WEBVTT 00:00:01.440 --> 00:00:03.805 Openness. It's a word that 00:00:03.805 --> 00:00:06.884 denotes opportunity and possibilities. 00:00:06.884 --> 00:00:08.924 Open-ended, open hearth, 00:00:08.924 --> 00:00:12.277 open source, open door policy, 00:00:12.277 --> 00:00:15.813 open bar. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:15.813 --> 00:00:18.333 And everywhere the world is opening up, 00:00:18.333 --> 00:00:19.833 and it's a good thing. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:19.833 --> 00:00:21.609 Why is this happening? 00:00:21.609 --> 00:00:24.573 The technology revolution is opening the world. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:24.573 --> 00:00:27.118 Yesterday's Internet was a platform 00:00:27.118 --> 00:00:29.710 for the presentation of content. 00:00:29.710 --> 00:00:32.965 The Internet of today is a platform for computation. 00:00:32.965 --> 00:00:34.572 The Internet is becoming a giant 00:00:34.572 --> 00:00:37.173 global computer, and every time you go on it, 00:00:37.173 --> 00:00:39.830 you upload a video, you do a Google search, 00:00:39.830 --> 00:00:41.484 you remix something, 00:00:41.484 --> 00:00:44.031 you're programming this big global computer 00:00:44.031 --> 00:00:45.271 that we all share. 00:00:45.271 --> 00:00:48.505 Humanity is building a machine, 00:00:48.505 --> 00:00:51.579 and this enables us to collaborate in new ways. 00:00:51.579 --> 00:00:52.895 Collaboration can occur on 00:00:52.895 --> 00:00:55.869 an astronomical basis. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:55.869 --> 00:00:59.277 Now a new generation is opening up the world as well. 00:00:59.277 --> 00:01:01.966 I started studying kids about 15 years ago, 00:01:01.966 --> 00:01:03.925 -- so actually 20 years ago now -- 00:01:03.925 --> 00:01:05.520 and I noticed how my own children were 00:01:05.520 --> 00:01:09.037 effortlessly able to use all this sophisticated technology, 00:01:09.037 --> 00:01:10.254 and at first I thought, 00:01:10.254 --> 00:01:13.219 "My children are prodigies!" (Laughter) 00:01:13.219 --> 00:01:15.345 But then I noticed all their friends were like them, 00:01:15.345 --> 00:01:17.289 so that was a bad theory. 00:01:17.289 --> 00:01:20.284 So I've started working with a few hundred kids, 00:01:20.284 --> 00:01:21.879 and I came to the conclusion 00:01:21.879 --> 00:01:23.937 that this is the first generation to come of age 00:01:23.937 --> 00:01:25.071 in the digital age, 00:01:25.071 --> 00:01:26.692 to be bathed in bits. 00:01:26.692 --> 00:01:29.028 I call them the Net Generation. 00:01:29.028 --> 00:01:30.378 I said, these kids are different. 00:01:30.378 --> 00:01:33.256 They have no fear of technology, because it's not there. 00:01:33.256 --> 00:01:34.717 It's like the air. 00:01:34.717 --> 00:01:38.540 It's sort of like, I have no fear of a refrigerator. 00:01:38.540 --> 00:01:41.070 And — (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:41.070 --> 00:01:42.908 And there's no more powerful force to change 00:01:42.908 --> 00:01:47.616 every institution than the first generation of digital natives. 00:01:47.616 --> 00:01:48.970 I'm a digital immigrant. 00:01:48.970 --> 00:01:51.911 I had to learn the language. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:51.911 --> 00:01:55.180 The global economic crisis is opening up the world as well. 00:01:55.180 --> 00:01:58.210 Our opaque institutions from the Industrial Age, 00:01:58.210 --> 00:02:00.579 everything from old models of the corporation, 00:02:00.579 --> 00:02:03.060 government, media, Wall Street, 00:02:03.060 --> 00:02:06.636 are in various stages of being stalled or frozen 00:02:06.636 --> 00:02:09.562 or in atrophy or even failing, 00:02:09.562 --> 00:02:12.572 and this is now creating a burning platform in the world. 