WEBVTT
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Thank you Tom, it's a great pleasure to be here
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I'm very glad to have the opportunity to talk
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about the questions that concern me most
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in a context which allows us to talk a little bit
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about journalism and a little bit about ignorance
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and a little bit about abuse of power
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The problem presented by The Press
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that is to say by the machinery of communication
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since we began industrializing communication
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and fighting ignorance in Europe,
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in the 15th Century
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The problem posed by the Press
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is its almost impossible affiliation with power
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the Press and power are difficult to keep apart
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more difficult to keep apart than peanut butter
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and jelly, more difficult to keep apart
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than night and day.
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The Press and power fell into one another's
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embrace from the very beginning
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because from the very beginning it was clear
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that the alternative to an embrace between
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the Press and power
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is constant Revolution fueled by people's desire
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to know and to free themselves
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to act in their own best interests
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regardless of power's best interests
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Our adoption of the Press in the European world
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brought on the collapse of the unity
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of Christendom and the end of the system
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for the control of the mind
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that was the universal Catholic Church
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in that great intellectual, political,
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moral revolution we called the Reformation
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The response to the Reformation was the
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lesson in all European societies, Protestant
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and Catholic both that the Press could not
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be allowed to be free.
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and the result was censorship almost
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everywhere for hundreds of years
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In those few places in Europe -- in Holland
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and in the United Kingdom -- actually in England
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after 1650, and then again after 1695 --
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in those few places where the Press was free
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to print without control, the result was the
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intellectual, political, and moral revolution
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we call the Enlightenment and the
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French Revolution, that is
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a further demonstration that allowing people
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to know, to learn, to educate one another
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and to share will bring about
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deconcentration of Power and threat to every
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"ancien regime"
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But in the age of capitalist industrial media
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out of which we are now passing
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the marriage between the Press and power was
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once again a matter of magnetic attraction
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the Press, that is the industrial production and
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distribution of organized information --
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the Press became the handmaiden of the
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ownership class.
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Freedom of the Press
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the great American press critic
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A. J. Liebling wrote
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"Freedom of the Press belongs to him who owns one"
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and throught the 20th Century
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both with respect to the Press
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and to its close kissing cousin, Broadcast
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that was most affirmatively true
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We are now passing out of the age
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of the Press
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as we are passing out of the very idea
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that there is a machine that transforms
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information from the local and the temporary
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to the permanent and the ever-present.
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We are instead beginning to live inside
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a digital nervous system which links
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every human being on the planet
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to every other human being on the planet
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actually or potentially
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without any intermediaries
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By the end of the next generation
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whatever horrors or victories have happened
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in the meantime
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by the end of the next generation
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we will live in that world
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of pervasive human social interconnection
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which is what we really mean
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when we talk about "the Internet"
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Every fax machine -- well, the few remaining --
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every scanner, every printer, every telephone
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every camera, every video camera
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did I say telephone..telephone..telephone..
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telephone?
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Every object with electrical power behind it
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will be an information-gathering and
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distribution system controlled
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by some human being, somewhere,
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at one end or at the other.
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If it is controlled at the end where the
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human beings are, where they struggle
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where they seek to sell their vegetables
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where they are affronted by a policeman
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refusing to allow them to sell their vegetables
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where they act in the street to deal with the
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aftermath of a vegetable seller prevented
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from selling his vegetables by a
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officious policeman
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everywhere we will have knowledge
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being produced by people
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to free themselves.
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Consider this: In Indian right now
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the poorest of the poor have mobile phones
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and on that mobile phone -- each person's
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mobile phone -- every book, every piece of music
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every piece of video, every map, every
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scientific experiment, every kind of
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information that is useful and beautiful
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could be made available to every single person
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were it not for the rules against sharing
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All we have left in that great nervous system
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of humanity -- all that we have left that makes
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ignorance compulsory are the rules against
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sharing
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When the rules against sharing are gone
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-- and they will go --
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ignorance will, for the first time
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in the history of the human race,
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be entirely preventable everywhere
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You are watching around the world right now
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as young people demonstrate that they
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are willing to stand in front of bullets
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for Liberty.
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Later in this Century you will watch as
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young people around the world demonstrate
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that they are willing to stand in front
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of bullets in order to have the freedom to learn.
