Lunch over IP

The 2008 chaos election theory, or: the year of user-generated swiftboating

The other day at the end of my speech on citizen bloggers at the BlogCamp in Zurich, someone in the audience asked  for my opinion on the impact of blogs on the 2008 US presidential election ("blogs" is here used as shorthand for a whole palette of communication and conversation tools, from youtube to twitter).

I said: "it will be huge, and lead to chaos".

That requires some explaining. The Web has played an increasing role in the US presidential campaigns ever since 1996. In 2004, blogs and MeetUp and online fund-raising were central in creating the illusion that Howard Dean was unstoppable, just to see him melt away as soon as he stepped out of the overheated online bubble. But at the end, television decided: think of the inordinate impact of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" campaign to distort John Kerry's military record (he was decorated for his service in Vietnam) that used four deceitful TV advertisements which instilled doubts in many people about his honesty and inserted a lot of static into his message. A tactic that became known as "swiftboating".

Much has changed in the last three years: broadband is commonplace; blogs carry alot of clout; online video has demonstrated its power; the "mainstream media" (television and print) have lost some of theirs. There is no randomness in the fact that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama announced that they were running through videos posted on their packed-with-features websites rather than at a formal press conference; in the fact that both have MySpace pages (Hillary: 8380 "friends"; Barack: 92426); in the fact that John Edwards invites bloggers to tag along on campaign tours; etc (most other candidates on both parties do the same).

So, many expect that 2008 will be a better, more democratic campaign, where "citizen journalists" will be able to unravel the partisan spin, where true conversations may start on real issues towards real solutions. Where manipulation and lies will be harder to carry out because somebody, somewhere, will be able to spot them, decrypt them, maybe record/videotape/document them, and if so certainly share them on YouTube or on a blog, condemning them and setting the record straight. And truth and substance will emerge -- and win.

My take is rather: along with the unprecedented avalanche of advertising from the candidates that the recent fund-raising records will pay for, 2008 will be the campaign of user-generated swiftboating. It will be a campaign dominated by information chaos. Where it will become impossible to tell candidates apart; to say clearly who stands for what; to figure out who's behind what message -- and particularly behind personal attacks; to detect where truth is and believe anyone. Historically we had spin doctors; now everybody has the tools to be a spin doctor, which means that the political ball will spin in every possible direction, faster than ever.

Consider just the remake of the famous ad that launched the Macintosh computer in 1984, featuring a woman throwing a hammer at a screen showing Big Brother. A couple of weeks ago an Obama supporter edited it (he did a near-professional job), inserting real (but out-of-context) footage from Hillary Clinton's campaign speeches, casting her as Big Sister, and posted it on YouTube: the homemade video has been seen over three million times so far.   

Sure, YouTube has been the theatre of many good things: letting the world know about the "macaca" remark that cost his senatorial seat to George Allen, for example. But as the Big Sister video hints (even discounting a humorous intent) the potential for user-generated swiftboating is limitless -- through YouTube, though blogs, and any other tool available.

This is not to say that in the future, citizens empowered by online tools won't be able to change politics for the better. Not this time though: the campaign up to 2008 will be wild. The tools are still too new, the possibilities too exciting, and a politically mature usage of them will take time to settle in.

Which means that 2008 -- boosted by California moving their primary to February, which changes the whole dynamics -- will probably be a campaign hitched to personality and authenticity, not to policies. That's the only signal that may emerge from the growing noise: leadership. How will this person respond in a crisis? Can I trust him or her to take the right decisions? Empathy and warmth will trump any carefully drafted social-security reform plan. Because with the message blurred by its own multiplicity, the messenger will become the (only) message.

And I have the impression that that's the way Barack Obama and John (+ Elizabeth) Edwards are shaping their campaign.

(Cross-posted on the Huffington Post)

SWF07: Larry Brilliant: we've known about global warming since 1958 and done little, but I'm optimistic

Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Third day/closing session (Website - SocialEdge)

Larry Brilliant, the director of Google.org, starts his talk by showing a short clip from a 1958 movie by Frank Capra, "The Unchained Goddess" -- a precursor of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" -- where a scientist, talking over images of melting Arctic icecaps and maps of rising sea levels inundating the southern regions of the US, explains:

"Even now, Man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through the waste products of his civilization. Due to our release through factories and automobiles every year of more than six billion tons of carbon dioxide, which helps air absorb heat from the sun, our atmosphere seems to be getting warmer!"

"So in 1958 we knew about global warming: should we feel good or bad that 50 years of foreknowledge accomplished so little?", Brilliant asks. He explores some megatrends:

• increasing global warming: gravest effects on the poorest and most vulnerable
• increasing population: +/- 50 percent in 50 years, from 6.5 billion today (we already "eat" resources as if we were 20 billion) to more than 9 billion
• increasing urbanization: this years we past the tipping point, 50 percent fo population lives in cities
• increasing desertification, loss of farming land etc
• increasing animal consumption: 2 billion kg bush meat a year in Africa; clear-cutting the Amazon to produce soybeans for China's livestock.
• increasing - explosive - growth of technology, which is beneficiary but has downside in bioweapons, etc
• increasing globalization, which has big winners and bigger losers. Today 1 percent of world population owns 40 percent of all goods and services (as Bill Clinton says, this situation is unprecedented, unequal, unfair and unstable)

Case for pessimism:

• Water and other resources riots: 230 riots per day in China last year; Darfur is in fact a resource war; refugees crisis
• Increasing number and scale of disasters
• Newly emergent disease patterns: thirty new communicable diseases - bush meat, China's chickens, etc

These megatrends may lead to anger, religious and sectarian violence, terrorism; denial, materialism; and where does this lead social entrepreneurs? Even if CO2 emissions stopped today, global warming would continue and the next decades would see rises in sea levels of minimum of 20 to 30 inches. He looks -- "navigating" the region with the help of GoogleEarth -- at the case of Bangladesh: the combined impact of melting snows from the Himalaya and of rising sea levels could displace 100 million people in Bangladesh. We are all in this together, global warming is something that's happening to all of us, as are the newly emergent diseases. There have been several diseases that began in animals and have jumped species in the last 30 years.

