1
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So a chip, a poet and a boy.

2
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It's just about 20 years ago,

3
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June 1994, when Intel announced

4
00:00:11,989 --> 00:00:14,002
that there was a flaw

5
00:00:14,002 --> 00:00:16,819
at the core of their Pentium chip.

6
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Deep in the code of the SRT algorithm

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to calculate intermediate quotients necessary

8
00:00:21,451 --> 00:00:23,285
for iterative floating points of divisions --

9
00:00:23,285 --> 00:00:26,384
I don't know what that means, but 
it's what it says on Wikipedia —

10
00:00:26,384 --> 00:00:29,263
there was a flaw and an error

11
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that meant that there was a certain probability

12
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that the result of the calculation would be an error,

13
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and the probability was one out of every

14
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360 billion calculations.

15
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So Intel said your average spreadsheet

16
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would be flawed once every 27,000 years.

17
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They didn't think it was significant,

18
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but there was an outrage in the community.

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The community, the techies, said, this flaw

20
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has to be addressed.

21
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They were not going to stand by quietly

22
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as Intel gave them these chips.

23
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So there was a revolution across the world.

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People marched to demand --

25
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okay, not really exactly like that —

26
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but they rose up and they demanded

27
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that Intel fix the flaw.

28
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And Intel set aside 475 million dollars

29
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to fund the replacement of millions of chips

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to fix the flaw.

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So billions of dollars in our society

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was spent to address a problem

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which would come once out of every 360 billion

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calculations.

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Number two, a poet.

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This is Martin Niemöller.

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You're familiar with his poetry.

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Around the height of the Nazi period,

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he started repeating the verse,

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"First they came for the communists,

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and I did nothing,

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did not speak out because I was not a communist.

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Then they came for the socialists.

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Then they came for the trade unions.

45
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Then they came for the Jews.

46
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And then they came for me.

47
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But there was no one left to speak for me."

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Now, Niemöller is offering a certain kind of insight.

49
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This is an insight at the core of intelligence.

50
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We could call it cluefulness.

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It's a certain kind of test:

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Can you recognize

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an underlying threat and respond?

54
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Can you save yourself or save your kind?

55
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Turns out ants are pretty good at this.

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Cows, not so much.

57
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So can you see the pattern?

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Can you see a pattern and then recognize

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and do something about it? Number two.

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Number three, a boy.

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This is my friend Aaron Swartz.

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He's Tim's friend.

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He's friends of many of you in this audience,

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and seven years ago,

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Aaron came to me with a question.

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It was just before I was going
to give my first TED Talk.

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I was so proud. I was telling him about my talk,

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"Laws that choke creativity."

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And Aaron looked at me

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and was a little impatient, and he said,

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"So how are you ever

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going to solve the problems you're talking about?

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Copyright policy, Internet policy,

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how are you ever going to address those problems

75
00:03:05,982 --> 00:03:09,215
so long as there's this fundamental corruption

76
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in the way our government works?"

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00:03:12,060 --> 00:03:14,665
So I was a little put off by this.

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He wasn't sharing in my celebration.

79
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And I said to him, "You know, Aaron,

80
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it's not my field, not my field."

81
00:03:20,911 --> 00:03:23,467
He said, "You mean as an
academic, it's not your field?"

82
00:03:23,467 --> 00:03:26,061
I said, "Yeah, as an academic, it's not my field."

83
00:03:26,061 --> 00:03:29,392
He said, "What about as a citizen?

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As a citizen."

85
00:03:32,819 --> 00:03:34,415
Now, this is the way Aaron was.

86
00:03:34,415 --> 00:03:39,476
He didn't tell. He asked questions.

87
00:03:39,476 --> 00:03:41,226
But his questions spoke as clearly

88
00:03:41,226 --> 00:03:43,914
as my four-year-old's hug.

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00:03:43,914 --> 00:03:45,330
He was saying to me,

90
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"You've got to get a clue.