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When that happens, the human race will go through
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the most important revolution since 1789,
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and an "ancien regime" which deserves to perish
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will perish throughout the world
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here today we are discussing a few, simple,
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precursor parts to that enormous revolution.
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The dis-intermediation of the systems of
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controlled information production and
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distribution which have been with us since the
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morning after Gutenberg.
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But this is the day after the morning
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after Gutenberg.
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This is the moment when the disparities
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of power and the disparaties of access
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begin to give way
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and on the other side, at this moment,
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are almost all the governments
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and almost all the Press
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and almost all the incumbents who do not
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want the World to change.
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I was having dinner with a government
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official in Washington, D.C. earlier this week
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and I said to him "You know, about half the
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television networks in Europe seem to be chasing
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me for an interview to discuss the
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hypocrisy of American government
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Internet freedom policy,"
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I said "and if half the television networks in
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Europe want to talk to me about the hypocrisy
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of American Internet freedom policy, that
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suggests to me that the State Department
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has a problem.
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He said "Yes, they know they have a problem,
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and they want to do something about it."
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And they should,
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but every government on Earth
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has difficulty talking about Internet freedom
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straight, because every government on Earth
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is part of a structure of power which stands to
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lose in one way or another from free information
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flows, just as the great economic institutions
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dominating our time, the great surveillance
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institutions which offer you the chance to search
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as long as you share everything you search,
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and free email, as long as you let them read it,
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and free telephone calls, as long as they can
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listen in -- just for the purposes of advertsing,
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mind you.
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Please, bring half a million people here
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and live your social life inside my surveillance
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system. I'll take good care of you.
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Of course, unless you're in the street protesting
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against dictatorship, in which case what we will
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tell you is: our great social networking service
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is rigidly neutral between dictators and
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people in the street fighting them...
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not our concern here at whatchamacallit
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This is a transitional stage, you understand?
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I've told you where we're going. Now the question
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is how are we going to get there?
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Here's how we're going to get there:
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the World's going to fill up with cheap, small,
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low-powered devices that are going to replace
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most of the computers you're accustomed to.
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All those big ones on desktops and in closets,
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and in rooms full of servers somewhere, replaced by things
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not much larger than a cell phone charger, and
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very, very, very much more capable
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than the first computer you ever owned,
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whichever one it was
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or maybe even the computer you're
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using now.
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Those devices are going to cost next to nothing
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and they're going to be everywhere, and
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we're going to make software that runs in them
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all of them, that a 12 year old can install
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and a 6 year old can use
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which will allow people to communicate freely
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everywhere, all the time, net of state control
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net of profitmaker control,
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net of control, they will be Freedom Boxes.
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They will make Freedom.
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We don't have to make the boxes -- the boxes
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are going to fill the world. We just need to make
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software. And the good news is that we don't
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need to make software, we make it already.
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Everybody in this room with an Android phone is
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using it. Everybody in this room who has
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touched Facebook today, they were using it
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on the other side.
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Everybody who used a bank or a supermarket
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or an insurance company or a train station
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in the last week interacted with our software.
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It's everywhere. We made it to be everywhere
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It's Free.
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That means we can copy it, modify it,
00:10:26.289 --> 00:10:27.914
and redistribute it freely.
00:10:27.914 --> 00:10:29.656
It also means that it works for people,
00:10:29.656 --> 00:10:31.490
not for companies.
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All of this is already done. This is the result
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of 25 years of effort on our part.
00:10:35.995 --> 00:10:39.896
Now, right now, in the street, right now,
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we begin to show why it protects Freedom
00:10:42.380 --> 00:10:44.307
and why people need it.
00:10:44.307 --> 00:10:49.021
And we begin to prepare to deliver it to them.
00:10:49.021 --> 00:10:50.786
A. J. Liebling, that press critic I was
00:10:50.786 --> 00:10:52.179
speaking of before, wrote once
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"The American press reminds me of a
00:10:55.035 --> 00:11:01.490
12 billion dollar superheated, absolutely
00:11:01.490 --> 00:11:02.326
state of the art fish cannery relying for all
00:11:02.326 --> 00:11:05.159
its fish on 6 guys in leaky rowboats."