00:02:12.572 --> 00:02:14.401 I mean, think about Wall Street. 00:02:14.401 --> 00:02:17.612 The core modus operandi of Wall Street almost brought down 00:02:17.612 --> 00:02:20.110 global capitalism. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:20.110 --> 00:02:21.673 Now, you know the idea of a burning platform, 00:02:21.673 --> 00:02:25.843 that you're somewhere where the costs of staying where you are 00:02:25.843 --> 00:02:29.044 become greater than the costs of moving to something different, 00:02:29.044 --> 00:02:32.217 perhaps something radically different. 00:02:32.217 --> 00:02:33.945 And we need to change 00:02:33.945 --> 00:02:36.038 and open up all of our institutions. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:36.038 --> 00:02:37.720 So this technology push, 00:02:37.720 --> 00:02:40.612 a demographic kick from a new generation 00:02:40.612 --> 00:02:43.480 and a demand pull from a new 00:02:43.480 --> 00:02:45.907 economic global environment 00:02:45.907 --> 00:02:47.600 is causing the world to open up. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:47.600 --> 00:02:50.720 Now, I think, in fact, 00:02:50.720 --> 00:02:53.923 we're at a turning point in human history, 00:02:53.923 --> 00:02:55.868 where we can finally now rebuild 00:02:55.868 --> 00:02:58.306 many of the institutions of the Industrial Age 00:02:58.306 --> 00:02:59.863 around a new set of principles. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:59.863 --> 00:03:02.227 Now, what is openness? 00:03:02.227 --> 00:03:03.802 Well, as it turns out, openness 00:03:03.802 --> 00:03:06.044 has a number of different meanings, 00:03:06.044 --> 00:03:08.947 and for each there's a corresponding principle 00:03:08.947 --> 00:03:10.616 for the transformation of 00:03:10.616 --> 00:03:12.640 civilization. 00:03:12.640 --> 00:03:15.915 The first is collaboration. 00:03:15.915 --> 00:03:18.730 Now, this is openness in the sense of the boundaries 00:03:18.730 --> 00:03:21.689 of organizations becoming more porous and fluid 00:03:21.689 --> 00:03:23.553 and open. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:23.553 --> 00:03:25.089 The guy in the picture here, 00:03:25.089 --> 00:03:26.218 I'll tell you his story. 00:03:26.218 --> 00:03:28.123 His name is Rob McEwen. 00:03:28.123 --> 00:03:30.705 I'd like to say, "I have this think tank, we scour the world 00:03:30.705 --> 00:03:32.359 for amazing case studies." 00:03:32.359 --> 00:03:34.017 The reason I know this story 00:03:34.017 --> 00:03:38.178 is because he's my neighbor. (Laughter) 00:03:38.178 --> 00:03:39.945 He actually moved across the street from us, 00:03:39.945 --> 00:03:41.224 and he held a cocktail party 00:03:41.224 --> 00:03:43.669 to meet the neighbors, and he says, "You're Don Tapscott. 00:03:43.669 --> 00:03:44.578 I've read some of your books." 00:03:44.578 --> 00:03:45.678 I said, "Great. What do you do?" 00:03:45.678 --> 00:03:46.995 And he says, "Well I used to be a banker 00:03:46.995 --> 00:03:48.443 and now I'm a gold miner." 00:03:48.443 --> 00:03:51.433 And he tells me this amazing story. 00:03:51.433 --> 00:03:53.924 He takes over this gold mine, and his geologists 00:03:53.924 --> 00:03:55.211 can't tell him where the gold is. 00:03:55.211 --> 00:03:56.938 He gives them more money for geological data, 00:03:56.938 --> 00:03:58.567 they come back, they can't tell 00:03:58.567 --> 00:04:00.429 him where to go into production. 00:04:00.429 --> 00:04:04.409 After a few years, he's so frustrated he's ready 00:04:04.409 --> 00:04:06.786 to give up, but he has an epiphany one day. 00:04:06.786 --> 00:04:09.560 He wonders, "If my geologists don't know where the gold is, 00:04:09.560 --> 00:04:11.930 maybe somebody else does." 00:04:11.930 --> 00:04:13.933 So he does a "radical" thing. 