Made in my backyard
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Goodness of fitLaptopQuicksortGodNeuroinformatik1 (number)Network topologyComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Right angleMultiplication signParadoxGeneral relativityPoint (geometry)Thermodynamisches SystemTheory of relativityPersonal digital assistantRhombusProduct (business)Lecture/Conference
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Open setContext awarenessPresentation of a groupProjective planeLecture/Conference
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Term (mathematics)Goodness of fitEstimatorLecture/Conference
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Object (grammar)Open sourceNatural numberData miningLine (geometry)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Process (computing)Data miningProjective planeProduct (business)Meeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Division (mathematics)Wage labourThermodynamisches SystemGroup actionProcess (computing)Meeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Metropolitan area networkVirtual machineDivision (mathematics)Wage labourBit rateState of matterLine (geometry)2 (number)Software frameworkBranch (computer science)Operator (mathematics)SummierbarkeitOffice suiteFormal languageMultiplication signGraph (mathematics)Network topologyStreaming mediaOnline helpOrder (biology)Statement (computer science)Data miningSound effectBitMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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FreewareModel theoryDivision (mathematics)Interpreter (computing)Cellular automatonMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Product (business)PlastikkarteBitPoint (geometry)Right anglePotenz <Mathematik>Meeting/InterviewComputer animationLecture/Conference
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QuicksortMultiplication signNatural numberOpen sourcePopulation densityMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Condition numberResultantData miningCASE <Informatik>Computer animation
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Group actionLevel (video gaming)Game controllerData miningDoubling the cubeComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Dependent and independent variablesForcing (mathematics)Execution unitPoint (geometry)Meeting/InterviewComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Product (business)Revision controlVoltmeterInternet service providerMeeting/InterviewComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Mobile WebWeb 2.0WebsiteNeuroinformatikComputer animationLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Term (mathematics)State of matterArithmetic meanComputer animationLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Arithmetic meanInterpreter (computing)ForestOpen setTerm (mathematics)Sound effectInferenceLecture/Conference
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Projective planeGroup actionTheoryRevision controlOrder (biology)Form (programming)Model theoryComputing platformMobile WebFreewareLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Data miningRule of inferenceLecture/Conference
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Condition numberGroup actionData miningField (computer science)Expected valueMultiplication signMeeting/InterviewComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Point (geometry)Multiplication signMobile WebAreaMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Multiplication signDifferent (Kate Ryan album)CASE <Informatik>Food energyComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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GenderMoment (mathematics)HypermediaCASE <Informatik>Object (grammar)Film editingCategory of beingPerspective (visual)Computer animationMeeting/Interview
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Dilution (equation)View (database)Grand Unified TheoryMetadataSelf-organizationHypermediaMultiplication signSource codeComputer animationMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Projective planeSelf-organizationComponent-based software engineeringThermodynamisches SystemArithmetic meanPoint (geometry)Lecture/Conference
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MaizeInternetworkingFocus (optics)Computer programmingGeneral relativityProgrammer (hardware)Lecture/ConferenceComputer animation
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Model theoryCartesian coordinate systemDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Coordinate systemSoftwareBasis <Mathematik>VirtualizationOpen setMeeting/Interview
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BuildingInformationDigital RevolutionDivision (mathematics)Wage labourGame controllerINTEGRALLecture/Conference
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InformationThermodynamisches SystemMereologyProcess (computing)Virtual machineDigital RevolutionSound effectMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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InformationInternetworkingSurface of revolutionGame controllerDigital RevolutionThermodynamisches SystemControl systemRevision controlLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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SoftwareOpen setProduct (business)Computer fileMereologyVirtual machineInformationThermodynamisches SystemObject (grammar)Copyright infringementComputer animation
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Product (business)Thermodynamisches SystemHand fanSoftwareVirtual machineMereologyMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Thermodynamisches SystemVisualization (computer graphics)Virtual machineDistribution (mathematics)CodeObject (grammar)CodeReading (process)Product (business)Moment (mathematics)Computer fileShared memoryArithmetic meanNeuroinformatikPersonal digital assistantLecture/Conference