Case for optimism:

• humanity has always risen to meet the challenge, just look at the list of Nobel Prizes engaged in prevention of nuclear dissemination; the creation of Médecins sans Frontières, of GrameenBank, etc; we have seen the eradication of smallpox, we may see the eradication of polio and guinea worm soon.
• there is a change in philanthropy and business practices, by younger wealthy people, and creating new models for philanthropy.
• there are signs of a "beginnings of a movement" regarding climate change, involving businesses (KP Greentech, TXU), politics (the AB32 global warming act in California, Al Gore testifying in Congress), science (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report), religion (evangelicals and environmentalists in the US are working together), Europe (the 2020 20% renewable energy 20% cut in CO2 plan). There is an optimistic mood to save the Earth in the air. Doesn't mean that people understand that climate change will hit the poorest first, but we are witnessing the first step.

He tells his own story of traveling through Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan; living in a Himalayan monastery; and starting to work in India for WHO's smallpox program -- finally being instrumental in eradicating it. Smallpox was the worst disease in history. In the 20th century it killed 500 million people, 2 million people in 1967 only. Poor and rich people alike (the King Louis XV of France or the Tsar Peter II of Russia among others died of smallpox). (Read this previous post where Brilliant tells about how they succeeded in eradicating it).

"To think that smallpox no longer exists should make us proud, and make us optimistic in tackling global warming".

SWF07: Peter Gabriel and video advocacy

Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Second day/1 (Website - SocialEdge)

Singer Peter Gabriel (of Genesis fame) tells about the almost-15-years-long experience of Witness.org, the non-profit he set up to encourage use of visual media (mainly video) and communication technology (Internet) to document human rights abuses (see here for his speech at TED2006). He tells about his epiphany meeting people that had been tortured and abused, "and what I found extraordinary is that people can suffer in extraordinary ways and then have their experience denied and forgotten. But it seems that when there is video and photo it is much harder to deny the story and for people's experience to be forgotten". Witness.org was started to give out cameras to local activists and NGOs helping them to tell their stories and raising awareness around the world -- "cell phone manufacturers did a pretty good job at that". Of course, he says, it isn't enough to get a camera out to a remote location, people need training and support. Fifteen years on, Witness.org still reaches small numbers of people. Now Witness.org is about to launch, in a few months, a Human Rights hub, "a sort of YouTube + Wikipedia for human rights", to allow anyone from anyplace in the world the chance of telling their story, have it uploaded and seen, and perhaps not forgotten nor discarded.
Gillian Caldwell, the director of Witness, gives some details on the site, as a destination for all kind of human rights-related media (audio, video, pictures) where everybody can upload, see, get educated, and act on it. This last point is crucial in the Witness.org approach, which she calls "video advocacy": use video as tool, as evidence, to raise awareness, to target key decision makers, to inflect policies, etc. There will be features on the site for organization, for activism (things like: print out 15 copies of this picture and get them delivered to members of Congress), for syndicating the content out to other sites, etc. Witness will also be organizing a "video advocacy institute" next July in Canada, bringing people together for training, with case studies, examples from all over the world, etc.
Their short presentation is followed by a discussion where a series of questions are raised about filtering or curating content (to avoid abuses of the system), about protecting both the people that upload content and those who appear on the videos, about the difficulties in using a peer-review approach for controversial content.

SWF07: taking "no" as a question, a Nobel's vision, and Queen Rania's call for corporate multicultural responsibility

Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Opening session/1. (Website - SocialEdge)

This year's Skoll Forum on Social Entrepreneurship (the fourth) goes under the theme "Enabling innovation". About 700 attendees, and a wide range of panels and speeches covering the many facets of social innovation -- from "where do ideas come from" to financing them and scaling them up, from working at the grassroots level to partnering with businesses, from "design thinking" to a systemic approach to innovation. I will try to blog a few of them.

Starting with the opening ceremony, which takes place in the round, historic (XVII century) and uncomfortable shapes of the Sheldonian Theatre and features statements and speeches by Stephan Chambers of the Saïd Business School at Oxford (which hosts the Skoll Center devoted to social entrepreneurship); Jeff Skoll, founder of the Skoll Foundation and of Participant Productions (his money comes from having co-founded eBay); John Hood, vice-chancellor of Oxford University; Geoff Mulgan and Rushanara Ali, director and associate director of the Young Foundation; writer Charles Handy; economist David Galenson of the University of Chicago (see next post for a summary of his speech); 2006 Nobel laureate for Peace Muhammad Yunus interviewed by broadcaster Pat Mitchell, and HM Queen Rania of Jordan -- plus music by Salman Ahmad, the founder of Junoon (which means "passion"), one of South Asia's most popular rock bands.

Introducing the event, Chambers quotes the poet Wadsworth who wrote: great writers create the taste by which they are to be understood. In the same way, he says, "entrepreneurs create the conditions by which they become understood". According to Jeff Skoll (see this post about his recent speech at TED2007), social entrepreneurs are creating those conditions: "In 2006, social entrepreneurs went from the edges of society to the mainstream" -- helped in that by the 2006 Nobel Prize given to Yunus. "The nature of philanthropy is shifting, and the nature of change is shifting too", from organizations to individuals, from governments to people. "Social entrepreneurs are everywhere social problems call for innovation, inspiration, and an inability to take failure as an option, and replacing cynicism with hope, and altering the course of history". John Hood stresses that "the growth in social entrepreneurship in both theory and practice has been remarkable in the last 10 years, which brings challenges -- including the challenge of focus".

A decade ago, a British think-tank that Geoff Mulgan used to run, called Demos, published a book called "The rise of the social entrepreneur". Ten years on, he says, "thanks to Yunus' GrameenBank, Ashoka and many others, social entrepreneurship has indeed entered mainstream". Social innovations have been many (fair trade, microcredit, complementary medicine, zero carbon housing scheme, carbon credits, timebanks, pledgebanks, patient-led healthcare, etc). "How do we take this further?" he asks. And mentions the three lessons, or organizing principles, taught by the late Michael Young, an archetypal social entrepreneur (after whom the Young Foundation is named):

• we should always take "no" as a question, not as  an answer.
• look for small changes with potentially big leverage.
• when you see a problem, act on it.

