I am here to introduce the panel Thank
You Stuart and everyone on the panel for
joining us today I have a passage that
I'm going to read off that kind of
explains and introduces what we'll talk
about a little bit here today so I'll be
reading this off feel free to take any
notes on some interesting things that
you might be able to look into after or
might be discussed as this panel
continues so there's a really worthwhile
book but sometimes it gets passed around
and Stuart recommends called the finite
and infinite games by James P Carson
that is a good philosophy book it's
short but incredibly dense and concise
in a sort of flowing always going
forward kind of way here's a passage
infinite players look forward not to a
victory in which the pass will achieve a
timeless meaning but towards ongoing
play in which the past will require
constant reinterpretation infinite
players do not oppose the actions of
others but initiate actions of their own
in such a way that others will respond
by initiating their own blockchains
are about resources applications shared
infrastructure individual freedom to act
to no social advancement and more but
fundamentally they are about
coordination we make the world computer
and therefore the world computer makes
us how much agency do we have and what
do we aim for really and using it we'd
like to welcome Stuart and the whole
panel to the stage for many reasons but
the ones we'd like to point out is that
he's popularized the personal computer
it could have been just called the small
computer but it's called a personal
computer microcomputers they were yeah
and coined the phrase information wants
to be free some of the rest of it will
be touched on the panel the the other
panelists we'd like to welcome our
wendell davis and Althea Allen to the
stage Wendell is in a theory community
member
an early member of amis ago and excuse
me while Allen is an early member of the
Oh music oh community they are here as
infinite gamers dedicated members of the
etherium community the blockchain
community the decentralization space the
human race and space in general one more
passage from the book before we start
infinite players are not serious actions
in any story but the joyful poets of a
story that continues to originate what
they cannot finish thank you all very
much and please welcome the controller
I'm not here for that Stewart you have
been there for many a movement you
rarely put your name on things mm-hmm
but you have been often behind the
scenes behind the camera I had to do
some research myself in preparation for
this and as I was sort of tracing your
story it was rather mind-blowing how
many times your name popped up in things
that I had heard of things that had
influenced me things that had influenced
the people who have influenced me so
we're hoping that you can bring some of
that perspective to us today but before
that I would like to let you tell your
own story I know that you have some
slides and just tell us some of the
things that you have lived through let
me do that now I would love you to do
that right now let's see what we've got
I guess it starts with psychedelics
[Applause]
[Music]
clearly it is not finished
yeah so I was in the thick with Ken
Kesey Merry Pranksters we organized the
biggest acid chest called the trips
festival in San Francisco and it put
together all the creative artistic
groups in the Bay Area in one place for
one night and set in motion the idea
that audiences should not exist as
audiences that there should be no
spectators and Burning Man carries on
that tradition to this day probably I
should say that my sense of what I do in
the world was i hack civilization I'm
trying to figure out kind of ingenious
low-effort ways to make a difference
that helps civilization go better and
I'm sure my best at least most efficient
hack was again on the effects of LSD
coming up with this button why don't we
see in the photograph of the whole earth
yet in 1966 and that was sort of strange
because we've been in space for ten
years at that point in others Soviet
Union the US had taken any significant
pictures from space so I was trying to
you know give a paranoid twist on it and
indeed a year later in 67 the first
photographs emerge from weather
satellite 80s there was the newspapers
and nobody paid much attention to it but
it was the one that was available when I
started my major of hack I suppose
exactly 50 years ago the Whole Earth
Catalog where the image of the earth was
on the cover tried to be comprehensive
and the main event of it was access to
tools I'll come back to that but what
really happened with the Earth image was
the end of 1968 when homesick astronauts
orbiting the moon took photographs of
their home from our home from a great
distance and what made that photograph
called Earthrise most powerful for
everybody reframed everything replaced
the mushroom cloud is the sort of
standard icon of our times and of
civilization it did that because there's
a dead planet in the foreground and a
clearly living planet
that happens to be ours and it's
surrounded by quite frightening vastness
of space it's a hard vacuum and you get
