Open Information Nation
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| License | CC Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Germany: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor and the work or content is shared also in adapted form only under the conditions of this | |
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00:00
InformationBridging (networking)BuildingRule of inferenceBitWave packetGoodness of fitComputer clusterOpen setMultiplication signGreatest elementFrequencyAdditionDifferent (Kate Ryan album)InformationFamilyFunctional (mathematics)Computer animationJSONXMLUMLLecture/Conference
03:10
Functional (mathematics)Line (geometry)GodBit rateMessage passingMeeting/Interview
03:51
Digital libraryDesign by contractPoint (geometry)Video gameMessage passingComputer clusterSatelliteWage labourInternet forumPlanningDigital electronicsLine (geometry)
04:37
Digital electronicsComputer clusterLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
05:03
Digital libraryInformationInformationDigital libraryDigital electronicsBitAdditionFitness functionSurfaceRight angleComputer animationLecture/Conference
06:04
InformationMathematicsMultiplication signDisk read-and-write headTheoryRight angleMeeting/Interview
07:01
InformationShared memory10 (number)InternetworkingCausalityContrast (vision)Lecture/Conference
07:52
Number theoryBitInformationScaling (geometry)1 (number)Rule of inferenceMathematicsDigital libraryField (computer science)Digital electronicsShared memoryRight angleMeeting/Interview
09:03
System callTranslation (relic)Latin squareForm (programming)Rule of inferenceRow (database)6 (number)Lecture/Conference
09:57
Reading (process)Affine spaceMeeting/Interview
10:47
Decision theoryComputer clusterMotion captureParameter (computer programming)Translation (relic)Lecture/Conference
11:29
InformationCategory of beingQuicksortMeeting/Interview
12:00
WordRule of inferenceComputer clusterInformationSoftwareCategory of beingComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Rule of inferenceSound effectMeeting/Interview
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Metropolitan area networkLecture/Conference
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Process (computing)Regulator geneRight angle40 (number)Software testingMeeting/Interview
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Business & Information Systems EngineeringDigital libraryMusical ensembleConnected spaceProcess (computing)Lecture/Conference
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Topological vector spaceExecution unitService (economics)SoftwareInformationDecision theoryNeuroinformatikVideo gameFreewareGoodness of fitDirection (geometry)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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InformationInformationRoboticsProcess (computing)SoftwareMultiplication signComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Multiplication signZuckerberg, MarkSearch engine (computing)Digital libraryInformationBrin, SergeyOperating systemRoboticsControl flowPhysical systemMeeting/Interview
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Insertion lossOperations researchPhysical systemComputerForm (programming)Rule of inferenceGoodness of fitVertex (graph theory)Operator (mathematics)WindowMultiplication signTextsystemCategory of beingMobile appOperating systemSpecial unitary groupConcentricRight angleLecture/Conference
20:56
Marginal distributionPower (physics)ConcentricCombinational logicLecture/Conference
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Hill differential equationRule of inferenceProcess (computing)Multiplication signInequality (mathematics)Electronic mailing listEngineering drawingDiagram
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Inequality (mathematics)InformationShift operatorMultiplication signRule of inferenceSelectivity (electronic)CausalityComputer animation
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Inequality (mathematics)Data modelInformationExtreme programmingRight angleCategory of beingEndliche ModelltheorieSeitenbeschreibungsspracheInequality (mathematics)Engineering drawingDiagramComputer animationLecture/Conference
23:17
FacebookShape (magazine)GoogolTelecommunicationStagnation pointEnterprise architectureFacebookMultiplicationShape (magazine)ResultantSpeech synthesisTheoryAngleAxiom of choiceGame controllerWeb pageRekursiv aufzählbare MengeObservational studyVotingLecture/ConferenceComputer animation
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Sound effectLimit (category theory)Power (physics)FacebookConcentricInfinityLecture/Conference
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Sound effectGodInheritance (object-oriented programming)Multiplication signEscape characterLecture/Conference
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Sound effectEnterprise architectureFacebookRule of inferenceResultantCausalityMeeting/Interview
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Enterprise architectureSpiralRule of inferenceEnterprise architectureInformationMultiplication signConnected spaceInequality (mathematics)Exclusive orStagnation pointExtreme programmingComputer animationLecture/Conference
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WordFreewareInformationShared memoryMeeting/Interview
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InformationRule of inferenceRight anglePhysical systemInformationData structureShared memoryInclusion mapForm (programming)Lattice (order)Open setExtreme programmingDynamical system1 (number)Lecture/Conference
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Computer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:28
German style, we're starting precisely on time, which is wonderful. Okay, so,
00:42
so good morning Berlin. Good morning. I am going to talk about the Open Information Nation and new rules for a new world. Now my name is Rufus Pollock
01:00
and I am the founder and president of Open Knowledge, which is an international non-profit started in 2004 that now operates all over the world, including, in fact, very actively here in Germany, Open Knowledge Germany is here, and that works to open up information, to build tools and communities to see that information,
01:22
be it train timetables or where your government is spending your tax money used to improve people's lives, to make a difference to what is important to them. And in addition to that, it will be interesting for you to know that I grew up on a farm, and I'm going to come to that in a moment.