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Social classComputer programmingDigital RevolutionCore dumpReplication (computing)Design by contractAtomic numberAssembly languageSimilarity (geometry)Mainframe computerLecture/ConferenceComputer animationSource codeMeeting/Interview
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Chemical equationTelecommunicationNeuroinformatikFood energyArithmetic meanWordProjective planeGreatest elementFocus (optics)Meeting/InterviewSource codeComputer animation
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Open setTexture mappingModel theoryAreaProduct (business)Level (video gaming)Local ringShared memoryInformationVirtual machineLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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State of matterTransmitterProjective planeThermodynamisches SystemModul <Datentyp>AdditionReplication (computing)Computer animationMeeting/Interview
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Virtual machineProjective planeLocal ringProduct (business)Materialization (paranormal)Musical ensembleSet (mathematics)Meeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Product (business)Student's t-testDressing (medical)Staff (military)Process (computing)Electronic mailing listPrototypeComputer animationLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Multiplication signBitLecture/Conference
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Projective planeBuildingCombinational logicMUDProcess (computing)Model theoryLecture/Conference
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TableauRoboticsLine (geometry)Context awarenessSocial classCycle (graph theory)Projective planeString (computer science)ArmVirtual machineData structureGradientLecture/ConferenceMeeting/InterviewComputer animation
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Network topologyLine (geometry)Order (biology)Machine learningModel theoryScaling (geometry)Data structureGradientRapid PrototypingVirtual machineProjective planeMaterialization (paranormal)Representation (politics)TheoryLibrary (computing)Meeting/Interview
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Object (grammar)Latent heatMereologyProcess (computing)Graph coloringTheory of relativityThermodynamisches SystemDependent and independent variablesUser interfaceDrop (liquid)Lecture/Conference
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Right anglePairwise comparisonArithmetic meanComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Product (business)Object (grammar)Hacker (term)Order (biology)Ocean currentResultantLecture/Conference
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Product (business)QuicksortFunctional (mathematics)Thermodynamisches SystemMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Product (business)Theory of relativityThermodynamisches SystemGeneral relativityArithmetic meanLine (geometry)InfinityBitMeeting/Interview
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MereologyProduct (business)User interfaceMassSampling (statistics)Process (computing)Surface of revolutionProjective planeLecture/Conference
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Business modelComputing platformProduct (business)Model theoryProjective planeMeeting/Interview
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CodeUser interfaceProduct (business)Virtual machineThermodynamisches SystemMathematical optimizationProcess (computing)MereologyLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Process (computing)MereologyProduct (business)Distribution (mathematics)Materialization (paranormal)Line (geometry)Mathematical analysisFormal languageGodMathematicsInequality (mathematics)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Business modelGeneral relativityOpen setLecture/Conference
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Computer hardwareOpen sourceProduct (business)Context awarenessRevision controlMomentumComputer animationLecture/Conference
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DivisorOpen setProduct (business)ChainOptical disc driveLecture/ConferenceComputer animation
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Multiplication signBitLecture/Conference
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Data miningCollaborationismSet (mathematics)SmartphoneTerm (mathematics)Design by contractService (economics)Model theoryLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:20
OK, so good morning, everyone. Welcome, as well. I'm sorry because of the delay of the laptop. We thought it died, but what actually happened is we stacked two laptops on top of each other, and there's this little magnet inside that makes it turn off. So my laptop screen was turning off and on and off and on
00:43
because it was sitting on top of the other one. But anyway, it works now. It didn't die, so I'm happy. It's a good start of the day because my computer is still alive. So I'd like to start with a quote from, actually,
01:01
Oscar Wilde, the picture of Dorian Gray, 1890. People know the price of everything but the value of nothing. I think a lot of people can relate to that. But what is value? How does value relate to prices and our economy? Why is it, for example, that water,
01:23
which is more useful than diamonds, is a lot cheaper than diamonds? They call this the value paradox. So how are empathic values, sustainable values, social values, shared values integrated
01:41
in our economic systems? I think there are no easy concluding answers to these questions, but I think we are at a point in time where we can really shape the economy right now, and we can create a more relational economy, a relational system,
02:01
where our values are more based on relations with products, people, and the systems we work in. So to achieve these relations, we need openness and transparency. So in this presentation, I'll show you some context and projects, which I'm working on, which relate to all these questions,
02:22
but also why it's important that this is something we have to ask now, and that we have to deal with now. So is there anyone here who knows what this is? Yeah?
