Last night I gave a speech to a meeting of the Information Assurance Advisory Council, the UK’s talking shop for government, law enforcement, security services, and private companies around the issues of cybersecurity and the like. The whole thing was under the Chatham House rule, so it’s hard to write about, and most of the audience could have me killed. But here’s the speech I gave. As I say at the beginning, it’s very rare that I give a speech verbatim like this, but I had some very specific points to make.
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“This evening I am going to be break a habit of a lifetime, and use a prepared speech. Ordinarily, I come up on stage and have slides, and videos, and talk about geopolitics and killer robots and the future of the web.
But tonight I’ve brought a written speech because I want to make a lot of points very carefully, and because you’re all rather scary. The Q&A afterwards will be more relaxed.
So.
So, Hi. As Sir Edmund said, I’m a journalist, and technologist, and a writer and advisor to people. I’m a knowledge worker. I manipulate symbols for a living. To use the old phrase, I’m a futurist, and as the Californian thinker on such things, Kevin Kelly, recently wrote, Futurists have a dilemma, he said, as “Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable.”
So I won’t be making that many predictions tonight. You’d never believe me. Instead I’ll try to describe the world as I see it from my own experience. In the words of the author William Gibson, “the future is already here, just not evenly distributed”. I’m going to try to fix that a little before the dinner gets cold.
Now, earlier this year I give a speech in Geneva, where I painted a picture – perhaps an unfair one – of the world being split down the middle. Those who grew up before the cold war, and those who grew up after.
My theme that day was that the world is currently run by a generation whose upbringing has left them intellectually unable to be deal with modernity.
This isn’t their fault. For someone to be in charge today, they’re more than likely to be in their 50s or 60s. Which means that when the Berlin Wall fell they were most likely already steeped in an intellectual tradition that had bedded in quite far.
But what happened after 1989 was, as we all know, devastating to that tradition. The end of the bipolar world – the end of history as Fukuyama had it – and the end of the relevance of 50 years of political and military planning.
Instead, things got weird. Germany was reunited in 1990, and a few weeks later, on Christmas Day, the first web server was turned on. Nearly 21 years later, and the internet has destroyed and rebuilt everything it has touched. Hierarchies have been under attack from networks for 20 years now. History certainly didn’t end, much to everyone’s disappointment.
We all know this. Everyone in this room has seen it happen, and from beautiful vantagepoints. Indeed, everyone in this room is probably of the generation of the people I’m talking about.
You’re all the same age, and upbringing, as the people that the digital generations are so upset with. Don’t take it personally, but your peers are the sorts of baby-boomers that have been entrusted with the future, while they are obviously so deeply confused by the present.
That’s fighting talk, I know, but looking around, I think I might be ok this evening. You’re all quite smart.
Now, personally, I’m one of those terrible half-breeds. I’m 35, and so sort of third-digital-native, third-pathfinder. And despite the silly moustache and the tattoos, I’m also third-establishment – The Times, the Guardian, the BBC, Downing Street this afternoon, the FCO next week. UN fellowship, and the odd visiting lectureship, RSA, RGS and Chatham House. I may not look like, or even be, a good establishment man, but I can fake it.
So, I’ve given myself a job. I’ve taken it upon myself to be the translation layer. The guy who tells the older guys what’s going on with the younger guys, and explains to the younger guys why the weird decisions the older guys are coming up with are being made.
And I look around here and I see people who do the same thing. This is good.
In the time of revolution, and believe me this is a revolution – easily on a par with the renaissance, or the Enlightenment – the translator has a very important role to play. The communicator, the person who makes the facts palatable to all sides, is the only conduit through which real change can be made.
And in this room today, there are nearly 100 of us.
So this evening, let me help us remind ourselves of the facts at hand: As it’s only through remembering the fundamental truths that we can really do our jobs.
So let’s start at the basics, and work on up.
First. Moore’s law. You all know it: the rule of the thumb that has computing power doubling for the same price every 18 months. It makes planning really difficult. Mostly because people don’t see its relentlessness.
For example, a two term Prime Minister today would end his term of office with an iPhone 64 times as powerful as the one he won the election with. (Or the same thing, but 1/64th of the price.) His policies, therefore, need to written with that future in mind, not the present. Good luck with that.