Rushanara Ali offers three examples of social innovation by the Young Foundation, "starting with modest ambitions but combining the passion, energy and insights of local areas and building up over time":

• The Open University, the world's first successful distance teaching university, created in 1969 in response to exclusion from higher education (particulary for women), copied around the world by public and private sector. Like many innovations, OU faced a lot of resistance, particularly from universities (including from Oxford).
• Tower Hamlets  Summer University, created in 1995 in the east-end of London (home of the largest Bangladeshi community in the UK), set up as a response to young people having nothing to do and getting into troubles: a program to keep them occupied, raise their aspirations, channel their energy into creative activities; the project helped reducing crime and drug abuse, and is now being rolled out across London and the UK.
• Language Line: telephone interpreting service for hospitals, police and other public services for the (culturally very diverse) London region. Now provides over 100 languages. Initial model was very straightforward, using immigrants as call centre operators. Most resistance initially from surgeons and doctors. Later sold off as a business, with professional intepreters, currently serving 750'000 people, and very much integral to the UK health system.

Mulgan: too many of the world's problems (climate change, aging, poverty, rapid urbanization, etc) are getting worse. What can be done to accelerate social innovation? Why doesn't social innovation attract the same billions as tech innovation? "The starting point has to be the passion to achieve change, but that's not enough. We have looked in some details at the processes of change, at the relations between the bees (the individuals with ideas) and the trees (the organizations, governments, businesses etc which have the capacity): without the alliance between the two, change doesn't happen", although "this movement of outsiders (the social entrepreneurs) should be careful not to become too much a movement of insiders". He mentions a couple of projects supported by the Young Foundation, such as Neighborhood Fix-It (a website using Google Maps that allows citizens who see something wrong locally to click and flag it; a message gets sent to the local officials and a conversation gets started) and the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX, a network of networks, resources and ideas for social innovation).

British writer and social philosopher Charles Handy has recently published with his wife Elizabeth a book called "The new philanthropists", where 23 people are portrayed. "Stories of ordinary people doing interesting things, and of the issues they raise", he says. He briefly tells four:

• Jeff Gambin, a Tibetan/Australian who owned a small chain of restaurants and a Rolls Royce when -- in his 40s, about ten years ago -- he had an epiphany about the lives of homeless in Sidney, sold the restaurants, and started preparing food for them, 400 a night. He was funding this out of his own money, but he is a businessman, and he wanted not only to feed people but also to teach them how to feed themselves. Has set up computer training centers to train them. Handy say that Campbell has taken 6000 people off the streets in 10 years.
• Tony Adams is not a businessman. He was a famous footballer in the UK, captain of the Arsenal team, a hero to many young boys. But he was also a drunk, and went to prison at the height of his career for drunk driving. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, wrote a book, retired from football at 32, started a clinic for people with alcool problems and does prevention work.
• Peter Ryan, an ordinary (meaning: non rich) executive in a French food business, inspired while traveling in Asia, started a microloan operation in Malawi with about 20'000 pounds, giving hundreds of small loans over the last 3 years, mostly to women, mostly paid back.
• Mo Ibrahim is the man who brought the first handheld mobile phone into Britain, and created telecom companies in Sub-Saharian Africa. He has set up a hospital for breast-cancer patients in Karthoum, Sudan. Along it, he rents out luxury offices, the income of which, he hopes, will fund the hospital. Last year, he announced a prize to the African democratically elected ruler who can demonstrate that under his or her leadership the country has seriously improved (he has set a series of criteria) and who commits to leave public office, he will give a prize of 5 million dollars and a lifelong income of 200'000 USD per year.

What's new about these "new philanthropists", asks Handy?

• they're young-ish, in their 40s. They're still full of energy and ambition, but of a different ambition: to achieve social change. And want to do it now.
• they are not investing in buildings, in local universities, or museums, but they are ttacking what they perceive as social needs.
• they are DIY (do-it-yourself) freaks. They are not prepared to write checks to institutions they don't know or to people they've never met.

On the other hand, he adds, they desperately understand that nothing works by itself, that they need help, teams make a difference; and that they are often not very popular when they enter areas where they don't know anything (NGOs often react by saying: "why don't they just give us the money, we know how to do this"). Increasingly the available money for innovation and social change is going to be in the money of individuals and not governments or organizations. These people are the seeds of change. Yes we read the stories of greed and duplicity in boardrooms today. "But something new is happening. Adam Smith wrote two books. In the first he said that self-interest drives the world and keeps it going. But in the second he added that it's sympathy and moral sense that keeps it together. We have so far assumed that it was the job of business to create the world and keep it going, and that the sympathy/moral part was the job of governments. Increasingly however we are realizing that governments can't do everything. There are signs that self-interest and sympathy are coming closer together. Wouldn't it be nice if every business had a social venture fund, or participated in one? Wouldn't it be nice if one day businesses saw themselves as social entreprises?"

GrameenBank founder and Nobel prize Muhammad Yunus is interviewed by Pat Mitchell who introduces him by summarizing the story of how GrameenBank was started. "A young economic professor at the university of Chittagong observes that in this part of Bangladesh the poor have only one option when they need money: horrendous interest rates from lenders. Banks won't lend to the poor without collateral. Cultural taboos discourage lending to women. He lends 27 dollars of his own money, mostly women, they pay it back, loans more, etc. Goes on to open a new kind of bank. The Grameen model is exported around the world -- and last year he got the Nobel Peace prize". (BG note: it must be said here that the interest rates asked by Grameen, in the two digits, are also controversial).

Yunus: Today in Bangladesh we reach 80% of all poor families with microcredit, and of course we want to reach 100%. But as you do, you wonder what this does to people. One area we focused on was education for the children of our borrowers, was making sure that they go to school even though their parents are illiterate. Then we discovered that some of the children coming from illiterate families were top of their class, so we introduced scholarships. Grameen now gives out about 4000 scholarships a year. We then introduced education loans so that they could continue into higher education. We have been creating a new generation, dramatically different from their parents. What will they do once they finish their education? We invite them not to seek jobs, but to create jobs. The other lesson that we learned is that people taking a small loan don't only buy a cow or start a small business. They are also owning assets for the first time. And at the same time they are co-owners of the bank, this huge operation with 24'000 staff. They take a lot of pride. We introduced pension funds -- first time that people hear about pensions in Bangladesh, for them this is an amazing concept. At the beginning of Grameen the women were reluctant, but now there is alot of agility in the system, people understand loans, pensions, scholarships. This demonstrates that poverty is artificial, it's not inherent but it's imposed on people. Poverty is caused by the institutions, like the banks which neglect and ignore two thirds of people in the world who are not eligible to get a loan from a traditional bank. Poverty is also caused by the concepts we use, by the way business is defined, "to make money", that's the only kind of business admitted by economics. This unidimensional approach is a shame to the human beings. We need to do them justice. We should create other kinds of businesses to do good to people. That could change the whole structure of the economy. Economics assumes that we are selfish, but in truth we are not: it's just that the selfish part in us is the only one that's currently allowed. I met the CEO of Danone, the French food producer, and suggested that we create a Danone-Grameen company to produce yogurt in Bangladesh, and I told him that this is a business that won't distribute dividends, and he said OK: I thought he hadn't understood my English...  And now we are producing yogurt. Things can be done differently, can be designed differently.