91
00:03:47,262 --> 00:03:48,938
You have got to get a clue, because there is

92
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a flaw at the core of the operating system

93
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of this democracy,

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and it's not a flaw every one out of 360 billion times

95
00:03:57,805 --> 00:03:59,597
our democracy tries to make a decision.

96
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It is every time,

97
00:04:01,418 --> 00:04:03,814
every single important issue.

98
00:04:03,814 --> 00:04:08,347
We've got to end the bovinity of this political society.

99
00:04:08,347 --> 00:04:09,990
We've got to adopt, it turns out,

100
00:04:09,990 --> 00:04:12,762
the word is fourmi-formatic attitude --

101
00:04:12,762 --> 00:04:14,532
that's what the Internet tells me the word is --

102
00:04:14,532 --> 00:04:16,604
the ant's appreciative attitude

103
00:04:16,604 --> 00:04:19,242
that gets us to recognize this flaw,

104
00:04:19,242 --> 00:04:25,055
save our kind and save our demos.

105
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Now if you know Aaron Swartz,

106
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you know that we lost him

107
00:04:30,171 --> 00:04:32,503
just over a year ago.

108
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It was about six weeks

109
00:04:34,039 --> 00:04:35,919
before I gave my TED Talk,

110
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and I was so grateful to Chris

111
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that he asked me to give this TED Talk,

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not because I had the chance to talk to you,

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although that was great,

114
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but because it pulled me out
of an extraordinary depression.

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I couldn't begin to describe the sadness.

116
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Because I had to focus.

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00:04:52,951 --> 00:04:57,266
I had to focus on, what was I going to say to you?

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It saved me.

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But after the buzz, the excitement,

120
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the power that comes from this community,

121
00:05:05,892 --> 00:05:08,443
I began to yearn for a less sterile,

122
00:05:08,443 --> 00:05:10,960
less academic way to address these issues,

123
00:05:10,960 --> 00:05:14,749
the issues that I was talking about.

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00:05:14,749 --> 00:05:16,605
We'd begun to focus on New Hampshire

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as a target for this political movement,

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because the primary in New Hampshire

127
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is so incredibly important.

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It was a group called the New Hampshire Rebellion

129
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that was beginning to talk about, how would we make

130
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this issue of this corruption central in 2016?

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But it was another soul that caught my imagination,

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a woman named Doris Haddock, aka Granny D.

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On January 1, 1999, 15 years ago,

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at the age of 88, Granny D started a walk.

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She started in Los Angeles

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and began to walk to Washington, D.C.

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with a single sign on her chest that said,

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"campaign finance reform."

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Eighteen months later,

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at the age of 90,

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00:06:04,820 --> 00:06:07,346
she arrived in Washington
with hundreds following her,

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including many congressmen
who had gotten in a car

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and driven out about a mile outside of the city

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to walk in with her.

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00:06:14,460 --> 00:06:16,602
(Laughter)

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00:06:16,602 --> 00:06:19,892
Now, I don't have 13 months

147
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to walk across the country.

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I've got three kids who hate to walk,

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and a wife who, it turns out,

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still hates when I'm not there

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for mysterious reasons,

152
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so this was not an option,

153
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but the question I asked,

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could we remix Granny D a bit?

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What about a walk not of 3,200 miles

156
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but of 185 miles across New Hampshire

157
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in January?

158
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So on January 11,

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the anniversary of Aaron's death,

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we began a walk that ended on January 24th,

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the day that Granny D was born.

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A total of 200 people joined us across this walk,

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as we went from the very top to the
very bottom of New Hampshire

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talking about this issue.

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And what was astonishing to me,

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something I completely did not expect to find,

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was the passion and anger

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that there was among everyone
that we talked to about this issue.

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We had found in a poll that 96 percent of Americans

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believe it important to reduce the influence

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of money in politics.

