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REIHAN SALAM: Hi, everyone.
Welcome back to Big Tent.
So we've talked about, in the first panel, we talked about
the digital playground, and keeping it safe, and
cultivating digital citizenship in these wild and
woolly spaces on the internet.
In our second panel, we discussed education and how to
cultivate the skills of lifelong learning through
digital technologies.
And now we're going to talk about building a strong,
connected community.
This panel is called Tomorrow's World Starts Today.
And we're dealing with a variety of activists, thinkers
who are working to take digital citizens and have them
collaborate with others to facilitate, to
foster social change.
So Jillian York is going to get us started.
Jillian, would you care to?
JILLIAN YORK: Sure, sure.
So my name's Jillian York.
I'm at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
But I'm also involved with an organization called Global
Voices Online, which is a several-hundred-person-strong
community in over 90 countries around the world.
And my background is, really, I guess I'm sort of a
full-time digital rights free expression activist, which is
the most fun job in the world and also a bit
challenging at times.
But my focus has been, for a long time, before the Arab
Spring, the Arab region, Middle East and North Africa.
And one of the things that I found interesting over the
past year, in looking at the way that we've sort of
analyzed what's going on in that community, is the element
of free expression activism, digital
rights and the internet.
And so there's all of this discussion as to whether or
not this was a Twitter revolution or a Facebook
revolution or what have you.
But one of the things that I have wanted to focus on and
touch on is the role of freedom of expression and the
fight for that in all of it.
And so, when we look at this idea of a leaderless
revolution, which has been one of the main themes in analysis
of what happened in the region over the past year, one of the
other things that that ties into is this idea of
transnational movements.
And so, when I think about strong, connected communities,
Global Voices is one of the first things that comes to my
mind, but so is this broad, leaderless digital rights
community that has really grown out of the past few
years and really over the past decade.
But I guess I've only been doing this for five years, so
my vision is a bit narrow.
And so, in the US, you have all of this activism that just
happen around these copyright bills, SOPA and PIPA.
And in Pakistan right now, you have these grassroots
communities banding together with international
organizations and with companies and other local
entities to protest a proposed censorship, internet filtering
system there.
And then, and so on and so forth.
And so what I've watched is from Anonymous--
from what I think many people in the room would think of as
the less legitimate actions of digital rights activism-- so
from Anonymous to these blackouts to other forms of
social media activism, this broad leaderless community
coming together over one incredibly vital human issue.
REIHAN SALAM: Thanks, so much, Jillian.
And next, we have Nancy Conrad.
NANCY CONRAD: Hi.
I left our Innovation Summit today, which is just down the
street at NASA Ames, where we have about 150 students
presenting their product ideas today, solving problems in
aerospace, energy and cyber-- pardon me, nutrition.
Cyber next year.
What our program does is we challenge teams of
high-schoolers to make commercially viable products
using science and technology.
And the three legs of our stool are innovation,
entrepreneurship and education.
So really what we're growing, in terms of community is, I
call it, the innovation generation.
These are kids that they're so far out of the box, we call it
think outside the globe.
And they do viable business plans, market studies and
visual representations, so they're product ideas.
And they live on our web site.
And there's thousands of kids and mentors that come into our
web site as a community of young innovators.
And I've been waiting for this to happen.
We're five years young this year.
We had two teams that were formed from
five different states.
Our teams are from two to five students.
And so these two teams formed from five different states,
they didn't even know each other, and they created a
product together.
So next year, as we go global--
and we've already begun to go global.
We went into 42 states and nine countries this year--
as we go global, there's going to be a specific challenge for
global teams to come together, work through the web site,
grow a product together.
And there'll be a special award for that global
competition.
And that's when you start to see
education become diplomacy.
So some of these students go on to--
some of them get patents.
Sometimes a patent isn't necessary.
Sometimes it is.
And there's all sorts of controversy around that.
But at the end of the day, what we want to be able to do
is have these kids license their IP into the commercial
marketplace.
We don't own the IP.
The students own it.
All of this is really a vehicle to drive
transformative education.
It's student-centered.
The kids are at the center of this credenza.
They drive it.
We don't talk very much about the consumer of education.
And my belief is that the consumer is the student.
I think we get all riled up about teachers and parents and
superintendents and
administrative everything else.
And it's really all about the students.
So how do you take this young person, who probably has more
in their fingers than a lot of adults have in their head, and
give them an adaptive learning process where you can combine
neuroscience--
and we know a lot about how kids learn these days--
and adapt that to the student.
We do it now for disadvantaged kids.
And when you get to it, most kids are.
So this is how, I think, we can really drive
transformative education.
And I would just share with you that all of this is really
an outgrowth of the legacy of my late husband, who was
expelled from school in the 11th grade.
He couldn't read or spell.
And he had dyslexia in the day when they didn't really know
what it was.
His mother took him to a little school
in upstate New York.
And the headmaster there saw something special
in this young man.
He took him under his wing.
My husband went on to get a scholarship to Princeton.
And he became an aeronautical engineer.
Well, it turns out you don't have to read or spell very
much to become an aeronautical engineer.
And then he became part of America's space program.
He flew four fights in space, including the second landing
on the moon.
He was the third man to walk on the moon.
He was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for rescuing
Skylab, our first space station, and then went on to
grow companies in commercial space, much like what Branson,
Musk and Bazos are doing today.
So all that happened because an educator took a
kid under his wing.
And the kid got a moon shot.
So I said that's what we're doing.
We're going to take kids under our wing, and we'll give them
their moon shot.
REIHAN SALAM: Thanks, very much, Nancy.
[APPLAUSE]
REIHAN SALAM: And now, Tiffany Shlain, a filmmaker and
activist and many other things.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: No.
Hi.
It's great to be here.
I'm really interested in this subject.
I had a film that came out last
January, called Connected.
And it really looked at the history of being connected in
civilization and where I think we're going.
And the last line of the movie was, "Perhaps it's time to
declare our interdependence."
So from that line, me and my film studio, we decided to try
to put that into action.
So I'm going to show you a four-minute movie that the
process of making it gives me every bit of hope of the
potential of engaging students all over the world.
So I'm going to play it.
It's four minutes.
And then I'll tell you a little bit what's happened
since then.
But to me, this is the hope.
NANCY CONRAD: And?
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
-When in the course of human events.
