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    0:15
    so
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    today we want to talk to you about the role of technology in society
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    in the longer arc have human history
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    Tom would like to take it would like you all to take a couple things away from
    0:31
    this talk
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    om the
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    interaction between a piece of technology into pieces and
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    and society is rarely settled in
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    you know two or three years or ten years we're still as a society just barely
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    learning how to use
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    email I if you think even in the past five or 10 years
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    the way emails used in professional context has changed radically we don't
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    really know what it means yet
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    am we think we have a reasonable understanding of how you use an
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    auditorium
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    we figured that one out mostly are
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    the other thing we'd like to talk about here and we'd like you to take away from
    1:14
    here
    1:14
    is that welke culture
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    kind of grew up is an outsider culture
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    that changed on it's at the heart of politics in the heart of social
    1:25
    movements now
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    because it's the hard how we communicate now geek culture and and hacker culture
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    used to be relatively apolitical
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    but now every action that you take and every piece of code that you ride
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    has political effects now you may intend somebody's a fact you may not intend to
    1:45
    master these are facts
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    but there there and we need to start thinking about and understanding these
    1:51
    changes
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    and this is a change that's happened in our lifetimes so
    1:57
    Quinn is mostly a kind in coherent lenders
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    anti-capitalist anarchism in California libertarianism
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    in l.a is marxists in the quest presumably with blood on our hands
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    but says she likes me a lot she's promised me six minutes notice on the
    2:15
    purge before it happens I get a head start
    2:17
    I'm despite the political party the stalk
    2:22
    this talk is not about our politics I it not about what
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    Allah or I want you to do it's about what we've learned from examining
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    the network a fact that we live with now on
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    because fundamentally and many have you recognize this the fundamentally
    2:39
    and architecture how the politics and it has a culture
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    and while we were all kind of sitting around in
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    our culture and Usenet in the nineties or wherever we got our start
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    kinda being like ellis et outsiders
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    the world pivoted it changed and surrounded us and put us at the heart
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    these matters and so whatever you
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    one to do politically what we're gonna be talking about
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    is the framework of the politics that technology is creating
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    around the world right now sOooo
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    10 the one other really
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    interesting structures in the world right now that we spend a lot of time
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    dealing with our state's
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    states have a couple a very basic things that they require to be able to interact
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    with the world
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    they need to be able to see their territory and the people who live in
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    that territory
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    if they're going to be able to interact with them and
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    this is this is simply a truth that applies to anything
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    to any time where someone needs to interact with the thing
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    if you can't perceive a thing you can't interact with it
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    am this map here's the plan city of Brasilia
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    which is the a city that was built
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    to be legible to be understandable to the state the notion that a state should
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    if nothing else even if it can't understand all the rest of its territory
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    all over each other cities it should be able to understand the city
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    from which it governs um of course
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    I don't know how many if you're familiar with the actual city of Brasilia
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    but it doesn't look much like what's indicated on that map
    4:20
    reality has kind of come back in and gotten about a lot messier again
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    so a lot of the time com the ability of a state
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    to see its citizens and to see its train is actually a very very good thing
