Overall, the synthesis of Serge - Serge Soudoplatoff at TEDxBordeaux
Translator: Elisabeth Buffard Reviewer: Denise RQ Good evening, after me, it will be the cocktail! Sometimes it's "after me, the deluge", but now, the cocktail comes next. It's a bit better, isn't it? Difficult to sum up. What have we been actually talking about today? What have you seen? You've seen people building the future. So TEDx is here, it's about the future. The future is terrifying because we're okay with the past. The past is over. It might not have happened the way we'd have liked it to, but we can't change it anymore. The future, we can still change it. So there are several ways to change the future. I see people reading the future in the stars, in cards. They expect a lot from chance. I don't trust chance. I only played lotto once in my whole life, I played 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 as a combination. You can't imagine how stunned the poor girl looking at this was, telling me sympathetically : "But sir, are you really playing that?" And I said, "Why not?" "But it will never get drawn!" (Laughter) So, I'm a mathematician as you all know. And this is as unlikely to get drawn as any other combination. As a mathematician, this is bugging me, because, so far, the girl is right! It has never been drawn. Well, maybe-- If it gets drawn one day, no matter if you say, "It's just painted lines", I'm quite sure half of the people will say "it's the end of the world". So that, that is one way. The other way, it's the future, and we have to build it. All those people you've seen today, they didn't read the cards, they've built the future. Building future is hard. It's about facing resistance, encouraging the world, changing it and to do so, you need a driving force. You can look for a lot of driving forces, and so on. Personnally, every single time I discussed with people building the future, I've always found the same driving force. It is called "desire". It's a very simple word. The energy required to change things originates in desire. So, desire is a word with a very, very beautiful etymology. Who knows the etymology of "desire"? It comes from the latin word "desiderare". "De" is a depriving prefix. And "siderare" comes from "sidus, sideris" meaning "star" and their combination made up the word "stellar". To desire is to be deprived of your star. Where does it come from? I think it comes from the fact that summer stars disappear during winter, and that winter stars disappear during summer. And so, in a way, the disappearance of stars, was linked to the season cycle, and to the wish to get the seasons back. So, when stars weren't there anymore, we desired them. There you go! And so... Wonderful. Desire is something that says, "I want to get the stars back". What does "get the stars back" mean? It means "I want to have them all at once" All of my stars together. To build the world, I want to get the stars back. How do you say all at once in latin? It's "cum" C - U - M. So, getting all of the stars back, it's "cum siderare", it is "consider". So, to build the world, you need to consider, you need to be considerate. That's how you can embrace all the stars. Desire as a driving force, consideration, I'd say, as a supporting driving force. Next, there is a very amusing distinction. How to build the future? You all know this sentence, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together" That's quite powerful. It is true that when you're alone, you needn't bother about constraints. You are a consultant. A consultant is not a high-ranking idiot in the Middle East, rest assured. (Applause) So, you go fast, I don't know if you go far, but you go fast. And then, when you're with several people, then you do go far, indeed. But being with several people has constraints, you have to take everybody's opinion into account, you have to make task groups, etc. What's interesting is when you look at the Internet world, or other worlds, you realise that you can go both fast and far. In mathematics, it is called group velocity, and phase velocity. How can we go both fast and far at the same time? Well, you reason together. I'll illustrate this with a very beautiful story I've read. 1998, Athletics World Cup, the women's 4x100-meter relay. The favorites were the Americans and the French. Analysis showed very clearly that the American's average speed was 7% higher than the French's average speed. So, you have 4 runners that are on average 7% faster. Who won? The French. Why? Baton passing. Because the Americans were giving it all, they were exhausting themselves, they were putting all of their blood into their legs. They were running very, very fast, when it was time to pass the baton, they had no energy left. While the French, they had kept enough energy to pass the baton.. And to put it simply, to win the race, what matters is not the runners' speed, it's the speed of the baton. From there, you enter another paradigm, that is, suddenly, there is a common objective, you have something in common that enables you to go fast. So what we all have today is: What can enable us to go from a sum of individual speeds to a collective speed? What can enable us to go from a sum of individual intelligences to a collective intelligence? It is called the Internet. That tool didn't appear all of a sudden out of sheer luck, enabling us to make that kind of alchemy come true eventually enabling us to go fast together. So the Internet is first the tool of the community. We really are in community models. Communities did exist long before the Internet. I mean, in France, the association networks are very powerful, It is not talked about enough. France is much more into a community spirit than everything the traditional media say about it. America is very much into communities. If you read Tocqueville, for the Americans, most of them it's my community that comes first, and then maybe my city. As for the State, it's getting