-[SPEAKING JAPANESE]
-In the course of human events.
-[SPEAKING HINDI]
-[SPEAKING AFRIKAANS]
-[SPEAKING ARABIC]
-[SPEAKING SPANISH]
-To recognize the fundamental qualities.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-That connect us.
-That connect us.
-That connect us.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-The truths we hold.
-To be self-evident.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-That all humans are--
-Created equal.
-And all are connected.
-[SPEAKING CHINESE]
-That we share the pursuit of life--
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-Liberty--
-[SPEAKING HEBREW]
-Happiness--
-[SPEAKING MALAYSIAN]
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-Food.
-[SPEAKING GERMAN]
-Water.
-[SPEAKING SPANISH]
-Shelter.
-[SPEAKING SPANISH]
-Safety.
-[SPEAKING SPANISH]
-Education.
-[SPEAKING MALAYSIAN]
-Justice.
-And hopes for a better future.
-That our collective knowledge, economy, technology
and environment are fundamentally interdependent.
-Interdependent.
-[SPEAKING CHINESE]
-That what will propel us forward--
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-Is our curiosity.
-Curiosity.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-Our ability to forgive.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-Our ability to appreciate.
-Our courage.
-Our courage.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-And our desire to connect.
-Interconnected.
-Interconnected.
-That these things we share.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-To our fullest common potential.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-[SPEAKING JAPANESE]
-We should never take ourselves too seriously.
-[SPEAKING AFRIKAANS]
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-So that we can learn from the past.
-Understand our place in the world.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-And use our collective knowledge.
-[GROUP IN UNISON]
And use our collective knowledge.
-To create a better future.
-[SPEAKING CHINESE]
-So perhaps it's time.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-That we, as a species--
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-As a species--
-Love to laugh.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-Love to laugh.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-Ask questions and connect.
-Do something radical and true.
-For centuries--
-We have declared--
-Independence.
-Perhaps it's now time--
-That we--
-As humans--
-Declare our interdependence.
-Interdependence.
-Interdependence.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-Interdependence.
-Interdependence.
-Interdependence.
-Inter--
-Dependence.
-Interdependence.
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
-Interdependence.
-[IN UNISON]
Interdependence.
-[IN UNISON]
Interdependence.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
TIFFANY SHLAIN: So we posted this film.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Well, first of all, the entries flew in from
so many places that it just, every day, it took our breath
away how many people sent us art work and videos.
And then it premiered in New York on Interdependence Day,
which was the 10-year anniversary of
9/11, the day after.
And then this amazing thing started happening, where
people all over the world, through this organization
called dotSUB started translating
it for us for free.
And they translated it, in six weeks, into 65 languages.
And then the last part of our experiment was, we said we
will offer to create a free, customized version of this
movie for any non-profit in the world working to make the
world a better place.
So at the end, it says declare your interdependence.
So we changed that.
Declare your interdependence by recycling your cell phone.
Declare your interdependence by freedom of speech.
So since we launched that two months ago, we've already made
80 free movies for non-profits.
So to me, as a filmmaker, this is so exciting.
I'm making a movie with students and people from all
over the world in all these different languages.
So our new film that we're working on, which is exactly
about the subject of this conference, it's
called, Brain Power.
And it's all about how to best nurture the brain and how to
also best nurture the internet.
And we're working with all these brain scientists.
And there's wonderful similarities and analogies as
to how to best nurture the brain.
Every interaction a child has-- and we're looking at the
first five years of life, when there's most neuroplasticity--
affects the architecture of the brain.
And every interaction we have and our students have online
are creating the architecture of the internet.
And don't be on all the time.
Unplug.
There's a lot of messages we're going to.
But we're working on the film now.
And then we'll make it free and available for all of you.
It'll be five minutes.
And it'll be done in the fall.
So you can find out more about that at Let It Ripple.
REIHAN SALAM: Thanks so much, you guys.
I also want to congratulate you for all staying below five
minutes, which is very
impressive to me as a moderator.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: [LAUGHS]
I'm all about timing.
REIHAN SALAM: So Tiffany, I wanted to ask you.
So as a filmmaker, to some degree, what it seems you're
doing is reflecting things that exist in the world.
You're reflecting the ways in which we're more
interdependent et cetera.
Yet also, it seems that there is an implicit aspiration to
advance a certain idea of what humanity ought to look like.
There are certain organizations that you've
partnered with because, I imagine, you're sympathetic to
their broad goals, et cetera.
Yet Jillian is working in a part of the world where, one
could argue, to overgeneralize, that there are
different ideas as to the virtues that a state or
community ought to cultivate.
And I wonder how you think about that.
Have you thought about what you want to see the digital
citizens of the future to be like?
Do you imagine that's going to be different from one place to
another place?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: You know, in this series, we're going to be
making 20 of these films. And the third one in the series is
the importance of engagement of society.
And we're doing one on power and money and curiosity and
death and all of these subjects.
But our goal is really to give some context on issues and
what could this be.
When they talk about technology, and especially a
lot of the talks today, I feel like we need to feel more
empowered, that we are creating these tools.
We have the responsibility to talk about how to shape them
and how to use them.
And my hope is that people are excited and empowered and have
agency to become part of this conversation, code, create the
tools and the products that we're using, to have more
agency in the architecture of all of this technology.
REIHAN SALAM: But Jillian, given that you work in the
Arab world, my sense is that there are certainly many
cultural traditions in which the idea of agency, as we
understand it in the Western world, is not seen as quite so
attractive and, in fact, if anything, their efforts to
actually dampen one sense of independence and agency, but
rather to cultivate the sense that you are embedded in a
larger community and a larger network of obligations.
And ask someone who's done a lot of work in the Arab world.
I wonder if you would let us in on some of those tensions
that you see.
JILLIAN YORK: Sure.
I can, at least, address that, as it pertains to the type of
work that I do.
There has been a lot of-- like I said before, I was talking
about digital rights activism, which includes a number of
different things, from privacy, free
expression, et cetera.
And I think that a lot of the activists who are working in
that space in the region are derided, harassed,
intimidated, not just by their governments, but also,
occasionally, by other members of the community who see their
activism as not just outside of the norm, but really
outside of what's morally acceptable, in a lot of cases.
And so Tunisia, right now, is a very good example of this,
where there is this effort to censor the internet for
immoral and pornographic content.