The closing speaker his HM Queen Rania of Jordan, who delivers a heartfelt call for understanding, for crafting together solutions for problems that have been around for too long. She said: until recently, companies (focusing on the bottom line) and civil society organizations (criticizing the companies for their lack of social and environmental thinking) were antagonist. But now they seem to be joining forces into what the Harvard Business Review recently called a "new social compact", realizing that they not only can, but should collaborate, speak a common language. Companies are realizing that they are a part of society and not apart from it. But our postglobal society is not prospering, we live in poverty of multicultural knowledge and respect. The Western world and the Islamic world are in suspicion and fear, each side feels increasingly threatened and misunderstood by the other. Yet, East and West are neighbors. Social inequality is wrong, but so is social intolerance. We should build a shared commitment to multicultural responsibility, we all have a role in promoting it. And corporations have a key role to play in bridging this divide, they should engage in Corporate Multicultural Responsibility (CMR). CMR is more than an formula, it is an essential strategy for success. As we grow global, so does our responsibility. I have engaged myself in creating this trust and respect between East and West, but I'm still at base camp and the way is long and steep. I need your help.

The real reality in Baghdad

If you thought that the news media are giving a too grim picture of the reality on the ground in Iraq, here is a picture from the US television channel NBC's own blog showing the whiteboard at the NBC correspondents bureau in Baghdad on March 6, with all the relevant news for the day. Only a tiny fraction of those make it into the Western media. (Via Ben via Jeff. Click on the picture to enlarge it):

TED2007: Betting on good people doing good things, and a "virtually embedded" filmmaker

Running notes from the TED2007 conference in Monterey, California - Session 8 (TED site; backgrounder; past TED videos; other bloggers at TED)

TEDster Nick Sears from NYU shows a contraption that simulates 70'000 LEDs using only 64. Interesting potential for volumetric displays.

JJ Abrams is the inventor of "Lost" and "Alias", two of the most successful TV series of the last few years. Why do mysteries attract us so much? He pulls out a cardboard box, a "magic mystery box" that he bought when he was a kid with his grandfather in the Tannen mystery store in New York, for 15 dollars, and has kept it and never opened it. I've been wondering why I never opened it, he says, and realized that it represents potential, hope, infinite possibility. It represents the difference between what you think you're getting and what you really get. (He does not open it). In everything I do, I am drawn by infinite possibilities. Mystery is more important that knowledge. My Apple laptop challenges me. He tells me: what are you gonna write that will be worthy of me? The blank page is a magic box. He shows a clip from the pilot episode of "Lost" (the moments after the plane crashes in the island) which was done in 12 weeks, with the help of technology, and discusses the fact that creation is easier today not only for professionals but for everyone.

TEDster Jakob Trollback, CEO of Trollback & Co in New York, a branding and design studio, shows a visualization of a Brian Eno/David Byrne song dealing with rising waters (Noah's Ark) and religion, while Tim Sarnoff of Sony Imageworks (the company that did the special effects for the "Spiderman" movie) gives a preview of their latest animation comedy, "Surf's Up", with animal characters engaged in competitive surfing, which will be released in June, and explains how they created parts of it.

Dotcom executive becomes billionaire, goes to Hollywood to make movies and, surprise, the movies don't suck. That's Jeff Skoll, who was one of the founders (and first fulltime employee) of eBay, and went on to take his money and found Participant Productions (which co-produced movies such as "Good Night, and Good Luck", "Fast food nation" and "An Inconvenient Truth" - read this post to see how they decide what projects to support). What drives me, he says, is a vision of the future that we probably all share, a world of prosperity and sustainability. And I think that we realize how far we have to go to get to that phase of humanity -- "humanity 2.0". Two big calamities in the world today: the gap in opportunities, and the hope gap. There is this weird idea that an ordinary individual could not make a difference in the world, but within each of us there is the potential to fill these gaps.
He tells of launching eBay and going "from living in a house with 5 guys in Palo Alto and living off their leftovers, to have serious money". He says of asking John Gardner on how best to use this fortune and getting as an answer: "Bet on good people doing good things". So he started the Skoll Foundation to support social entrepreneurs. Participant Productions came out of the idea of using storytelling for the public interest. In 2003 I started to go around Hollywood to talk about a "social media company". I was told over and over that the streets of Hollywood being paved with people like me. But PP started with the idea of not only doing movies but also getting involved in the issues (there are activism and advocacy programs that accompany the movies online). "North Country", with Charlize Theron, about harassment, may have played a role in the renewal of the US  "Violence against women" Act. About Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth", he says they decided to do it immediately after having seen Gore's slideshow about climate change, but that they thought it would be a documentary destined to niche television channels -- instead, it got an Oscar and is changing the debate on climate change.
At PP they're now preparing two movies about Afghanistan (one about Charles Wilson, a US politician who supported the Taliban to fight against the Soviets; the other from the "Kite Runner" bestselling book). He closes by dreaming up some headlines for 2010 or 2015: "US imports its last barrel of oil", "Snows return to Kilimanjaro", "Israeli and Palestinians celebrate anniversary of peace", and a screenshot from eBay: "Well-traveled obsolete slideshow for sale" -- that's Al Gore's, of course.

TEDster Paul Koontz, a VC, shows pictures of his trip to North Korea, a world of absurdity. One image shows a multiple-time-zones clock with only two time zones: Pyongyang and Havana. Another a policewoman directing the traffic in the middle of a giant crossing -- but there are no cars. He shows a short video from the "Mass Games" that are performed in the stadium, involving tens of thousands of performers organizing massive mosaics by turning colored pages of books and holding them up to compose giant images (like the one showing the soldier and the "dear leaders" in the backdrop in the picture at right -- which is not from Paul's presentation, but was taken by Reinhard Krause). The perfection of the extravagant performance as seen in Paul's video is amazing, so maybe  he's right in comparing it to "a giant communist display" where "every performer is basically a pixel". (You don't want to be the broken pixel).