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    this is the snow map which founded modern epidemiology at a map of cholera
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    deaths and London
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    around a particular while when they didn't understand
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    that com water and that the cholera was spread through water
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    arm this map
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    told us things about human disease transmission
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    that have saved at least tens of millions of lives
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    and this is a former surveillance
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    sometimes this is a bad thing this is a map that the city of Amsterdam prepared
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    from their very complete census records
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    up where all the Jews were in Amsterdam for the nazis
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    during the process as
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    kind of the societal adjustments following the revolution in France
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    arm and this was actually wanted the demands leading up to the revolution
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    from certain sectors the society
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    com the a revolutionary government has continued under Napoleon
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    standardized on the metric system am
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    one of the things that this did was that it he's a lot of the burdens on farmers
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    who
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    we're having to deal with incompatible local unit systems
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    being used to basically rip them off from what they should have earned a net
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    profits
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    but it also laid the groundwork for tax standardization
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    and for central control arm to paraphrase
    6:01
    shutter beyond what he said at the time you know if someone's using the metric
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    system
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    that their narc in other words you know that if someone is using the metric
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    system they work for the government they work for the order that is attempting
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    to impose legibility on society
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    interested Quinn in the fourth century BC
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    no relation the a
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    the Emperor decided that imposing
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    surnames on the population was a good idea
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    on they needed to be able to
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    I construct people for labor and for the military they needed to be able to tax
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    people
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    and they needed to be able to apply laws to families
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    I now many the ruling families in this is true throughout the world
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    in places where names have been have been put into force not been imposed on
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    people
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    many the ruling families already had surnames were frequent hatch to wear
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    that lived her
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    or where they ruled on the common people had all sorts of different ways and
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    being known
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    and if you imagine you've got a dozen different ways that you can be named
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    and you might have some reasons to not want to be
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    legible to the state this is very very convenient for you
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    so assigning patrons was away as changing that power structure
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    and along the way it may have also changed some other power structures in
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    the family
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    it's not clear but one of the things that
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    they attempted to do was to make the arm
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    rested the to make the head of a family responsible for all the action to the
    7:33
    rest to the family
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    which you could reasonably see might have some arm
    7:38
    some cultural shifts now this is really interesting because it shows that the
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    vision and the state has consequences
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    when the state looks at the world it makes things fall into the box is that
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    it's measuring
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    even if they didn't before in other words
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    networks weird legibility
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    cell I'm i this is i think have a controversial statement in this room
    8:03
    right now
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    but I think that surveillance is actually a form of human concern
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    human attention in human concern and
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    and surveillance is what we do when we care about something
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    I at some times that care takes positive forms
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    got coming back to the collar map I sometimes
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    it allows us to build infrastructure that works for a lot of people sometimes
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    it allows us
