:43.422
And what are you going to do,

0:08:43.422,0:08:46.532
like, cut back on paper clips or something? No.

0:08:46.532,0:08:51.245
We need to reinvent the whole model of scientific research.

0:08:51.245,0:08:54.709
The pharmaceutical industry needs to place assets

0:08:54.709,0:08:58.644
in a commons. They need to start sharing precompetitive research.

0:08:58.644,0:09:00.987
They need to start sharing

0:09:00.987,0:09:02.445
clinical trial data,

0:09:02.445,0:09:06.716
and in doing so, create a rising tide that could lift all boats,

0:09:06.716,0:09:08.658
not just for the industry but

0:09:08.658,0:09:11.449
for humanity.

0:09:11.449,0:09:13.854
Now, the fourth meaning

0:09:13.854,0:09:16.000
of openness,

0:09:16.000,0:09:17.999
and corresponding principle, is about empowerment.

0:09:17.999,0:09:20.215
And I'm not talking about the motherhood sense here.

0:09:20.215,0:09:23.689
Knowledge and intelligence is power,

0:09:23.689,0:09:26.528
and as it becomes more distributed, there's a

0:09:26.528,0:09:29.073
concomitant distribution

0:09:29.073,0:09:32.704
and decentralization and disaggregation of power

0:09:32.704,0:09:34.633
that's underway in the world today.

0:09:34.633,0:09:37.723
The open world is bringing freedom.

0:09:37.723,0:09:40.072
Now, take the Arab Spring.

0:09:40.072,0:09:41.984
The debate about the role of social media

0:09:41.984,0:09:43.978
and social change has been settled.

0:09:43.978,0:09:47.216
You know, one word: Tunisia.

0:09:47.216,0:09:49.562
And then it ended up having a whole bunch of other words too.

0:09:49.562,0:09:51.904
But in the Tunisian revolution,

0:09:51.904,0:09:54.031
the new media didn't cause the revolution;

0:09:54.031,0:09:55.811
it was caused by injustice.

0:09:55.811,0:10:00.048
Social media didn't create the revolution;

0:10:00.048,0:10:02.369
it was created by a new generation of young people

0:10:02.369,0:10:04.177
who wanted jobs and hope and

0:10:04.177,0:10:08.203
who didn't want to be treated as subjects anymore.

0:10:08.203,0:10:11.268
But just as the Internet drops transaction and collaboration

0:10:11.268,0:10:13.636
costs in business and government,

0:10:13.636,0:10:16.393
it also drops the cost of dissent, of rebellion,

0:10:16.393,0:10:18.222
and even insurrection

0:10:18.222,0:10:20.314
in ways that people didn't understand.

0:10:20.314,0:10:22.137
You know, during the Tunisian revolution,

0:10:22.137,0:10:24.831
snipers associated with the regime were killing

0:10:24.831,0:10:26.575
unarmed students in the street.

0:10:26.575,0:10:29.596
So the students would take their mobile devices,

0:10:29.596,0:10:32.249
take a picture, triangulate the location,

0:10:32.249,0:10:34.450
send that picture to friendly military units,

0:10:34.450,0:10:36.859
who'd come in and take out the snipers.

0:10:36.859,0:10:39.393
You think that social media is about hooking up online?

0:10:39.393,0:10:42.420
For these kids, it was a military tool

0:10:42.420,0:10:45.546
to defend unarmed people from murderers.

0:10:45.546,0:10:47.679
It was a tool of self-defense.

0:10:47.679,0:10:50.034
You know, as we speak today, young people

0:10:50.034,0:10:52.044
are being killed in Syria,

0:10:52.044,0:10:53.854
and up until three months ago,

0:10:53.854,0:10:56.053
if you were injured on the street,

0:10:56.053,0:10:57.505
an ambulance would pick you up,

0:10:57.505,0:11:00.405
take you to the hospital, you'd go in, say, with a broken leg,

0:11:00.405,0:11:02.884
and you'd come out with a bullet in your head.

0:11:02.884,0:11:05.795
So these 20-somethings created

0:11:05.795,0:11:08.089
an alternative health care system,

0:11:08.089,0:11:10.479
where what they did is they used Twitter and basic

0:11:10.479,0:11:13.724
publicly available tools that when someone's injured,

0:11:13.724,0:11:16.404
a car would show up, it would pick them up,

0:11:16.404,0:11:18.963
take them to a makeshift medical clinic, where you'd get

0:11:18.963,0:11:22.505
medical treatment, as opposed to being executed.

0:11:22.505,0:11:25.690
So this is a time of great change.

0:11:25.690,0:11:28.324
Now, it's not without its problems.