00:04:13.933 --> 00:04:15.440 He takes his geological data, 00:04:15.440 --> 00:04:18.203 he publishes it and he holds a contest on the Internet 00:04:18.203 --> 00:04:19.694 called the Goldcorp Challenge. 00:04:19.694 --> 00:04:23.274 It's basically half a million dollars in prize money 00:04:23.274 --> 00:04:25.986 for anybody who can tell me, do I have any gold, 00:04:25.986 --> 00:04:29.922 and if so, where is it? (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:29.922 --> 00:04:32.069 He gets submissions from all around the world. 00:04:32.069 --> 00:04:34.326 They use techniques that he's never heard of, 00:04:34.326 --> 00:04:36.494 and for his half a million dollars in prize money, 00:04:36.494 --> 00:04:40.679 Rob McEwen finds 3.4 billion dollars worth of gold. 00:04:40.679 --> 00:04:42.452 The market value of his company 00:04:42.452 --> 00:04:44.770 goes from 90 million to 10 billion dollars, 00:04:44.770 --> 00:04:47.462 and I can tell you, because he's my neighbor, 00:04:47.462 --> 00:04:50.952 he's a happy camper. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:50.952 --> 00:04:54.640 You know, conventional wisdom says talent is inside, right? 00:04:54.640 --> 00:04:57.751 Your most precious asset goes out the elevator every night. 00:04:57.751 --> 00:05:00.256 He viewed talent differently. 00:05:00.256 --> 00:05:02.552 He wondered, who are their peers? 00:05:02.552 --> 00:05:06.621 He should have fired his geology department, but he didn't. 00:05:06.621 --> 00:05:08.952 You know, some of the best submissions 00:05:08.952 --> 00:05:11.183 didn't come from geologists. 00:05:11.183 --> 00:05:13.679 They came from computer scientists, engineers. 00:05:13.679 --> 00:05:14.930 The winner was a computer graphics company 00:05:14.930 --> 00:05:16.746 that built a three dimensional model of the mine 00:05:16.746 --> 00:05:18.569 where you can helicopter underground 00:05:18.569 --> 00:05:21.239 and see where the gold is. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:21.239 --> 00:05:24.342 He helped us understand that social media's becoming 00:05:24.342 --> 00:05:26.415 social production. 00:05:26.415 --> 00:05:28.159 It's not about hooking up online. 00:05:28.159 --> 00:05:31.234 This is a new means of production in the making. 00:05:31.234 --> 00:05:35.231 And this Ideagora that he created, an open market, agora, 00:05:35.231 --> 00:05:38.230 for uniquely qualified minds, 00:05:38.230 --> 00:05:42.965 was part of a change, a profound change in the deep structure 00:05:42.965 --> 00:05:45.423 and architecture of our organizations, 00:05:45.423 --> 00:05:49.025 and how we sort of orchestrate capability to innovate, 00:05:49.025 --> 00:05:50.725 to create goods and services, 00:05:50.725 --> 00:05:51.848 to engage with the rest of the world, 00:05:51.848 --> 00:05:56.253 in terms of government, how we create public value. 00:05:56.253 --> 00:05:58.239 Openness is about collaboration. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:58.239 --> 00:06:00.605 Now secondly, openness is about transparency. 00:06:00.605 --> 00:06:02.795 This is different. Here, we're talking about the communication 00:06:02.795 --> 00:06:06.630 of pertinent information to stakeholders of organizations: 00:06:06.630 --> 00:06:09.547 employees, customers, business partners, shareholders, 00:06:09.547 --> 00:06:11.309 and so on. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:11.309 --> 00:06:15.582 And everywhere, our institutions are becoming naked. 00:06:15.582 --> 00:06:18.069 People are all bent out of shape about WikiLeaks, 00:06:18.069 --> 00:06:20.525 but that's just the tip of the iceberg. 