And the activists who are fighting against this, on
principle, not because they actually think that the
content's acceptable either, but the activists fighting
this on some principal are really being pushed out to the
sidelines and marginalized for taking that stance.
And we've seen that in other places as well.
And so, yeah, I think that there is a
strong sense of community.
And there is this strong sense that, when you're pushing
boundaries, that you're taking almost, sometimes, a Western
or an American stance.
And that can be really problematic.
REIHAN SALAM: Nancy, just to clarify, so this collaboration
across national boundaries, has this already started?
Or is this something you intend to do in the future?
NANCY CONRAD: Yes and yes.
REIHAN SALAM: Got it.
NANCY CONRAD: [LAUGHS]
It has started already.
We have nine countries come into our competition this
year, some strange ones, Vietnam, Iran, the usual
suspects that you always think of.
We've been working with the State Department.
And so some of our students will be going to the Rio+20
this summer, as ambassadors of science and youth.
So with that as our launch pad, if you will, the concept
of putting together this global competition, it will be
a special award in that category.
But those kids was still work in energy, cybersecurity,
nutrition, aerospace and aviation.
But if you grow a global team across five countries, there's
a special category just for that award.
REIHAN SALAM: And tell me, have you watched as these
young people have come to know one another and as they've
come to collaborate?
Is this something that you're a part of?
NANCY CONRAD: Oh, we're very involved in it.
Our web site is an active, very integrated community.
It's really beginning to be a movement.
And so I'm going to jump off into that area as well, in
terms of growing Innovation Generation as a movement and
really starting to fund some of these companies that are
growing up because we have messed up enough.
We're not running out of problems.
And when you take these young minds, whose imaginations are
incredible, and you give them the opportunity to problem
solve and do design thinking and get creative and use
everything they know, and give that a context, it's
unbelievable what they come up with.
Just unbelievable.
We've had kids that created generators to harvest energy
from the heat vents in the deep ocean, to make low-cost
electricity.
REIHAN SALAM: Have you guys made any mistakes?
Is there anything you regret?
Were there any false steps, any reversals, that you think
would be useful lessons for other organizations that are
trying to do the same thing?
NANCY CONRAD: Sure.
Oh, God, if we'd have done it perfect from day one, hm.
I think what we did this year, and we streamlined it.
We made the level of entry very
easy, a one-page abstract.
From that, we go into our semi-finalists.
From that, we go to our finalists.
And so, really, until they're your finalists, they don't
have to write an 18-page business document.
So we streamlined that.
We decreased the number of attendees at the finals and
streamlined our summit, which is going on, as
I said, right now.
And any of you, you're all welcome.
It's Building 3 at NASA Ames.
You don't need credentials.
Dr. Cerf spoke this morning--
and the kids went crazy over him-- as he did last year.
So you're welcome to come.
We invite you.
Just tell them Nancy sent you.
But sure, you make mistakes.
And that's what entrepreneurship is, isn't it?
It's failing forward.
My husband used to say, you know, in the space business,
failure wasn't an option.
And in entrepreneurship, it's mandatory.
REIHAN SALAM: [LAUGHS]
Yeah.
Tiffany, I want to know.
So the larger theme of our event is digital citizenship.
And I wonder, when you're talking about interdependence,
when you're seeing--
and I imagine you're also a student of this kind of
collaboration across national boundaries, across class
boundaries and what have you.
What are the shared norms that you see?
What are the things that make cooperation actually work, as
you've observed this over time?
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Well, the best part about the human species
is we all want to be part of something.
You know, I explore this idea a lot in the feature film,
Connected, which is we want to connect.
That is like the fundamental part of being human.
And I feel like, in a lot of my work in the last five
years, we've spent so long looking at what divides us.
And actually, I think people are ready.
And I think the internet has actually shown people the way,
even the terminology, the linking.
And the words themselves are pointing us
on how are we connected.
And I feel like the ability to share our stories is creating
a network for worldwide empathy that
we've never had before.
I mean, they've done studies that, as you're getting emails
and Tweets, you're getting hits of oxytocin, which is the
love hormone, which is all about sharing and wanting to
collaborate.
And I'm not just a total optimist. I would say I know
there's a lot of issues involved.
But my hopeful side, because we're the hopeful panel, the
potential, is that we're opening up all these new
channels for wanting to collaborate.
In fact, I think they're going to look back at this age as
the age of collaboration.
I think we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
I mean, certainly with the University of Washington, with
the AIDS DNA strand, that they never could figure it out.
And they put it on as an online game.
And it was figured out in 10 days by online gamers.
I mean, we're just at the beginning because the tools
aren't completely really there for collaboration.
Even as a filmmaker, when me and my team made that movie,
we're cobbling together all these different things to try
to do that.
But in three years, it's not even going to be a question.
It's going to be like here's a science project.
Here's an art project.
Here's a film.
All of the tools will be available to collaborate so
seamlessly.
And when you get perspectives from all over the world, that
is where innovation happens.
That is what gets me really excited about tackling the
biggest problems of our day, is when we get all those
different perspectives from Africa, China, America,
Europe, all saying world hunger, the economic
structure, female inequality, freedom of speech, and let's
all tackle this together in some cool environment.
That's what gives me hope.
REIHAN SALAM: I wonder about this.
I was talking to a friend of mine some time ago.
And she was talking about how the internet
had changed her life.
She's my contemporary.
So she's in her early '30s.
And she talked about how the key things were AOL chat rooms
and the band Weezer, which some of you in the audience
might have heard of.
So basically, in around 1994 and 1995, she became obsessed
with Weezer.
She started going to Weezer concerts.
And her exposure to it was almost
entirely through the internet.
And this is something that then led her to be more
curious about the wider world.
She grew up in a rural part of the United States.
She wanted to move into New York and becoming part of this
very different community than the community that she had
been part of as a young person.
And again, it's entirely because of AOL chat rooms and
the power of Weezer.
And I wonder, Jillian, I assume that you're not a
native of North Africa.
Yet it's a huge part of your life.
And I wonder, given what Tiffany had said about
everyone's urge to connect, why is it that your urge to
connect drew you to digital expression and particularly to
the Arab world?
JILLIAN YORK: I love this question.
OK, this is great.
So honestly, the reason I went to Morocco, specifically, in
the first place, was a professor.
So it had nothing to do with the internet.
But once I got there, I spent a semester, went back home,
yearned for it for a whole other year,
and then went back.