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    to prevent disease and feed children and so on and so forth
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    and sometimes it's used for political control it's always used in some way
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    I have concern and like technology
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    and many political qualities it is neither good nor bad doors in Utah
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    excuse me who on and
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    and I think that some when things we have to bear in mind in this particular
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    age of surveillance
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    and is that to in many ways
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    surveillance is a small touches that we do on each other surveillance is when we
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    check up on each other and stuff like that
    9:03
    so finding a way to cast that's where we can reclaim the positive
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    and suppress the negative is I think much more the task then to fight all
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    surveillance
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    it's a much more subtle question then it would seem right now
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    on but when we talk about this kinda vision of the state
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    the status watcher the state as some as arbiter money for instance
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    the news cycle we have right now if we want to take it back
    9:26
    all the way to I for century BC China
    9:29
    this isn't this all makes more sense
    9:32
    now it makes sense that that nations are trying to get all the information they
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    can
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    because they're trying again to make their world legible
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    and when they get all that information they're putting into categories that
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    they perceive
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    are meaningful and
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    and that means destroying by ignoring the ones that are
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    I think one thing that's really useful about reading this history is it gives
    9:56
    you a measure of prediction
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    on what states are gonna wanna do with technology
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    they want to keep tabs on their people for good and bad reasons and there's
    10:04
    always both good and bad reasons I'm
    10:08
    and they want to take the power
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    that they get by being the state and use it to mold
    10:16
    the country that they're in that has been
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    a tremendously progressive force in history and a tremendously destructive
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    one but it still comes from the same fundamental
    10:27
    impulse and this is why it's really easy for me to stand up and say
    10:31
    a statement always spy on its people as much as they possibly can
    10:35
    because Steve always have not just to maintain their power but just to
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    maintain
    10:40
    the ability to control consequences which is a point that will return to
    10:45
    later
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    so we're in an on time history and i wanna actually rollback
    10:50
    to I am another moment in history
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    introduce you for two William Tindal from the 16th century
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    and Tindal I'm had to flee one day from his native England
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    and he never set foot in England again he died outside England
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    up because he decided to translate it said would you wanna do with translate
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    the Bible into English
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    now centuries before this this was always a contentious issue
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    translated the Bible into the local language I it was generally in Latin
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    I'm at centuries before this Pope Innocent the third had
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    had essentially and sentenced to death
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    people that would try to do something like this he
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    the lady was never even to touch the Bible it was to be interpreted and
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    handed down
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    from on high by the church because the church
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    with the people who have the knowledge to understand it it was a top-down
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    picture and Tindal was part of a movement
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    they wanted people to be able to take control of their own Christianity
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    he was opposed by as Sir Thomas More
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    now Saint Thomas More I'm who believed that
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    the church was necessary to keep order if this is sounding a bit Hobbesian
    12:03
    that's because it is a hot team today and it is one that we are still kinda
    12:07
    I too would like in the third activists I used to think this is a good metaphor
    12:11
    for where we are now but actually I think this is just the same thing going
    12:13
    on
    12:14
    so more in 10 Dale got into a huge fight
    12:18
    and more was on the runner's high today was on the run more worse
    12:22
    was sitting with p.m. henry the eighth and they got into
    12:26
    a big argument and this argument spanned con the continent
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    at various points about whether or not the Bible should be in English
    12:34
    and people should be able to interpret their own religion
    12:37
    on and of course that got started because this guy
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    at Martin Luther who created up and shove