a sense of finiteness and fragility what
I was doing with the Whole Earth Catalog
in terms of access to tools and I
learned last night from Cory Doctorow
that he based sort of the way boinking
link does reviews on the way we did it
in the Whole Earth Catalog they were
just short access to tools to skills the
best book on learning how to fly was
done in the 40s by languages a really
important book that came out in 60s and
70s was Our Bodies Ourselves from the
Boston women's collective and basically
it went against what medicine had done
up to that point it's basically treated
woman's body is disease and not female
doctors and so on of this group put
together a book that was a manual of
having a woman's body
there's craft too it takes tuning that
takes maintenance it takes enjoying at a
cellular level and all that was in there
in this book it was one of their core
books of the women's movement actually
50 years later I discovered after
various people came to me and said well
you know but reading the Whole Earth
Catalog got me out of Nebraska got me
out of Indiana got me out of some small
place where I was and it got me going on
you know what I do now and they tell me
these origin stories and in summary what
I noticed it does and I think that
blockchain is doing this is it confers
agency it gives people of freedom the
sense of freedom to choose to do Gami or
anything and just go forth and try and
the opposite of agency is victimhood so
one of the things I wrote somewhere
along in the process was a good project
is to just unmake victims start with
yourself branch out from there one of
the things that they grew out of the
Whole Earth Catalog was the hackers
conference in 1984 the bearded guy in
the top left there is John Draper known
as Captain Crunch he was jailed for
being hacker and in jail the mob broke
his back to get it secret somehow to do
hacking he was out by the time of this
there's a brand new Macintosh on the
left and two of the developers the
Macintosh are leaning forward they're
looking at somebody's demo I want to
point out that hackers conferences go on
all the time this is in a sense one that
we're in here but also on the screen is
the eye gem Jamboree which is ten years
old this is these are bio hackers and
they are basically hacking bio code the
genetic code currently they are up to
you 3,000 participants and 300 student
teams that come and create organisms and
basically erase them and get prizes and
this is the long-term project of ten
years of basically making the world safe
for biotechnology it's an awesome
project there is one of the most
thrilling things to go to it feels sort
of like this event in terms of just
getting a sense of hope and excitement
and lots of things you can do what I'm
involved in now is partly biotechnology
bringing it to wildlife conservation and
then partly the long now foundation
based in San Francisco where among other
things we have been for 25 years now
working on a 10,000 year a clock
designed by Danny Hillis it is being
installed as you can see you're inside a
mountain in West Texas and a mountain
range to the Jeff Bezos owns and that
clock will check faithfully for more
than 10,000 years just a permission to
think long term one of the things that
emerge from all of that is our idea of a
sort of a peace layered diagram of a
healthy civilization going from very
rapidly moving fashion all the way down
to very slow moving nature and culture
and those are separate layers they need
to be respected as separate layers and
most of the power
yours in the slow part and most of the
learning is in the fast part we can come
back to this if you want the customer of
the long now foundation and I think the
customer of aetherium is civilization
that's just a local fragment of it
there's the kind of a big picture of
civilization as a whole that's our
that's who we're working for my view
that ok hmm we can go back to any of
these see you've yeah thanks you've been
walking around yeah so this is your
first Def Con of course and this is your
first blockchain conference yeah and
you've come at a great time it seems
actually yeah really a very special
event you know I know you've been
talking to a lot of people as you've
been walking around you've seen a lot of
talks mm-hmm
I'm curious to know I mean what is your
impression of all of this is this is
this how these things happen hmm
back in the day when no we another thing
I did is called Global Business Network
and we pervade scenario planning to
corporations and governmental
departments and so on things that were
big and slow and had to think ahead in
order to decide what to do next and
they're always wondering what's going on
and one of the things I said is that we
noticed is look where there's new
terminology emerging and so with hackers
for example there were a whole bunch of
become hackers firms that merged in fact
there was a hacker dictionary that was
kind of carefully maintained because
newcomers to that world would need to
know what what is this shorthand for and
I could well imagine there should be if
there's an already a blockchain
