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I got invited to an exclusive resort
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to deliver a talk about the digital future
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to what I assumed would be
a couple of hundred tech executives.
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And I was there in the green room,
waiting to go on,
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and instead of bringing me to the stage,
they brought five men into the green room
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who sat around this little table with me.
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They were tech billionaires.
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And they started peppering me
with these really binary questions,
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like: Bitcoin or Etherium?
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Virtual reality or augmented reality?
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I don't know if they were
taking bets or what.
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And as they got more comfortable with me,
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they edged towards
their real question of concern.
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Alaska or New Zealand?
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That's right.
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These tech billionaires
were asking a media theorist for advice
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on where to put their doomsday bunkers.
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We spent the rest of the hour
on the single question:
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"How do I maintain control
of my security staff
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after the event?"
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By "the event" they mean
the thermonuclear war
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or climate catastrophe or social unrest
that ends the world as we know it,
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and more importantly,
makes their money obsolete.
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And I couldn't help but think:
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these are the wealthiest,
most powerful men in the world,
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yet they see themselves as utterly
powerless to influence the future.
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The best they can do is hang on
for the inevitable catastrophe
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and then use their technology and money
to get away from the rest of us.
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And these are the winners
of the digital economy.
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(Laughter)
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The digital renaissance
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was about the unbridled potential
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of the collective human imagination.
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It spanned everything
from chaos math and quantum physics
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to fantasy role playing
and the Gaia hypothesis, right?
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We believed that human beings connected
could create any future we could imagine.
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And then came the dot com boom.
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And the digital future
became stock futures.
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And we used all that energy
of the digital age
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to pump steroids into the already dying
NASDAQ stock exchange.
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The tech magazines told us
a tsunami was coming.
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And only the investors who hired
the best scenario-planners and futurists
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would be able to survive the wave.
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And so the future changed from this thing
we create together in the present
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to something we bet on
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in some kind of a zero-sum
winner-takes-all competition.
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And when things get that competitive
about the future,
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humans are no longer valued
for our creativity.
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No, now we're just valued for our data.
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Because they can use the data
to make predictions.
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Creativity, if anything,
that creates noise.
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That makes it harder to predict.
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So we ended up with a digital landscape
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that really repressed creativity,
repressed novelty,
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it repressed what makes us most human.
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We ended up with social media.
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Does social media really connect people
in new, interesting ways?
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No, social media is about using our data
to predict our future behavior.
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Or when necessary,
to influence our future behavior
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so that we act more in accordance
with our statistical profiles.
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The digital economy --
does it like people?
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No, if you have a business plan,
what are you supposed to do?
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Get rid of all the people.
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Human beings, they want health care,
they want money, they want meaning.
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You can't scale with people.
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(Laughter)
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Even our digital apps --
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they don't help us
form any rapport or solidarity.
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I mean, where's the button
on the ride hailing app
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for the drivers to talk to one another
about their working conditions
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or to unionize?
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Even our videoconferencing tools,
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they don't allow us
to establish real rapport.
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However good the resolution of the video,
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you still can't see if somebody's irises
are opening to really take you in.
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All of the things that we've done
to establish rapport
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that we've developed over hundreds
of thousands of years of evolution,
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they don't work,
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you can't see if someone's breath
is syncing up with yours.
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So the mirror neurons never fire,
the oxytocin never goes through your body,
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you never have that experience
of bonding with the other human being.
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And instead, you're left like,
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"Well, they agreed with me,
but did they really,
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did they really get me?"
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And we don't blame the technology
for that lack of fidelity.
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We blame the other person.
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You know, even the technologies
and the digital initiatives that we have
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to promote humans,
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are intensely anti-human at the core.
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Think about the blockchain.
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The blockchain is here to help us
have a great humanized economy? No.
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The blockchain does not engender
trust between users,
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the blockchain simply
substitutes for trust in a new,
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even less transparent way.
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Or the code movement.
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I mean, education is great,
we love education,
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and it's a wonderful idea
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that we want kids to be able
to get jobs in the digital future,
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so we'll teach them code now.
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But since when is education
about getting jobs?
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Education wasn't about getting jobs.
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Education was compensation
for a job well done.
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The idea of public education
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was for coal miners,
who would work in the coal mines all day,
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then they'd come home
and they should have the dignity
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to be able to read a novel
and understand it.
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Or the intelligence to be able
to participate in democracy.
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When we make it an extension of the job,
what are we really doing?
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We're just letting corporations really
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externalize the cost
of training their workers.
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And the worst of all really
is the humane technology movement.
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I mean, I love these guys,
the former guys who used to take
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the algorithms from
Las Vegas slot machines
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and put them in our social media feed
so that we get addicted.
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Now they've seen the error of their ways
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and they want to make
technology more humane.
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But when I hear the expression
"humane technology,"
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I think about cage-free
chickens or something.
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We're going to be as humane
as possible to them,
-
until we take them to the slaughter.