    12:44
    at the season staple them to door and then and then sent them all around the
    12:48
    continent
    12:50
    again nothing on this list above church reforms that Luther in 10 day on the
    12:55
    whole crew wanted were new
    12:57
    not thing was new what was new was a if you were
    13:00
    Martin Luther you wanted to say the church needs to reform and you gonna
    13:03
    force
    13:04
    and to go tell people that that's what you believed the church would burden you
    13:09
    I but something had changed and this is also how
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    Tindal and I mean it this the statement
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    10 they all ran away and then they had a fight for years
    13:20
    doesn't make any sense to most people in that area
    13:23
    and it just sounds assumed to us because I've a communication technology in this
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    case that communication technology
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    on is the printing press
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    I'm so on Luther was able to put out as they fight the cysts it
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    safely with patron in Germany and say the church need to reform
    13:43
    and the church dedication to be like could you send them from eating and he's
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    like
    13:46
    I'll stay here in Germany it's fine and I'm
    13:51
    and no originally though the printing press
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    had been a huge to love the church
    13:58
    the more the biggest customers a printing
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    am not just to print bibles but also standardize the interpretation of the
    14:06
    religion everywhere they could print things out send them
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    out all Europe and gain control
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    and again legibility on their religion make sure that everybody had the right
    14:15
    materials
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    that there was no corruption in them and spread them everywhere
    14:20
    and that went on for a few years and then the dissidents got a hold of this
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    technology
    14:24
    and it turned out they could do the same thing the church could do
    14:28
    so the big question hanging over the 16th century
    14:31
    was was the printing press going to reform the Catholic Church
    14:36
    well in fact the printing press reformed
    14:40
    everything on the planet and possibly few things of the plaque
    14:46
    so they didn't even have a language to ask the right question
    14:52
    for the undertaking that they were embarking on
    14:59
    so Tindal and more were two threads inside one institutional power
    15:05
    but there are a lot of kinds of power in society not just one
    15:09
    arm the church has waned in authority
    15:13
    capitalism was in many ways just getting started this was the birth at the East
    15:16
    India
    15:17
    company this was the birth a mercantilism in that same era
    15:22
    on but the power guns in the power of money and the power of God
    15:25
    are just three different kinds of power and they'll let you do different kinds
    15:29
    of things they're not
    15:31
    commence herbal with each other they don't act on each other they don't
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    act on themselves if you have a pile of money that doesn't lessen
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    necessarily let you directly influence
    15:42
    what someone else who has a pile of money wants to do now
    15:46
    you can maybe take away their money or
    15:49
    force them to do something else because you bought the thing that they were
    15:52
    trying to buy first
    15:54
    om but there's a lot of subtlety here in terms of how
    15:58
    power acts and this is one of the things that
    16:03
    seems to be occasionally getting missed while we talk about
    16:07
    oh we need to force states to do such and such we need to stop States from
    16:11
    doing such-and-such
    16:13
    you know there's this a you know all corporate surveillance is the worst
    16:17
    thing oh
    16:18
    state surveillance the worst thing other different things and they may be
    16:21
    problematic in different ways all power needs to be able to see the world in a
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    balloon
    16:27
    in order to act whether you are a state for a corporation or church
    16:32
    you need your own kind and legibility and your own kind of surveillance
    16:36
    whether that means figuring out if the people in all the villages are showing
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    up in church on Sundays
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    and whether or not they're doing any of these things that might be indicative
    16:46
    have any at these various heresies
    16:49
    that you keep hearing about well let's go burn some people and find out
    16:53
    or whether it just means that I need to be able to set cookies in your browser
    16:57
    and figure out what kind of porn you like that's the same operation but for
    17:02
    very different reasons
    17:05
    states are panicking right now there
    17:09
    acting the way they are because they're panicked
    17:12
    and there's nothing that can cause the consequence very and it used to be that
    17:16
    consequence ferry was a very staid creature
    17:19
    and it would sort of you know floats slowly around the room analyte
    17:23
    on the shoulders have had to state and popes and bishops
    17:27
    and you know capitalists and say your
    17:30
    actions matter in the world you're an important person
    17:34
    and at some point in the past 20 or so years the consequence very got drunk
    17:38
    and now the country is kinda flitting around the room doing
    17:41
    matter in you matter in you matter
    17:45
    and everybody else is like what the fuck how do we even deal with this because we
    17:49
    don't know how
    17:51
    because our legibility
    17:54
    min you know like the world hasn't changed the stuff that we pullin is
    17:58
    still the same thing
    17:59
    but it doesn't mean what it used to mean we can't interpret it anymore
    18:03
    so one of the things we're seeing right now is we're staying States
    18:07
    desperately trying to hang onto not their ability to surveilled but their
    18:10
    ability to understand
    18:12
    but those don't look different from the outside
    18:15