02:43
Shot really loud? No idea? Now? Toaster. Toaster, yeah. So I think looking at this product, and this toaster has been made by this guy over here,
03:01
this Thomas Twaits. And Thomas Twaits went into a shop and knew the price of a toaster, because he was going to buy one. And he was going to buy one for, I think, three or four pounds. And he asked himself, how is it possible to make something like this for three or four pounds? And what's behind it?
03:21
What's the story behind this toaster? And how do you make it? And who is making it? And what do you need for it? And I think it's a really good question, because it's also a question which we don't ask that much ourselves anymore. And what came out of that is this beautiful toaster, which looks kind of alienating, because we
03:42
are used to have all these. And you see it there in the shop, together with all the other toasters. We are used to see these toasters, these mass-produced toasters as objects we use every day. And we don't ask about how is it made and what's around it. But with the toaster Thomas Twaits made,
04:02
you can actually see how it's made, because he took it very seriously. So what he did, he went into the mines and got the ore, the iron ore. And he actually found a patent online of someone who found out how to get iron out of iron ore.
04:22
There's actually someone who was playing around with microwaves to try to get iron out of iron ore. So he used that. And from all these steps in getting further into this process, the technical process, he actually learned a lot about the stories behind all these people working in the mines.
04:43
And so it became more like this project about the stories around stuff. So the toaster tells a story. And the beauty of the product, I think, is that it's transparent, that you can see what's behind it.
05:05
So it's an industrial product. And we kind of got alienated from all these products. And looking at industry, when it started, this is around, I don't know if there are probably a lot of people here who know the wealth of nations, Adam Smith, 1767.
05:26
And Adam Smith is the one, this is the first book that actually describes the economic systems. And Adam Smith was describing the self-regulating market. He was describing division of labor.
05:42
And division of labor is exactly what happened with the toaster as well. Everything became processes. And you have some people working on that aspect, some people working in the mines, some people working somewhere else on having the fuels to make the machines work.
06:04
So there's another man called Milton Friedman. He's a true capitalist who has a really, I think, a brilliant story about a pencil where he explains the division of labor. And I'd like to show you the movie of Milton Friedman explaining this.
06:38
Look at this lead pencil.
06:40
There's not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. Remarkable statement? Not at all. The wood from which it's made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the state of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To make the steel, it took iron ore.
07:02
This black center, we call it lead, but it's really graphite, compressed graphite. I'm not sure where it comes from, but I think it comes from some mines in South America. This red top up here, the eraser, bit of rubber, probably comes from Malaya, where the rubber tree
07:21
isn't even native. It was imported from South America by some businessmen with the help of the British government. This brass ferrule, I haven't the slightest idea where it came from, or the yellow paint, or the paint that made the black lines, or the glue that holds it together.
07:41
Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil. People who don't speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met. When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time
08:01
for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no commissar sending out orders from some central office. It was a magic of the price system,
08:21
the impersonal operation of prices that brought them together and got them to cooperate to make this pencil so that you could have it for a trifling sum. That is why the operation of the free market is so essential, not only. To promote productive efficiency, but even more,
08:44
to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world. Well, a true capitalist, I would say. And also, I mean, he brings this really romantic story
09:00
about the free market and people not knowing that they're working together on this pencil, but are connected in a way that creates this social bonding, blah, blah, blah. Well, what he's talking about, actually, is the invisible hand, the self-regulating market.
09:24
And the invisible hand is the hand, and Adam Smith was already talking about it. There are some critics about the interpretation of that. But the invisible hand of the self-regulated market became this thing everyone was holding onto
09:40
because isn't it beautiful that everything works by itself? The problem with that is that you also, that is an untransparent way of working. If you don't know if somebody's working, you know, Division of Life, somebody's working on a piece there and somebody else is working on a piece there,
10:00
they don't know. They have no shared value in the whole thing. The invisible hand takes care of that. So what if this untransparent situation creates unfair situations? And I think invisible hands can be really unfair. And I think some British people here
10:21
might agree with that. Because if you look at production and at products, they've become so complicated, and it's become so impossible to trace all these parts. Because look at this card.