0:11:28.324,0:11:30.970
Up until two years ago,

0:11:30.970,0:11:34.123
all revolutions in human history had a leadership,

0:11:34.123,0:11:36.915
and when the old regime fell, the leadership

0:11:36.915,0:11:37.893
and the organization would take power.

0:11:37.893,0:11:40.418
Well, these wiki revolutions happen so fast

0:11:40.418,0:11:41.916
they create a vacuum, and

0:11:41.916,0:11:43.651
politics abhors a vacuum,

0:11:43.651,0:11:45.723
and unsavory forces can fill that,

0:11:45.723,0:11:48.849
typically the old regime,

0:11:48.849,0:11:51.195
or extremists, or fundamentalist forces.

0:11:51.195,0:11:53.930
You can see this playing out today in Egypt.

0:11:53.930,0:11:55.593
But that doesn't matter,

0:11:55.593,0:11:57.730
because this is moving forward.

0:11:57.730,0:12:00.706
The train has left the station. The cat is out of the bag.

0:12:00.706,0:12:04.084
The horse is out of the barn. Help me out here, okay?

0:12:04.084,0:12:06.226
(Laughter) The toothpaste is out of the tube.

0:12:06.226,0:12:08.449
I mean, we're not putting this one back.

0:12:08.449,0:12:12.182
The open world is bringing empowerment and freedom.

0:12:12.182,0:12:14.966
I think, at the end of these four days,

0:12:14.966,0:12:17.732
that you'll come to conclude that the arc of history

0:12:17.732,0:12:21.228
is a positive one, and it's towards openness.

0:12:21.228,0:12:23.709
If you go back a few hundred years,

0:12:23.709,0:12:26.093
all around the world it was a very closed society.

0:12:26.093,0:12:27.662
It was agrarian, and the means of production

0:12:27.662,0:12:30.377
and political system was called feudalism, and knowledge

0:12:30.377,0:12:34.315
was concentrated in the church and the nobility.

0:12:34.315,0:12:35.922
People didn't know about things.

0:12:35.922,0:12:38.397
There was no concept of progress.

0:12:38.397,0:12:40.300
You were born, you lived your life and you died.

0:12:40.300,0:12:44.896
But then Johannes Gutenberg came along with his great invention,

0:12:44.896,0:12:48.448
and, over time, the society opened up.

0:12:48.448,0:12:50.489
People started to learn about things, and when they did,

0:12:50.489,0:12:51.874
the institutions of feudal society appeared

0:12:51.874,0:12:55.577
to be stalled, or frozen, or failing.

0:12:55.577,0:12:58.353
It didn't make sense for the church to be responsible

0:12:58.353,0:13:00.635
for medicine when people had knowledge.

0:13:00.635,0:13:02.582
So we saw the Protestant Reformation.

0:13:02.582,0:13:04.452
Martin Luther called the printing press

0:13:04.452,0:13:06.849
"God's highest act of grace."

0:13:06.849,0:13:10.360
The creation of a corporation, science, the university,

0:13:10.360,0:13:12.047
eventually the Industrial Revolution,

0:13:12.047,0:13:14.221
and it was all good.

0:13:14.221,0:13:16.368
But it came with a cost.

0:13:16.368,0:13:19.080
And now, once again, the technology genie

0:13:19.080,0:13:22.400
is out of the bottle, but this time it's different.

0:13:22.400,0:13:25.265
The printing press gave us access to the written word.

0:13:25.265,0:13:28.724
The Internet enables each of us to be a producer.

0:13:28.724,0:13:31.538
The printing press gave us access to recorded knowledge.

0:13:31.538,0:13:33.448
The Internet gives us access,

0:13:33.448,0:13:35.097
not just to information and knowledge, but

0:13:35.097,0:13:38.473
to the intelligence contained in the crania of other people

0:13:38.473,0:13:40.010
on a global basis.

0:13:40.010,0:13:43.249
To me, this is not an information age,

0:13:43.249,0:13:46.123
it's an age of networked intelligence.

0:13:46.123,0:13:49.995
It's an age of vast promise,

0:13:49.995,0:13:53.123
an age of collaboration,

0:13:53.123,0:13:57.302
where the boundaries of our organizations are changing,

0:13:57.302,0:14:00.017
of transparency, where sunlight

0:14:00.017,0:14:03.240
is disinfecting civilization,

0:14:03.240,0:14:06.796
an age of sharing and understanding

0:14:06.796,0:14:08.502
the new power of the commons,

0:14:08.502,0:14:11.145
and it's an age of empowerment

0:14:11.145,0:14:14.036
and of freedom.

0:14:14.036,0:14:17.572
Now, what I'd like to do is,

0:14:17.572,0:14:20.220
to close, to share with you

0:14:20.220,0:14:22.829
some research that I've been doing.