    arm rule of law was never intended
    18:18
    to operate in a state of exception in this is one of the things which is very
    18:21
    interesting
    18:23
    if we talk about rule of law as a response
    18:26
    to unrestricted surveillance or to any other other problems in the world right
    18:29
    now
    18:30
    arm a state of exception and a set of rules law are
    18:34
    defined opposites com we now live
    18:37
    in a state of permanent but neither pervasive nor complete
    18:42
    exception and this complicates
    18:46
    all responses within systems
    18:51
    sue on a personal level things have gotten weird to
    18:57
    om positional Essex
    19:00
    is basically what happens when you join an institution when you join our
    19:05
    organization
    19:05
    when you join a network that network or that institution
    19:09
    has a set of ethics that are attached to it
    19:12
    and when you operate with in that institution
    19:16
    you take on some of those ethics you be calmer
    19:19
    the person that does the thing that the institution
    19:23
    needs to do in the world om now
    19:26
    this is not complete this is this is definitely not total
    19:30
    arm infrastructure does this tune this is a really interesting thing
    19:34
    for all of us you build communications infrastructure in the world
    19:37
    infrastructure has an ethics now in a lot of cases
    19:40
    right now that ethics is actively suicidal
    19:43
    we're dealing with suicidal infrastructure that we're embedded
    19:46
    inside
    19:48
    and we cannot b.com non suicidal ourselves entirely
    19:53
    because we're still tied into that infrastructure
    19:56
    we can only become in some ways
    20:00
    sensible are human and humane again if we get outside that infrastructure but
    20:04
    we can't because that's what one society
    20:07
    um things in our lives can sometimes override
    20:11
    positional FX and and this is where our friend Walter really comes in right
    20:15
    you know if you have kids
    20:18
    all of a sudden you realize I'll I will do anything
    20:22
    to feed these kids it doesn't matter what I thought my world used to be
    20:27
    my world is no different on
    20:30
    and one of the things that's really interesting about life in the network
    20:34
    society
    20:35
    is that we don't just have a single set of ethics we don't just have a single
    20:38
    context anymore
    20:40
    on we may find that we wake up in the morning and we go to work
    20:44
    and we work on systems upstate or corporate control all day
    20:48
    and then we go home and we do other work to undermine the exact same systems
    20:54
    %uh control that we were working to build all day and we are literally
    20:57
    fighting ourselves
    21:01
    that is one of the conditions the next century
    21:10
    so one other reasons that that institutions are freaking out right now
    21:14
    is because this network that were on makes people
    21:18
    weird and actually I like this particular networks weird people
    21:22
    in almost like the high medieval cents they almost make people have a fame
    21:27
    magic to them and all the sudden one person can become many people on the
    21:31
    network
    21:31
    and that legibility that several thousand years a
    21:35
    getting a last name on you people is suddenly gone because you just invented
    21:39
    15 new people
    21:41
    today and a ten thousand if you read a scripted
    21:45
    and all the sudden the other
    21:48
    the thing that the that power has a grip on
    21:52
    has a bearded in that classic its its totally fallen buffet and uncontrollable
    21:56
    magic and that's what you are right now
    21:58
    that's what you are becoming that's what people on the network have become
    22:02
    on and in the network has its own logic or possibly this
    22:07
    I'm not sure I wanna apply that word here for charm up but it's really true
    22:12
    but the network projects your reality and substitute is their own
    22:15
    those categories those safe and understand or predictable categories
    22:19
    those get weirded out to
    22:21
    and we're all kinda living through this process all still within our lifetime
    22:25
    and
    22:26
    and we don't have a social structure or even a language to describe the networks
    22:31
    that we're living in right now
    22:32
    on and
    22:36
    it's doing really really strange things to institutions
    22:41
    the Internet in particular turns conduits and barriers
    22:45
    and I do mean that the IAEA used to be the good guys
    22:49
    their jobs from the nineteen fifties was to standardize
    22:53
    all the record players to make sure that all the record players will play all the
    22:57
    records
    22:57
    so that anyone to get music and a set up distribution systems for the anyone
    23:02
    around the country
    23:03
    could get anyone else's music and this actually really interesting in magical
    23:08
    thing they did because if you are living in you know in a Louisiana by you
    23:11
    in 1950 you didn't hear music from New York
    23:15
    until they fix this system and they allowed this
    23:19
    this and they're one of the entities that allowed this common culture to grow
    23:23
    up in these
    23:23
    other options to enter people's lives all over america
    23:26
    and they didn't actually really change what they did for the next 50 years
    23:32
    but the world did that pit the same one that put you at the heart of the matter
    23:37
    took this conduit of information and turned it into a barrier
    23:41
    and the people who are working these jobs the people who live through this
    23:46
    whole cycle with the RIAA
    23:48
    I gotta say like as a journalist who said to call in for interviews it's like
    23:51
    going crazy people
    23:52
    and I have a lot of sympathy for them these days because they didn't do
    23:56
    anything wrong
    23:57
    the whole world just went cook it from their perspective
    24:01
    I and they're grabbing it reality as best they can
    24:06
    in fact so many other things that would have been the awesome geeky things to do
    24:11
    in the fifties and sixties
    24:13
    have turned from conduits and generous
    24:17
    ways are sharing information into the barriers trying to stop the network from
    24:21
    doing their job better
    24:22
    because it got those kids to feed and they've got a mortgage
    24:26
    and get what they were doing the right thing all their lives why did they have
    24:28
    to change now
    24:29
    so
    24:33
    I'm what does it look like on a grand scale
    24:37
    when by these these weird things go on with institutions and people
    24:42