01:40
So I'm going to start by talking about this new world. What do I mean by a new world? Well, one thing I want to mention, I said I grew up on a farm and my mother is a farmer. She's still a farmer, she's 73, and she has cows.
02:01
And she really loves animals. My mother adores animals, that's kind of why she's a farmer. And she gets very concerned when cows are going to have their little babies, when they're going to have calves, because just like humans, things can go wrong sometimes. The calf could get stuck, or it might not get looked after,
02:22
and so my mother is always quite worried around the time when a cow should have its new calf. And also, like humans, it's not precisely known when the cow is going to have its calf. You know roughly in a week or two when it's going to be, but you don't know exactly. And for example, around that time, my mother tends to go out and check on the cow every couple of hours,
02:43
and then when she goes to bed, she makes my father go out and check on the cow every two hours, and then she doesn't sleep very well, because she's worrying. During that period when she's asleep, something might happen. She's a worrier. The other thing to get about my mother, that you might guess as being a farmer,
03:02
is she's a bit of a technophobe. She didn't really adopt email early. I mean, I think her first function phone was about 2008, and she insisted that she never had her phone on. The only reason for having a mobile phone was to make emergency calls. So you can imagine my shock a few years ago
03:22
when my mother calls me up, and she says, can you tell me about international text messaging? My first thought is, oh my God, does my mother realize, has she got caught in some scam and is busy, I don't know, calling some hotline in the Pacific or something at some incredible rate?
03:41
But no, she explains she doesn't want to send international text messages. She wants to receive them. Now, to make a long story short, what she's done is she's bought this device. It's called Moocall. And you attach it to the tail of a cow, and when the cow goes into labor, contractions happen. The device in the tail of the cow,
04:02
the device knows this, and it sends a message via a satellite to HQ in Ireland, and then the HQ in Ireland sends you a text message. And my mother is worried that she's not receiving these text messages. In particular, if you remember, her mobile phone is off, so these text messages have to be sent to a landline.
04:21
So that's another added complication. Anyway, the long story short, we get it all sorted out, and this is making her life way better. And the point of that story is my mother, who is not really interested at all in digital technology, if anything is an opponent often of digital technology, is engaged in one of the oldest professions known to man.
04:43
She is being affected by digital technology. She is adopting digital technology. People have been carving cows for thousands of years, and now they've got this device. So our economy has changed.
05:01
We are now in this digital economy, where what we produce often, what we use, is digital information. In that device, the cow, it may be a plastic device attached to the cow, but it's digital technology. And I want us to invite us to look deeper, because we're all familiar with this, right?
05:22
I mean, we've all got phones, we're at a conference about digital tech, everyone's familiar, and we often get very excited, self-driving cars, AI, but I want you to look deeper than the kind of the glitz on the surface, because what is the digital economy made of? What is the digital economy made of?
05:41
It's made of information. When we talk about a digital economy, we really mean an information economy. And that's what digital technology creates. It's a technology that allows us to communicate, to send information, to send bits, to produce bits very easily, or more easily.
06:03
Now, how is this new and different? How is this a new world? Because, for example, when people invented the motor car, it replaced horses. That was a big change. And a lot of the time, I think we see the digital economy, the information economy,
06:21
simply as like it's faster, better, more. But there's actually something profoundly different about the information economy, which is costless copying. In an information economy, we can costlessly copy. That was not true in the old world.
06:42
So just to think again, to see that, to really see that, what is information if you think about it? Information is ideas. Right now, in theory, I'm sharing an idea from you, and the idea is going from my head, and it's getting costlessly copied into your brain
07:02
if this talk is going well. And right now, I can share that idea with the hundreds of people, or thousands of people, or tens of people in this room, over the internet, and it's just happening just like that. And you want to contrast this
07:21
with what we've been used to. Consider ideas or information versus cars. If I shared my car with everyone at this conference, I wouldn't get to use my car very much. When I share my car, I don't get to use it anymore, unless we happen to go to the same place.