And I arrived there.
And I started a blog.
And once I started this blog in Morocco, the original
purpose of it-- and this was my real first public blog--
the purpose was just to send notes home, to let my family
and friends know what I was up to.
And within a few months, I'd been contacted by Moroccan
bloggers first, and then by Global Voices, which I now
have been a part of for five years and was invited
to write for them.
And this allowed me to connect with a broader community than
I had access to in the city that I lived in.
And so, over time, I connected with all these different
Moroccan bloggers who blogged in three to four different
languages and lived not only in the country, but also in
the diaspora.
And this led me to be able to connect with the other
bloggers in the region.
And I've seen this happen as well.
It's not the same one that I have now, but I started it in,
I think, 2004 or 2005.
And now, over that period of, what, eight years, I've seen
the bloggers from that region of the world really band
together, and not just online, but in real life.
We've had these Arab blogger summits that--
and again, not Arab blogger connected to the region-- but
that I've attended two of, partly
sponsored by Global Voices.
And they've brought together some of, who are now some of
the most prominent bloggers and activists in the region.
But back then, when these meetings started happening,
they weren't.
So I think that this transnational learning from
one another has been really incredible and has created
this Arab digital vanguard, so to speak.
REIHAN SALAM: Why Morocco in the first place?
JILLIAN YORK: It was a Moroccan professor who just
kept pushing me to go.
There was a study abroad program through my university.
And just kind of coincidence.
REIHAN SALAM: Nancy, I wonder.
In civil society, broadly conceived, it seems as though
there has more recently been a vogue for, what you might
call, for-profit social entrepreneurship.
And a lot of what your organization does is it seems
to be teaching young people to become entrepreneurs, to
believe that they're capable of becoming entrepreneurs.
Yet there are also many people in the social sector who look
askance at for-profit entrepreneurship and who might
prefer to cultivate other kinds of collaboration.
Tell me about that, those tensions.
Do you believe that for-profit entrepreneurship is a
particularly good way to encourage collaboration across
national boundaries?
Or does it just happen to be where you got started?
NANCY CONRAD: I hope I understand your question.
REIHAN SALAM: You know what?
You can take it in any direction you want.
NANCY CONRAD: [LAUGHS]
Good, because I'm going to have to go at 30,000.
I'm not sure where you're going.
But it's OK.
We'll fly together.
What we see in teaching
entrepreneurship with students--
and these are high-schoolers, keep in mind--
it's unique to even talk about
entrepreneurship in high school.
It's not taught.
And it's really, for us, the innovation piece and the
entrepreneurship tied together, is contextual, so to
give context to your stem education, if you will.
We're not all that hard-wired about whether you make a
company in 20 years or whether or your product idea actually
ends up in the marketplace.
It has to be commercially viable to come into our
competition.
But what it's really there to do is to drive this
transformative way of learning.
So it gives context to all this stuff that you're
learning in science, technology,
engineering and math.
It takes it out of this "cause du jour" mode that we're in a
lot, whether it's the military kids, it's the women, it's the
maker's stuff and it's project stuff.
And so this just coalesces everything and says, look,
there's a lot of problems.
You have the ability and you have the mind where you can
actually fix some of these problems. And you can
collaborate with this huge community of innovators.
And not only just the community of innovators, but
also a huge community of mentors that live on our site.
And they come out of academia, government and industry.
So it's a circle.
The graybeards get to give back.
And we all know that we're losing our workforce,
engineers and scientists.
They're getting old.
And so we're trying to replenish that workforce.
And we're trying to grow an innovative workforce.
So I think it was Tom Friedman said, if we want more jobs, we
need more Steve Jobs.
Well, we can't reverse engineer Steve Jobs.
We can't do that.
We can't say, create this really cool thing.
We'll fund it.
And you can drop out of school.
And have a nice day.
That's not who we are.
We say, you know what?
What did Steve Jobs do?
He took innovation, entrepreneurship, science,
technology, engineering and math and
did a big game changer.
Sergey and Larry, same thing.
Mark Zuckerberg, same thing.
And I wish I could give you a woman who did this.
I just don't know a name right now, but we're getting there.
So that's really the foundation.
That's the bones of what we do.
I'm not sure I answered your question.
REIHAN SALAM: I think that was a splendid answer.
NANCY CONRAD: OK.
REIHAN SALAM: Thank you, very much.
Tiffany, I wonder.
So given that you thought so much about connectedness, I
wonder, just to loop back in to our previous conversation,
what do you think of as the right ingredients for an
education for connectedness?
Are there ways in which we need to train people for a
more connected world?
And are there particular things that you'd want to draw
out, if you were addressing young people or thinking about
how they're educated?
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Yeah.
Well, I've definitely thought about that a lot.
So the feature film, Connected, we spent a lot of
time on our educators edition.
So we created a whole curriculum.
And the film, we were super excited because the State
Department does something called, The American Film
Showcase, where they selected 19 documentaries.
And they're going to take them to all the embassies
all over the world.
And Connected got selected.
And we're going to send our educator's kit.
And we do think this requires a lot of thinking.
We mostly want people to start talking about it.
Howard Rheingold has a great new book about net literacy.
Our goal, with Connected and all of our films, are really
like, let's start talking about it.
Obviously, this is such a great, committed group.
You're interested.
But I think a lot of people are so fearful of tech, like,
what's technology doing to our kids?
And that's such the wrong place to come from.
You know, Socrates was worried about the written word, that
language was going to become uncontrollable.
And we'd lose our memory.
And when I was growing up, television was going to turn
my brain to mush.
And I just feel like there's so much fear based in every
transformative educational system.
And I didn't just say television was
an educational system.
But no, I think we just come from such fear.
And it's kind of normal.
We do all this hammering.
Things become less fearful when you really start talking
about it, and talking about it with the youth, and figuring
out how they're using it in new ways,
and guided by teachers.
Again, it comes down to the teacher.
So we've created this educator's kit for Connected
that goes very deep on a lot of this stuff.
REIHAN SALAM: So is it fair to say that your impulse is that
you shouldn't want to protect young people, shouldn't want
to insulate them, but rather allow them to go
out and make mistakes?
And then that's a part of the process of becoming connected?
TIFFANY SHLAIN: All this new research--
and again, we're focusing specifically on the first five
years of life, the first 2,000 days where, your brain, most
neuroplasticity happens.
