-
So this is Anna Hazare,
-
and Anna Hazare may well be
the most cutting-edge
-
digital activist in the world today.
-
And you wouldn't know it by looking at him.
-
Hazare is a 77-year-old Indian anti-corruption
and social justice activist.
-
And in 2011, he was running a big campaign
-
to address everyday corruption in India,
-
a topic that Indian elites love to ignore.
-
So as part of this campaign,
-
he was using all of the traditional tactics
-
that a good Ghandian organizer would use.
-
So he was on a hunger strike,
-
and Hazare realized through his hunger
-
that actually maybe this time,
-
in the 21st-century,
-
a hunger strike wouldn't be enough.
-
So he started playing around
with mobile-activism.
-
So the first thing he did, he said to people,
-
"why don't you send me
-
a text message if you support
-
my campaign against corruption?"
-
So he does this, he
gives people a short code,
-
and about 80,000 people do it.
-
Okay, that's pretty respectable.
-
But then he decides,
-
"let me tweak my tactics a little bit."
-
He says, "why don't you leave
me a missed call?"
-
Now, for those of you who have
lived in the global south,
-
you'll know that missed calls
-
are a really critical part
of global mobile culture.
-
I see people nodding.
-
People leave missed calls all the time:
-
If you're running late for a meeting
-
and you want to let them know
that you're on the way,
-
you leave them a missed call.
-
If you're dating someone and
you just want to say "I miss you"
-
you leave them a missed call.
-
So a note for a dating tip here,
-
in some cultures,
-
if you want to please your lover,
-
you call them and hang up.
-
So why do people leave missed calls?
-
Well, the reason of course is that
-
they're trying to avoid charges
-
associated with making calls
and sending texts.
-
So when Hazare asked people
to leave him a missed call,
-
let's have a little guess how
many people actually did this?
-
35 million.
-
So this is one of the largest coordinated
actions in human history.
-
It's remarkable.
-
And this reflects the extraordinary strength
of the emerging Indian middle class,
-
And the power that their
mobile phones bring.
-
But he used that,
-
Hazare needed up with this massive
csv file of mobile phone numbers,
-
and he used that to deploy
-
real people-power on the ground
-
to get hundreds of thousands of
people on the streets in Dehli
-
to make a national point of
everyday corruption in India.
-
It's a really striking story.
-
So this is me when I was 12-years-old,
-
I hope you see the resemblance,
-
and I was also an activist,
-
and I have been an activist all my life.
-
I had this really funny childhood
-
where I [tropsed?] around the world
-
meeting world leaders and
Noble Prize winners
-
talking about third-world debt,
-
as it was then called,
-
and demilitarization,
-
I was a very, very serious child.
-
And back then,
-
in the early 90s,
-
I had very cutting-edge
tech-tool of my own:
-
the fax.
-
And the fax was the
tool of my activism.
-
And at that time, it was the best way
-
to get a message to a lot of people
-
all at once.
-
I'll give you one example of a fax
campaign that I ran.
-
It was the eve of the Gulf War
-
and I organized a global campaign
to flood the hotel,
-
the Intercontinental in Geneva,
-
where [name] and [name]
-
were meeting on the eve of the war,
-
and I thought that if I could
flood them with faxes,
-
we'll stop the war.
-
Well, unsurprisingly,
-
that campaign was wholly unsuccessful.
-
There are lots of reasons for that,
-
but there's no doubt that
one sputtering fax machine
-
in Geneva was a little bit
of a bandwidth constraint
-
in terms of the ability to
get a message to lots of people.
-
And so, I went on to
discover some better tools.
-
I co-founded Avaaz that uses the
internet to mobilize people
-
and now has almost
40 million members,
-
and I now run Purpose, which
is a home for these kinds of
-
technology-powered movements.
-
So what's the moral of this story?
-
Is the moral of this story,
-
"you know what, the fax is kind of
eclipsed by the mobile phone?
-
This is another story of
tech-determinism?"
-
Well, I would argue that there's
actually more to it than that.
-
I'd argue that in the last 20 years,
-
something more fundamental has changed
-
than just new tech.
-
I would argue that there has
been a fundamental shift
-
in the balance of power
-
in the world.
-
You ask any activist how to understand the world,
-
and they'll say,
-
"look at where the power is,
-
who has it,
-
how it's shifting?"
-
I think we all sense that something
big is happening.
-
So Henry Timms and I,
-
Henry's a fellow movement builder,
-
got talking one day and
we started to think,
-
"how can we make sense of this new world?
-
how can we describe it and give
-
it a framework that makes it more useful?"