    well soluble from earlier with this kind of crap this is it from 1979 to the
    24:46
    president
    24:47
    a level up global protests any part in this I think we all know is fed by the
    24:52
    fact the core name protesters now
    24:54
    piss easy compared to what it was prior to this
    24:58
    I that it's you know
    25:01
    it's like a signing up for a amassed tweeting and then going somewhere and
    25:06
    it's
    25:06
    something people can do in a few minutes it something
    25:09
    you know it I the people who set up the
    25:12
    actor protests in on Poland that brought down
    25:16
    a that legislation eventually work people who had been working on it for
    25:21
    years in building networks and
    25:23
    and doing trainings and so on and so forth they're just like I must our
    25:26
    Facebook group
    25:28
    and pretty soon there is two hundred thousand people in three hundred cities
    25:31
    crashing abusive legislation
    25:33
    that was ever a treaty that was never even supposed to face any serious
    25:37
    opposition
    25:38
    that came out of nowhere that's when the one with the Polish Parliament mast up
    25:43
    talk about weirding identity and institutions right there
    25:46
    I'm this was a little bit more subtle but actually think ultimately more
    25:50
    important
    25:51
    something's happened since the 90's it certainly took off by the year two
    25:55
    thousand
    25:55
    and actually interestingly maps pretty well that global protest graph
    26:00
    inode by pretty well I mean in a rough sense that is risen on a somewhat plain
    26:04
    on which is that this bottom-line is on
    26:07
    is for Nate from 1970 to the present
    26:11
    and that top-line is international remittance
    26:15
    an international remittances the fancy pants term for sending money home to
    26:18
    your family
    26:20
    not so what's happened here is that um
    26:24
    v is that nearly three times as much money is sent
    26:28
    by immigrants back to their families
    26:31
    as is is set to countries via foreign aid from governments
    26:36
    and possibly other fundraising institutions on
    26:40
    why is that important because the system a mutual care
    26:43
    it is again largely a while legible or stepping out of the state some %uh this
    26:47
    actually the number is probably higher than this because it is very very hard
    26:51
    to count
    26:52
    remittances go through informal in car economies a limitation that the people
    26:56
    who study this recognized but by their very nature they are illegible
    27:00
    and they're often used for remittance by people who are trying to
    27:03
    avoid taxes or avoid government they're trying to skim off the top of the
    27:07
    remittance economy
    27:08
    on so again the network is making things
    27:12
    pretty weird
    27:23
    so
    27:25
    I first got online in August in 1994 just before
    27:30
    the internet said only became a
    27:33
    very different place for the first half probably the dozen or two dozen times
    27:37
    that that's happened
    27:38
    since then om and
    27:42
    that culture that I first came in on
    27:46
    was a culture where we were kind of in a corner doing our own thing
    27:51
    and that September
    27:55
    when all the college kids came online and then everyone else
    27:58
    started coming online all of a sudden we don't live
    28:02
    somewhere off a corner now all the sudden we live
    28:05
    right in the middle and everything com
    28:09
    and everything that we're doing is going
    28:12
    to keep ako ng through history
    28:16
    no matter what we want to do one of the things that means is that means that we
    28:21
    need to learn history who's been to learn our own history
    28:24
    if we continue to
    28:28
    ignore the shaping a fact that we have on the world
    28:32
    we miss a lot of things it means we're going to keep repeating the same
    28:36
    mistakes it means we're not going to understand the victories
    28:39
    that we won in the past on it means we're not going to understand the
    28:43
    victories
    28:44
    other people one and see the similarities between the situations
    28:48
    that we're in now and that some French peasant was in seven hundred years ago
    28:52
    or some Chinese peasant was an two thousand years ago
    28:56
    com that social change
    29:01
    is really really critical arm you know we keep hearing
    29:05
    no code is polished their code is law laws code there's this
    29:09
    there's this you know arm equivalency now
    29:13
    I think there's something deeper there's well I think that
    29:16
    code it becomes given a hundred years culture
    29:20
    arm and that's a lot harder to protect
    29:24
    in some ways we can look at apiece have law
    29:27
    and makes some gases about what effect it's gonna have on the world
    29:32
    it's a lot harder to make the same set of gases about what
    29:36
    a cultural object or a thing that will influence a cultural object is going to
    29:40
    have on the world
    29:41
    but if we don't start thinking about it we're definitely not going to get there
    29:45
    so arm one of the things that we're talking about
    29:49
    is trying to stretch out are mines
    29:53
    stretch out like our conceptions of history while living
    29:56
    while those institutions and as institutional ethics that we're talking
    29:59
    about
    29:59
    push you towards thinking in quarters most imp cultures currently conducted on
    30:06
    on like
    30:06
    quarters or maybe an annual cycle
    30:09
    a but something like pointed out to me recently that they can't right now find
    30:14
    any articles that are making predictions for 2014
    30:19
    our time horizons have gotten so short
    30:23
    that we are too scared to predict next month but we can look back
    30:28
    we can look back at different points and and take lessons from them some other
    30:31
    things that we face right now are unprecedented
    30:33
    as all history has been and some other
    30:37
    is patterns that we can learn from and when we step back and look at
    30:40
    not just I not just things like Tindal
    30:44
    and more and that path they traced up to the Enlightenment
    30:48
    and again interestingly it is almost at we can also look at things like the fall
    30:52
    of the Roman Empire
    30:53
    the rise of paper money in China all these things
    30:56
    are things that can help inform us and make us understand the technologies that
    31:00
    we face today
    31:01
    but of course there are limits because every moment is unprecedented and right
    31:06
    now
    31:06
    there are so many freakin people out there that's what's so strange about
    31:10
