Well, here we are, in Casablanca, in 2050.
Casa has become the world capital of fair trade electronic production.
Everywhere in Morocco, some small tin, copper and silver artisanal mines
provide small green companies
what they need to produce fair trade electronic parts.
Most of this fair trade parts production
goes into building what is now a well-known Moroccan specialty,
the "beldi" smartphone! (Laughter)
"Beldi", as they say in Morocco.
To talk about healthy and tasty farm produce,
produced locally in small villages,
usually around the big cities.
So, our "beldi" smartphone is a fair trade smartphone
as it is the fruit of -- I'll put this down --
as it is the fruit of an economic activity at the service of the men developing it.
An economic activity at the service of the environments where this activity happens.
Our "beldi" smartphone is also a pacified smartphone,
as we'll see it serves basic,
simplified use.
It serves basic mobile web use
And it's also a phone offering connectivity that is well-thought-out,
well-controlled and non-intrusive.
It's not the sort of phone that will disturb you
while you're thinking at work
or during your shared moments with friends and family
Everything is designed to leave you alone in the real moments of your life.
But to be fair trade right to the tip of the aerial,
the beldi smartphone is sent to Europe, America or Asia,
on small container sailboats.
A cooperative start-up run by artisanal sailors.
Back to 2012 : tonight, let's imagine together
what a beldi smartphone prototype might look like.
To be respectful of the environment, there are two main levers:
produce less raw materials -- use less raw materials
and produce less waste.
So we need much longer-lasting, sustainable devices,
The beldi smartphone is made to last a lifetime.
So it can be repaired and modified
along with the 2G, 3G network standard changes etc...
But let's look at the basis of our telephone.
Around a bistable ink screen -
that's the black and white screen of the early ebook readers.
It doesn't light up, it uses almost no battery,
we add a text keyboard
and an aerial to it : 2G, 3G
that we can change once 3G has completely disappeared.
A microphone, and an ear piece for voice use.
With these simple tools,
we'll be able, of course,
to phone, send and receive text,
send and receive vector pictures,
these are very light digital pictures,
used in online maps and plans.
With these tools, we'll even be able
to read and check our emails,
all the messages, as long as they are text,
SMS, tweets, Facebook messages - text only.
And of course, access all the world knowledge
available on wikis, or the press.
What is missing are the plans and maps for the instruction manuals.
Those uses seem simple, basic,
but still they allow you to
to study, to build or run a company,
to find the love of your life,
to buy train tickets,
to find a couch to spend the night when traveling,
and why not,
to make a revolution!
So why does the invention of such a phone matter so much?
Well, I think that I, like you,
am of a generation
for which electronics are a wonderful tool for world change,
for improving the world from a social and environmental angle.
Wind turbines and solar panels produce the cleanest electricity.
All over the world, as in Morocco, low-energy lighting systems
connected to solar panels and batteries
allow electricity to be brought
to the 1/5 of the world's households lacking access to the grid
and which use small oil lamps to light up their homes at night,
resulting in burns, lung problems and fires.
Finally, the magic threesome: mobile phones, blogs and social networks
allow the exchange of information
on topics that are not addressed by traditional media:
pollution, corruption, police violence, and so on.
So yes, electronics and all these systems, all these devices
are fantastic tools for improving the world socially
and environmentally.
Unfortunately, the production of these components
is sometimes harmful for men, women and the environment.
Giant open cast mines
polluting air and water.
Extremely low wages in electronics assembly
coupled with overproduction of devices and fast obsolescence.
In France, we get a new phone every 18 months
and a new laptop every 3 or 4 years.
Those devices will end up swelling the piles at unauthorized electronic waste dumps -
usually in Africa or Asia.
Imagining a fair trade electronics industry,
from mine to smartphone, is now a matter of urgency.
An industry concentrating on craftsmanship,
an industry that will allow local economies to develop
if by any chance there's ore under our feet.
So let's bring to the table
universities, NGOs, local authorities,
entrepreneurs, telephone service providers and investors
so that together, they can start preparing
tomorrow's fair trade electronic industry, right now.
Obviously, not every ore used in electronics is available in Morocco.
So we could get our supplies
- via our small container sailboats from artisanal sailor cooperatives -
from other countries producing fair trade electronics:
Mongolia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo
and why not Ghana, which has one of the largest
electronic waste dumps in the world.