07:41
When I share my shoes with somebody else, I go barefoot. But when I share an idea, I still have it, and suddenly you have it too. And the thing about the digital here is digital makes costless copying a reality at global scale.
08:01
Sure, I could always go and speak to people and have ideas copied between me, if you like, and the other person, but suddenly I can share my idea with six billion people at the click of a button. So what digital technology is doing is enabling truly an information economy, a new economy. We're making a new world
08:21
made of bits and ideas where we can share costlessly. Right? And it is profoundly different. It's not just like a car replacing a horse or industrial agriculture replacing hand-sewn fields.
08:41
It is a change in the very substance that allows us to costlessly share. You cannot costlessly share bread or steel, a house or a car. Now, do we need new rules for this economy?
09:00
Or will the old ones do? I want to explain what I mean by rules. I want to tell you another story. It's a story about St. Columba. St. Columba was a monk about 1,500 years ago. And St. Columba was very big
09:20
on sharing knowledge in the form of the Bible and other Christian knowledge. And he had a teacher called Phineon. And one day, Phineon traveled off to Rome. And this is in about the 6th century A.D., okay? So this is a long time ago in the Dark Ages. And Phineon travels to Rome and he comes back from Rome.
09:42
And what does he have? He has the first copy in St. Columba's country in Ireland of the Bible in Latin. The famous first translation of the Bible into Latin called the Vulgate, done by St. Jerome. And of course, St. Columba is so excited.
10:01
He rushes off to Phineon and says, hey, can I have a look at the book? Can I have a look at the Bible? Can I copy it and share it with others? And Phineon says, well, of course, St. Columba, you can have a look. But I don't want you copying it. It's my copy. I got it. And if people want to look at it,
10:21
they've got to come to me and they've got to read it here. And even though St. Columba really respects Phineon and really loves him, he was his teacher, he thinks this is wrong. He thinks it's so wrong to confine the knowledge that is in the Bible just to Phineon, just in this book that he's got, that he decides to violate his friend's trust.
10:43
And secretly, at night, he creeps into the church and copies the Bible out. But one night, Phineon catches him. And they have a huge argument. The argument is so big that they end up having to go
11:01
to the king of Ireland to adjudicate the decision. And the king makes this famous decision. He says, I don't know St. Columba where you get these fancy notions about being able to copy people's books. When you have a cow and it has a calf, if I own the cow, the calf is mine.
11:23
The same is true of books. To every cow it's calf, to every book it's copy. And this basic idea of translating the ideas of real property that has served us as humanity very well for thousands of years.
11:40
This stone axe was mine, this apple is mine, this piece of land is mine, and if it's mine, I get to do what I want with it. Which has served us very, very well. Got translated into this world of ideas and information. We turned real property into intellectual property.
12:03
Even though, as we know, information is different. So we took our old rules and we applied them to the new world, particularly in the last 400 years. As the information started to be important, as ideas, commercial ideas
12:20
started to be important in our society, we created intellectual property, we created copyright, we created patents, we expanded them, we applied them to more things. And we took our old rules that worked in the world of bread and of cows and applied them to books and software and ideas.
12:44
Now, maybe that works well. I mean, in general, it's not a bad idea. It's worked well before, it could work well in the future. It's a good idea to try and adapt what's working. And that's what we've been doing with intellectual property rights. And they've often had very beneficial effects. They've helped stimulate innovation in our world.
13:03
But what is the impact? I want us to look for a moment, what are the real impact of those old rules in a new world, in a world of the digital economy, where we can truly, costlessly copy with the whole planet?
13:21
And I want to look at this through the lens of Mr. Frisbee and his American dream. Mr. Frisbee is a real man. He was born in 1963 in rural Florida, just south of Tampa. At the age of 15,
13:40
he went to work in agricultural machinery business. He worked there for 30 years. In his late 40s, he left the business and started American dream welding and fabrication. And that, if you like, is very symbolic.
14:01
He started American dream welding and fabrication. He was repairing the American dream. And he's symbolizing that because his world is not working. His world is not working. Around him,
14:20
in the world he grew up in, the industrial sector is disappearing. The jobs he did are disappearing. The blue-collar sector is disappearing. It's declining in the United States. When the recession comes in 2009, he's really struggling. He goes from six employees to just two,
14:40
him and his stepson. His partner's daycare center goes bankrupt. The government's killing him with regulations, he thinks. He resents other people's success. Why are they doing OK when he's struggling? He resents immigrants. Because his world is not working.