    this moment every second two hundred and seventeen years a few min experience
    31:15
    pass on this planet since we've been talking it's something close to you
    31:20
    five hundred thousand years in as in the course of this talk
    31:25
    that's the that's the human attention that has passed
    31:28
    from seven billion people while we've been standing here we've been standing
    31:31
    you can stay
    31:32
    setting and what I really wanna start pushing on you
    31:36
    pushing toward you towards is trying to look at that long time
    31:40
    try to look at what the world was like a few hundred years ago
    31:44
    and try to imagine what you want the world to look like in a hundred years
    31:49
    but that's a question very few of us can answer at this point
    31:52
    not what do you think it will look like we want it to look like
    31:58
    what do you think is right for people in a hundred years
    32:01
    how do you hope people that you will never meet will live
    32:13
    people are different because at this network that we've dealt over the last
    32:17
    thirty years
    32:17
    I but they're having to do it on brains that haven't had a chance to change
    32:22
    I'm normally we have to we have decades and generations to adjust to these kinds
    32:28
    of change
    32:28
    currently living through an age where we have to adjust these changes
    32:32
    and and a biologically challenging period of time
    32:35
    am billions of people a number that none of us can conceive
    32:40
    I I not just once on the network for those touched by the network test for
    32:45
    the presence of a network
    32:46
    I are affected by what we
    32:49
    as a community have till on yes
    32:54
    we built the technology that let's governments monitor controller people
    32:58
    we also built a technology that lets people escape the fate's that their
    33:02
    rulers and cultures have for them
    33:03
    and sometimes we built those things in the same applications
    33:07
    you
    33:10
    have left millions and perhaps hundreds of millions
    33:13
    have children know the mothers and fathers who had to leave them
    33:17
    in order to feed them and care for them a tradition that goes back many
    33:21
    generations
    33:22
    many generations into social isolation in Los
    33:25
    you taken away the power economics and distance to make strangers a family's
    33:31
    on this is what's buried in those
    33:35
    dry remittance figures people
    33:39
    families families origin
    33:43
    families that we create distance no longer has
    33:48
    the same power over its lives over our lives
    33:51
    because other things that we all built in the last thirty years
    33:54
    this is what mutual care looks like it looks like the faces a
    33:59
    people it looks like their blood and their flash
    34:03
    and this is what our technology affects
    34:06
    controls and enables you made millions of people care
    34:10
    about people they didn't know existed millions of people they didn't know
    34:15
    existed
    34:15
    you made
    34:18
    not just distance but
    34:22
    the time but the depth of time the human record
    34:26
    all recorded history you made it so present
    34:29
    that we can pocket out of the air at any moment that's what you did in the last
    34:34
    thirty years
    34:35
    that's what you gave close to two billion people
    34:39
    on this planet in the last thirty years
    34:42
    that's what you're responsible for
    34:46
    I know that you didn't ask for this job
    34:51
    you didn't ask for this role in society none the view
    34:54
    not one %uh view wants to think about the many people that can be affected by
    34:59
    one fucking perfectly normal Bob or mistake
    35:03
    in the technology that you built and this is where the reasons we keep our
    35:06
    heads down
    35:07
    no one became a geek because they wanted to be the center of political attention
    35:11
    that just happened
    35:14
    you don't get to choose you don't get to choose what arab history you live in
    35:19
    and what that era wants to do with you and this is a moment when it
    35:24
    all up for grabs that's what it means to say we're on a burning planet and what
    35:28
    it means to say that we don't have neutral ground is that you're at the
    35:30
    center of that fire
    35:32
    you said it you one other people that said it you're one of the people
    35:35
    attended
    35:36
    and everything you do the changes you make over the next month in years ago in
    35:41
    a time down decades and centuries in shape the lives of people
    35:44
    you will never know but they will know you
    35:47
    for one thing your lives very well courted
    35:51
    and
    35:55
    at this point this is where we are in history
    35:59
    but we're standing at a conference where we still have to remind people in the
    36:02
    community to eat embed themselves
    36:13
    it is time for us to up our game
    36:36
    I believe me we taking questions at the Mikes
    36:39
    and possibly from the internet I'm not sure
    36:44
    I'm
    36:48
    but when many the citations that we use not all that many the situations that we
    36:51
    used in the talk
    36:52
    are contained within these books and essays and so on and so forth and
    36:56
    together they make a pretty interesting follow-on curriculum as it were
    36:59
    for the concepts even talking about
    37:21
    hi
    37:22
    good evening thanks for the bus station a.m.
    37:25
    after the printing technology came we saw a emancipate
    37:29
    emancipation of the human being human rights
    37:33
    end of slavery a do you think there could be something similar happening
    37:37
    with the
    37:37
    you man which is enhanced man also going through in speed
    37:42
    emancipation and of digital slavery and
    37:45
    new union rights committee um
    37:48
    so interestingly we thought we saw ups
    37:51
    slavery as a explicit condition abolished but we saw it as an implicit
    37:56
    condition expanded so we have various people who end up
    38:00
    I am essentially living in slave-like conditions
    38:03
    they can't be they they can be bought or sold well in some cases they almost
    38:07
    can be I'm but a it is
    38:10
    its interesting to watch how that institution changed I think actually
    38:14
    that's a really really important point
    38:15
    because this kind of modified human being
    38:19
    this we're all basically cyborgs have some sort or another at this point I
    38:23
    living on a cyborg planet like if you look at if you look at this planet that
    38:27
    is not what the planet naturally looks like this is what we have now
    38:30
    on and up and
    38:33