-
Because we realize that many
-
of the lessons that we were
discovering in movements
-
actually applied all over the world
-
in many sectors of our society.
-
So I want to introduce you to
this framework:
-
Old power, meet new power.
-
And I want to talk to you about
what new power is today.
-
New power is the deployment
-
of mass participation and peer coordination,
-
these are the two key elements,
-
to create change and shift outcomes.
-
And we see new power all around us.
-
This is bile grio
-
he was a populist Italian blogger
-
who with a minimal apparatus
and only some online tools,
-
won more than 25 percent of the vote
-
in recent Italian elections.
-
This is air b&b,
-
which, in just a few years,
-
radically disrupted the hotel industry
-
without owning a single
square-foot of real estate.
-
This is Kickstarter,
-
which we know has raised over a billion dollars
-
from more than 5 million people.
-
Now, we're familiar with all of these models.
-
But what's striking is the commonalities,
-
the structural features of
these new models
-
and how they differ from old power.
-
Let's look a little bit at this.
-
Old power is held like a currency.
-
New power works like a current.
-
Old power is held by a few.
-
New power isn't held by a few,
it's made by many.
-
Old power is all about download,
-
and new power uploads.
-
And you see a whole set of characteristics
-
that you can trace,
-
whether it's in media or politics,
-
or in education.
-
So we've talked a little bit about
-
what new power is,
-
let's talk for a second about what
new power isn't.
-
New power is not your Facebook page.
-
I assure you that having a
social media strategy
-
can enable you to do
-
just as much download
-
as you used to do when you had the radio.
-
Just as Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Asad,
-
I assure you that his Facebook page
-
has not embraced the power
of participation.
-
New power is not inherently positive.
-
In fact, this isn't an normative
argument that we're making,
-
there are many good things
about new power,
-
but it can produce bad outcomes.
-
More participation, more peer coordination
-
sometimes distorts outcomes
-
and there are some things,
-
like things, for example, in the medical profession
-
that we want new power to get
no where near.
-
And thirdly, new power is not
the inevitable victor.
-
In fact, unsurprisingly,
-
as many of these new power
models get to scale,
-
what you see is this massive push-back
-
from the forces of old power.
-
Let's look at this really
interesting epic struggle
-
going on right now between
Edward Snowden and the NSA.
-
You'll note that only that
-
only one of the two people on this slide
-
is currently in exile.
-
And so, it's not at all clear
-
that new power will be
the inevitable victor.
-
That said, keep one thing in mind:
-
We're at the beginning of a
very steep curve.
-
So you think about some of
these new power models, right?
-
These were just like someone's
-
garage idea a few years ago,
-
now they're disrupting
entire industries.
-
And so, what's interesting
about new power,
-
is the way it feeds
on itself.
-
Once you have an experience of new power,
-
you tend to expect and
want more of it.
-
So let's say you've used a
peer-to-peer lending platform
-
like Lending Tree or Prosper,
-
then you've figured out that
you don't need the bank,
-
and who wants the bank, right?
-
And so, that experience tends
to embolden you
-
it tends to make you want
more participation
-
across more aspects of your life.
-
And what this gives rise to is
-
a set of values.
-
We talked about the models
-
that new power has engendered,
-
the air b&bs, the kick starters,
-
what about the values?
-
And this is an early sketch
-
of what new power values look like.
-
New power values prize
transparency above all else.
-
It's almost a religious belief
in transparency
-
that if you shine a light on something,
-
it will be better.
-
And remember that in the 20th-century,
-
this was not at all true.
-
People thought that gentlemen
should sit behind closed doors
-
and make comfortable agreements.
-
New power values informal,
networked governance.
-
New power folks would have
invented the UN today,
-
for better or worse.
-
New power values participation,
-
and new power is all about
-
"do it yourself."
-
In fact, what's interesting
about new power
-
is that it eschews some of
the professionalization
-
and specialization that was
-
all the rage in the 20th-century.
-
So what's interesting about these
-
new power values and these
new power models
-
is what they mean for organizations.
-
So we've spent a bit of time thinking
-
"how can we plot organizations
-
on a 2x2 where, essentially
-
we look at new power values
-
and new power models
-
and see where different people sit?"
-
We started with a U.S. analysis,
-
and let me show you some
-
interesting findings.
-
So the first is Apple.
-
In this framework, we actually
described Apple
-
as an old power company.
-
That's because the ideology,
-
the governing ideology of Apple
-
is the ideology of the perfectionist,
-
product designer in Cupertino.