00:06:20.525 --> 00:06:23.230 You see, people at their fingertips now, everybody, 00:06:23.230 --> 00:06:25.455 not just Julian Assange, 00:06:25.455 --> 00:06:28.046 have these powerful tools for finding out what's going on, 00:06:28.046 --> 00:06:29.503 scrutinizing, informing others, 00:06:29.503 --> 00:06:33.093 and even organizing collective responses. 00:06:33.093 --> 00:06:35.383 Institutions are becoming naked, NOTE Paragraph 00:06:35.383 --> 00:06:37.190 and if you're going to be naked, 00:06:37.190 --> 00:06:39.905 well, there's some corollaries that flow from that. 00:06:39.905 --> 00:06:40.768 I mean, one is, 00:06:40.768 --> 00:06:43.549 fitness is no longer optional. (Laughter) 00:06:43.549 --> 00:06:47.870 You know? Or if you're going to be naked, you'd better get buff. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:47.870 --> 00:06:51.335 Now, by buff I mean, you need to have good value, 00:06:51.335 --> 00:06:53.315 because value is evidenced like never before. 00:06:53.315 --> 00:06:54.279 You say you have good products. 00:06:54.279 --> 00:06:55.320 They'd better be good. 00:06:55.320 --> 00:06:57.271 But you also need to have values. 00:06:57.271 --> 00:07:00.214 You need to have integrity as part of your bones 00:07:00.214 --> 00:07:02.622 and your DNA as an organization, 00:07:02.622 --> 00:07:05.095 because if you don't, you'll be unable to build trust, 00:07:05.095 --> 00:07:09.084 and trust is a sine qua non of this new network world. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:09.084 --> 00:07:12.355 So this is good. It's not bad. 00:07:12.355 --> 00:07:15.050 Sunlight is the best disinfectant. 00:07:15.050 --> 00:07:19.033 And we need a lot of sunlight in this troubled world. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:19.033 --> 00:07:22.029 Now, the third meaning and corresponding principle 00:07:22.029 --> 00:07:24.159 of openness is about sharing. 00:07:24.159 --> 00:07:25.880 Now this is different than transparency. 00:07:25.880 --> 00:07:28.623 Transparency is about the communication of information. 00:07:28.623 --> 00:07:33.041 Sharing is about giving up assets, intellectual property. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:33.041 --> 00:07:35.311 And there are all kinds of famous stories about this. 00:07:35.311 --> 00:07:38.248 IBM gave away 400 million dollars of software 00:07:38.248 --> 00:07:40.349 to the Linux movement, and that gave them 00:07:40.349 --> 00:07:43.360 a multi-billion dollar payoff. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:43.360 --> 00:07:45.320 Now, conventional wisdom says, 00:07:45.320 --> 00:07:48.055 "Well, hey, our intellectual property belongs to us, 00:07:48.055 --> 00:07:50.358 and if someone tries to infringe it, we're going to get out 00:07:50.358 --> 00:07:52.706 our lawyers and we're going to sue them." 00:07:52.706 --> 00:07:56.119 Well, it didn't work so well for the record labels, did it? 00:07:56.119 --> 00:08:01.223 I mean, they took — They had a technology disruption, 00:08:01.223 --> 00:08:03.912 and rather than taking a business model innovation 00:08:03.912 --> 00:08:07.864 to correspond to that, they took and sought a legal solution 00:08:07.864 --> 00:08:10.177 and the industry that brought you Elvis and the Beatles 00:08:10.177 --> 00:08:12.209 is now suing children 00:08:12.209 --> 00:08:16.376 and is in danger of collapse. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:16.376 --> 00:08:19.217 So we need to think differently about intellectual property. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:19.217 --> 00:08:20.246 I'll give you an example. 00:08:20.246 --> 00:08:23.128 The pharmaceutical industry is in deep trouble. 