00:11:05.159 --> 00:11:06.598
The point being, of course, that the great
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monolithic industrial press of the 20th
00:11:08.711 --> 00:11:12.612
Century did everything well except reporting,
00:11:12.612 --> 00:11:15.004
which it did poorly, because reporting
00:11:15.004 --> 00:11:16.931
was the free lunch in the saloon, and any time
00:11:16.931 --> 00:11:21.761
the saloonkeeper could cut back on it, he did.
00:11:21.761 --> 00:11:23.479
I don't need to tell you that that process has
00:11:23.479 --> 00:11:30.143
accelerated since A. J. Liebling died in 1975.
00:11:30.143 --> 00:11:31.699
So we live now in a world where we're
00:11:31.699 --> 00:11:34.648
about to fill a gap in reporting.
00:11:34.648 --> 00:11:37.342
You know what fills the gap in reporting -- it was
00:11:37.342 --> 00:11:40.732
referred to in the moments we've already had together
00:11:40.732 --> 00:11:44.610
it's all those phones, all those video cameras, all those tweets.
00:11:44.610 --> 00:11:47.257
In other words, we have already democratized
00:11:47.257 --> 00:11:49.602
the system of reporting.
00:11:49.602 --> 00:11:51.831
What is scary for the establishment
00:11:51.831 --> 00:11:55.407
about Wikileaks is that Wikileaks is to
00:11:55.407 --> 00:11:58.286
newsgathering what Craig's List is to
00:11:58.286 --> 00:12:01.630
classified advertising.
00:12:01.630 --> 00:12:05.020
It changes the economy of leaking
00:12:05.020 --> 00:12:07.365
I hate to be correcting anybody on any point
00:12:07.365 --> 00:12:08.596
but I should point out that Wikileaks
00:12:08.596 --> 00:12:11.545
has not released 250,000 State Department
00:12:11.545 --> 00:12:14.934
cables. It has 250,000 State Department cables
00:12:14.934 --> 00:12:19.811
and has released about 2,000 of them.
00:12:19.811 --> 00:12:21.529
Which is about the number of diplomatic
00:12:21.529 --> 00:12:23.991
cables showed to diplomatic correspondents around the world
00:12:25.244 --> 00:12:28.542
working for major newspapers every single day.
00:12:28.542 --> 00:12:30.771
But nobody says that's treason, because that's
00:12:30.771 --> 00:12:34.486
the official commerce in leaking, from which
00:12:34.486 --> 00:12:37.342
government officials and press lords and
00:12:37.342 --> 00:12:40.221
owners around the World derive benefit
00:12:40.221 --> 00:12:41.336
every single day
00:12:41.336 --> 00:12:43.890
Economic power, political power
00:12:43.890 --> 00:12:48.464
and the power to keep people ignorant.
00:12:48.464 --> 00:12:50.438
What is happening in the 'Net, now,
00:12:50.438 --> 00:12:54.014
in those phones, in those Tor exit nodes,
00:12:54.014 --> 00:12:56.266
and what will be happening in the World
00:12:56.266 --> 00:12:58.704
multiplied by a hundred, shortly,
00:12:58.704 --> 00:13:01.305
in all those Freedom Boxes is,
00:13:01.305 --> 00:13:04.997
information being free for the benefit of those
00:13:04.997 --> 00:13:09.322
who need.
00:13:09.322 --> 00:13:12.335
Ask yourself what will happen when
00:13:12.335 --> 00:13:14.680
everybody who needs can have
00:13:14.680 --> 00:13:18.279
and everybody who can make, supplies.
00:13:18.279 --> 00:13:21.855
What will happen in neighborhoods
00:13:21.855 --> 00:13:22.691
What will happen in police stations
00:13:22.691 --> 00:13:24.734
What will happen when there's a fire
00:13:24.734 --> 00:13:28.333
Or an earthquake, what will happen when there's
00:13:28.333 --> 00:13:32.025
a tyrant coming down.
00:13:32.025 --> 00:13:33.836
Those same little boxes I'm talking about
00:13:33.836 --> 00:13:38.759
will also be able to do wireless mesh networking
00:13:38.759 --> 00:13:41.290
that is to say that if somebody turns out
00:13:41.290 --> 00:13:44.285
the telecommunications network in a neighborhood
00:13:44.285 --> 00:13:47.954
the neighborhood will keep functioning.