But they talk about it, that you need a combination of a
safe environment for play, making mistakes, curiosity,
but not to be around toxic stress or things that might
harm your child.
So in a lot of ways, I feel like that's really applicable
to adults too with the internet.
Don't be on all the time.
Use it for collaboration, curiosity.
But don't be in toxic data and know contextual context.
So it's not all about protecting kids from
everything.
It's creating a space for them to experiment to be
scientists, to be artists for human expression.
So I do think there's a point of being guided.
But there's a point of exploration that is very
exciting, that we need to nurture more.
REIHAN SALAM: Jillian, you mentioned some fascinating
stuff in your talk, very briefly.
You mentioned this idea of leaderless resistance or
leaderless revolution and how
transnational movements spread.
And you also mentioned anonymous.
And I'm very curious because, when, I think, many of us look
at the Arab Spring, we tend to see these very brittle regimes
that really were squelching human freedom, that were,
essentially, police states that have been brought down in
this very inspiring way.
But of course, from another lens, you see a situation in
which regimes that had achieved some modicum of
stability, despite very difficult circumstances,
suddenly crumbled with great speed.
And then, when you imagine these technologies of
resistance, of leaderless resistance being deployed
against regimes that we might all think of as more broadly
representative and more virtuous in all kinds of ways,
tell me, have you thought about that?
Have you thought about how these technologies can be
deployed for bad ends, rather than good ends?
JILLIAN YORK: Yeah, absolutely.
Like I said before, I think a lot of people in the room,
when we think of anonymous, we think absolutely not
legitimate, right?
And in terms of activism, I--
REIHAN SALAM: And actually, if you don't mind giving us a
little context, I'm not sure if everyone here is
knowledgeable about Anonymous and that.
JILLIAN YORK: Sure, sure.
So Anonymous, I guess-- and I feel like this might get some
push back-- but broad, leaderless community that
uses, sometimes illegal, means of activism, so called
hacktivism, right?
So Distributed Denial of Service attacks, for example,
where a large number of people or even a Botnet come together
and attack a web site to bring it down, or when you hack-in
to a web site, deface it, and change the content.
And so we saw them around WikiLeaks, around some of the
anger around the Visa and
MasterCard blockade of WikiLeaks.
We saw Anonymous attacking those sites.
But then, on the flip side, we also saw them attacking Syrian
government web sites and using that space to teach about
online safety, which was a really interesting example.
And again, because it's this broad, leaderless, not really
organized movement, it's always hard to say if a person
is a member of Anonymous or not and what
their role is et cetera.
And so the question was--
ah, oh, when deploying against, let's say, more
democratic governments, for the sake of brevity.
Yeah, this is a difficult question.
I've actually chosen not to take a public stance on the
legitimacy of these actions because, on a personal level,
I cheered a little inside when I saw the Syrian government
attacks, but not so much the ones in the US.
And not because I--
you know, I mean, there are a number of reasons, right?
But I just don't think that it's the most useful means of
going after, say, Visa or MasterCard or the US
government.
I don't necessarily think it's most useful means of going
after the Syrian government either.
But when all else has been tried, I understand why that
direction would be gone.
And then, given that that government was actually
attacking their own citizens through technological means,
using that as a space to educate about online safety
makes sense.
But so I guess, when I think about it in terms of against a
democratic government, I think, ultimately, tactically,
I don't think it makes sense.
And so there are obvious legal concerns.
Not being a lawyer, I'm going to refrain from
pontificating on those.
But I think, tactically, it just doesn't make sense to use
that when there are so many other means available.
REIHAN SALAM: Interesting.
So basically, when there are other ways you can--
when you have a state that's relatively permeable, when you
have other channels for protest,
then that's one thing.
But when those channels don't exist, then you'd be somewhat
more inclined to be sympathetic to
these efforts too.
JILLIAN YORK: Right, right.
Here in the US, we saw this great action, collaborating
between companies, between non-profit organizations,
between independent activists and, really, all over the
world, against the copyright bills a couple of months ago.
And Google was one of the companies that took a stance
by blacking out their logo that day.
And that was a completely legal means of digital,
non-violent resistance, if you want to call it that, that was
really successful and really productive and didn't involve
hacking anybody's web site or taking
anybody's web site down.
And so I think that, when means like that are available,
I don't see the reason to deploy these less legal and,
perhaps, less tactically legitimate methods.
REIHAN SALAM: I wonder if anyone has any questions?
There's a gentleman in the front row.
VINT CERF: Thank you.
It's Vint Cerf.
So first of all, this is a very thought-provoking panel,
which is your purpose.
So you've done well with that.
I have a question on the leaderless
notion for just a second.
One of the interesting features of the Arab Spring is
that, while there was a great deal of agreement about what
they immediately wanted to have happen--
Egypt being a particularly interesting example--
after the regime was toppled, it wasn't so clear that there
was common agreement about what should happen next.
So I think we should be a little careful about cheering
ourselves along on this leaderless notion.
By the way, it could have happened in a leadered--
whatever the right-- a led notion too, because the people
who are willing to combine for one particular purpose might
not be ready to figure out what to do next.
I'm reminded of the Washington story that says that Congress
critters don't have friends, they have interests.
And that means that, if they want a friend, get a dog, that
sort of thing.
REIHAN SALAM: [LAUGHS]
VINT CERF: So I'm wondering how you feel about these sorts
of features, where people come
together with common interests.
And then they don't quite know what to do.
And now this same platform becomes a source of--
what's the word I'm looking for here--
centrifugal force, where it drives people apart because
they aren't able to agree.
So what do you think we should--
maybe there's nothing to do.
But what comes to mind as you think about that?
JILLIAN YORK: So I think what first came to my mind is just
an anecdote, which is I've never been to Egypt until this
year, right?
Fascinating, right?
I've talked a lot about it, for somebody
who had never been.
And I knew all these bloggers in real life.
And I'd met them different, separate points.
Probably, we're talking, maybe, 40 people.
I'd met them all in different countries
and different places.
And I saw them all interacting with each other on Twitter.
And I was under the assumption that a large number of these
people were friends.
And then I go Cairo.
And I'm out one night, literally, just having drinks.
And I'm listening to all of them back talk each other.
Oh, this person's too far left.
This person's too far whatever.
And I'm thinking, wow, you guys really present a unified
front online.