Another example: a civil servant only gets to do really good stuff in their 40s. If they’d joined up straight out of Oxford, by the time they get a big chair, their desktop machine will be 1000s of times as powerful as when they joined.
The same goes for storage, for network speed, and so on, as you know.
This is all obvious for us, yes, but Truth Number One, is that anything that is dismissed on the grounds of the technology-not-being-good-enough-yet is going to happen. We have to tell people this.
Fundamental Truth Number two is that the internet is the dominant platform for life in the 21st century.
We can bitch about it, but Facebook, Twitter, Google and all the rest are, in many ways the very definition of modern life in the democratic west. For many, a functioning internet with freedom of speech, and a good connection to the social networks of our choice is a sign not just of modernity, but of civilisation itself.
This is not because people are “addicted to the video screen”, or have some other patronising psychological diagnosis. But because the internet is where we live. It’s where we do business, where we meet, where we fall in love. It is the central platform for business, culture, and personal relationships. There’s not much else left.
To misunderstand the centrality of these services to today’s society is to make a fundamental error. The internet isn’t a luxury addition to life; for most people, knowingly or not, it is life.
And this way we live online brings us to the Fundamental Truth Number Three: That technology changes our expectations of each other.
I collect these changes. I really like them. There are lots. A good example is about phone numbers. You might remember a time – I kinda do myself – where a phone number represented a place. That might be a hallway in a house, or a desk in an office, but it was a place – and there was a understanding that someone might not be at that place when you called.
Weirdly, you used to be able to call people and find them in a strange state of being “not in”. Schrödinger would have proud.
Now, of course, a phone number is a person. If you call my number, whereever I am on the planet, more or less, I will answer the phone. Tomorrow I’ll be in Amsterdam, and Friday I’ll be in Athens, but that doesn’t matter.
Call me. I’ll answer, partly because you all seem nice, but also because not answering one’s phone has gained a completely new social significance over the past few years. If you’re “not in” now, something may well be up.
The point is that this switch of the meaning of phone numbers, from place to person, has created a complete change in social behaviour. New technology does that. It creates new norms.
A newer example is that young children consider televisions to be broken. Why doesn’t the touchscreen work? Why can’t you pause things? Where, if we’re being old fashioned, is the mouse? No Angry Birds means it’s broken.
These are gross examples, but there are more subtle ones.
Let’s take opinion. In about ten short years, we’ve gone from there being only a specialist class of people who could have opinions, to it being a standard feature of modern life.
Ten years ago, your verdict about the meal in front of us could only have been shared with a few – your neighbours, your friends, your partner. The only opinion that mattered, that would have travelled, would be the professional critic’s, distributed in print.
The same goes for theatre, or television, music, or our views on the Prime Minister. Now, of course, there is a place to review everything.
We assume that every meal we eat, every hotel bed we sleep in, every piece of culture we consume, is something we can have an opinion on, and have it be given the same importance as an opinion from anyone else. There are rating sites online for you to rate just about anything, legal or not, and the sheer weight of amateur reviews outdoes the professionals for authority most of the time.
It’s another example of a network beating a hierachy, and it’s all pervasive in the national discourse. We are used to having our opinions matter, and so now, at the one end, politics is more shrill – more rabble-like – and at the other end, we have rioting.
Indeed, a small part of the trigger for the London riots can be understood as the gap between the respect given to peoples’s opinions by the internet, and the complete disrespect given by the government and the ruling elites.
In this way, we are undergoing a renegotiation of the social contract because of the internet, and the data up on it. We have become more empowered, more self-actualised. We know what we create simply by existing, and we know its value.
So, more than our opinions, we are used to, in fact, having our data matter.
Don’t be surprised at my meaning of “the social contract” here. People are more sophisticated in their understanding of media than you may think. We know what it means when a service is given to us for free: it means we’re the ones who are being sold. And that’s cool.
The handwringing about teenagers exposing themselves on Facebook is based on the idea that they don’t know why Facebook is so keen on that happening. Far from it.
We understand the value of our data, we have done the sums and we judged ourselves in profit. If advertisers want to know my preferred brand of whisky, or be allowed access to my travel schedule, and these disclosures gets me Facebook for free, with all its associated social utility and delights, then fine. Fair play.