00:08:23.128 --> 00:08:25.733 First of all, there aren't a lot of big inventions 00:08:25.733 --> 00:08:28.087 in the pipeline, and this is a big problem for human health, 00:08:28.087 --> 00:08:33.248 and the pharmaceutical industry has got a bigger problem, 00:08:33.248 --> 00:08:35.171 that they're about to fall off something 00:08:35.171 --> 00:08:36.692 called the patent cliff. 00:08:36.692 --> 00:08:37.460 Do you know about this? 00:08:37.460 --> 00:08:40.464 They're going to lose 20 to 35 percent of their revenue 00:08:40.464 --> 00:08:42.091 in the next 12 months. 00:08:42.091 --> 00:08:43.422 And what are you going to do, 00:08:43.422 --> 00:08:46.532 like, cut back on paper clips or something? No. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:46.532 --> 00:08:51.245 We need to reinvent the whole model of scientific research. 00:08:51.245 --> 00:08:54.709 The pharmaceutical industry needs to place assets 00:08:54.709 --> 00:08:58.644 in a commons. They need to start sharing precompetitive research. 00:08:58.644 --> 00:09:00.987 They need to start sharing 00:09:00.987 --> 00:09:02.445 clinical trial data, 00:09:02.445 --> 00:09:06.716 and in doing so, create a rising tide that could lift all boats, 00:09:06.716 --> 00:09:08.658 not just for the industry but 00:09:08.658 --> 00:09:11.449 for humanity. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:11.449 --> 00:09:13.854 Now, the fourth meaning 00:09:13.854 --> 00:09:16.000 of openness, 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:17.999 and corresponding principle, is about empowerment. 00:09:17.999 --> 00:09:20.215 And I'm not talking about the motherhood sense here. 00:09:20.215 --> 00:09:23.689 Knowledge and intelligence is power, 00:09:23.689 --> 00:09:26.528 and as it becomes more distributed, there's a 00:09:26.528 --> 00:09:29.073 concomitant distribution 00:09:29.073 --> 00:09:32.704 and decentralization and disaggregation of power 00:09:32.704 --> 00:09:34.633 that's underway in the world today. 00:09:34.633 --> 00:09:37.723 The open world is bringing freedom. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:37.723 --> 00:09:40.072 Now, take the Arab Spring. 00:09:40.072 --> 00:09:41.984 The debate about the role of social media 00:09:41.984 --> 00:09:43.978 and social change has been settled. 00:09:43.978 --> 00:09:47.216 You know, one word: Tunisia. 00:09:47.216 --> 00:09:49.562 And then it ended up having a whole bunch of other words too. 00:09:49.562 --> 00:09:51.904 But in the Tunisian revolution, 00:09:51.904 --> 00:09:54.031 the new media didn't cause the revolution; 00:09:54.031 --> 00:09:55.811 it was caused by injustice. 00:09:55.811 --> 00:10:00.048 Social media didn't create the revolution; 00:10:00.048 --> 00:10:02.369 it was created by a new generation of young people 00:10:02.369 --> 00:10:04.177 who wanted jobs and hope and 00:10:04.177 --> 00:10:08.203 who didn't want to be treated as subjects anymore. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:08.203 --> 00:10:11.268 But just as the Internet drops transaction and collaboration 00:10:11.268 --> 00:10:13.636 costs in business and government, 00:10:13.636 --> 00:10:16.393 it also drops the cost of dissent, of rebellion, 00:10:16.393 --> 00:10:18.222 and even insurrection 00:10:18.222 --> 00:10:20.314 in ways that people didn't understand. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:20.314 --> 00:10:22.137 You know, during the Tunisian revolution, 00:10:22.137 --> 00:10:24.831 snipers associated with the regime were killing 00:10:24.831 --> 00:10:26.575 unarmed students in the street. 00:10:26.575 --> 00:10:29.596 So the students would take their mobile devices, 00:10:29.596 --> 00:10:32.249 take a picture, triangulate the location, 00:10:32.249 --> 00:10:34.450 send that picture to friendly military units, 00:10:34.450 --> 00:10:36.859 who'd come in and take out the snipers. 00:10:36.859 --> 00:10:39.393 You think that social media is about hooking up online? 