-
It's absolutely about that beautiful,
perfect thing descending upon us,
-
in perfection.
-
And it does not value, as a
company, transparency.
-
In fact, it's very secretive.
-
Now, Apple is one of the most
succesful companies
-
in the world.
-
So this shows that you can
-
still pursue a successful old power strategy.
-
But one can argue that there's
real vulnerabilites in that model.
-
I think another interesting comparison
-
is that of the Obama campaign
-
versus the Obama presidency.
-
(Applause)
-
Now I like President Obama,
-
he ran with new power
at his back, right?
-
And he said to people,
-
"we are the ones we've
been waiting for."
-
And he used crowdfunding
-
to power a campaign.
-
But when he got into office,
-
he governed like,
-
more or less,
-
all the other presidents did.
-
And this is a really interesting trend,
-
as when new power gets powerful,
-
what happens?
-
So this is a framework you
should look at
-
and think about where your
own organization
-
sits on it.
-
And think about where it
should be
-
in five or 10 years.
-
So what do you do if you're old power?
-
If you're there thinking,
-
in old power,
-
"this won't happen to us."
-
Then just look at the Wikipedia
entry for the Encyclopedia Britannica.
-
Let me tell you,
-
it's a very sad read.
-
But if you are old power,
-
the most important thing
-
you can do is to occupy yourself.
-
before others occupy you.,
-
before you are occupied.
-
Imagine that a group
of your biggest skeptics
-
are camped in the heart
of your organization
-
asking the toughest questions
-
and they can see everything
inside of your organization.
-
And ask then "would they
like what they see
-
and should our model change?"
-
What about if you're new power?
-
Is new power kind of just
riding the wave to glory?
-
I would argue no.
-
I would argue that there
are some very real challenges
-
to new power in this nascent phase.
-
Let's stick with the Occupy Wall Street
example for a moment.
-
Occupy was this incredible example
of new power,
-
the purest example of new power.
-
And yet, it failed to consolidate.
-
So they energy that it created
-
was great for the mean phase,
-
but they were so committed to participation,
-
that they never got anything done.
-
And in fact that model
-
means that the challenge for new power is:
-
how do you use institutional power
-
without being institutionalized?
-
One the other end of the spectra
-
is Uber.
-
Uber is an amazging,
-
highly scalable new power model.
-
That network is getting denser and denser
-
by the day.
-
But what's really interesting
about Uber is
-
it hasn't really adopted new power values.
-
This is a real quote from
the Uber CEO recently:
-
He says, "Once we get rid of the
dude in the car," He means drivers,
-
"Über will be cheaper."
-
Now, new power models
live and die
-
by the strength of their networks.
-
By whether the drivers and the consumers
-
who use the service actually believe in it.
-
Because they're not an exercise
in top-down perfectionism,
-
they are about the network.
-
And so, the challenge,
-
and this is why it's in
no way surprising,
-
that now Uber's drivers
are now unionizing.
-
It's extraordinary.
-
Uber's drivers are turning on Uber.
-
And the challenge for Uber,
-
this isn't an easy situation for them,
-
is that they are locked into
a broder super-strcuture
-
that is really old power.
-
They've raised more than a billion
dollars in the capital markets.
-
Those markets expect a financial return,
-
and they way you get a financial return
-
is by squeezing and squeezing
-
your users and your drivers
-
for more and more value
-
and giving that value to your investors.
-
So the big question
-
about the future of new power
-
in my view is:
-
Will that old power just emerge?
-
So will new power elites just become
-
old power and squeeze?
-
Or will that new power
base bite back?
-
Will the next big Uber
-
be co-owned by Uber drivers?
-
And I think this will be a very interesting
-
structural question.
-
Finally, think about new power
-
being more than just an
-
entity that scales things
-
that make us have slightly
better consumer experiences.
-
My call to action for new power
-
is to not be an island.
-
We have major structural
problems in the world today,
-
that could benefit enormously
-
from the kinds of mass participation
-
and peer coordination
-
that these new power players
-
know so well how to generate.
-
And we badly need them to
turn their energies and their power
-
to big, what economists might call,
-
public goods problems,
-
that are often beyond markets
-
where investors can easily be found.
-
And I think if we can do that,
-
we might be able to fundamentally change
-
not only human being's
sense of their own agency and power,
-
because I think that's the most
wonderful thing about new power,
-
is that people feel more powerful,
-
but we might also be able to change
-
the way we relate to each other
-
and the way we relate to
authority and institutions.
-
And to me, that's absolutely
-
worth trying for.
-
Thank you very much.
-
(Applause)