20160627 OSCAR TAG

One of the best ways of talking about what was so not just exciting but human about the web the Internet overall but the web in particular, was that we could talk about what was interesting to us, which meant what we cared about, what mattered to us. We now could reclaim in a public space. The web allowed this reflection of our interest, not the interest of well intentioned media, or corporate entities that maybe not so well intentioned, but wanted to serve our interests which would be their interests as well. This was the place in which for the first time the world as a whole could express and engage with people around what we actually cared, which is in many ways entirely different from what the corporate world would like to think we care about what they want us to care about. And the same for the media. The issue when it comes to the question of the good and what’s useful to you, to us as a collective, we don't agree about that. There is no agreement, we can see this now, literally we can see it on the net we can see that people are interested in crazy things and things that are self-destructive from our point of view, things that are stupid, things that are trivial. The web allows us to express and pursue our interest, no matter how stupid or self-destructive, they may seem to us. One of the things we seem to have in common is that we are an interest-based species, we have interests, and these interests are hugely important to us, the world matters to us it matters to each of us differently. Now we can only see that it matters to each of us differently, we can explore how it matters to someone differently. The ancient attempt to discover what is good and to get us to care about it maybe premised on a notion that there is a thing that is good that we all humans can agree on, - Which is what? - Just being on the internet shows maybe there isn't, maybe there is a billion different ways of being, of having things matter to us. We look at these people as someone who is already acting, behaving, believing, having habits, having beliefs, ok? Something that has been already shaped by their own lives, by the society, and we know that behind society behind our lives there are people trying to control us somehow, no? To make us buy. And as a marketer I think to know quite well how the bad marketing works to make people buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like. And now the web is an extremely powerful weapon that, if it goes in the wrong hands. I’m a bit scared as a citizen, as a father of the way that someone might use it. I’d like to see it as something neutral somehow, then I'm wondering if it is possible to consider the web neutral somehow. This one is the question. There has not been an invention that has less purpose than the internet since language. I agree. So, if we try to manage it it will be because we think we know what the purpose of the internet is - and we don't - and we don't, then it's a very practical thing, who’s going to manage it? well, it's gonna be governments - obviously - governments are just controlling, even in best case they want to control it, because they’re afraid of all this stuff - terrorism, and stuff like that -. And we should be.... but still I don't want governments deciding what the internet is for, I don't want companies decide what it's for, I don't want Google deciding what it's for, Google is often pretty good about it there’s a lot of open stuff but it also doesn't know- it's business - it's business. It's really important, for me it's the essence of the internet not to be turned into something that is for some purpose, it's to serve our interests and we've to define our interests. Some of those interests are horrible, that's terrorism and fraud, the worst parts of humanity, those interests. But to sacrifice the Internet the openness of the internet where we all get to explore and fulfill our interests because of the desire to control the Internet, manage the Internet for very good reasons, is very distressing to me. That's why the internet is by far the largest project humans have ever undertaken - I agree - There's not a single manager on the internet, there's nobody with the business card that says "Manager of the World Wide Web", "CEO of the internet". It has succeeded and grown, because it turns out if you want something to scale, to get really big you have to take management out of it you have to take control and management out of it. That's how internet works, no management, no control. I think for me the most natural one was to think at it as a place, although it’s not like any other place but I think there's actually good reason to think about it as a language. in terms of being unmanageable. Language succeeds because there's nobody in control of it. And we try, you know that’s good you can’t use that slang or this slang identifies you as the wrong sort of person or whatever you know, there are efforts to control it and that’s perfectly fine but language evolves representing our needs local needs around the world. New words they need, new ways of expressing things that’s wonderful, but if you try to control language to put somebody… you couldn’t! But you could do some damage to it and that’s how I feel about the internet which, in that regard, language is a really good metaphor. I don’t want to theorize anything, we are full of theories I mean, we don’t need to see anyone theorize or whatever. I’d like to see if there’s a level where you can stop before transforming your ideas into a dogma because when you get into a dogma, the dogma gets altered and then you didn’t create actually anything. So, I try to imagine the act of love love like the big ‘L’ as the highest, the most powerful, the greatest act of economy that we could produce. I cannot understand human experience without facing that fact. None of human experience makes sense if you don’t see the care, that things matter to us. And that is absolutely essentially correct, it is true. And so for me, if instead of saying love one were to say care. Then for me absolutely, the genius the importance and the inherent morality of the internet is that it is a field in which care, our care, matters to us, and it is inexplicable not recognizing the internet was built by people to whom the world mattered and built by people to whom the world mattered differently. And built it in such a way for the first time in human history that we can get direct access from me to you to a person that we don’t know to see how their world matters to them. Never had that, language enables it, in some sense the internet makes it a click away. And so I’m absolutely, I’m very comfortable with saying that the Internet is the expression of human caring and I’m also quite comfortable saying that is another expression of human love. These questions are getting very very strong in my life. What can we do for (urgent), absolutely and urgent time. Anyway thank a lot, it was a pleasure, thank you.