But then, when we take this offline into real life, it
turns out that there are these-- and I
hate the digital dualism.
I hate that real life, online.
But for practical purposes, it turns out that there really is
this divide.
And a lot of these things, to an outsider's ears, sounded
like petty issues.
But they were, nonetheless, issues.
And so I do think that what happens there is that, when
we're talking about these things online, when we're not
having these arguments face to face, I think that there's
something that gets glossed over.
There's something that's missing.
And I don't know if it's the means of expressing oneself.
I don't know if it's things like facial expressions and
body language.
But I do think that it's very easy online, when we're
fighting for a cause all together, it's very easy to
just assume that everyone's doing it for the same reasons
or that everyone has the same views.
And then, as soon as you take that offline, I think that
something else shifts in that dynamic.
REIHAN SALAM: Nancy or Tiffany, do you have any
thoughts on that?
NANCY CONRAD: Well, I have a comment.
In thinking about watching this movement of Innovation
Generation, I got very engaged in what is a movement.
How do you launch it?
What are the pieces of it?
And so I talked to some of the folks that
launched the Occupy movement.
And the thing that they told me that they completely lacked
was planning.
And there was no strategic plan.
And many of these movements don't have a plan.
They just go do that thing they do.
And so the good, bad and ugly starts to
bubble up very quickly.
So I think, if there is going to be a movement, and whether
it's political or a for-good, or however we do these
movements, because the internet gives us the power
and the audience to do them, and yes, we are connected, so
there is a certain responsibility, I think, to
plan that and to understand what your beginning, middle
and end is, what your goal is, how you're going to get there.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: But-- yeah.
NANCY CONRAD: Yeah?
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Couldn't you see--
I mean, I'm just thinking.
This is not a prepared thought.
But--
REIHAN SALAM: That's the best kind of thought.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: That's the best kind.
OK, couldn't you see--
so we're at the beginning of all these collaborative tools.
So obviously, we're mentioning two movements that didn't have
leaders and didn't really have a clear strategy afterwards.
But couldn't you imagine, soon, there's going to be some
space online that is for these movements to figure out their
plan, that's collaborative, that there's some kind of
democracy and voting within it?
OK, we all agree.
This government is not letting us A, X, Y and B. Again, I
feel like we're just so at the beginning of the
collaborative tools.
So there's some space that you could have inner
voting on your plan.
First we saw that it works.
It gets attention.
It stopped this.
But then, the next level is the interesting part to me,
which is what do you do with it?
You've got all this energy.
And how do you channel it into effective change?
JILLIAN YORK: There's totally a non-profit doing this.
I think they're called Citizen Compass.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: What are they called?
JILLIAN YORK: Citizen Compass.
NANCY CONRAD: There's another one too, yeah.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
NANCY CONRAD: There's compass.org.
They're all about launching--
I'm so deep in this right now, I could give you, probably,
every web site.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: I imagine they're probably--
I mean, it's so ripe to--
NANCY CONRAD: Yeah, it's totally ripe.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: The next one is going to have that.
Or the Occupy movement's going to.
I mean, I know they're getting all ready for the election.
So maybe that's--
NANCY CONRAD: Yeah.
REIHAN SALAM: There was an Op-Ed published some years ago
by a guy named, John Robb, a military thinker, who wrote a
book called, Brave New War.
And it was about, what he called, the open source
insurgency in Iraq.
And his argument was that, compared to insurgencies in
other long-running guerrilla conflicts, the funny thing
about the insurgency, as he saw it in the mid-2000's in
Iraq, is that you had, literally, hundreds of
semi-autonomous organizations that behaved in swarm-like
fashion and were rapidly learning from
each other over time.
So basically, an effective weapon of war would then
propagate through this kind of network quite quickly.
And so his argument at the end of the piece, it was a very
dark argument, is that the only way to actually beat back
this open source insurgency was with, what he called, an
open source counterinsurgency.
That is, you actually deploy a similar swarming network of
semi-autonomous, learning organizations that could
basically meet these challenges
and also evolve quickly.
And shortly thereafter, you saw the United States partner
with various indigenous self-defense organizations,
some of which had decidedly problematic human rights
records and what have you.
But the idea was that, because they were similarly
splintered, they could learn quickly as well, because they
don't have that centralized structure.
And with regard to your question, it occurs to me
that, in a way, the Egyptian regime was vulnerable
precisely because it was brittle and centralized.
And so, in a way, what you do is this leaderless resistance
takes you from the point of where you have something
that's brittle and centralized to something that
is much less so.
It doesn't necessarily mean that it actually solves any
underlying problems. But you enter this different
generative space.
Much like when you were talking about a Democratic
government, it doesn't get everything right, but again,
there are more points of entry in that kind of a regime.
And the tragedy is that, in a way, you have all this energy
and enthusiasm and Utopian energy that's built around the
idea of what would this alternative look like.
But of course, the alternative is that you just have endless
disagreement being managed in some other form, which seems
to touch on a lot of it.
NANCY CONRAD: That's called [INAUDIBLE].
TIFFANY SHLAIN: That's called our government plan.
REIHAN SALAM: Indeed.
Indeed.
Any other questions?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
Last I heard, wasn't that what Democracy is?
TIFFANY SHLAIN: The heads of our government, yeah.
AUDIENCE: Isn't that what it kind of is?
The question I had is, what are the models that we could
apply in this distributed--
I actually know John Robb.
He came and spoke at the Hub Bay Area here.
How do we apply this disruptive model, which is
what you need to start things new?
It's what start-ups do.
That's why we have hackathons.
We have work spaces where people just mix
in and build stuff.
How do we apply that to these very structured systemic
problems you talked about earlier?
Because there are only two choices, build a better model
of the disrupt and replace all these other ones, or bring a
new thing that becomes a part of the actual
institutional change.
Where are we at on that, kind of?
That's the kind of real question people like myself
are looking at.
Do we build new models?
Or do we bring solutions to old models?
That's really it.
REIHAN SALAM: Nancy, I think you thought about that.
NANCY CONRAD: Yeah, can I jump into that?
Oh, where angels fear to tread.
What we have done, with respect to education, is we
haven't asked permission to enter the schools.
We enter, primarily, through students and
sometimes through teachers.
And we grew through collaboration.
It's very unusual for a not-for-profit to collaborate
with other not-for-profits.