complicated. As for the Federal State, the less I see it, the better I feel. Obama's issues and his social security reform, it is because the federal state has to be as far as possible. And it is the community that solves everything. I lived in California, and I saw the community mobilizing to bring out 120,000$ to heal a girl that had cancer. I don't give a judgment value, it is what it is. But you have a very good presentation of a free software. What's free built itself on a community. What's interesting is that you find other examples in history. You know that the Franciscan order had a lot in common with the free. Who are the Franciscans? They are people that escaped from the extreme catholic hierarchy that was getting very rich in the lead that withdraw from the world, that got organised in networks -- -- this enables them to build missions in California, that is to say 9 months of travel through Europe. And they are building a new world, where richness is based on flux and not on stock anymore. So, communities, they've always existed. And Internet is the tool that allow those communities to express themselves. How? Information sharing. You've been on chatting forum. But it is also a tool that allows savings to express yourself that is formidably more efficient. Based on the free, but not only. There is among all those chatting forums, an extraordinary forum, the primary school teachers forum. It is a teacher from the Reunion island that, few years ago, said: "The Department of Education doesn't give me the tools that I need. It's okay." He opened that forum. Today, it is 100.000 teachers that exchanged 3.7 million messages. I don't know if you can imagine, 100.000 teachers. Extraordinary messages 'how-to' messages here! Tomorrow, I have to give a speech on domestic dangers. Can anybody give me some tips? Well you know that... this forum economy, what is it? At that level, he pays 500 euros a month. What did he do? He set up a non-profit organization. It costs 2 euros each year. Only 3% of the members need to pay a contribution and he can have his forum. I don't know if you can imagine the savings Internet makes possible. It allows a community to express itself at an extremely low cost. But in contrast, with a richness of exchanges that is absolutely fabulous. So this economy is very simple. It is abundance savings against rarity savings that is inscribed in Internet genes from the beginning since the Kleinrock paper, on the communication packet protocol which says: "I don't use the telephone company protocol because it is based on rarity." When you call with your cellular phone, the bandwidth is yours. No one else can access it. It says: "I put my message in packets that go up on trucks that go on roads, and the road is a shared model." So obviously, the drawback is that you're loosing the global quality, that only a rarity model allowed. The advantage is that the costs are very low. Offers such as Triple Play at 30€ a month exist because we are in a sharing economy and an economy of abundance, not in an economy of rarity. So loosing the total quality... Oh, if you're negotiating a 10 million euros deal. Yes, I recommend you to put money in communications. But when it's about calling aunt Marcelle to wish her a Happy Birthday, you're glad it is crackling and going slow a little bit. "Yes aunt Marcelle, yes I can't hear you very well but I have to go now." And here it is, it's done. No need to pay too much to wish aunt Marcelle a happy birthday. But the second thing that Internet and community model allow, is creativity. We talked about Wikipedia. Wikipedia, probably the quintessence of Internet model. You all know Wikipedia. We all know it is as poor as Encyclopedia Brtannica. No problem, we are not going to argue about Wikipedia's quality. But what's interesting is the Wikipedia ruling. First, when there is a mistake, it is corrected 3 minutes later. Secondly, there's the history tab that enables you to follow each article's history Thirdly, there is the Discussion tab. You know, sometimes, when I browsed on Bordeaux, it is much interesting to read the argument on the Discussion tab about what must be written in the article about the city than the actual article on it. So I recommend the Discussion tab, you see, people fight fiercely. It is extraordinary! Another iinnovation: this article doesn't quote enough references, this article is incomplete, this article isn't neutral, this article is just a draft. Can you imagine a printed encyclopaedia that would say the same thing? And the last tab, which is extraordinary. It is not a tab, it's down on the left-hand corner. Have you noticed that often, there is a list of languages? This is not a translation, it is the article, the same article in another language's Wikipedia. Do you know how many languages there are in Wikipedia? 278. First language, English, 3 million articles. Second language, it surprises everybody, German, 1.2 million articles. Third language, French, 1.1 million articles. Fourth language, well, they're arguing about that. Two languages are overtaking each other. It is Italian and Polish. On the 13th position, you have Catalan, It's amusing. Then you have Uzbeck, Tajik, Comanche, Cheyenne. In other words, it is the first time in human history that Uzbecks, Tajiks, Comanches, Cheyennes, Fulas, and whatever rare languages are having their own encyclopedia in their own language that is not just another western encyclopedia translated. And I think that this is just the beginning of the revolution generated by Wikipedia. So this is creativity to express your creativity, yes, you need desire but also fun. And this is something that you can find very often on Internet. Fun. Fun, pleasure, laughter, this is something that you share. You know Bidochon. [He's a French comic] You've maybe read that extraordinary story about an organised trip, that takes place in Russia, you guess it, it is not said. And they are going from one church