From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
BitTorrent is the first time in history that people found a way to make decentralised infrastructure work better and more efficiently than centralised. Transferring files through BitTorrent is 100-1000% faster than centralised infrastructure.
The moment that really stuck with me was during the Egyptian revolution of 2011. Before Mubarak steps down, he turned the internet off for five days. And that was kind of a moment where it was like, wow—actually, in this hyper-technological world we live in, states can control it in ways they couldn't control printing presses or other forms of written technology as easily.
Politicians, by and large, don't understand technology at all, and technologists don't understand politicians—and both tend to denigrate each other. The technologists in Silicon Valley see politicians as venal, short-term, and ignorant, while politicians view technologists as rapacious capitalists who will stop at nothing to beat their rivals and lack any ethical compass.
There are a lot of people who misuse social media and then they pay the price for it. These individuals and groups are hunting for people to make mistakes, take embarrassing videos and show the world.
The second big change I foresee is the continued convergence of the complex OTC derivatives market and the exchange traded futures and equity options market. Those lines will continue to blur due to regulation, legislation, increased capital and margin requirements, increased requirements for trade reporting, and increased pre and post trade price transparency in OTC markets.
The key lesson I have learned from looking at 600 years of technological controversies is that human history is a footnote on the tensions between innovation and incumbency.
Social media was kind-of created to destroy humanity, in a literal sense. The first notion of the implications of such networks was provided by B. F. Skinner who spoke of the dangers of people who- on networks- were too free, too creative and too uncontrolled.
Older generations give their trust to experts and influencers based on who and what: credibility, qualifications, and institutional affiliations. Younger generations, by contrast, trust based on how someone makes them feel. And you can manipulate that incredibly effectively in 15 seconds of video: the music, the mood, the atmosphere.
Today's civilisation is more fragile as a result of its complexity. We've created an astonishingly networked world in which we communicate and travel in ways which were unimaginable for most of human history... The story of modernity is a story of scientific advance – but in reality, with every step forward, we're taking half a step backward in terms of making ourselves more fragile.
We cannot think about technology in confrontational terms. There is no race against the machines, there is no fight, no war. We have to end this long, historical confrontational narrative.
From a global point of view, we are currently in the middle of a technical revolution similar to what our grandparents experienced when everybody switched their horse carts for cars. The same is happening now and it is a phase of transition for many businesses.
It is precisely because of all those years of anticipating and designing for failure that they are alive today.