10:41
It's a beautiful card, but it's an old card, and it's actually a very simple card. This is, you know, you have, the cards right now are much more complicated. And can you even imagine that all these pieces have suppliers, and all these suppliers of these pieces have suppliers, and those have suppliers again. So it's exponential, it becomes very,
11:02
you know, it becomes exponentially complicated to trace where stuff is coming from. So the cards right now have electronics as well. And when you put electronics into the equation, it becomes even more complicated. And there's also a lot of stuff going,
11:20
you know, being unfair about these electronics we use. I can show you that in the next short movie.
11:49
Pay attention. Be careful. But because, you know, anything can happen. And you feel it, and then they see, okay, this can be a danger for us. You are dead.
12:12
I'm on my way to the Eastern Congo, one of the most dangerous places in the world. Congo has been a major source of natural resources
12:21
for the mobile industry the last 15 years. I've heard that in mine, Steve in the jungle, children are working under horrible conditions. I want to see where these minerals are coming from, and to see with my own eyes if they are financing war. Shofar, Shofar, I'll take you to the mountain. Shofar, go to the mountain. I'll take you to the mountain.
12:44
This is Chance, he's 16. He says that for the last three years, he's been working in Bissi, the biggest illegal mine in Congo. He wants to take me there.
13:04
You see, and this is horrible. What they are, they are living with really horrible. Four years ago, this place was nothing but jungle. Today, 15 to 25,000 people are working here. Different armed groups are fighting to gain control
13:22
over the mine. These teenage boys stay down here for several days, taking out minerals essential for the mobile industry. Mines like these are fueling the war here. In the last 15 years, more than 4 million people
13:42
have died. These minerals end up in mobile phones, like my Nokia. Does that make me responsible? We are all responsible. And do you know that all this is going into you? We must feel revolted by this situation. We are human beings.
14:19
Okay, so, of course, this is through the eyes
14:22
of a documentary maker. There's a lot of drama in it. But there's, I mean, there's definitely a point here, I think, and looking at the situations we create around these products, making these products. It's so complicated to even know where stuff
14:44
is coming from. Nokia, for example, in this movie, is one of the targets of the documentary maker. And Nokia cannot say they have conflict minerals, conflict-free phones. There's not one phone provider, phone developer
15:01
in the world that can actually say that they have conflict-free phones. Because it's impossible to trace. And you see here the difficulty of the tracing in the Congo itself. And it's not only, this is about the mobile industry, but it's not the mobile industry itself. It's the whole electronics industry.
15:24
Tantalum, one of the minerals they showed here in the movie as well, is used for capacitors. And capacitors are in all electronics. So, also cards. So I went to this website called slaveryfoodprint.org.
15:44
And I don't even have a mobile phone, actually. But I do have a computer, I do have a lot of electronics in my house. So what you do, you fill in all these electronics devices you have, and the website then calculates how many slaves are working for you. So I got 60 slaves working for me.
16:02
And well, obviously, most of them are working in China. But some of them are also working in the States, South America, Africa, you know, it's all around the world, slaves are working for me. But the problem with, you know, slaves, and the whole term slaves, is that, you know,
16:22
what makes a slave a slave? And what is slavery, and what is the opposite of slavery? Because when you look at the opposite of slavery, I think we're talking about liberty. And what, you know, if you look at one of the brightest
16:41
people ever lived tells us about liberty. He actually says, Isaiah Berlin, it's a term whose meaning is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist. So what does that say about fairness? What does that say about openness?
17:01
If even liberty is so porous that you cannot, you know, you can make anything out of that. But there's one thing I do know, and I'm a designer, and designers like to think in solutions. And not so much in question, because we have had, you know, I've been putting out all these questions,
17:21
and all these abstract terms which are really hard to answer. But if you look at unfairness, so you take the opposite of what is fair, I think everybody believes that you have to have action when you have unfair situations. So one of the projects we did is creating a Fairphone.