00:13:47.954 --> 00:13:51.964
What Mr. Mubarak and the men around him
00:13:51.964 --> 00:13:53.898
misunderstood. The reason that he's in
00:13:53.898 --> 00:13:57.567
Sharm el-Sheikh, hoping to buy a single floor through apartment
00:13:57.567 --> 00:13:59.541
in one of the towers being built in Mecca, no doubt
00:14:00.864 --> 00:14:02.304
The reason that that happened is that
00:14:02.304 --> 00:14:05.183
Mr. Mubarak and his advisers thought that
00:14:05.183 --> 00:14:07.714
if you turn off the Internet, you turn off
00:14:07.714 --> 00:14:10.617
the Internet generation.
00:14:10.617 --> 00:14:14.912
That was wrong. Because, in fact, it isn't
00:14:14.912 --> 00:14:18.511
a particular system of telecoms,
00:14:18.511 --> 00:14:21.646
or a particular social networking structure,
00:14:21.646 --> 00:14:25.849
a particular database of 'twats' ... or twuts..
00:14:25.849 --> 00:14:27.799
or twoots, or whatever they call them
00:14:28.984 --> 00:14:34.672
It's not the technology that makes it work
00:14:34.672 --> 00:14:37.738
it's that human beings have figured out
00:14:37.738 --> 00:14:41.104
something about society if they grow up
00:14:41.104 --> 00:14:43.148
in the 'Net.
00:14:43.148 --> 00:14:45.284
Most human beings, most of the time,
00:14:45.284 --> 00:14:47.745
in most social contexts, believe that the
00:14:47.745 --> 00:14:51.019
social network valuable to them is the people
00:14:51.019 --> 00:14:53.968
they see every day, and the people with whom
00:14:53.968 --> 00:14:57.265
they have strong emotional connections.
00:14:57.265 --> 00:14:59.518
That's how most people, almost all the time,
00:14:59.518 --> 00:15:01.445
think about the social world.
00:15:01.445 --> 00:15:03.605
That's because we evolved for millions of years to think that way.
00:15:03.605 --> 00:15:08.713
As parts of small groups of a few dozen
00:15:08.713 --> 00:15:12.800
ground-dwelling primates.
00:15:12.800 --> 00:15:15.238
Our neurology evolved for that
00:15:15.238 --> 00:15:19.046
our social heuristics evolved for that
00:15:19.046 --> 00:15:21.716
we think that the social network robust
00:15:21.716 --> 00:15:24.270
enough to support us, is the people
00:15:24.270 --> 00:15:26.941
we see around us and the people we care about
00:15:26.941 --> 00:15:29.518
who care about us back.
00:15:29.518 --> 00:15:31.654
But the generation of people growing up
00:15:31.654 --> 00:15:39.108
inside the 'Net now knows, knows viscerally, knows all the time
00:15:39.108 --> 00:15:41.987
as a matter of habit, is that the social network
00:15:41.987 --> 00:15:44.170
that is robust enough to change the world
00:15:44.170 --> 00:15:47.026
around you includes the thousands of people
00:15:47.026 --> 00:15:49.789
you don't live near, and with whom you don't
00:15:49.789 --> 00:15:53.249
have any direct emotional connection,
00:15:53.249 --> 00:15:55.106
but are the people who believe what you
00:15:55.106 --> 00:15:59.518
believe, and want to do something about it, too.
00:15:59.518 --> 00:16:01.654
What we learned at the end of the 20th Century
00:16:01.654 --> 00:16:03.802
first in Poland, and then in other places, is that
00:16:03.802 --> 00:16:08.319
what makes revolution is solidarity.
00:16:08.319 --> 00:16:10.780
The ability of people who do not live near
00:16:10.780 --> 00:16:14.031
one another in social or geographic space
00:16:14.031 --> 00:16:16.887
who do not have immediate personal bonds
00:16:16.887 --> 00:16:20.068
binding them together, to percieve the ability
00:16:20.068 --> 00:16:22.831
to self-organize for the sudden achievement
00:16:22.831 --> 00:16:25.478
of deeply felt social ends
00:16:25.478 --> 00:16:30.494
what the network does -- what life with the network does is to
00:16:30.494 --> 00:16:34.069
teach humans that the cost of making solidarity
00:16:34.069 --> 00:16:36.229
has gone way down.
