(Ian Goldin) Great, thank you: it's wonderful to be with educators
who care about the intersection of learning and technology,
because that's going to shape the future.
Whether we're able to get this right or not
will determine whether we have a glorious 21st century
or a period of unmitigated risks.
The walls are coming down everywhere and it's difficult to not think about this,
being so close to it, here in Berlin,
25 years ago, these walls coming down.
But it's not just about physical walls coming down,
it's about mental walls, it's about financial walls,
it's about technological walls.
All the walls are coming down, and it's that
that makes this the most exciting century in the history of humanity.
It changes all of our lives in surprising ways.
And it has certainly changed mine.
I was living in Paris when this wall came down.
I didn't imagine that it would touch me personally.
I thought it was about Eastern Europe, about the Cold War, about something else.
But within 6 months, I would, much to my surprise,
I was invited to have dinner with President Mandela in Paris.
He wasn't president then, he had just been released from prison.
But he was released because the Cold War ended.
And the defining feature of this period we live in our lives
is that what happens elsewhere will dramatically affect us in new ways.
It's this change that results from the walls coming down.
And it's this change that will shape education going forward
and technological progress.
And of course, the other fundamental period of -- in this time --
is technology, technology, which got off the ground
at the same time as the Berlin Wall came down, over 25 years.
This exponential growth in virtual connectivity.
And now we have a world of 5 billion literate, educated people
whereas we had a world, only 30 years ago,
of well less than a billion connected people
4 billion more literate connected people in the world,
and this is the engine of change,
where the people in the slums of Mumbai, Soweto's Al Pano (check)
or in apartments in Berlin,
they will contribute to change in surprising new ways.
And they're coming together.
There is a release of individual genius.
If you believe in the random distribution of exceptional capabilities, which I do,
there is just more people out there, educated, connected, giving, learning.
But I also believe in collective genius,
the capabilities of people coming together,
to form teams, to learn from each other
through the methods that we learned about this morning.
and in other ways.
So new cures for cancer being developed in 24 hours cycles around the world.
My lab in Oxford doing this with people in Beijing and San Francisco, in Palo Alto
and all over, in real time.
There is no sleep on innovation any more.
And that's the power, the engine, which brings change. 3:01