The same for Tesco Clubcard, or Amazon recommendations, or whatever. We sell our data in return for a better world, and we do understand what we’re doing.
But this leads us to the next big social change. Just as we expect to be able to express an opinion – there is a growing expectation of being able to access all the other data in our world.
Let’s take architecture and public transport. I can easily monitor the public transport in London from my phone – and it actively changes the way I use the city. I make routing decisions in realtime, based on realtime data from public services.
This is not just simply cool. It’s a expectation I have to be able to do it. After all, I’m entirely used to giving people my data to improve their systems. I’m simply now expecting people to give me their data to improve my life. The freeing of public data over the past ten years has been driven by geeks, it’s true, but their arguments were merely foreshadowing a general shift in the mindset of the population at large.
The you-show-me-yours-I’m-already-showing-you-mine deal is the next big movement. Nevermind government league tables: we want everything.
We expect everything. And we expect it on our own terms.
I’ve been working through the social evolution of these technologies in this humanistic way for a simple reason. I need to make the point that this technology isn’t a removable part of life. It is ever more interwoven both into the practicalities of our lives, as well as our very mindsets.
Mindsets are good to talk about. You’re all security people, and next week is the anniversary of the event which made security people completely lose their minds: 9/11.
– Well, just as I’m empowered by the internet to be a restaurant critic, I’m also empowered to be critic of national security. So bear with me –
The government, and the security industry, in this country and elsewhere, have spent the past ten years really blowing it. Time and time again there has been a demonstration of security theatre, or overreaction, or overstatement of the risks in hand. From liquids in airports to invading Iraq, no one believes this stuff any more.
While there is no doubt that religious extremism, whatever the religion, has presented a risk to life, that threat has been so overstated as to render any other warnings, on any other subject – including the one in hand today – completely impotent.
A world where Al-Qaeda can be described by the government as an existential threat to the UK, when it is patently not, is a world where warnings about updating your virus scanner because of Chinese cyberwarriors or Russian mafia will be ignored as yet more paranoid security bullshit.
Despite the fact that it probably isn’t.
What’s worse, is that the phrase “security precautions” has become a synonym for “pointless annoying thing to do because politicians are either stupid or oppresive”.
This is bad. But it’s a very common belief. The speeches given after the London riots, about closing social networks down in times of national emergency were triply stupid in this respect.
1. They disregarded the centrality of those services in people’s lives, which made people look out of touch with modernity.
2. They were technically dubious (which pretty much everyone who would have been affected well knew),
3. They reinforced the impression you get when you go through an airport, that this is all self-justification.
In total it both makes one both feel less secure, and be less secure.
Your challenge, then – your challenge as an industry – is to communicate the risks and threats we face, and the measures and trade-offs we can make, in a way that removes yourselves entirely from the framing of the past ten years. The internet equivalent of making everyone take our shoes off at the airport won’t work.
In fact, given that the efficacy of Richard Reid as a terrorist didn’t depend on his being able to detonate his shoe at all – as arguably the downing of that flight would not have lead to the years of airport hassle and distress for millions of people – and simply in using our own overreaction against us, I’d be willing to take a bet that this sort of judo move would be something Anonymous would do, as they say, simply for the lulz.
So we need to work on ways to communicate these issues both up and down. It’s a design problem. A branding problem. It needs skills you find in advertising, or luxury goods, or pop music, not in politics or the military or espionage. And we need to educate. Not only in schools – though as Eric Schmidt of Google pointed out last week in Edinburgh, the state of IT education in this country, from primary school on up, is shameful – but also our political class. How many policy debates have you heard, from security to copyright reform, that have been predicated on technical ignorance? This is a threat to national prosperity itself far more severe than any terrorist organisation could ever be.
It remains, in too many circles, a matter of pride not to be able to programme the video recorder. That’s pathetic.
But more to the point, we have to decide what sort of country we want to live in.
As the 21st century sees us move every aspect of our lives onto the internet, the need for robust security measures is very great. But those security measures come with their own risks, and we need to draw a line in the sand.
What are we protecting, if the protection itself means we become, in some small way, a police state?