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Now politicians and pundits tell you,

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there's nothing we can do about this issue,

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Americans don't care about it,

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but the reason for that is

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that 91 percent of Americans

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think there's nothing that can
be done about this issue.

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And it's this gap between 96 and 91

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that explains our politics of resignation.

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I mean, after all, at least 96 percent of us

181
00:07:49,913 --> 00:07:51,775
wish we could fly like Superman,

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but because at least 91 percent
of us believe we can't,

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00:07:54,939 --> 00:07:57,605
we don't leap off of tall buildings every time

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we have that urge.

185
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That's because we accept our limits,

186
00:08:00,921 --> 00:08:03,680
and so too with this reform.

187
00:08:03,680 --> 00:08:07,973
But when you give people the sense of hope,

188
00:08:07,973 --> 00:08:14,690
you begin to thaw that
absolute sense of impossibility.

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As Harvey Milk said, if you give 'em hope,

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00:08:18,305 --> 00:08:21,020
you give 'em a chance, a way to think

191
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about how this change is possible.

192
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Hope.

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And hope is the one thing that we, Aaron's friends,

194
00:08:29,530 --> 00:08:32,527
failed him with, because we let him

195
00:08:32,527 --> 00:08:38,127
lose that sense of hope.

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I loved that boy like I love my son.

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But we failed him.

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00:08:50,202 --> 00:08:53,790
And I love my country,

199
00:08:53,790 --> 00:08:56,144
and I'm not going to fail that.

200
00:08:56,144 --> 00:08:57,316
I'm not going to fail that.

201
00:08:57,316 --> 00:09:01,009
That sense of hope, we're going to hold,

202
00:09:01,009 --> 00:09:02,475
and we're going to fight for,

203
00:09:02,475 --> 00:09:07,175
however impossible this battle looks.

204
00:09:07,175 --> 00:09:08,469
What's next?

205
00:09:08,469 --> 00:09:11,630
Well, we started with this march with 200 people,

206
00:09:11,630 --> 00:09:15,032
and next year, there will be 1,000

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00:09:15,032 --> 00:09:16,671
on different routes

208
00:09:16,671 --> 00:09:19,181
that march in the month of January

209
00:09:19,181 --> 00:09:23,009
and meet in Concord to celebrate this cause,

210
00:09:23,009 --> 00:09:25,569
and then in 2016, before the primary,

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00:09:25,569 --> 00:09:28,530
there will be 10,000 who march across that state,

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00:09:28,530 --> 00:09:31,594
meeting in Concord to celebrate this cause.

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00:09:31,594 --> 00:09:34,365
And as we have marched, people around the country

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00:09:34,365 --> 00:09:36,223
have begun to say, "Can we do the same thing

215
00:09:36,223 --> 00:09:37,340
in our state?"

216
00:09:37,340 --> 00:09:39,719
So we've started a platform called G.D. Walkers,

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00:09:39,719 --> 00:09:41,710
that is, Granny D walkers,

218
00:09:41,710 --> 00:09:43,837
and Granny D walkers across the country

219
00:09:43,837 --> 00:09:46,939
will be marching for this reform. Number one.

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00:09:46,939 --> 00:09:49,219
Number two, on this march,

221
00:09:49,219 --> 00:09:52,011
one of the founders of Thunderclap, David Cascino,

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00:09:52,011 --> 00:09:53,630
was with us,

223
00:09:53,630 --> 00:09:55,488
and he said, "Well what can we do?"

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00:09:55,488 --> 00:09:57,817
And so they developed a platform,

225
00:09:57,817 --> 00:09:59,739
which we are announcing today,

226
00:09:59,739 --> 00:10:02,205
that allows us to pull together voters

227
00:10:02,205 --> 00:10:04,883
who are committed to this idea of reform.