00:10:39.393 --> 00:10:42.420 For these kids, it was a military tool 00:10:42.420 --> 00:10:45.546 to defend unarmed people from murderers. 00:10:45.546 --> 00:10:47.679 It was a tool of self-defense. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:47.679 --> 00:10:50.034 You know, as we speak today, young people 00:10:50.034 --> 00:10:52.044 are being killed in Syria, 00:10:52.044 --> 00:10:53.854 and up until three months ago, 00:10:53.854 --> 00:10:56.053 if you were injured on the street, 00:10:56.053 --> 00:10:57.505 an ambulance would pick you up, 00:10:57.505 --> 00:11:00.405 take you to the hospital, you'd go in, say, with a broken leg, 00:11:00.405 --> 00:11:02.884 and you'd come out with a bullet in your head. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:02.884 --> 00:11:05.795 So these 20-somethings created 00:11:05.795 --> 00:11:08.089 an alternative health care system, 00:11:08.089 --> 00:11:10.479 where what they did is they used Twitter and basic 00:11:10.479 --> 00:11:13.724 publicly available tools that when someone's injured, 00:11:13.724 --> 00:11:16.404 a car would show up, it would pick them up, 00:11:16.404 --> 00:11:18.963 take them to a makeshift medical clinic, where you'd get 00:11:18.963 --> 00:11:22.505 medical treatment, as opposed to being executed. 00:11:22.505 --> 00:11:25.690 So this is a time of great change. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:25.690 --> 00:11:28.324 Now, it's not without its problems. 00:11:28.324 --> 00:11:30.970 Up until two years ago, 00:11:30.970 --> 00:11:34.123 all revolutions in human history had a leadership, 00:11:34.123 --> 00:11:36.915 and when the old regime fell, the leadership 00:11:36.915 --> 00:11:37.893 and the organization would take power. 00:11:37.893 --> 00:11:40.418 Well, these wiki revolutions happen so fast 00:11:40.418 --> 00:11:41.916 they create a vacuum, and 00:11:41.916 --> 00:11:43.651 politics abhors a vacuum, 00:11:43.651 --> 00:11:45.723 and unsavory forces can fill that, 00:11:45.723 --> 00:11:48.849 typically the old regime, 00:11:48.849 --> 00:11:51.195 or extremists, or fundamentalist forces. 00:11:51.195 --> 00:11:53.930 You can see this playing out today in Egypt. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:53.930 --> 00:11:55.593 But that doesn't matter, 00:11:55.593 --> 00:11:57.730 because this is moving forward. 00:11:57.730 --> 00:12:00.706 The train has left the station. The cat is out of the bag. 00:12:00.706 --> 00:12:04.084 The horse is out of the barn. Help me out here, okay? 00:12:04.084 --> 00:12:06.226 (Laughter) The toothpaste is out of the tube. 00:12:06.226 --> 00:12:08.449 I mean, we're not putting this one back. 00:12:08.449 --> 00:12:12.182 The open world is bringing empowerment and freedom. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:12.182 --> 00:12:14.966 I think, at the end of these four days, 00:12:14.966 --> 00:12:17.732 that you'll come to conclude that the arc of history 00:12:17.732 --> 00:12:21.228 is a positive one, and it's towards openness. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:21.228 --> 00:12:23.709 If you go back a few hundred years, 00:12:23.709 --> 00:12:26.093 all around the world it was a very closed society. 00:12:26.093 --> 00:12:27.662 It was agrarian, and the means of production 00:12:27.662 --> 00:12:30.377 and political system was called feudalism, and knowledge 00:12:30.377 --> 00:12:34.315 was concentrated in the church and the nobility. 00:12:34.315 --> 00:12:35.922 People didn't know about things. 00:12:35.922 --> 00:12:38.397 There was no concept of progress. 00:12:38.397 --> 00:12:40.300 You were born, you lived your life and you died. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:40.300 --> 00:12:44.896 But then Johannes Gutenberg came along with his great invention, 00:12:44.896 --> 00:12:48.448 and, over time, the society opened up. 00:12:48.448 --> 00:12:50.489 People started to learn about things, and when they did, 00:12:50.489 --> 00:12:51.874 the institutions of feudal society appeared 00:12:51.874 --> 00:12:55.577 to be stalled, or frozen, or failing. 00:12:55.577 --> 00:12:58.353 It didn't make sense for the church to be responsible 00:12:58.353 --> 00:13:00.635 for medicine when people had knowledge. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:00.635 --> 00:13:02.582 So we saw the Protestant Reformation. 00:13:02.582 --> 00:13:04.452 Martin Luther called the printing press 00:13:04.452 --> 00:13:06.849 "God's highest act of grace." 00:13:06.849 --> 00:13:10.360 The creation of a corporation, science, the university, 00:13:10.360 --> 00:13:12.047 eventually the Industrial Revolution, 00:13:12.047 --> 00:13:14.221 and it was all good. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:14.221 --> 00:13:16.368 But it came with a cost. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:16.368 --> 00:13:19.080 And now, once again, the technology genie 00:13:19.080 --> 00:13:22.400 is out of the bottle, but this time it's different. 00:13:22.400 --> 00:13:25.265 The printing press gave us access to the written word. 00:13:25.265 --> 00:13:28.724 The Internet enables each of us to be a producer. 00:13:28.724 --> 00:13:31.538 The printing press gave us access to recorded knowledge. 00:13:31.538 --> 00:13:33.448 The Internet gives us access, 00:13:33.448 --> 00:13:35.097 not just to information and knowledge, but 00:13:35.097 --> 00:13:38.473 to the intelligence contained in the crania of other people 00:13:38.473 --> 00:13:40.010 on a global basis. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:40.010 --> 00:13:43.249 To me, this is not an information age, 00:13:43.249 --> 00:13:46.123 it's an age of networked intelligence. 00:13:46.123 --> 00:13:49.995 It's an age of vast promise, 00:13:49.995 --> 00:13:53.123 an age of collaboration, 00:13:53.123 --> 00:13:57.302 where the boundaries of our organizations are changing, 00:13:57.302 --> 00:14:00.017 of transparency, where sunlight 00:14:00.017 --> 00:14:03.240 is disinfecting civilization, 00:14:03.240 --> 00:14:06.796 an age of sharing and understanding 00:14:06.796 --> 00:14:08.502 the new power of the commons, 00:14:08.502 --> 00:14:11.145 and it's an age of empowerment 00:14:11.145 --> 00:14:14.036 and of freedom. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:14.036 --> 00:14:17.572 Now, what I'd like to do is, 00:14:17.572 --> 00:14:20.220 to close, to share with you 00:14:20.220 --> 00:14:22.829 some research that I've been doing. 00:14:22.829 --> 00:14:25.340 I've tried to study all kinds of organizations 00:14:25.340 --> 00:14:28.477 to understand what the future might look like, 00:14:28.477 --> 00:14:31.502 but I've been studying nature recently. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:31.502 --> 00:14:35.132 You know, bees come in swarms 00:14:35.132 --> 00:14:37.843 and fish come in schools. 00:14:37.843 --> 00:14:40.656 Starlings, in the area around Edinburgh, 00:14:40.656 --> 00:14:42.139 in the moors of England, 00:14:42.139 --> 00:14:44.233 come in something called a murmuration, 00:14:44.233 --> 00:14:47.005 and the murmuration refers to the murmuring of the wings 00:14:47.005 --> 00:14:48.918 of the birds, and throughout the day the starlings 00:14:48.918 --> 00:14:50.783 are out over a 20-mile radius 00:14:50.783 --> 00:14:52.824 sort of doing their starling thing. 00:14:52.824 --> 00:14:54.588 And at night they come together 00:14:54.588 --> 00:14:56.710 and they create one of the most spectacular things 00:14:56.710 --> 00:14:58.305 in all of nature, 00:14:58.305 --> 00:15:00.359 and it's called a murmuration. 