Clearly, the production of electronics in small quantities
by craftsmen would be a little more expensive.
And this is where we come back to our good "beldi" smartphone.
Proud to be part of the development of the areas in which it is being produced,
sustainable, and made to last a lifetime, it opens up a market.
A market for electronics that are slightly more costly to produce.
And in this way, it becomes the ambassador for the supply of fair trade electronics to the general public.
So when I present this project, this phone,
I am told that it runs counter to progress,
that it runs counter to what people expect of their phones.
I have asked myself a question, and I am asking you the same one tonight.
Do we all need all of this?
HD photos and videos, super-powerful processors,
permanent connectivity?
Let me show you some examples that got me thinking.
A 2011 smartphone is twice as powerful as all the computers
used by NASA in 1969 to land Apollo 11 on the moon. (Laughter)
It seems a well-worn example.
Today, on Mars, the Curiosity robot,
will be near-autonomous for 2 years.
It will dig, analyze, and look for signs of life
with 4 times less power than any current smartphone.
But let's come back to Earth, in California,
where the executives of the biggest web companies in Silicon Valley are spending a fortune
sending their kids to computer-free schools.
The curriculum includes: hiking, astronomy, building a solar oven,
philosophy, theater - maybe one day they will be brilliant at making TED talks.
That's how tomorrow's American elite is being educated:
without computers, but well-connected to Earth and humankind.
Even closer to us,
on the internet, a Slow Web movement is getting ready to emerge,
like some online journals
that are betting on publishing just one article per week,
or even per month.
The article is extremely well written
and it gives users time to
read it, leave comments, share it, find out more,
which gives rise to thinking outside of current affairs
about social issues,
as you can see here.
So less power,
less connectivity,
simplified uses -
to me it's anything but a return to the candle.
It's simply prioritizing the power of ideas,
the power of human relationships
and setting the mere power of processors aside for a while.
Earlier on, the word "eccentric" could be heard.
Perhaps this may seem a little eccentric or out of place.
My feeling is rather that the world is ready to welcome this sort of project.
Projects featuring fair trade mines,
which participate in the economy of small villages in which they are located.
Phones that last a lifetime
and will not add to the pollution at the world's big electronics dumps.
A few figures:
Fair trade farming and produce:
their market share has multiplied by 17 over the past 10 years.
Over the same period of time, the turnover of organic farming
has risen from 15 billion dollars a year to 60 billion dollars a year.
There's every reason to think that consumers of fair trade or organic products
will soon demand that their smartphone be just as fair as their coffee or their chocolate.
A few months ago in London, on the stage at TEDxExeter,
Bandi Mboubi told us how much coltan extraction --
coltan is an ore
needed to manufacture mobile phones --
how much coltain mining brought his country
-- the Democratic Republic of Congo --
nothing but misery, pollution and violence.
So if the world seems ready,
it seems to me that this is just as true of Morocco.
In Casablanca, the fifth organic store has just opened.
And 10-year-old children want to put gardens on rooftops --
The blogosphere and the tweetosphere are driven by internet users
yearning for social, societal and environmental progress.
An online journal you probably know,
like TalkMorocco has chosen to publish, just once a month,
a collaborative report dealing with major social issues
enabling a discussion aimed at building a still fairer,
still more equitable Morocco.
For 3 years, on the stage of the Moroccan TEDx
free spirits and bold entrepreneurs have been celebrated.
Morocco is developing its green city project,
a city project focused on a University dedicated to sustainable development.
A partnership has just been signed with the Ecole des Mines in Paris.
And talks are underway
with MIT - the major American institute for technological research.
And finally, Morocco has many of the ores
necessary for the production of electronics.
So Morocco, like France, Mongolia, Afghanistan
or the Democratic Republic of Congo are countries with fiery youth,
hungry for social and environmental progress.
Together, they own leading universities,
quality ores,
daring entrepreneurs,
and hopefully, visionary operators and investors.
So now it's up to us -- to all of us -- to make it happen,
to activate, to demand a fairer electronics industry.
One that is fairer to men, women and environments.
Fairer from the small craftsman in the country to the smartphone shops of our city centers.
Let's meet again in 2050. Thank you. (Applause)