Despite the 9/11 anniversary, AQ isn’t an existential threat. Neither, really, are the Chinese.
But your industry, and the authorities you advise, might be. Not through malice, but simply through not understanding the place in society that data has taken.
So my message to you this evening, is simple. While we have Q&A over pudding, while you have your day tomorrow, and every day from then on, remember that we are living through the greatest revolution ever seen in the potential for human achievement and human connection. We can ruin it at birth, or we can nurture it. And one day, in decades to come, we’ll be asked about these years, and what we did at the birth of the internet era. The decisions you make today and tomorrow, will be the answer you will give to your grandchildren. Make it an answer you can be proud of.
I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
As an American currently sitting in Korea and reading this talk to the Information Assurance Advisory Council I want to say thanks for the inspiration and being that translation layer which is desperately needed for all of us.
This is so wonderfully put — I only hope the people you spoke to take the same ideas forward!
I am not articulate enough to express how exceptional this is.
Bold. Brilliant. Grand work, Ben.
Such clarity and sense. Thank you.
[applause]
The basis for mutual disclosure between govts. and populations is being renegotiated; the danger lies in not knowing that it’s happening.
Thanks Ben for a very stimulating and challenging talk. Good to get a copy of your script and it certainly stimulated a few questions.
Nicely done.
Brilliant! Your words eloquently describe the way many feel, but haven’t been able to craft into such clarity.
Yes, yes, yes.
Well written, and well said. Amidst all the security theatre and over-reaction plaguing many governments and systems, this speech is a breathe of fresh air. Level-headed and compelling, I think more than just the people you spoke to need to hear/read this.
Ben,
Awesome speech! Well done! Let’s see if they “get it” actions speak louder than words so I’m looking for changes now! But with the dinosaurs that weren’t there these things will no doubt take time to sink in.
Keep it up!
Sarah
A great speech with THE ONLY caveat being around the “We sell our data in return for a better world, and we do understand what we’re doing.”
Having spent time with secondary, college and university students over the last couple of years discussing this area it is painfully obvious that for their generation the understanding is at best basic, at worst non existent.
For some the reality is a horrid shock, for others merely an affirmation that the generation in control really are just taking the piss a lot of the time.
Political reform to cope with the new world order is essential BUT organisation reform, especially in the morality and ethicacy (?) of how business interacts with consumers is every bit a challenge.
Some interesting points – mainly “pointless annoying thing to do because politicians are either stupid or oppressive” but as someone born in 1952 “world is currently run by a generation whose upbringing has left them intellectually unable to be deal with modernity” I just don’t agree – it’s a broad sweep too far.
You’ve identified and expressed the ill-formed and nebulous notions flitting around in my head and nailed them to the door, and many more I’d never considered. I’ll be referring to this again and again.
Wonderfull.
perhaps…
“Make it an answer they will be proud of.”
Great speech with some excellent points. But I agree with BarneyC, I actually think there’s a massive disconnect in terms of people’s perception of the cost of “free” services like Facebook and Google. You’re spot on that we are the ones being sold – we’re the suppliers, not the consumers – but I think this not at all well understood, especially by the young.
What’s your translation on the Baby Boomer’s climate change legacy for their grand-children, does it trump internet?
I sort of agree with Richard, it might be a broad step, but as a person born in 1978, it certainly feels true to me. Granted my dad was born in the 40′s and he seems perfectly capable (i may have a bias) but he was also always a computer and ham radio person, and that is the mindset that is now seemingly the norm rather than the exception. The only difference I would say is perhaps my seeming ability to rely on disruptive change rather than well, I just I don’t know I guess, but it seems that whenever something “really crazy” happens, the older generations get in a fuss, but I seemingly yawn a lot at this point.
Shit – I am 5 years older than you
Great speech.
Mmmm, thought provoking and fascinating. I can think of quite a few opinion formers I’ll share this with in order to open their eyes. So Ben thanks for sharing the text of your speech with ‘your’ public!