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So now they're going to let these
technologies be as humane as possible,
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as long as they extract enough data
and extract enough money from us
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to please their shareholders.
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Meanwhile, the shareholders,
for their part, they're just thinking,
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"I need to earn enough money now,
so I can insulate myself
-
from the world I'm creating
by earning money in this way."
-
(Laughter)
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No matter how many VR goggles
they slap on their faces
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and whatever fantasy world they go into,
-
they can't externalize the slavery
and pollution that was caused
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through the manufacture
of the very device.
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It reminds me of
Thomas Jefferson's dumbwaiter.
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Now, we like to think
that he made the dumbwaiter
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in order to spare his slaves
all that labor of carrying the food
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up to the dining room
for the people to eat.
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That's not what it was for,
it wasn't for the slaves,
-
it was for Thomas Jefferson
and his dinner guests,
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so they didn't have to see the slave
bringing the food up.
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The food just arrived magically,
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like it was coming out
of a "Start Trek" replicator.
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It's part of an ethos that says,
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human beings are the problem
and technology is the solution.
-
We can't think that way anymore.
-
We have to stop using technology
to optimize human beings for the market
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and start optimizing technology
for the human future.
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But that's a really hard argument
to make these days,
-
because humans are not popular beings.
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I talked about this in front
of an environmentalist just the other day,
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and she said, "Why are you
defending humans?
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Humans destroyed the planet.
They deserve to go extinct."
-
(Laughter)
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Even our popular media hates humans.
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Watch television,
-
all the sci-fi shows are about how robots
are better and nicer than people.
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Even zombie shows --
what is every zombie show about?
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Some person, looking at the horizon
at some zombie going by,
-
and they zoom in on the person
and you see the person's face,
-
and you know what they're thinking:
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"What's really the difference
between that zombie and me?
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He walks, I walk.
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He eats, I eat.
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He kills, I kill."
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But he's a zombie.
-
At least you're aware of it.
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If we are actually having trouble
distinguishing ourselves from zombies,
-
we have a pretty big problem going on.
-
(Laughter)
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And don't even get me started
on the transhumanists.
-
I was on a panel with a transhumanist,
and he's going on about the singularity.
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"Oh, the day is going to come really soon
when computers are smarter than people.
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And the only option
for people at that point
-
is to pass the evolutionary torch
to our successor
-
and fade into the background.
-
Maybe at best, upload
your consciousness to a silicon chip.
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And accept your extinction."
-
(Laughter)
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And I said, "No, human beings are special.
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We can embrace ambiguity,
we understand paradox,
-
we're conscious,
we're weird, we're quirky.
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There should be a place for humans
in the digital future."
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And he said, "Oh, Rushkoff,
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you're just saying that
because you're a human."
-
(Laughter)
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As if it's hubris.
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OK, I'm on Team Human.
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That was the original insight
of the digital age.
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That being human is a team sport,
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evolution's a collaborative act.
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Even the trees in the forest,
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they're not all in competition
with each other,
-
they're connected with the vast
network of roots and mushrooms
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that let them communicate with one another
and pass nutrients back and forth.
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If human beings
are the most evolved species,
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it's because we have the most evolved
ways of collaborating and communicating.
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We have language.
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We have technology.
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It's funny, I used to be the guy
who talked about the digital future
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for people who hadn't yet
experienced anything digital.
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And now I feel like I'm the last guy
-
who remembers what life was like
before digital technology.
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It's not a matter of rejecting the digital
or rejecting the technological.
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It's a matter of retrieving the values
that we're in danger of leaving behind
-
and then embedding them in the digital
infrastructure for the future.
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And that's not rocket science.
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It's as simple as making a social network
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that instead of teaching us
to see people as adversaries,
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it teaches us to see
our adversaries as people.
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It means creating an economy
that doesn't favor a platform monopoly
-
that wants to extract all the value
out of people and places,
-
but one that promotes the circulation
of value through a community
-
and allows us to establish
platform cooperatives
-
that distribute ownership
as wide as possible.
-
It means building platforms
-
that don't repress our creativity
and novelty in the name of prediction.
-
But actually promote
creativity and novelty,
-
so that we can come up
with some of the solutions
-
to actually get ourselves
out of the mess that we're in.
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No, instead of trying to earn
enough money to insulate ourselves
-
from the world we're creating,
-
why don't we spend that time and energy
making the world a place
-
that we don't feel
the need to escape from.
-
There is no escape,
there is only one thing going on here.
-
Please, don't leave.
-
Join us.
-
We may not be perfect,
-
but whatever happens,
at least you won't be alone.
-
Join Team Human.
-
Find the others.
-
Together, let's make the future
that we always wanted.
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Oh, and those tech billionaires
who wanted to know
-
how to maintain control of their
security force after the apocalypse,
-
you know what I told them?
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"Start treating those people
with love and respect right now.
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Maybe you won't have
an apocalypse to worry about."
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Thank you.
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(Applause)