REIHAN SALAM: Nancy, I'm imagining you breaking down
the doors and swinging through the window.
NANCY CONRAD: Yeah.
No, it didn't happen.
[LAUGHTER]
NANCY CONRAD: So because we collaborated and we did have a
strategic plan and we knew that we wanted to do
student-centered education, we talked to our consumer.
We entered the schools.
Now there's a responsibility there to enter with something
that's constructive and productive and has the power,
really, in a sidebar, to transform the whole system.
So I serve on all these presidents
committees on education.
And I've testified in Congress and all this stuff.
And everybody sits around admiring the problem.
I'm bored.
I'm tired of hearing it.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Admiring the problem.
NANCY CONRAD: Yeah.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: [APPLAUDS]
NANCY CONRAD: So let's just fix this stuff, right?
And we can fix it by the students demanding a better
education, in my humble opinion.
REIHAN SALAM: Tiffany, do you have any thoughts?
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Amen, to that.
REIHAN SALAM: Any other questions, you guys?
There's someone in the middle here.
CHRIS JACOBY: Hi.
I'm Chris Jacoby.
I--
REIHAN SALAM: Oh, I'm sorry.
[LAUGHTER]
CHRIS JACOBY: In the beginning, when Anonymous
wasn't that popular, it kind of had, for me, the feeling of
a Robin hood and like society is getting
what society deserves.
But I guess, being anonymous had the problem that, over
short or long time, their actions become less and less
legitimate.
And there is no way I would like to be seen on the same
page as Anonymous.
But the question goes, isn't something like this
inevitable?
Isn't that one of the problems of
communication on the internet?
And I think it also has something to with the lack of
planning, Nancy said.
JILLIAN YORK: Yeah.
I don't know if it's inevitable.
I think you make a really good point, although, I would point
out, especially if there are folks in the audience who
aren't familiar, what one person once said to me, who
may or may not have been affiliated with Anonymous.
He said, "Anonymous is not unanimous." And I think that's
a really good point because you're going to have bad
actors in any movement.
There's another group that does similar things to
Anonymous, equally illegal at times, but almost always in a
more "for the common good" way, Telecomix.
And they're a European group.
And they've mostly focused their efforts on Syria and
Tunisia, and mostly in a way that is providing education.
Again, they're still, in certain cases, committing
illegal acts.
But so is a lot of non-violence movements.
So yeah, I guess what I would say that is, if you're going
to have this large, any sort of decentralized movement,
whether it takes place online or offline, but particularly,
if it takes place online because there are so many more
issues of identity and identification, then yeah,
certainly, you could absolutely always have bad
actors involved.
And it just becomes, how do you vet people?
How do you bring them in?
Do you centralize?
Or do you just find another means?
And I don't know what the answer to that is yet.
And I certainly don't the--
I don't mean in the US, but the proposed government
answers to this are often to require
identification to go online.
And I don't see that as the solution.
REIHAN SALAM: I recall having read an essay some time ago
about a Darwinian interpretation of identity.
And the core argument of the essay was that, as you move
from kin-based social networks to non-kin-based social
networks, there's a larger change in the texture of
social life.
And again, this is a somewhat accrued rendering of the
argument, but the idea is that, in a kin-based social
network, you basically have this mutual surveillance in
which we're all interested in our extended genetic fitness.
So basically, your judging your cousin or your sibling or
what have you, based on whether or not they're
advancing the interest of the larger group.
Whereas, when you go into these non-kin-based
environments, there's this greater anonymity.
That's one aspect of it.
And also there's a way in which the habits and
expectations that govern your life are very different
because, again, it's no longer about, well, are you
successfully reproducing?
Or are you contributing to the well-being
of the kinship group.
Rather, it's about other broader objectives that one
might have.
And I wonder.
When you think about the kind of digital collaboration that
you cover in your films, Tiffany, in a way, you're
talking about people who are actually so extended, the
relationships become so extended that some of that
shunning, that shame, that surveillance that governs
relationships between people who share a cultural context,
is not really operative.
So I wonder, just to play devil's advocate for a moment,
and you as the optimist, do you see that
as potentially dangerous?
Because, again, the only way you can shame someone is if
you share a cultural context with them.
And that's the way that you're able to say,
hey, that's bad behavior.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: You know, it's interesting.
So as someone that's a big advocate and have been most of
my life for technology, about a year ago, I was feeling like
it was overwhelming my brain.
And I started, with my family, doing technology Shabbats
which, one day a week--
we're Jewish-- so Friday night, we light the candles.
And we turn everything off for 24 hours with our kids.
And it's totally changed my life.
And I've been trying to share this with everyone because
it's made me feel more grounded and centered, a
better mother.
I'm just feeling like it resets me every week, to know
that I have this one day off.
And it's interesting what you're saying, shaming,
because I've been trying to get everyone to try it.
You don't have to be Jewish to try it.
NANCY CONRAD: Hey, I tried it.
I tried it.
It's cool.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: It's amazing.
NANCY CONRAD: It's awesome.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: It's a very old idea.
I think we need it now, more than ever.
And it's funny.
I was talking to someone.
And they were like, are you shaming me to get
offline all the time?
REIHAN SALAM: [LAUGHS]
TIFFANY SHLAIN: And I was saying, no.
I just feel like when you've read a good book and you want
to share it.
I'm like, this thing has changed my life.
I know I get this one day in the garden and not online.
And it's really wonderful.
But it's interesting how that person used this word because
I so don't want to come from that place.
But I think you're speaking to this thing that I really feel
like is important, like nothing replaces the
community, your family, the people-to-people connection.
That'll never go away.
And that's actually one of my concerns.
And I'm sure it's the teacher's concern is like,
what's that balance of using all these tools for the great
potential, but don't use it to the point where you get so far
away from some of these things that we're talking about.
JILLIAN YORK: But if I could--
I mean, I completely agree with you.
I see the importance of community as well.
And I also love to take technology breaks.
But from my personal experience, as a kind of
digital native, I've found that, with my work-- and I
travel a lot, I mean, literally, every other week--
I have made these connections to people that I would not
have met without the internet, who live in other cities, who
have become that family for me because I'm
always on the road.
And so it's great to be able to have those.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Yeah.
Just so you know, I have made such good friends from people
over Twitter, where I finally meet them in person, and we
give each other the biggest hug because we've been
admiring each other's links for years.