As refreshing as it is to see a fellow translator pierce the shroud of techno-political conditioning, the issue of revolution remains layered in (ironically traditional) Zen Buddhism. When you dig for the core problem of paradigms and the actions that flow from it, it eventually comes back to one thing: attachment. There is an inherent desire to see reality as fixed, ignoring not only the fallacy of such a statement (7 billion people means 7 billion different views), but arrogantly reinforcing it with naive actions to back it up. Fear is the main drive in all of this. Fear of change, which is the true nature of our existence fed by an ignorance as a by-product of our lack to accept and keep up with an ever-changing world. The very institutions of state, religion and culture feed this ignorance and as we see now are in popular decline as a result of the Internet revolution. Regardless of the form of Internet and it being technological (these are just tags), it does aid the human potential and desire to connect on a level playing field. It defies hierarchy, because deep down we know that despite us playing out 7 billion little dramatic plays, we are essentially all the same. From breathing the same air and being born and dying at one point to the core root of all our desires: to be accepted and accept in return. What to do with this security wise? Perhaps support it with policy, maybe just sit back and watch it regulate itself or maybe take a breather, go home to your loved ones and re-assess what your role in life is all about when all the non-essential falls to the side. Good luck and peace.
@BarneyC, @Pete Lewis: While this is certainly true for the generation you’re talking about, in my experience it’s absolutely not for the younger generation. Today’s kids and teenagers are very conscious about their use of the Internet. If they seem ignorant about it, it’s only because they are lax.
Tremendously put!
The internet is the means to an end not an end in itself. The end is the information and sometimes knowledge it provides. My coworker just now popped in to show me his new app for downloading his boarding pass to his i-phone. Very happy for him but frankly so what- is it really a better world because he can do that? And to be honest I could care less that I now know what my third cousin had for breakfast this morning or why she chose black shoes instead of brown for work. My kids process data at a rate exponentially greater than mine as evidenced by my inability to successfully compete on Halo Reach but I worry that there is more time spent processing and sorting the great volumes of instantaneously available data than there is actually thinking about and finding real solutions to the types of security challenges described in your speech. In some respects the knee jerk reaction of cutting off the internet in response to the London riots is driven by the perception that people expect instanteous, sound-bite solutions to complex problems. An expectation created by the immediacy of information and connectivity available through the internet.
With modern means of super-fast communication it is the political class, which requires a more extensive training in downloading their views to the public-at-large without keeping too many secrets to themselves.
This is true for almost all the countries in the world, whether it is India, the USA or Europe etc. But governments would ever like to withhold communication, whether necessary or not, for fear of any repression or uprising from down below.
It is doubtful even if the the modern youngsters form a government – whether they would be any different! What with all their exposure to the Internet!!!
I hope you read this from a tablet.
Very well done.
[Directed here from Neil Gaiman's blog!]
As a young person of that ‘digital native’ generation (though perhaps only just), I do agree that your translator role is an important one. Not only do our senior generations not necessarily understand young people’s use of the internet or how we really think of it, but many if not most young people are incapable of articulating what they take as natural and obvious. It’s hard for us to see just how revolutionary much of our lives are.
Barnstorming! I’m a similar age to you, and find myself in the “translator” role. I’m also an elected politician (local government level). Dealing with people who “just don’t get it” can be frustrating as all hell. When I take my now ancient iPad 1 into meetings with civil servants and establishment types, I still get some who treat it as if it’s some sort of future tech that fell through a wormhole from an advanced and terrifying civilisation which they will never be able to understand. Your video recorder comment was spot-on; there are too many people who pride themselves in their wilful ignorance, and too many of these people are in a position to make decisions which will mess with us all.
Excellent piece of work.
It’s helped to pin down that sense of unease that is pervading everything at the moment – I’ve been pondering the subject of motivation throughout society and this has helped me see the gaps, especially the one between the previous generation trying to comprehend the current one.
Your comments on security put me in mind of a quote, by of all people, the Marquis de Sade: “Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.” I keep this at the front of my mind when I read the daily news.
Like Pete Lewis, I wholeheartedly agree with BarneyC, in dealing with students and those in their early 20-somethings, it is clear that they have a very basic understanding of what it is they are giving away and what it is they are getting. To expand on the point, they are not thinking about this exchange in an entirely holistic way–to clarify, as you’ve posed it, they are only thinking a/b these matters as a material exchange of ‘free’ and not in the intellectual and certainly not in the exchange of socio-political or economic power and the impact it has. I believe many of them still maintain an idealized notion that that exchange provides an arena where they get free stuff, without a full appreciation that they are commoditizing themselves and getting little in return for it.