    I think that the job I have our generation especially in the next
    38:37
    generation is going to be
    38:39
    to try and and the slavery without instantiating a new
    38:42
    sadler form of slavery like we did last time
    38:46
    cell this is coming this these enhancements are coming there's nothing
    38:50
    we can do about it except make it positive
    38:52
    I see ways in which emergent structures can make this world a much better place
    38:56
    but I also see ways in which emergent structures fighting state power
    39:00
    turning violent could make a completely gray
    39:04
    featureless terrible planet where anyone who was different was instantly
    39:08
    destroyed
    39:08
    I think that's what our network could do in the worst-case I'd rather it didn't
    39:12
    do that okay thank you
    39:16
    I'm more remarkable order basically if you're standing in the Ailey II to go to
    39:20
    ask questions
    39:21
    sit down or leaf no standing around looking and chances are details
    39:25
    thank you and the next question over there on
    39:29
    I E not so much a question as a comment I would like to encourage
    39:34
    in addition to reading those books that we need to learn and remember more about
    39:39
    our own history I'm they are very recent history
    39:42
    it disturbs me that there have in
    39:46
    there are books about cryptographic algorithms
    39:49
    there are books about bomb early days of hacking but I talk to people younger
    39:54
    than myself
    39:55
    your the on their I teens and twenties
    39:58
    and Theor from the people i've talked to there is an astounding lack
    40:03
    awareness UVC like the first crypto war nobody
    40:08
    that I know I love who is to give him the younger than me
    40:12
    knows about the clipper chip ok for it has a or how weak I
    40:16
    a I want gonna over in crypto
    40:20
    with you know the combination the expiration have patents
    40:23
    and solve the other free software that developed
    40:27
    the period %uh naked silly 1988 1992
    40:31
    as a collected history seems to be
    40:34
    plank so let me actually don't know I find that can found the disturbing
    40:38
    everybody in the room house at some sort a computer science degree related degree
    40:41
    put up your hands
    40:42
    now everyone who
    40:45
    that we keep your hands up now everyone who read caught Shannon
    40:50
    in school choir hands down get all of your people with CS degrees who didn't
    40:57
    require Shannon
    40:58
    one of the most fundamental voices in everything you do
    41:02
    and that's kind of goes to this interesting point about I'm
    41:07
    about understandably I think one of the great things you can do is talk to all
    41:10
    people
    41:11
    ask them what like used to be like and I will talk your about this
    41:16
    talk about this because I thank you 3/28 talk
    41:19
    I on so you talked about the
    41:25
    view of the state's um by the state itself is just
    41:29
    are some top technology to keep society on
    41:33
    human time to working cell arm
    41:36
    while you're I rejoin to you talk I was
    41:40
    thinking whether you have thought about the possibility that
    41:45
    some sort of new technologies we're
    41:48
    inventing building may eat even supersede
    41:52
    the state structure and I am
    41:56
    to 'em region even more fundamental change how humans interact on the global
    42:00
    level
    42:01
    so while we could
    42:04
    and may replace the state's I am
    42:10
    I really like roads one of the things that we often
    42:14
    end up doing and especially in the gay community
    42:17
    we will end up building technologies which will they sort of mostly work
    42:22
    um that doesn't cut it for water systems that doesn't cut it for a lot of the
    42:26
    stuff that keeps us alive
    42:30
    I don't think it is unreasonable to start the project if trying to replace
    42:33
    the state I'd
    42:34
    I definitely don't but we need to make sure that we get it right
    42:39
    because if you fucked that one up too badly things get really really horrific
    42:43
    I completely agree but I am I was just
    42:47
    I thought this song was a bit focus on the state love is safe for me is just
    42:50
    another technology
    42:52
    and this state is the technology that has kept most humans alive
    42:57
    foremost recorded history so it's unreasonable to spend a certain amount
    43:01
    of time on it
    43:14
    thank you
    43:15
    thank you for bringing talk um basically from you
    43:18
    parts down to this so instead of a question
    43:22
    people don't be scared be prepare
    43:25
    repaired don't be predictable take questions are
    43:32
    short answer the question mark and put into this quiet down some boats
    43:36
    good people watching this team are complaining about older college because
    43:40
    the lawyers have people and singer leaving
    43:42
    so I the common take a seat be quiet or just leave
    43:46
    thank you know an expression lip balm most question
    43:49
    that overtime yes sir actually
    43:52
    I am afraid I am very very afraid because
    43:56
    I feel like we're walking on a very very thin line because the
    44:00
    action that that we take could easily tip
    44:03
    what whatever will happen a lucky in the
    44:07
    papal what what we want to what we don't want and I feel like even when I look
    44:11
    back within his history
    44:12
    it's never been like this that that I basically when it tried to create
    44:17
    something I might
    44:18
    later wake up in like it a scene of a dystopian movie
    44:21
    where all I have created end up destroying all that I love so
    44:25
    how can I not be afraid so I think that was always true
    44:30
    yet but you're gonna be dead before it happens
    44:34
    dawson's on
    44:38
    %ah tell you layup treetop for its harbour
    44:43
    I is a guy who dedicated his life to inventing as many horrific
    44:47
    chemical weapons as he could and along the way he worked out nitrogen-fixing
    44:51
    which is why we have all these people and I
    44:57
    and what's really interesting about that to me things like for toppers while
    45:01
    people I keep in mind I think to some degree we have to let go
    45:04
    the fear because we will never actually control the gutter ill we do in the
    45:07
    world we can not we can push we can hope but at the end
    45:11
    if the most I amazing ugg boots you human life
    45:16
    came from a guy who was trying to invent chemical weapons
    45:19
    we really I no one's driving this crazy train
    45:23
    you okay thank you very much
    45:27
    on the
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