17:46
And we're still working on it, because that's nothing you do, not something you do within one year. But Fairphone is a project we started two or three years ago. And what we thought is, okay, so if the mobile industry cannot say that there is conflict free,
18:01
that there are conflict free phones, and they cannot, you know, vouch for fair phones, then we're going to make one ourselves. Because how hard is it to make a phone? Phones are being made already. The hardest thing is to make them fair. So we started doing that, and of course you cannot do that yourself, because I'm not a phone developer,
18:22
I don't know electronics, and I don't know mines, I don't know minerals, I don't know, well, you can go on and on. But together, if you put it up as a platform, I think we can come quite far. So that's what we did. We started step by step, and one of the things we did was also go to Congo and find out if it's possible to work with mines and corporations
18:42
where you can actually contribute. Africa.
19:12
Africa. Fairphone is the world's first collective
19:21
non-profit technology company, developing a phone using minerals, mined and sold under equity conditions. Recently, Fairphone undertook a fact finding mission to Katanga, the most southern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Katanga's soil is full of copper and cobalt, the latter being used in batteries for mobile phones.
19:43
The Fairphone crew visited various parties in the mining industry, from high-ranking officials to artisanal miners. This short film shows you some highlights of a very successful, though bumpy expedition towards the heartland of Congo's copper belt.
20:02
We've been here for a long time. We've been here for a long time. We've been here for a long time. Cobalt, pear, we've been here for a long time. So when we come back, we're going to the
21:32
show the show.
23:08
I work for a media lab in Amsterdam, it's a non-profit organisation called VAG Society.
23:48
And Fairphone is one of the projects we do. If you want to know more about the project and look at what we're at at this point, you can go to the website and look it up. At VAG Society we have a mission.
24:04
And our mission is to give social cultural meaning and value to technological developments. In a way it's looking at social innovation. And when you look at the projects we do, one of the principles we work on a lot is reciprocity.
24:23
And reciprocity is also very much connected to fairness. So in a way all the projects we do has this fairness component in it. And also one of the things we think is that with closed systems you cannot create this reciprocity.
24:42
And I really like this quote from Maksin and I think a lot of people, or some people here might know the manifesto Maksin made. And one of the quotes in there was, if you can't open it, you don't own it. And I think ownership is very important.
25:02
Because when you feel ownership you can actually create relations with the stuff you use. So at VAG Society we have several labs and you can see the labs as research programmes we do. We have a creative care lab, we have a future internet lab
25:24
which focuses on the future of the internet. Urban reality lab is focused on how you deal with urban development and location-based applications and virtual layers.
25:41
And one of the labs I coordinate is the Open Design Lab. And of course the Open Design Lab has a mission as well. And the mission comes down to that we try to bridge the gap between the virtual world and the old industrial models.
26:00
Because in the virtual world we have this network culture and in the old industrial models I just showed you, they work on a totally different basis, totally different principles. So this is what happened with the industrial stuff in our cities.
26:22
Division of Labour actually took care of that. And what you see in the back of these industrial buildings is what came out of that. It's the knowledge economy. And the knowledge economy is mainly about information.
26:43
And information moved away from controlled consumption. What happened is that we had a digital revolution. And we had this digital revolution, this took place. Information and industry got separated.
27:00
Well, what do I mean by that? When you look at this, people reading books, information was part of the industrial system. You needed books to put this knowledge on. You needed film to make stupid films on. So you had all these artefacts and you had machines to be able to create these artefacts to distribute knowledge.
27:25
That's where copyright also came in. So copyright is very much related to all these industrial processes. So with the digital revolution, that totally changed.
27:42
So information is produced in a very distributed way. And people are both the sender and the receiver of information. And this is, by the way, a snapshot of the internet, I think, two years ago or something.
28:00
So that digital revolution made this possible as well. This is Napster, one of the first versions, I think. And this was a pain in the ass for the industry. Because it totally bypassed the system they've created. And what they did was, of course, their first reaction was to create this control system.
28:25
But we went on and we did this and now we have open data. You see all this creation of openness within this network culture is getting more and more. And many people here talk about it already, so I won't go into that too much.
28:42
But this is when it gets really interesting. Because Pirate Bay, I think two or three months ago, opened an underside, something like, what's it called, Fizzables. So on Pirate Bay, you can actually search for physical objects, you can download the files and you can create them with machines.
29:05
These are blueprints of products. So at Pirate Bay, you can actually download products now. And then this happens, because products now are partly moving away from this controlled consumption as well. Because it's becoming part of this digital system.