to another. And they are fed up with churches and everything. Hopefully, the day comes for an individual discovery. So they consult each other and then Robert Bidochon goes to see the guide and says: "Can we borrow the bus?" "The bus for the individual discovery?" And Bidonchon has that extraordinary answer: "Well, yes, individual discovery, it would be a shame not to do it together." Here it is, this is the Internet model. You make individual discoveries, together. And so, therefore, fun, what does it mean? It means we're seeing more and more things that are linking the left brain to the right brain. There is another forum that I really like. It is the "Thyroid" forum created by a woman who had thyroid issues, and did it all alone, by herself. She succeeded in creating an 11.000 members community! This is not bad! They've exchanged 300.000 messages. Only people with thyroid issues. This is extraordinary because left brain and right brain. this is packed with empathy and packed with seriousness at the same time. I remember, one day, a woman came on the forum and said: "I'm desperate, my thyroid issues are solved but my 18 year old daughter has just found out she got it too. I know this is a genetic issue." And you can imagine, when it happens to your daughter, it is worse than when it happens to you. The community mobilizes, but it is not cheap psychology. "Show us your analysis sheets and her analysis sheets." This is not about making a diagnosis. This is about comparing paths. This is almost alternating medicine. And so, people say: "Yes, we can see what happenned to her." "I've been there, she's going to make it through, etc..." And after a week, the daughter comes to the forum and says "Mom, I'm not angry with you." Openly and publicly. So, obviously, you can tell yourself: "Wow, where is privacy there?" No, no, in the Internet world, privacy disappeared. I'm going to give you the trick: it is intimacy that is preserved. So, don't fight any longer about public life, professional life, etc... All of this, it's in the same mix. On the other hand, you can notice that people keep for them their intimacy. This is the defence. This makes the difference. So at last, in the Internet world, this is it: there is pleasure, there is fun. I do believe in immersive environment a lot, in virtual worlds. You may call them "Second life", or whatever else, I don't care. Because those are places where you can work in collaboration and have fun at the same time. And this is extremly rare, to be able to work and have fun. But you can also do great things. There is a wonderfull project at Trousseau Hospital where kids that have had leukaemia on its last stage, that are therefore in sterile rooms were put in a virtual world and were talking with others via this media. Do you know that autistic people started to socialize again with the help of virtual worlds? This is quite interesting to see that this media has both sensorial and rational paths, Well, you can create in some way meaning and socialization. So in the end, this is what Internet is. This is something that enables every person you've seen today; to express themselves. Even if in Africa, that's true, they're lacking infrastructures, there is still an intriguing project, a Google project called "The Other 3 billion". Google, HSBC and I don't remember who else, that consists of setting a satellite network, not to have direct access to Internet in areas with none but to enable Internet service provider's emergence. And it is quite extraordinary to see that nowadays you have techniology to favor an ISP emergence everywhere in the world. And I am telling you, the big issue to be solved is to continue with the network. There is no point in getting interests, carring about services. Services, everybody is going to create them. We are in a co-creation process. On the other hand, the network, this is what we need to do, continue to build optical fibre network. And this is what's amazing in Internet world. It is a world that favors free entreprise, less State, but asks the States to take care of what's fundamental, which is constructing infrastructures. And in that sense, the last year Australian elections were extraordinary. Since it's the Independents that chose the Prime Minister, only on the following statement: Two independents that were in remote areas of Northern Australia, said: "We choose the Workers, because they have an investment program of 40 billion dollars in optic fibre. And we are convinced that this is what's going to open up our regions in the North." So, to finish, I am going to destroy a myth about Internet. Internet is for young people. And also, I am going to tell you about a lady named Rose. Maybe you've seen a district association, I don't remember which one, that is willing to promote help for elderly people and made a poster as sad as death. You can see Rose, she's sitting on her chair, curled up, Rose doesn't have any visitors, Rose eats in the morning but she's not hungry, Rose is driking her coffee but she doesn't have... Wow! I mean what the... This doesn't motivate me Okay. Maybe some Saints will go see Rose, I'm glad but it does not motivate me, I'm sorry, poor Rose, it's not just a picture, it does exist. And I am going to tell you about Ivy Bean. Who knows Ivy Bean here? Well, Ivy Bean is a British lady born in 1906, who lived an ordinary British lady life. Except that Ivy Bean, in 2008, at 102 years old discovered Internet and joined Facebook. And she became the oldest person on Facebook. After one year, she's a bit sad because she has 4895 fans, which is the maximum on Facebook. So she turns to Twitter. And poor Ivy Bean died in june 2010 at the age of 104, with more than 5,000 Facebook friends, 58,000 followers on Twitter. Well, you see, in the Internet world, you can discover Internet at 102 years old and die at 104 years old and being an Internet star. In the end, we have the future in front of us. Thank you. (Applause)