0:14:22.829,0:14:25.340
I've tried to study all kinds of organizations

0:14:25.340,0:14:28.477
to understand what the future might look like,

0:14:28.477,0:14:31.502
but I've been studying nature recently.

0:14:31.502,0:14:35.132
You know, bees come in swarms

0:14:35.132,0:14:37.843
and fish come in schools.

0:14:37.843,0:14:40.656
Starlings, in the area around Edinburgh,

0:14:40.656,0:14:42.139
in the moors of England,

0:14:42.139,0:14:44.233
come in something called a murmuration,

0:14:44.233,0:14:47.005
and the murmuration refers to the murmuring of the wings

0:14:47.005,0:14:48.918
of the birds, and throughout the day the starlings

0:14:48.918,0:14:50.783
are out over a 20-mile radius

0:14:50.783,0:14:52.824
sort of doing their starling thing.

0:14:52.824,0:14:54.588
And at night they come together

0:14:54.588,0:14:56.710
and they create one of the most spectacular things

0:14:56.710,0:14:58.305
in all of nature,

0:14:58.305,0:15:00.359
and it's called a murmuration.

0:15:00.359,0:15:03.276
And scientists that have studied this have said

0:15:03.276,0:15:05.022
they've never seen an accident.

0:15:05.022,0:15:06.972
Now, this thing has a function.

0:15:06.972,0:15:08.834
It protects the birds.

0:15:08.834,0:15:10.434
You can see on the right here,

0:15:10.434,0:15:14.939
there's a predator being chased away by the collective power

0:15:14.939,0:15:17.929
of the birds, and apparently this is a frightening thing

0:15:17.929,0:15:21.393
if you're a predator of starlings.

0:15:21.393,0:15:23.841
And there's leadership,

0:15:23.841,0:15:25.979
but there's no one leader.

0:15:25.979,0:15:28.080
Now, is this some kind of fanciful analogy,

0:15:28.080,0:15:30.526
or could we actually learn something from this?

0:15:30.526,0:15:33.582
Well, the murmuration functions to record

0:15:33.582,0:15:34.945
a number of principles,

0:15:34.945,0:15:36.464
and they're basically the principles that

0:15:36.464,0:15:38.378
I have described to you today.

0:15:38.378,0:15:41.184
This is a huge collaboration.

0:15:41.184,0:15:42.963
It's an openness, it's a sharing

0:15:42.963,0:15:45.478
of all kinds of information, not just about location

0:15:45.478,0:15:50.493
and trajectory and danger and so on, but about food sources.

0:15:50.493,0:15:54.630
And there's a real sense of interdependence,

0:15:54.630,0:15:58.317
that the individual birds somehow understand

0:15:58.317,0:16:01.276
that their interests are in the interest of the collective.

0:16:01.276,0:16:03.525
Perhaps like we should understand

0:16:03.525,0:16:07.693
that business can't succeed

0:16:07.693,0:16:09.853
in a world that's failing.

0:16:09.853,0:16:11.410
Well, I look at this thing,

0:16:11.410,0:16:14.097
and I get a lot of hope.

0:16:14.097,0:16:19.149
Think about the kids today in the Arab Spring, and

0:16:19.149,0:16:22.005
you see something like this that's underway.

0:16:22.005,0:16:26.145
And imagine, just consider this idea, if you would:

0:16:26.145,0:16:30.090
What if we could connect ourselves in this world

0:16:30.090,0:16:33.935
through a vast network of air and glass?

0:16:33.935,0:16:36.767
Could we go beyond just sharing information and knowledge?

0:16:36.767,0:16:39.276
Could we start to share our intelligence?

0:16:39.276,0:16:41.718
Could we create some kind of

0:16:41.718,0:16:43.439
collective intelligence

0:16:43.439,0:16:47.359
that goes beyond an individual or a group or a team

0:16:47.359,0:16:51.507
to create, perhaps, some kind of consciousness

0:16:51.507,0:16:52.732
on a global basis?

0:16:52.732,0:16:56.405
Well, if we could do this, we could attack some big problems in the world.

0:16:56.405,0:16:58.276
And I look at this thing,

0:16:58.276,0:17:01.191
and, I don't know, I get a lot of hope that maybe this

0:17:01.191,0:17:04.987
smaller, networked, open world

0:17:04.987,0:17:08.091
that our kids inherit might be a better one, and that

0:17:08.091,0:17:11.404
this new age of networked intelligence could be

0:17:11.404,0:17:14.028
an age of promise fulfilled

0:17:14.028,0:17:17.058
and of peril unrequited.

0:17:17.058,0:17:20.404
Let's do this. Thank you.

0:17:20.404,0:17:30.030
(Applause)