29:22
We can spread around all this information about products, we can spread around the files to actually create products. And now, this shit really hits the fan for the old industrial copyright system. Because it becomes integrated into this whole network culture and the physical world.
29:45
So what is that that makes it possible to download products and then make them? Well, digital fabrication is a big part of that. Most of you might know 3D printing. This is a laser cutter. So somebody downloaded a file and with that file, you send it to the machine and the machine can create, in this case, a chair out of that.
30:19
So there's the chair.
30:26
So the big thing about this digital fabrication, of course, is the way you can distribute it. You know, these machines are capable of reading digital code and controlling a machine to make the object.
30:45
So, and of course, these machines and making chairs is not what it is about. It's about creating access to these means of production. Because you can actually download yourself silly from Pirate Bay or Thingiverse or whatever and have all these files on your computer.
31:04
But you can still not make a product because you need machines for that. So one of the developments in that is, for example, Fab Lab. I think Fab Lab Fabrication Laboratory is one of the biggest distributed maker systems
31:24
and infrastructure which gives open access and which is growing really fast at the moment. And I'll show you a movie where Neil Gershenfeld, the founder of the whole Fab Lab idea, will explain the idea of Fab Lab himself.
31:43
We've had a digital revolution, but we don't need to keep having it. We can declare success we want. What's coming now is the digital revolution in fabrication. My colleagues and I started teaching a class called How to Make Almost Anything. And the idea was just that. It's a program looking at how the digital world relates to the physical world.
32:02
And one of the core things coming out of the research is the idea of digital fabrication, making the Star Trek replicator an assembler that makes anything you want by building the atoms on up. This is designed where you put in the ribbon. Millions of dollars of equipment at MIT are like the mainframes of digital fabrication. We can make anything we want using those tools. In 20 years, we'll make it so you can have it in the home.
32:22
The Fab Labs are in between. They spread all around the world, letting ordinary people create technology from South Africa to the north of Norway and from rural India to inner city Boston. Instead of spending vast amounts of money to send computers and energy and communication around the world, you can spend much less to send the means to create it.
32:42
Energy, communication, computation, just to say the words, they sound big. They're being tackled as billion dollar mega projects top down. Fab Labs is tackling them from the bottom up. We're just finding so many people with such interesting inventions and such great ideas. Sharing that is where I see this go.
33:03
Okay, so that explains the whole idea of the Fab Lab. This is a map of Fab Labs around the world, which is pretty old, actually, because also in Berlin, with Open Design City, of course, you have a Fab Lab as well. I think even in Holland, I think around 10, 12 Fab Labs are already popping up.
33:27
And the great thing about looking at fabrication this way is that you share knowledge on this global level and you have the production on a very local level. So you can actually create products on this local level and local needs and share the
33:45
information about making it because you have similar machines on the other side of the world. Share that information and other people can use that as well. So one of the examples is Afghanistan.
34:00
In Afghanistan they make Wi-Fi antennas together with also Kenya and MIT in the States to be able to send Wi-Fi signals from one village to the other village so you can connect all the villages and all the nodes. And they create these antennas for around 200 euros so you can make them yourself instead of the 20,000 Cisco system Wi-Fi transmitters.
34:32
But another project they're doing in the States is on modular housing with digital fabrication, so how to be able to create your own house.
34:43
You can actually build a Fab Lab with a Fab Lab this way. So if you have a machine and you have the wooden stuff you can create your house. One of the projects we're working on at WAG Society, because at the WAG we also have a Fab Lab, is this prosthetics project we do together with Indonesia.
35:03
And what we're trying to do is to create a prosthetics for under 50 dollars. So normal prosthetics, lower leg prosthetics is around the 5,000 euros. But when you look at Indonesia for example where you have bamboo and local materials which are pretty strong, you can use bamboo instead of titanium.
35:21
Of course it's not as sustainable as titanium, but it's a lot cheaper. The real challenge with this kind of product is that we try to design them in such a way that people can create them themselves. Either in workshops or in sessions where you get guidance in it, or alone.
35:43
But the real challenge is that. So think about how do I create products that other people can create. So you're kind of making blueprints for other people to be able to create their own products. But not only prosthetics, housing, these big things are happening in the Fab Labs.