00:15:00.359 --> 00:15:03.276 And scientists that have studied this have said 00:15:03.276 --> 00:15:05.022 they've never seen an accident. 00:15:05.022 --> 00:15:06.972 Now, this thing has a function. 00:15:06.972 --> 00:15:08.834 It protects the birds. 00:15:08.834 --> 00:15:10.434 You can see on the right here, 00:15:10.434 --> 00:15:14.939 there's a predator being chased away by the collective power 00:15:14.939 --> 00:15:17.929 of the birds, and apparently this is a frightening thing 00:15:17.929 --> 00:15:21.393 if you're a predator of starlings. 00:15:21.393 --> 00:15:23.841 And there's leadership, 00:15:23.841 --> 00:15:25.979 but there's no one leader. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:25.979 --> 00:15:28.080 Now, is this some kind of fanciful analogy, 00:15:28.080 --> 00:15:30.526 or could we actually learn something from this? 00:15:30.526 --> 00:15:33.582 Well, the murmuration functions to record 00:15:33.582 --> 00:15:34.945 a number of principles, 00:15:34.945 --> 00:15:36.464 and they're basically the principles that 00:15:36.464 --> 00:15:38.378 I have described to you today. 00:15:38.378 --> 00:15:41.184 This is a huge collaboration. 00:15:41.184 --> 00:15:42.963 It's an openness, it's a sharing 00:15:42.963 --> 00:15:45.478 of all kinds of information, not just about location 00:15:45.478 --> 00:15:50.493 and trajectory and danger and so on, but about food sources. 00:15:50.493 --> 00:15:54.630 And there's a real sense of interdependence, 00:15:54.630 --> 00:15:58.317 that the individual birds somehow understand 00:15:58.317 --> 00:16:01.276 that their interests are in the interest of the collective. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:01.276 --> 00:16:03.525 Perhaps like we should understand 00:16:03.525 --> 00:16:07.693 that business can't succeed 00:16:07.693 --> 00:16:09.853 in a world that's failing. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:09.853 --> 00:16:11.410 Well, I look at this thing, 00:16:11.410 --> 00:16:14.097 and I get a lot of hope. 00:16:14.097 --> 00:16:19.149 Think about the kids today in the Arab Spring, and 00:16:19.149 --> 00:16:22.005 you see something like this that's underway. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:22.005 --> 00:16:26.145 And imagine, just consider this idea, if you would: 00:16:26.145 --> 00:16:30.090 What if we could connect ourselves in this world 00:16:30.090 --> 00:16:33.935 through a vast network of air and glass? 00:16:33.935 --> 00:16:36.767 Could we go beyond just sharing information and knowledge? 00:16:36.767 --> 00:16:39.276 Could we start to share our intelligence? 00:16:39.276 --> 00:16:41.718 Could we create some kind of 00:16:41.718 --> 00:16:43.439 collective intelligence 00:16:43.439 --> 00:16:47.359 that goes beyond an individual or a group or a team 00:16:47.359 --> 00:16:51.507 to create, perhaps, some kind of consciousness 00:16:51.507 --> 00:16:52.732 on a global basis? 00:16:52.732 --> 00:16:56.405 Well, if we could do this, we could attack some big problems in the world. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:56.405 --> 00:16:58.276 And I look at this thing, 00:16:58.276 --> 00:17:01.191 and, I don't know, I get a lot of hope that maybe this 00:17:01.191 --> 00:17:04.987 smaller, networked, open world 00:17:04.987 --> 00:17:08.091 that our kids inherit might be a better one, and that 00:17:08.091 --> 00:17:11.404 this new age of networked intelligence could be 00:17:11.404 --> 00:17:14.028 an age of promise fulfilled 00:17:14.028 --> 00:17:17.058 and of peril unrequited. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:17.058 --> 00:17:20.404 Let's do this. Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:20.404 --> 00:17:30.030 (Applause)