Deborah Scranton is the filmmaker of "The War Tapes": she gave cameras to US infantry soldiers in Iraq in 2004 asking them to film their war life, and basically directed the movie via e-mail and instant messaging -- a unique collaborative film (see the trailer). She calls the approach "virtual embed": a novel way to tell a story in video from the inside out, rather than observing from the outside  in, as in traditional documentary-making. She shows scenes from the movie, and tells the backstory. One of the most profound stories: A soldier came up to me and he looked at me and I smiled and I saw the tear starting hi his eye and he told me about killing a child who got too close to the vehicle and was run over, "I'm a father, and I'm afraid to tell my wife because she may think that I'm a monster". She sees this as exhibit A in a disconnect between the lives of soldiers and those of the other Americans.
Scranton is now using a similar approach to tell the story of the US-Mexico border, putting cameras into the hands of the border patrol, ranchers, humanitarians who leave water in the desert trying to save lives, smugglers, and illegal immigrants themselves. 

David Pogue, the NY Times' tech columnist revealed last year his talents as a comedian - watch video or read summary - is offered a mini-slot of three minutes that he uses to play a "history of technology" using a portable keyboard, mixing up the iPod, YouTube, music downloads, and more. Funny.

Game designer Will Wright created "Sim City" and "The Sims" -- probably the best-selling computer game of all time (Chris Anderson says in introducing him that "The Sims" has probably occupied 7 billion hours of cumulated world's attention). He comes on stage with a broken arm in a cast, and talks about his new project, "Spore", a game that simulates the complete history and future of an alternative universe populated by fantastic creatures (like the one in the picture at left). He explains it as a multigenerational game, where at every level players can "create" part of the game following the evolution of the creatures, and heavily inflect the dynamics of the overall environment. So the process of playing the game is the process of building up a big database of user-generated content.  "It will be an amplifier for the user's creativity", he says. The demo he shows is that of a game with depth and almost infinite possibilities indeed. "I would like to give people some better calibration in long-term thinking. Maybe giving kids toys like this that let them observe long-term dynamics over a short period is a way in which games can change the world". Possible release date for "Spore": next September.

TED2007 / TEDprize: Nachtwey, Wilson and Clinton have a wish

Running notes from the TED2007 conference in Monterey, California - Session 6: TEDprize (TED site; backgrounder; past TED videos; other bloggers at TED)

This is the session where the winners of this year's TEDprize (whose names were announced in October) will reveal their "wishes". The TEDprize was introduced in 2005 and is an award given annually to three people that, in the words of TED curator Chris Anderson, "have shown that they can, in some way, positively impact life on this planet". Winners are granted a wish - no restrictions - that they get to express in front of the TED audience, asking for help in realizing it; and they receive 100'000 USD to use towards their wish.

TEDprize 2005-06 update

TEDprize Director Amy Novogratz is on stage to introduce the prize and give an update on past awardees.
She starts by announcing a new website for kids "about looking after the planet", which grew out of the TEDprize awarded in 2005 to photographer Ed Burtynsky (see the video of his speech). The site, MeetTheGreens.org (image right) launches today.

Larry Brilliant won the TEDprize last year, and said he wanted to build a global system to detect new diseases or disasters as quickly as it emerges and enable rapid response (I have chronicled this idea in detail here, and here is the video of his TED2006 speech). Since he unveiled his wish, he has become head of Google.org (the nonprofit/forprofit philanthropic arm of Google); seed funding has been raised to begin building the system, known as INSTEDD (International Networked System for Total Early Disease Detection); lots of pro bono work is coming from the TED community and from the health and disaster prevention community. (Contacts with Canada's GPHIN team, which Brilliant put forth as model in his speech last year, have instead been rare). In March they will be doing a pilot project: a simulation involving 6 countries, including Vietnam, Thailand and a province of China, about responding to a pandemic.

Architecture for Humanity's founder Cameron Sinclair was another 2006 winner and wished "to create a community that actively embraces open-source design to generate innovative and sustainable living standards for all" (summary and video of his TED2006 speech). In response, Sun Microsystem has mobilized several of its engineers and specialists (and other companies such as Hot Studio and AMD, as well as many individual TEDsters, have contributed) to build the Open Architecture Network (image left), which is launched today: an open and collaborative forum to enable designers, builders, architects, donors and volunteers to collaborate in improving housing conditions for those in need around the world.

The third 2006 winner was filmmaker ("Control Room") Jehane Noujaim, who wished to "bring the world together for one day a year thorugh the power of film" (summary and video of her TED2006 speech). Since, hundreds of offers of help were received, and Pangea Cinema Day is programmed for May 2008, as a three-hours live event distributed simultaneously around the world. It will be a day featuring speakers, music and dozens of short films selected via a global competition (run online, a user-generated event).

TEDprize 2007 winners

The winners of this year's TEDprize are photojournalist James Nachtwey, biologist E.O. Wilson (author of "The Diversity of Life"), and former US president Bill Clinton. Their wishes have been matter of speculation lately, but so far have remained confidential.

Nachtwey -- he is presented the prize by actress Goldie Hawn -- has covered more wars than most, being a witness to the world's horrors. He has been described as a "one-man human rights watch", and he is an activist photographer: "the primary function of my photos is to be in mass-circulated publications during the time that the events are happening, to become part of people's daily dialog and create public awareness".
I was a student in the 1960s, a time of social upheaval and idealism, he says. Pictures had a strong impact on me: about the war, politicians were telling us a story, and photographers another. I believed the photographers. They not only recorded history, they helped change history. Change became not only possible, but inevitable. In the face of poor political judgment, journalism and photojournalism put a human face on issues which from afar can appear abstract or ideological. What happens at ground level, far from the halls of power, touches individuals one by one. Photojournalism gives a voice to those who don't have a voice. The right balance is to be found between market considerations and journalistic principles. Every story does not have to sell something: there is also a time to give. I wanted to be a photographer in order to be a war photographer. But I understood that war photography would necessarily be intervention photography.
He shows pictures he took in Northern Ireland, Central America, Palestine and Israel, the Balkans, South Africa, Somalia, Sudan ("use of starvation as a means of genocide") and many other places, including New York on September 11. I am a witness and I want my testimony to be honest and uncensored. I also want it to be powerful and eloquent and do justice to the people I'm photographing, he says. I saw the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa, and it was the most uplifting thing; the next day I traveled to Rwanda and it was like taking the express lift to hell. Some 800'000 people were slaughtered, while the international community remained silent. My work has evolved from being concerned mostly with war to cover social issues as well (orphans in post-communist Romania, for example, or industrial pollution elsewhere in Eastern Europe, crime and punishment -- prisoners -- in America).
The pictures below were taken by Nachtwey in Chechnya, Afghanistan and South Africa:

 

Photographing the rubble at Ground Zero on 9-11 I realized I had been covering the same story for 20 years, and the attacks on NY were its ultimate manifestation. In its suffering, the Islamic world has been crying out, why haven't we been listening? When the war in Iraq was imminent, I realized that the US troops would be covered by others, so I decided to photograph the invasion from inside Baghdad. When Marines started rounding up bank robbers, they were cheered by the crowd: a short-lived moment. I covered wounded US soldiers and realized that good people have been put in a very bad situation for questionable reasons.
My TED wish: there is a vital story that needs to be told and I wish for TED to help me gain access to it and then help me come up with innovative and exciting ways to use news photography in the digital era. (BG note: yes, it is vague, but James can't reveal in public the precise story he has in mind, but clearly it's a about a place that's difficult to access, politically, diplomatically and logistically, and a story that's not being covered).

Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson is the other winner of the TEDprize 2007. He was 13 when he discovered in Alabama the first known US colonies of fire ants, and from there he has become one of the world's most distinguished scientists. The Guardian called him "Darwin's natural heir". He is the author of "The diversity of life", his recent work has focused on the impact human activities have had on life on the planet. The award is presented by Stewart Brand.
Says Wilson (that's him giving his speech in the picture at left): I've come on a special mission on behalf of my constituency, the millions of trillions of insects and other small creatures, to make a plea for them. Please keep in mind that if we would wipe out insects from the planet - which we are trying hard to do - the rest of life would disappear within a few months. Out of my study has emerged  an ambition crystallized in the wish I am about to make. The variety of genes on the planet in viruses and bacteria is likely to exceed that of all the rest of life. We know that some bacterial species are capable of almost unimaginable extremes of temperature, changes in environment, and more. They are in the process of disappearing under the HIPPO juggernaut: Habitat destruction (climate change), Invasive species (fire ants, pathogenic bacterias, etc), Pollution, Population growth and Overharvesting that drives species into extinction. Human-forced climate change alone could eliminate a quarter of species within the next half century. We need to settle down before we wreck the planet.
So my TED wish: I wish we will work together to help create the key tools that we need to inspire preservation of the Earth's biodiversity. Let is call it the encyclopedia of life. It is an encyclopedia that lives on the Internet and is contributed to by scientists and amateurs, it has an indefinitely expandable page for each species, available to anyone. Some scientists have started this effort, I wish you will help them to make this real. To start, someone has already donated the domain name "eol.org" (Encyclopedia of Life).

Do I dare writing three words describing the other TEDprize winner of this year? Former US president. Bill Clinton is certainly one of today's most recognizable and powerful global personalities. He has reinvented himself after leaving the White House in 2000 to become a credible champion of global interdependence through the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative (for a look at how Clinton operates, read David Remnick's great article published last September in the New Yorker). The TEDprize is presented to Clinton by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com.
Says Clinton: We live in a world that's interdependent but insufficient, in at least three ways: It's highly unequal, both in developing and in developed countries. It is unstable, because of the threats of terrorism, WMD, diseases, and growing vulnerability. It is unsustainable because of climate change, resources depletion and species destruction. When I think of the world that I would like to leave to my daughter, it's a world that moves aways from these three insufficiencies. People like us who are not in public office have more power to do good that in any time in history - thanks to the Internet, to NGOs.
What we have been trying to do, working first in Rwanda and then in other places, is to develop a model for rural healthcare in poor areas that can be used for a whole range of health issues, that can first be scaled for the whole nation in Rwanda and then implemented in other countries, a model that does the job (delivers healthcare) and does it at a price that allows countries to sustain the system without foreign donors over the long term. In a world with no systems, with chaos, everything becomes a struggle. The person who has done the best job of this, building a system in a poor area, is Paul Farmer (Partners in Health), who has built systems in Haiti and elsewhere (BG note: Farmers' work is chronicled in the great book by Tracy Kidder "Mountains Beyond Mountains"). Systems are what we need; in Rwanda we are trying to build a healthcare network. We started about 18 months ago, developing paid community health workers, ensuring that people who have AIDS or TB are properly diagnosed and treated, working about bringing clean water and sanitation and providing nutrition, and moving people up the health chain if they have problem of a severity that requires it. We went from 0 to 2000 people treated for AIDS; about 40% of all the people who need TB treatment get it; we started the first malaria treatment program that they ever had there; clinics have been created that are well-equipped and solar-powered. We estimate that this system could be developed across Rwanda for the equivalent of 5-6% of GDP. We are now working with PIH and the Ministery of Health in Rwanda to scale this system up, and are starting projects in Malawi, Tanzania, and other countries: to save as many lives as possible, but do it in a systematic way. We need initial upfront investment to train doctors and nurses, to set up the infrastructure, etc. But over a 5-10 year period we will eliminate the need for outside assistance.
My wish: help in creating a better future for Rwanda by assisting my foundation, in partnership with the Rwandan government, to build a sustainable, high quality rural health system for the whole country, that can then be a model for other countries. We have a chance here to prove that a country that almost slaughtered itself out of existence (while “none of us, most of all me, did anything to help") can practice reconciliation, reorganize itself, focus on tomorrow and provide comprehensive healthcare to its citizens. My belief is that this will help us build a more integrated world, a place where we all want our grandchildren to live in.

The TEDprize award ceremony ends with music from singer Paul Simon (as in Simon & Garfunkel) and his band.

TED2007: Serious people seriously scared about climate change, and Africa is open for business

Running notes from the TED2007 conference in Monterey, California - Session 3 (TED site; backgrounder; past TED videos; other bloggers at TED)

The first session of the day opens (like several TED sessions) with Thomas Dolby and his House Band, which provide the live soundtrack of the conference.