36:07
A lot of designers come there and make their stuff, dresses. We have in Amsterdam a lot of textile students and fashion designers are coming to the Fab Lab to work with textiles. To see what happens if you put specific stuff under the laser cutter for example.
36:24
Because they're not allowed to do that when you go to a prototyping place and give them a job on cutting something. They can cut anything as long as it's not on the black list we know. For example PVC which has chemicals and stuff like that.
36:41
So this is an example of a little boy I think 9-10 years old came in and he had something wrong with his foot. So he needed special things for in his shoe to make them a bit higher in size.
37:02
And he had to wait for a few months when he was going to the shoe repairman, or to the shoe specialist. So he decided to do it himself and he succeeded. So he made this stuff all by himself in the Fab Lab, learned a lot. And I think it's a brilliant example of somebody who puts a lot of time into making this because it's not pushing a button and it's ready.
37:28
But he succeeded in doing it. So what we do also is look at how can we combine old crafts and 21st century crafts. This is a project where we use mud building and CNC routing together to
37:42
combine ecological building with this 21st century blob building if you want to call that. So you might know this project.
38:01
This has been shown at DMY I think last year. And a project by Dirk van der Kooij. So you see that also designers are experimenting with these new technologies as well. So if you open up these technologies people find new things to do with it. So hi, I'm Dirk van der Kooij. I'm graduated on the Design Academy with the project called Endless.
38:24
It's actually a big robot that is making furniture out of recycled fridges. Recycled fridges goes inside of the machine on the top of the robot arm. And it's getting melted. And it's so hot actually that it will melt to the former layer that it's been putting down.
38:42
So it's writing in one endless line or in one endless string a chair or a table or another piece of furniture. We can pigment it of course like any other plastic you can. But like with this layering structure you can do funny stuff like gradients and you can emphasize the way it's been built up.
39:01
The idea is like retrieved from rapid prototyping when I saw like the model that was made with a really old machine. And then you can see the ornament or the lines and you can see how it's been built up. And I said okay wow this is cool. I want to blow it up to a bigger scale and then make it an ornament.
39:21
And tell the people like in the chair really how it's been made. It was much faster like a rapid prototyping machine does it in five days in a chair. And this does it in three hours. And you can use recycled plastic instead of really expensive materials. So there's maybe a future ahead for me also with this project. So enjoy.
39:42
Okay so those are examples of people using these technologies to create solutions for specific problems. Or to create designs or to create objects. But it's not only about that. I think a big part of the labs and the importance of places like the fab lab or hackerspaces or whatever you want to call it.
40:07
Is that the making process itself. It brings crafts and making into the environment again. It creates this relation with the objects you use again.
40:21
Which is necessary also to create this ownership. And this ownership is necessary to take responsibility also for the stuff you do. And also to be able to understand the systems around you.
40:41
Because making, and this is, I read this story about IKEA. People creating billies. I think you know billies. These really easy cupboards people make. And they made a comparison about people who made billies. And they put them together and they asked which one do you like most.
41:03
And everyone liked their own billy. They thought their own billy was the most beautiful. And they are exactly the same. So in a way if you make something yourself even though it's an IKEA billy. You get an attachment to it in a way. So talking about IKEA.
41:21
I think you know let people give their own meaning to stuff. Own products as well. Hack products. Because if you look at objects. And if you get this ownership of objects. It's about these experiences as well.
41:45
And again also the stories behind all these objects. So it's important to look at technology and to hack into it. Because if you know technology becomes very complicated.
42:03
And I was showing the car in the beginning. And the car is you know it's an easy thing. And I don't think there are that many people that can fix their own cars nowadays. So that's also a reason why we need these places. We need places where people hack into this technology. Because otherwise it will be the big companies and the big institutions.
42:24
That will make this technology. And you'll be the one that consumes it. And have to deal with that. So that's also one of the. I think maybe the most important function of these labs.
42:41
And this also in a city. Because that's what happening. You get production much more closer to the urban environment. Some people call it post-industrial production. I think post-industrial production might actually create these new relations.
43:05
So what does that mean for a business? Because I think a lot of people. And that's one of the questions I get a lot. It's okay, you know, fine, nice story. A bit idealistic. I believe people are altruists. But the bottom line is still.