15:04
And it might seem that this is worlds away from our topic. It's worlds away from what we're talking about here in the digital economy. But there is a coincidence, right? Because the rise of the digital economy
15:21
takes place exactly in his lifetime. When he is five years old in 1968, Intel is founded. When he is 12 years old in 1975, Bill Gates will drop out of Harvard to start Microsoft.
15:41
In 1978, when he goes to work at the agricultural equipment business, Steve Jobs and Wozniak will start Apple Computer in a garage in Silicon Valley. And whilst there is no direct connection,
16:00
we can't see a direct connection, there is a hidden connection. If we look, we can see a connection between those two things. Because essentially, his world is being impacted. The fact that tractors have computers, that Walmart can automate their inventory,
16:21
that you can ship stuff from China, isn't just a consequence of political decisions or free trade or immigrants. It's a consequence of the information economy. Walmart could not do what they did without the information economy.
16:41
Tractors wouldn't work without computers. The more and more of the value in our world accrues to information goods. Everywhere from what we consume to what we make.
17:01
Kids don't go and play in the streets anymore, right? They play video games. They consume information. We buy phones, we buy TVs, we buy films. And also, more and more of our work is in the information economy. Whether it's directly,
17:20
and we often focus just on the direct access, whether it's just software and high-tech, but even indirectly in advertising and financial service, the information-driven industries, and even in retail and agriculture. Look at my mother. Information is there. Our entire economy has shifted.
17:43
And in that economy, not only is Mr. Frisbee's job going so that he is one of the dispossessed, but there aren't new jobs. Instead, there are robots. There aren't new jobs. They're just robots and software.
18:01
And what is that? That is information. Now why, and more than that, more than that, it's not just that there are these new things, and hey, we could all have them and go to the beach, right? There's, hey, I've got a robot. It does my job. I can go to the beach now. That's not what the world looks like.
18:23
It's not like the time you bought a dishwasher and it replaced all that chore you did washing up dishes and it's just great. Because more and more of our world, more and more of our economy, more and more of the value is concentrated.
18:42
That wealth is incredibly concentrated in an information world. Because, and why is that? It's because of costless copying. Go back to the incredible thing about our information economy. It's costless copying. But think about it this way.
19:00
Suddenly you have someone with a robot. And the real value of that robot is its digital brain. And someone owns the IP in that digital brain and they can give a copy of it to everyone in the world with one click. They can share that with everyone, but they own it all. It's not like a world, in fact, when you bought things.
19:21
I said when you had this dishwasher, we had automation of some kinds before, but we got to own it. Instead, now we rent it at best. We rent those digital brains and someone owns them. And in this world, in essence, even when we buy, we're renting. And that brain is owned and controlled by someone else. Jeff Bezos runs Amazon.
19:42
Mark Zuckerberg can supply a social network for everybody on the planet. Sergey Brin can run a search engine for everybody on the planet. Bill Gates can give you an operating system for six billion people at the click of a button. It's not like the old world. In the old world, if I made apples,
20:02
I can't supply apples to everyone in the world. There are other apple farmers, but suddenly there's no need for more apple farmers. Once there's one good operating system, there's no need for others necessarily. At least it's very hard to have them. Look at your devices. Look in each vertical. Look at word processors. Look at social networks.
20:21
Look at messaging apps. There's only one or a few. And costless copying plus the old rules. Costless copying plus the old rules of the form of intellectual property gives us monopoly, right? And that monopoly leads to incredible concentration of wealth.
20:41
And I also want to emphasize, it's also not just the fact there's one supplier. It's the fact that every time Bill Gates makes a copy of Windows, it costs him nothing. All, everything that you then pay for that copy of Windows is profit essentially. It's not like an apple farmer. However good he is, he only makes a certain margin.
21:00
You have this extraordinary margin. And it leads to an extraordinary, unprecedented concentration of economic power and wealth. Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, we can go on. In 2016, eight people on this planet had as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent combined.
21:24
As the same, eight people had as much wealth as three and a half billion people. And of those eight billion, eight people, six of them were tech billionaires. You go back to when Mr. Frisbee was young in 1975, there wasn't one tech billionaire in the top rich list.