And I feel so connected to them because
we have common interests.
So it doesn't take away from that.
JILLIAN YORK: Yeah.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: But I guess I don't think anything, all
these technological changes, whether it was the book, or
television, all these things, nothing will also
replace the kind of--
NANCY CONRAD: Personal time.
JILLIAN YORK: Well then, perhaps the answer is that,
within a generation or two, we will culturally connect more
to the point where that kinship link happens through
these broader communities, and not just--
just a thought, a very poorly formed one.
REIHAN SALAM: Well, it's my favorite kind of thought.
[LAUGHTER]
REIHAN SALAM: Any other questions, you guys?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
Over here.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: There's one over there.
ANNE COLLIER: Anne Collier, with connectsafely,org.
This is a hard question to ask.
I think we're in the middle of this grand experiment.
And this moment, right now in time, feels like a watershed
moment within an extended watershed moment.
And one of the--
there was the Arab Spring, which, from thousands of miles
away, following it largely on Twitter and also, kind of,
from 30,000 feet, was a major watershed
moment for the planet.
And then, we kind of had our Arab Spring
with stopping SOPA.
That was another important watershed moment.
This was sort of expressed for me in my personal life with a
14-year-old son coming up to me and grabbing me, looking
down from his 6' 1" height, and saying, Mom, you've got to
watch this Kony 2012 video.
This was when it only had had a couple
hundred thousand views.
And he was so moved by it that it was his timeline splash
photograph and everything.
And I have friends working in Sierra Leone in reconciliation
and reconstruction work.
And I had seen some posts of theirs about it in Facebook
and in Google+ as well.
And it was sort of a family watershed and, I think,
really, kind of a watershed for all of us because, in
effect, we had something really appealing to people's
hearts, but not their heads.
It was all emotion and not a lot of fact.
And so we very quickly, virally, had 100 million
misinformed people hearing a very colonialist perspective
about a place where a lot of good
reconstruction work had happened.
And the video was talking about a white family.
And it was talking about something six years past, as
well as decade or two past.
So to me, that was a real problem.
We have viral social good.
But all of a sudden, we had this reality check where we
have viral misinformation.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: But look at how quickly it got corrected.
ANNE COLLIER: Yeah.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Especially as a filmmaker, I was fascinated
on so many levels.
I'm still unpacking it because the guy had a breakdown also.
ANNE COLLIER: Yeah.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: I mean, first of all, I felt like he was not
the right--
ANNE COLLIER: What an correction, you know?
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Right.
But the correction, but that, to me, is why I love the web.
I mean, it got corrected in a week.
That all happened in a week.
I was so like, wow, look at what this film did.
But is he the right messenger?
It didn't feel right.
Something didn't feel right.
OK, and then the whole world responded.
And then he had a mental breakdown.
And then I was like, oh, my gosh.
It was like the whole thing was so weird.
But to me, it was like, is that what 100 million views
does to someone, if it's all focused on you?
ANNE COLLIER: Yeah.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: And I don't know.
The whole thing was so what I love about the web.
And then it was misinformation.
And then it corrected.
It was like this--
I don't know.
JILLIAN YORK: Well, I think it was misinformation because
they lacked the connectedness with the local community they
were trying to represent.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Yeah, they were not the right messengers.
JILLIAN YORK: They had great connection
with the Twitter community.
And that's how they managed to get things out so quickly.
But from all I understand about this organization, is
that they lacked connectivity with local
Ugandans on the ground.
And that's why their message was not successful.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: But it got destroyed within a week.
I mean, it got [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
ANNE COLLIER: It got reversed, but to great tragedy for that
family and maybe for that extended community as well.
So the question is, do we just let it play out?
Is that humanity's solution?
TIFFANY SHLAIN: You know, I feel like--
REIHAN SALAM: Thanks, very much.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Yeah.
That was great.
I've definitely been thinking about that a lot.
And a lot of people are talking about it, which I
believe in humans.
I believe, when we talk about something, good will come in a
ripple from that.
But I think what you're starting to see is that people
are hungry for any video.
I mean, they've been watching cat videos, very cute ones,
for a long time.
JILLIAN YORK: Nothing wrong with cats.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: And now we're starting to see--
I mean, obviously, the work that we're doing, the TED
talks, people are hungry.
We're a curious species.
We want to connect.
And what that showed me is that people are ready for
something deeper, which is exciting for me.
And then, if the right people do it and they're ready and
they have the context and the right connections and they
come from the right place, that is exciting.
But I think what you saw was that it wasn't right.
It wasn't right on all these levels.
You know, when I watched it, I remember being totally riveted
for 10 minutes.
I, interestingly, only watched 10 minutes.
And most people I know only watch 10
minutes, which was good.
But something felt off.
And I couldn't put my finger on it.
And then I was fascinated with the viral nature of it.
But then, the offness got revealed.
I mean it was, actually, to me, the web showing its power
in not the best way, because you had the mental breakdown.
But that's a whole different thing.
REIHAN SALAM: Well, do guys have any closing thoughts as
well, because we should probably wrap up soon.
Nancy?
NANCY CONRAD: I don't know.
There are three words.
We have a tremendous responsibility in having this
tremendous resource at our fingertips.
So authenticity comes to mind and the responsibility to be
authentic and to use this tool in good and productive ways.
I think we have a huge responsibility to do that.
Having said that, I'm a recovering optimist. So I
totally understand that everything is
good, bad and ugly.
And there's no perfection in any of these things.
But I think what's so exciting, as I look at the
youth that are driving the future now and they're in the
vapors of the Millennials, there's some
awesome stuff going on.
So I tend to focus on that because that excites me and it
gets me up every morning.
JILLIAN YORK: You said something wonderful about
entrepreneurship in the beginning and
how it's making mistakes.
And I think that, if we look at Kony and we look at these
other movements that have failed in some way, if not
wholly, basically, it's the same kind of thing as
entrepreneurship.
It's making these mistakes.
And then the wonderful thing about the internet, to connect
back to what you said, is that it's self-correcting.
Through connectivity.
It's that connectivity that allows the internet to be
corrective.
NANCY CONRAD: Mm-hm, right.
REIHAN SALAM: Thanks, so much, you guys.
NANCY CONRAD: Thank you.
TIFFANY SHLAIN: Thank you.
JILLIAN YORK: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]