43:21
How do you make money with all this stuff? Well the bad news is I don't know. I cannot tell you how to make money with all this stuff. With everything that's happening. But what we did is we did experiment with it. And we're still doing some experiments.
43:40
But just have a look at this model. So I was talking about crafts. Before the industrial revolution people made products in workshops. The mass production model, you get standardized products. What we have now is that people can actually be part of that interactive digital design process.
44:08
We can create interfaces where people can be part of creating their own products. So if you look, this is simplified. But it's a way of looking at what's happening.
44:23
And we did a project with Drog Design. Drog Design is a design brand in Holland which is pretty famous for its high quality design. And we're creating this platform. It's not online yet but we're creating this platform called MakeMe. Where we look at how we can create business models around all these new things that are happening.
44:46
And the main, the basics of the platform is that it's a platform for products which are not made yet. That means that if somebody is going to buy something on that platform. He can still choose who's going to make it.
45:01
Maybe he's going to make it themselves. That's a business model as well. And also what the product is going to look like. Because if it still has to be made, you can still have influence on the product. So these are some of the products which came out of the first pilot.
45:24
You see the cupboard in the left corner? There is an interface created for that where you can actually push at specific places. And the cupboard will make holes at the places where you've pushed. And in the back, it generates all these outlines for machines to read the code to actually make this cupboard as well.
45:47
So after you've made your product, you can choose which Fab Lab is going to produce it. And then it sends it right away to the Fab Lab. So it's about optimization of the system. It's about having consumers make them part of this design process.
46:03
And also it's about how is the designer going to make money on these blueprints which are downloadable and freely distributable. This is another product. I'll go through that.
46:21
It's a bikini line which you can cut with the laser cutter. And the nice thing about this, and of course the size is you can change everything in the colors, but it melts together while it's cutting. So you can put two materials on top of each other and it cuts with the laser cutter and it melts together, so you have really high quality bikinis.
46:41
So how does that relate to openness? For the Fab Labs, I think it speaks for itself. But with the stuff I showed you with the business models, I think what's happening is that it's also creating new relations with the people who make stuff.
47:01
Because it gives the craftsmen, either it's 21st century craftsmanship, it's digital fabrication, or it's people that make stuff by hand, it gives them a face again. And you can also, you can relate more to them and it becomes much more transparent. So to me that's openness as well.
47:23
But if you look at where I think the main things are happening is when you put something, when you put products online, you create communities around it, and you create this context where everyone can collaborate and participate.
47:41
And then you're talking about open source design hardware products. This is a car which has been developed open source. This is a house which has been developed open source. And these products mainly exist online. This is where the real stuff is going on. Once in a while there is a momentum of a house that's popping up,
48:02
which is a version of the whole community working on that house. That's also something we want to do with Fairphone. And we're starting this year to create this open design community where people can actually design and think and create stuff together with us to be able to produce this product.
48:21
And I think one of the important factors in that is that we can make this invisible hand, I was talking about in the beginning, we can make this invisible hand visible again and create shared value throughout this whole production chain. So when we go back to where I started, I think we still have a long way to go.
48:46
But I truly believe we have the perfect situation now to create this relational industry based on values. And I also believe that we can all benefit from that. So I'd like to leave it with this and thank you for your attention.
49:17
I don't know if we have time for questions. No, it's 11 already.
49:22
Okay, so one or two questions. No one? Still too early? First of all, thank you very much, fantastic keynote.
49:41
What about the phone? Can you tell us a bit more of when will it be ready to ship? The phone, it's a very complicated thing to do. But what we did, we simplified it by saying we got one mineral, which is cobalt.
50:02
And cobalt is used for making batteries. And we focus on cobalt now. So we're in Congo trying to find, to set up collaborations with mining companies or with mining corporations there to actually create this battery. And we have on the other side of the market a KPN Vodafone T-Mobile.
50:23
We're already willing to sign contracts to take these batteries and put them into the market. So that's why we start. And then a smartphone has more than 30 minerals, which are also dubious in terms of fairness. So there's a long way to go. We do it step by step.
50:43
Yeah, go on. Thanks. Bas, thank you very much. Due to our schedule, we have to close another session. Thank you.