21:41
Costless copying plus the old rules gives us monopoly. And that creates this incredible gap for Mr. Frisbee. Since he grew up, inequality has massively widened in the United States. He sees his job disappear. He doesn't even really know why.
22:02
And at the same time he sees the few. People who are doing well, who are getting rich. Wall Street guys, high tech billionaires in California. And he gets angry and he's resentful. And that creates this incredible gap. And it's this incredible inequality gap
22:22
that is the motor for these great political shifts of our time. And so actually when President Trump gets elected, it's people like Mr. Frisbee who are angry and upset and dispossessed, it comes down to this information economy.
22:42
The biggest cause of Trump's election was the closed information economy running on old rules that has driven inequality like this for the last 40 years. That is what made Trump president. If you're worried about extremism,
23:00
you're worried about these things, look at the heart of the information economy. And it's not just about inequality. It's not just about inequality. The monopoly rights model of intellectual property has an impact on growth and freedom. People are now talking about secular stagnation where our economies won't grow as fast.
23:21
People worry about freedom. Let me just illustrate it quickly to you. Talk about freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of enterprise. Facebook is a monopoly. You don't really have a choice if you now want to be online and connect with people. And they get to decide what you post. And it's more than that. It's not just control over your freedom of speech in that way.
23:42
It's that Facebook and Google shape what you find and think. A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious journals in the United States, showed that by Google manipulating what you saw on a page of search results had enough impact on undecided voters to change most elections in the world.
24:06
That is an incredible concentration of social and economic power. And it's also having an impact on innovation. Because we think of these companies, Google and Facebook as beacons of innovation. And in a sense, they are.
24:21
The digital economy is pretty amazing. But actually, we want to look at the Kronos effect here. We want to understand that there's a limit to that. Kronos, if you know your Greek mythology, was the father of Zeus. And he had been told a prophecy
24:41
that one day his children would rebel and overthrow him and enslave him. So what did he do? He ate them. Every time he had a child, he ate the child. They lived in his stomach. And one day, Zeus escaped.
25:01
And while his father was sleeping, he cut him open and let out his children, and there was a huge rebellion and a fight, and it was true. The gods overthrew their parents. And that is what every monopoly company today lives in fear of. That one day, they will be eaten by their children.
25:21
Why does Facebook spend 23 billion on WhatsApp? Because they are afraid that WhatsApp will one day compete with them. These companies live in fear of the Kronos effect of being eaten by their children, and as a result, they suppress competition, they buy out companies, they act ruthlessly,
25:40
and it is damaging in a really profound sense to innovation in our economy and to the freedom of enterprise. Who today would you ever fund to go and start a company to compete with Google or with Facebook? No matter how good you were, there's no freedom of enterprise anymore. So to summarize, these old rules in a new world create huge problems.
26:03
They impact on inequality, on economic growth, and on freedom of thought and enterprise. They're generating spiraling inequality, social injustice, and economic stagnation, leading to exclusion, anger, extremism, and instability.
26:21
There is this deep connection between how we've structured the information economy and the other big political to start tsunamis that we're seeing of our time. So we need new rules. The old rules with this new economy are not working. We need new rules for a new world.
26:43
And a better world is possible. We've got stuck in our thinking. We just don't, when you talk to people, they just don't, oh, but this worked in the old world, property rights worked like this in this world. You know, they must work the same here. No, we've got stuck in our thinking. We need to create new institutions. We need to restore free markets and the freedom to innovate.
27:04
There aren't really free markets today. There are monopolies. We need to restore those and create true freedom of opportunity. We need to embrace the magic of costless copying, because what's so extraordinary is we suddenly have the ability.
27:20
It's like a world where food, imagine a world in the past where food could have been infinitely copied. No one would have gone hungry. Now in the world of information, we have that ability to share infinitely. We need to get the best of both worlds. We need to embrace that sharing. We need to create an economy that is dynamic and inclusive, and we can do that. We can do it by building an open information economy,
27:43
an open information nation where knowledge is freely and openly shared and innovators are recognized and rewarded by creating new institutional structures, new forms of rewards, new legal rights, ones that restore the market, restore the dynamism of our systems,
28:00
while also providing inclusiveness while leaving no one left behind, creating an economy of the many and not the few. We need new rules for a new world. If you want to combat extremism, you want to build a dynamic, inclusive economy that's vibrant and where everyone gets to share,
28:22
then we need to build an open world. We need to build an open information nation. Come join us, come join Open Knowledge, and come make the new rules for a new world. Thank you very much.
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