The other comment I have is one that ignores that the very tool Gaiman believes the older generation is ignoring was created by that generation. While there may be the underestimation of what we’ve wrought and our creation, I think it is an oversight to or underestimation to ignore that the internet and the trading in data was created by the generation of people whom he is criticizing. In short, I think we are all in a state of trying to figure out its true power and what it means to and for the evolution of our societies (acknowledging this whole discussion is a v. european/american, privileged and entitled pov).
Sorry, to be so long winded, but one last comment is what I think is a major oversight in his analysis. While I largely agree with much of what he’s stated, I feel the lack of an analysis of power in all of this. Again to clarify, there is an assumption that the powers that be–the men in black, the men in dark smoky rooms, the shadow powers of the world are not aware of his analysis. I think there is a failure to consider, at least in this speech, that the security community and those who are ultimately in charge of these mechanisms, are not aware of the points he’s making and that at the end of the day, we are all being played and these are deliberate distractions so that power preserves itself–which is its ultimate goal. So while we are talking around the superficial layers of these issues, the fundamental issues of who dictates what we do, how we do it, who gets what resources and who doesn’t, etc. is still not ultimately questioned, addressed or changed.
Masterful. Wonderful. Big thumbs up from this quarter. Politicians and their hangers on are starting to realise that we are in control, and it scares them to death. Unfortunately, I think that means that they will try to tighten their grip on the flow of information, not change their approach and ideals.
I think that what is missed in cases like shutting down the social media during the riots was that those media are not only the means through which chaos is incited, they are also the media through which the champions of order communicate and enable a social response. It isn’t as dramatic as police in riot gear, but if those you expect to support and inform you, instead denigrate and chastise you, it has a much greater impact. Being beaten or arrested further angers rioters and sets them up as having a cause. Being told their friends and families are ashamed of them and are prepared to support them in positive steps to right wrongs, is a much more beneficial outcome for all concerned.
Cutting them off was extremely foolish, and a stunning example of the Old Guard’s tone-deafness to the possibility of non-hierarchical, technology and society based, solutions.
Great speech. I think the core of your argument/presentation is that in addition to 7 billion people/7 billion realities, the over 50/under 50 generations have completely different “Givens” in their make-up, i.e. the core structure of our beliefs about life. Therefore we have to be able to step inside someone else’s shoes or look through their eyes if we want to really communicate.
Exceptional.
Great piece, mr Hammersly, thanks. Will share it on Google Plus. Thanks again for inspiring us translators. As you put it (also) well in Amsterdam:
” But we have a responsibility. The responsibility is that, as sad as it is to realise it: we’re the grown-ups now. Four years ago, we could go on about being innovative and cool and disruptive and “yeah! – we’re just gonna fuck it up – whew!”.
The thing is: we’re in charge now. When you look round the people who think they’re in charge – they really don’t know how the world works anymore. And we’re the next people down on the list.”
It’s a heck of a responsibility, but I’ll try. Thanks.
True inspiration comes in the form of the unexpected. I am sure the IAAC would have felt that when hearing this and to your point above, it coming from the sort of unexpected face they wouldn’t have imagined could deliver this rousing talk.
It is, like you say, a genuine challenge laid down to each one of them. A challenge for them to create a better understanding for themselves, a challenge to not forget the meaning behind our interaction with technology, and also to show that ostensibly technology + human nature = evolution.
Of course this isn’t always the case and it is a subject that deserves incredibly rich debate, something the IAAC themselves should listen to. Needless to say, this feels like a manifesto for the future. Excellent stuff.
A superb piece of writing.
Excellent stuff. My only comment would be to disagree with your contention that “The internet isn’t a luxury addition to life; for most people, knowingly or not, it is life.”
I think this is an over-exaggeration of the significance of the online space. We shouldn’t forget that people post restaurant reviews because they like eating, watch youtube because they want to play the guitar better and join dating sites because they like kissing other humans.
Real life will always win, for all but the most insane anoraks. The Internet just gets us there faster.