Iconic Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr (he's invested in Google, Amazon, Sun and others) talks about greentech, around which Silicon Valley seems to be reinventing itself, leaving behind the "dotcom/I-have-a-business-plan" era and moving anew into engineering real tech (see these stories in the San Francisco Chronicle).
I'm scared. I don't think we're gonna make it, he says. Shortly after I saw Al Gore's speech at TED last year (original post; video), I had a conversation over dinner with friends on global warming, and when it came to my 15-year-old daughter, she said: "I'm scared and I'm angry; your generation created this problem, you better fix it". I didn't know what to say. Maybe there are times when panic is the appropriate response, and we may have reached that time. (BG note: this reminds me of the "good ancestor principle"). We cannot afford to ignore this problem. We must act decisively. For me everything changed that evening. My partners and myself (at VC firm Kleiner Perkins) mobilized, and the more we learned, the more concerned we grew.
The first lesson is that companies are really powerful. When Wal-Mart last year made "going green" a top priority, committing to reduce energy use in their stores -- it matters because it is massive. They are the largest employer in the US, have the largest private fleet on the roads, andwhen they declare that they can "go green" and be profitable, they can have a big effect on other companies. If they achieve reducing 20% energy consumption, that will matter.
But it won't be enough. The second thing we learned is that individuals are powerful. We should all switch to fluorescent lightbulbs. It is stupid that we use two tons of steel plastic and glass (a car) to go to the store to buy bread. It is stupid that we put water in plastic bottles in Fiji and ship it here. As long as we pretend that CO2 is free, we won't be able to create change. The third lesson is that policy matters. The most important thing right now is to make it clear to politicians to have a system that caps and mandates reduction of greenhouse gases. Doerr mentions his (and others') lobbying for a law that was passed recently in California, mandating 25% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020. But that's not enough. Here is a story about national policy: we went to Brazil, to meet the producers of ethanol. Brazil's government mandated that every gas station in the country carry ethanol, and every vehicle run on ethanol. 85% of their cars run on flex fuels. But even Brazil ethanol policy is not enough. I'm afraid all of the best policies we have are not enough.
Every year 1.5 million people die of malaria around the world. A team from Berkeley is designing a new way to make anti-malaria drugs, to make it 10 times cheaper -- through synthetic biology. What has this to do with green? This technology can be used to make better biofuels. This is a really big deal: it means that we can precisely engineer the molecules and design them the right way. In 2005, 600 million USD were invested in these new techs; 1.2 billion in 2006. But we need much more. It is almost criminal that we are not investing more in energy research in the US.
So despite Wal-Mart, ethanol, cutting-edge biologists, I'm afraid it's not enough. The wild card in this is China. China's CO2 emissions are passing those of the US. But the Chinese say: "why should we sacrifice our growth, so that the West can continue to be profligate and stupid?". I don't have an answer to that.
Green technology is bigger than the Internet. It's the biggest economic opportunity of the XXI century. If the trajectory of all the world -- companies, individuals, policies, innovation -- is not gonna be enough, what are we going to do? Make "going green" your next big thing. Become carbon neutral (BG note: I have my doubts about carbon offsets). Lobby for green legislation. Use your personal power to push your company to go green. Because if we do (Doerr stops talking, he is getting visibly emotional, and starts to cry) I can look forward to the conversation I will have with my daughter in 20 years. (His daughter is in the room and stands up to hug him).

TEDster Ron Dembo is on stage for three minutes. He's an expert in mathematical modeling and risk analysis, CEO and founder of ZeroFootprint in Toronto, which works towards sustainability by guiding users to "green" products and services or through things like carbon offsetting. He agrees with all Doerr has said. He says that over 40% of total US greenhouse gases comes from operating buildings, and suggests that a possible solution to the problem is to promote ground source heating.

Robin Chase is the founder of Zipcar, the US' leading car-sharing company (which was founded after similar companies in Europe) is also scared -- scared that we won't be able to dramatically reduce CO2 within the required time frame to avert catastrophic effects. It's not a movie. It's happening. Her speech is about using market-based pricing to affect demand for car mobility, and wireless technology to create more efficiency. People just say: let's use fuel-efficent cars. But even if we start today, we may reduce consumption by a few percent, that's not enough. She explains how Zipcar (carsharing) works, and what social results it produces: 100'000 members sharing 3'000 cars, and driving much less on average than car owners, because people respond quickly to prices: if you know that picking up the Zipcar car to go buy an ice-cream at the mall costs you 8 dollars for 1 hour of car driving, you may reconsider it, buy the ice cream when you do your weekly shopping. That drives consumption down.
She talks about her new venture: GoLoco.com, which is an attempt at developing ridesharing. 75% of all trips in the US today are single occupancy vehicles. Sharing rides will transform the way we travel, with huge social benefits, from fewer cars congesting the highways to less demand for parking to more efficiency of fuel use (spread over several people), to a reduction of the portion of our income that goes into cars. Why do we drive too much: because car travel is underpriced, so we consume alot. We need to put price tags on car travel. When will we start to charge people what it really costs to drive? And what kind of wireless tech are we going to use to enable more efficient use of cars? She suggests ad hoc peer-to-peer self-configuring wireless networks (aka "mesh networks") where every device contributes to expand the network. Low-cost devices, with zero ongoing communication costs, highly scalable (just keep adding devices), resilient and redundant networks. How do we create a big network? By putting wireless in cars. Imagine if we put a mesh network device in every single car across America. We could have a coast-to-coast free wireless communication system, possibly accessible to everyone with open standards. As a major side effect, we could have a new tool for creating energy efficiency in every sectors. I believe this is as important to our economy as electrification. (BG note: cars seem to me the wrong place to put a good idea -- mesh networks -- because they move. Cars should be the "clients" of the network, which could be built along roads).