228
00:10:04,883 --> 00:10:06,029
Regardless of where you are,

229
00:10:06,029 --> 00:10:08,681
in New Hampshire or outside of New Hampshire,

230
00:10:08,681 --> 00:10:10,591
you can sign up and directly be informed

231
00:10:10,591 --> 00:10:13,579
where the candidates are on this issue

232
00:10:13,579 --> 00:10:15,219
so you can decide who to vote for

233
00:10:15,219 --> 00:10:18,137
as a function of which is going

234
00:10:18,137 --> 00:10:22,605
to make this possibility real.

235
00:10:22,605 --> 00:10:26,677
And then finally number three, the hardest.

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00:10:26,677 --> 00:10:28,500
We're in the age of the Super PAC.

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00:10:28,500 --> 00:10:30,609
Indeed yesterday, Merriam announced

238
00:10:30,609 --> 00:10:34,859
that Merriam-Webster will have Super PAC as a word.

239
00:10:34,859 --> 00:10:38,499
It is now an official word in the dictionary.

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00:10:38,499 --> 00:10:43,894
So on May 1, aka May Day,

241
00:10:43,894 --> 00:10:46,681
we're going to try an experiment.

242
00:10:46,681 --> 00:10:48,498
We're going to try a launching

243
00:10:48,498 --> 00:10:50,796
of what we can think of as a Super PAC

244
00:10:50,796 --> 00:10:54,060
to end all Super PACs.

245
00:10:54,060 --> 00:10:55,860
And the basic way this works is this.

246
00:10:55,860 --> 00:10:57,632
For the last year, we have been working

247
00:10:57,632 --> 00:11:01,352
with analysts and political experts

248
00:11:01,352 --> 00:11:04,684
to calculate, how much would it cost

249
00:11:04,684 --> 00:11:07,106
to win enough votes in the United States Congress

250
00:11:07,106 --> 00:11:08,926
to make fundamental reform possible?

251
00:11:08,926 --> 00:11:11,728
What is that number? Half a billion? A billion?

252
00:11:11,728 --> 00:11:13,568
What is that number?

253
00:11:13,568 --> 00:11:16,333
And then whatever that number is,

254
00:11:16,333 --> 00:11:18,438
we are going to kickstart, sort of,

255
00:11:18,438 --> 00:11:20,369
because you can't use KickStarter for political work,

256
00:11:20,369 --> 00:11:23,140
but anyway, kickstart, sort of,

257
00:11:23,140 --> 00:11:25,496
first a bottom-up campaign

258
00:11:25,496 --> 00:11:28,476
where people will make small dollar commitments

259
00:11:28,476 --> 00:11:31,438
contingent on reaching very ambitious goals,

260
00:11:31,438 --> 00:11:33,438
and when those goals have been reached,

261
00:11:33,438 --> 00:11:37,577
we will turn to the large dollar contributors,

262
00:11:37,577 --> 00:11:40,959
to get them to contribute to make it possible

263
00:11:40,959 --> 00:11:44,482
for us to run the kind of Super PAC necessary

264
00:11:44,482 --> 00:11:45,824
to win this issue,

265
00:11:45,824 --> 00:11:48,718
to change the way money influences politics,

266
00:11:48,718 --> 00:11:52,489
so that on November 8,

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00:11:52,489 --> 00:11:54,817
which I discovered yesterday is the day

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that Aaron would have been 30 years old,

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on November 8,

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we will celebrate 218 representatives

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in the House and 60 Senators

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in the United States Senate

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who have committed to this idea

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of fundamental reform.

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So last night, we heard about wishes.

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Here's my wish.

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May one.

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May the ideals of one boy

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unite one nation behind one critical idea

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that we are one people,

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we are the people who were promised a government,

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a government that was promised to be

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dependent upon the people alone, the people,

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who, as Madison told us,

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meant not the rich more than the poor.

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May one.

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And then may you, may you join this movement,

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not because you're a politician,

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not because you're an expert,

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not because this is your field,

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but because if you are,

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you are a citizen.

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Aaron asked me that.

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Now I've asked you.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)