00:16:36.229 --> 00:16:40.014
That it is easier and faster to make solidarity
00:16:40.014 --> 00:16:41.779
than it has ever been before, and if you take
00:16:41.779 --> 00:16:45.145
a bunch of people who know that lesson, and
00:16:45.145 --> 00:16:48.094
you turn the network off, they go right on making
00:16:48.094 --> 00:16:50.625
solidarity the best way they know how.
00:16:50.625 --> 00:16:52.506
They drop leaflets in the street, they make
00:16:52.506 --> 00:16:54.642
carrier pigeons, they have phone trees.
00:16:54.642 --> 00:16:57.707
They do whatever it is, because the real skill
00:16:57.707 --> 00:17:00.563
being learned by humanity is the skill of
00:17:00.563 --> 00:17:04.464
self-organization, and what we're seeing right
00:17:04.464 --> 00:17:05.695
now, today, in the Maghreb, right now,
00:17:05.695 --> 00:17:08.760
right today, right now, is that solidarity made
00:17:08.760 --> 00:17:11.129
by self-organization is stronger than machine
00:17:11.129 --> 00:17:15.633
gun bullets.
00:17:15.633 --> 00:17:17.886
All over the world tyranny likes to say "the
00:17:17.886 --> 00:17:20.974
alternative to me is chaos," and all around the
00:17:20.974 --> 00:17:25.060
world everybody can see that isn't true.
00:17:25.060 --> 00:17:27.290
So what we're going to do is we're going to make
00:17:27.290 --> 00:17:29.658
cheap things, and we're going to fill them
00:17:29.658 --> 00:17:32.026
with Free Software, and we're going to put them
00:17:32.026 --> 00:17:33.443
in everybody's hands, and we're going to say
00:17:33.443 --> 00:17:37.321
"Here. That makes solidarity. Use it. Be well.
00:17:37.321 --> 00:17:40.688
Be Free"
00:17:40.688 --> 00:17:43.358
It's going to work.
00:17:43.358 --> 00:17:45.703
There isn't any reason to be on the side
00:17:45.703 --> 00:17:49.302
of the Press, just as there isn't any reason
00:17:49.302 --> 00:17:52.832
to be on the side of power. It's simple, now.
00:17:52.832 --> 00:17:57.452
Power has moved to the edge of the network,
00:17:57.452 --> 00:17:58.149
and it will continue to do that for a generation
00:17:58.149 --> 00:17:59.194
to come.
00:17:59.194 --> 00:18:01.377
It will make a grand revolution, and it will
00:18:01.377 --> 00:18:04.976
change the fate of billions of human beings.
00:18:04.976 --> 00:18:07.507
It will make ignorance obsolete, and when it
00:18:07.507 --> 00:18:10.386
makes ignorance obsolete, it will change the
00:18:10.386 --> 00:18:13.660
future of the human condition.
00:18:13.660 --> 00:18:15.494
The Press isn't going to do that. Power isn't
00:18:15.494 --> 00:18:17.932
going to do that.
00:18:17.932 --> 00:18:19.883
People are going to do that.
00:18:19.883 --> 00:18:22.530
The technology to empower people to do that
00:18:22.530 --> 00:18:26.292
exists already. All it needs is a little bit
00:18:26.292 --> 00:18:27.824
of refinement.
00:18:28.743 --> 00:18:34.093
We're the guys who refine it. We don't seek
00:18:34.093 --> 00:18:35.022
money. We don't seek power. We only want
00:18:35.022 --> 00:18:39.225
to share.
00:18:39.225 --> 00:18:43.405
Everyone wants to talk about Internet freedom,
00:18:43.405 --> 00:18:45.378
except us.
00:18:45.378 --> 00:18:48.025
We don't want to talk about Internet freedom,
00:18:48.025 --> 00:18:49.953
we just want to do it.
00:18:49.953 --> 00:18:51.485
Join us.
00:18:51.485 --> 99:59:59.999
Thank you very much.