Anand Agarawala is a student at the university of Toronto who has created Bumptop, an evolution of the computer's desktop metaphor to make it more "natural" (piling up documents on a corner for later use, flip through them, etc). After Jeff Han's demonstration yesterday, this is the second computer interface innovation that made me think (and I'm not alone in this) "I want one". He shows Bumptop -- just click "play" to see a demo (6 minutes):

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Finance and Foreign minister of Nigeria, known for her tough policies on corruption and debt reduction, is next on stage -- she provides somehow a link to the upcoming TEDGLOBAL in Tanzania next June. There are stories about Africa that you hear all time: the Africa of poverty, violence, HIV/AIDS, disaster. But there is an Africa that you don't hear often about, the Africa that's changing, the Africa of people that are taking their destiny into their hands. In Sept 2005, the governor of one of the richest oil states in Nigeria, was arrested in London because of money transfers in the millions that went into an account that belongs to him and his family. Today he is in jail. This is not trivial: people in Africa are no longer willing to tolerate corruption from their leaders. People want their resources managed properly for their good, not stolen by the elites. In some countries people and governments are fighting corruption. There is still a long way to go, but there is a will there. Figures show that the trend is downwards in terms of corruption, and governance is getting better.
There is a will for reform. Africans are tired of being the subject of everybody's charity. We are grateful, but we know that we can take charge of our destiny if we have the will to reform. No one can do it but us. We can invite partners that can support us, but we have to start, reform our economies, change our leaderships, become more democratic and open. Nigeria has 140 million chaotic people but very dynamic people. We put forward a comprehensive reform program which we developed ourselves (not the World Bank or others). A program that would get the state out of businesses it should not be in, because it is often inefficient and incompetent. At the end of 2003 we started privatizing markets. We had a telecom company that had developed 4500 land telephone lines in its whole life. After liberalization of the telecom market, we went to 32 million GSM mobile phones. The other thing we have also done is to manage our finances better. In Nigeria the oil sector had the reputation of being corrupt. We introduced a fiscal rule that de-links our budget from the oil price, and began to budget at a price lower than the oil price. It was very controversial, but it took out the volatility from the system, and we are able to save and create reserves. Brought inflation down to 11%, GDP growth up to 6%. We want to get away from oil and diversify. Most of our growth came from non-oil sectors.
There is a new wave in the continent, of democratization and reform. Not everything is perfect, but the trend is clear. The average rate of growth in the last three years has moved from 1.5 % to 5%. Things are changing. Conflicts are down. The best way to help Africans today, is to help them to stand on their own feet, by helping in creating jobs. There is no issue in fighting malaria, of course. But imagine the impact if the parents can have jobs and buy the drugs to fight the disease themselves. And some of the best people to invest in on the continent are the women.
She concludes by mentioning the Africa Open for Business documentary featuring African entrepreneurs. 

My colleague June Cohen, TED's Media Director, goes on stage to give a preview of the new TED website, which will be launched in a couple of weeks. She tells how last year TED decided to "open up" and distribute the talks of its speakers online, in video, for free (thanks to a generous sponsorship by BMW). It has been an unexpected success: TEDtalks have been downloaded or streamed over 6 million times since last summer, almost one million a month, trend growing. They're currently distributed on TED's website and blog as well as on YouTube, Yahoo Video, Google Video, AOL, iTunes, etc. We have been adding two-three new talks every week, and will continue to do so, including of course all the talks from this year's conference, and we are partnering with other conferences as well. The new website will be structured around the TEDtalks, and will allow everyone to create a personal profile, comment on the speeches, and more. Here is how it will look (still a work in progress):

June adds her belief that the newest digital technologies are returning us to the most ancient form of media — one in which a natural order is restored; our individual stories take center stage, with the rest of the world as a backdrop.

Poet Rives -- a wordsmith with an engineering background -- offers a comedic break with a verbal riff about "4 in the morning". Sorry I can't possibly summarize it, but you can see his previous TEDtalk recorded in New York last November.

Larry Lessig (blog), professor at Stanford and co-founder of Creative Commons, which is his way of fighting what he calls "the overregulation of 21st-century creativity and innovation" produced by the copyright system (which was crafted in the 19th century), tells three stories about user-generated content.
First story: 1906 John Philip Sousa traveled to Washington to talk about the "talking machines" (records) that, he said, "are going to ruin artistic development of music":

"These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape"

If this makes you smile, Lessig takes it very seriously. Sousa's remarks were certainly romantic, but basically what he was saying is that before music was recorded people participated in a read-write culture. Since, the "machines" have created a top-down, read-only culture, where some produce and the mass consumes.
Second story: land is property. Trespass law protects the land, including up and down (underground and sky). Until the airplane came along: were they trespassers? Justice decided that the doctrine was against common sense, and that airplanes were not trespassers.
Third story: When broadcast came along, the first conflicts over access to music happened. ASCAP, who was then controlling copyright, raised the fees that it charged to broadcasters by more than 400 percent between 1931-39. Broadcasters began a competing organization, BMI, pushing even music by black musicians and putting music in the public domain. ASCAP predicted that "people would revolt", but that didn't happen, and BMI changed music consumption forever.
Lessig's argument: the most significant thing is to recognize that what the Internet is doing is the opportunity to revive the read-write culture that Sousa romanticized. User-generated content celebrating amateur culture, by which I don't mean amateurish culture, but culture that people produce for the love of what they do and not for the money. He shows some examples of anime music videos and other amateur-made videos, remixes, etc. It is important to emphasize that this is not piracy (taking other people's content in wholesale and distribute it without the permission of the content's owner). The importance of this is not the technique that you see here. The importance is that the technique has been democratized. Now everybody with access to a computer can take images and sounds and words and create with it. These tools are tools of literacy. This is what your kids are.
The law has not greeted this new use of culture through digital technologies with much common sense. Instead, the architects of copyright law are produced the presumption that this is illegal. If copyright protects from copy, the problem is in the digital domain every single use of culture produces a copy. We are seeing a growing extremism from both sides in this debate: one side wants to build new technologies that allow, for example, to take automatically down copyrighted content from sites like YouTube. On the other side, there is a growing copyright abolitionism. Both extremisms in this debate are just wrong. The balance that I try to fight for, is a solution that can legalize what it means to be young again.
How does this connect to our kids? We have to recognize they kids different from us. We watch TV, they make TV. It is technology that has made them different. We can't kill the instincts that tech produces, we can only criminalize them. We can't make our kids passive again, we can only make them "pirates". We live in a strange time, like a new age of prohibition, our kids live lives against the law. This is extraordinarily corrupting. In a democracy we ought to be able to do better. At least for them.

Artifact from the future: Gorebama clipping

This morning I was testing a time-travel device and could journey a few days into the future. As I always do when visiting a new place, I picked up the local newspaper:

 

(Newspaper clipping courtesy of the clipping generator. Cross-posted on the Huffington Post.)

A profile of Barack Obama

So Barack Obama announced yesterday that he is forming a presidential exploratory committee - which is considered the first step towards a possible candidacy to the Democratic nomination for the 2008 US presidential election. I just wrote a long profile of Obama for the Swiss newsmagazine L'Hebdo, which will publish it tomorrow. If you read French, the article is here for download (PDF 420 KB).