Lovely stuff. But (in the words of many advertising clients) what exactly are you asking us to do?
Something about a need for “better communication and education.” Something about “deciding what kind of country we want to live in”. Some equally hard-to-argue-with stuff about “fear leading to the dark side.”
I’m completely on board with all this stuff – but as a fully paid-up member of the liberal technical elite* I would be, wouldn’t I?
*They called – it seems you’re late with your dues?
Excellent speech. I could have written much of it, wish I had. I’m one of the people that don’t quite fit your groupings – born in 1943, but started work in the computer industry in 1965. Ancient Geek, radio ham, software engineer, social networker, first used the Internet (then the ARPAnet) in 1979.
I remain forever astonished at how politicians who are younger (often much younger) than me get all of this stuff so horribly wrong. Particularly on security theatre (“being seen to do something about it”). So they make us take our shoes off. I predicted the next horror – exploding underpants. Unfortunately, I said it publicly – guess what happened next.
Keep up the good work, Ben, we need you.
great article – but I also agree with those comments above regarding the ignorance of many users of social media with regard to what is happening with their data. Teenagers that I talk to have no idea what Facebook does with all their data – they are also ill educated about the privacy issues surrounding their accounts.
Talk about “speaking truth to power”. I am also a translation layer / translator, and plan to refer to this speech often.
Mind if I call you “Captain Hammersley” ?
Lovely. Searingly on the nose. Uncomfortable for many.
Very V for Vendetta. Perhaps you should start distributing some masks en masse.
Some of us old folks managed to grow up with Moore’s Law even before the Internet was called the Internet, expecting a deeply connected world where a planet was a small place, and frustrated that it wasn’t happening fast enough.
It’s still not happening fast enough. There’s a huge pushback from established organizations, including some of the ones that are responsible for the revolution, trying to keep control of their customers. Particularly in the USA.
I recently had to send my daughter a new mobile phone because she couldn’t get hers working again after a hard reset, because the producer had put a layer of software on it that locked her out of her own phone unless she jumped through a set of hoops. All it would do was receive calls. This was intolerable to me… her phone, fully paid for, and she couldn’t use it… but it seems to be OK with Motorola, and Apple, and T-Mobile, and AT&T.
Good talk. I’d like to draw attention to one thing: the division is not one of age. Somewhere above 50, your preamble would put me (and most of my cohort) in the same bracket as those you were addressing, whereas my opinions fit far more closely with your own. Importantly, there are people much younger than me who have been brought up to think in terms of physical politics rather than information. So it’s a matter of culture, not age. We need to get the message across to this cultural cross-section regardless of age, because the current rulers are likely to pass the baton to people in their own mould.
absolutely spot on, except the last paragraph.
the issue is not “what we did at the birth of the internet”, but more ‘you lot need to learn to let go of power gracefully, like the British Empire. Your time of greatness has passed, and a new Spring is upon you. Walk away quietly into the long grass of evening’. or something like that.
because the network has its own authority.
Personally I dislike the world you are presenting. Whilst having “real time” data at your finger tips can be useful, the luxury on anonymity is beguiling.
Lucas once said “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
I suspect a whole sub culture will be created revelling in disconnectedness and the reality of living, whilst the benign city dwellers examine their screens and consume. Your status in this brave new world would be based on how totally connected to the establishment you could be whilst remaining ruthlessly anonymous.
I know where I will be.
Wonderful speech and beautifully constructed.
Good job Hammertown! Nice one. Wondering:
Over the tea and biscuits, what were the questions like? What was the reaction?
What an excellent narrative. I think the most important comment is, “… given that the efficacy of Richard Reid as a terrorist didn’t depend on his being able to detonate his shoe at all – as arguably the downing of that flight would not have lead to the years of airport hassle and distress for millions of people…” The powers have seized on this to maintain the ‘cold war fear’. We have to be frightened of AQ and the Chinese. It keeps us from taking time to thinking about what is going on and why. How much money has been squandered on maintaining our fears that could have been spent on teaching us to use the video recorder?! How much of our attention was diverted to the ‘cold war’ being perpetrated by the ‘investment banking’ industry developing vast markets in synthetic instruments? Ben – I have only become aware of you but shall be following you with positive interest.