dictionary and aetherium dictionary and
you see it in different you know new
words DAP new word see it in words
they're repurposed wallet and fork and
beacon you see it in joke works like
hurdle and that's a sign to me that
new words I have to it's not just for
decoration there are new tools and they
need new words to express them and so
part of what I've been doing is a guest
here is just sort of learning some of
the little vocabulary and with
vocabulary you start to learn the system
that's Robin getting here mm-hmm
and since you've been a part of so many
different let's call them hacker
movements and especially you know you've
yourself participated and providing
these civilization acts as you start I
mean you you've identified some things
that they kind of give away the game
that say like you're maybe you're onto
something give you a little whiff of it
but what I'm interested in here is
having some of these folks who are doing
this now to be able to have a
perspective on this to see that you know
they're part of a long history of this
kind of stuff to take this home what is
the what is the thing that connects it
together early on we had no idea that
the hackers in 1984-85 had no idea that
hacking would eventually get
industrialized and weaponized that would
become a so you know one of the things
we're saying well there's blackhat
hackers and white hat hackers and don't
worry and we did not prepare enough for
the problems that might occur I think
blockchain is doing a better job of that
than we did I think the biotech crowd is
doing a better job of that can you
elaborate on that a little bit why so
well so you know there's not a lot of
talk about sex here at all there was no
women involved at all we had like a
hundred hackers there - might have been
female boys that changed none of them
were athletic and I see a fair amount of
fairly athletic looking characters here
so that's changed and it's also a good
sign there's a you know across the board
helps going on
what Steven Levy is the guy who wrote
the book hackers he's in the far left
there up in the upper corner and he was
recently asked to reminisce about this
and he said what he remembered was the
laughter that basically these young
hackers spent three days and all night
just giggling away it's the first time
they'd come together and these kind of
comings together have that quality of
Glee about them that I think is is part
of what makes it go I want to apologize
for over valorising hackers in this
tender they tend to be the star of the
personal computer show but we were
actually you know they thought of
themselves as masterless samurai but
frankly most of the real engineering was
done by people who are narrow ties who
worked 9:00 to 5:00 often with federal
government money like the Doug Engelbart
mother of all demos everybody worked the
SR I was in the Department of Defense
money and people in the Xerox PARC that
was corporate money that was you know
devised the the things that became the
really graphic interface for what became
the personal computer Steve Jobs came
over chief Wozniak was that this thing
Jobs didn't the jobs wasn't hackers
offices marketer but but Wozniak was an
actor and Apple then took what was going
on and being completely wasted at Xerox
PARC by this Yorick's company and then
deployed it and then they got copied by
Microsoft slash IBM and you're off and
running
so hackers are important and part of any
of these stories and they're the sort of
the glory part but they're not
necessarily the only part or even the
main part so that actually brings up
something for me that I wanted to get
your perspective on as well which is
what is the role of institutions in
something like this because on the one
hand institutions have
of money and they have a lot of power
and they have a lot of guys and skinny
ties who can just do the work but on the
other hand I'm gonna read another quote
from finite and infinite games here hmm
this was one that really stuck with me
that a successful defense of society
against the culture within itself is to
give artists a place by regarding them
as producers of property and I think
that extends to a lot of forms of
revolution and forms of dissidents you
schedule the protest you know it will be
happening from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. so find
a different way home and it's a very
effective way to sort of disempower a
movement to give it a safe place in
which to have its revolution so that
everyone else can go on about their
business and so there's that danger to
me when trying to sort of compromise or
trying to work with institutional powers
that we maybe give up what's most
important because it's also what's most
inconvenient for them cerium is an
institution but that that that's saying
that you know what's the solution to bad
code solution is better code I think
institutions is how humans collaborate
on things I mean we see civilization as
10,000 years old and in a sense what
that's honoring is the invention of
Agriculture and the institutions of
towns and then the way that people could
collaborated and more levels than just
hunting and gathering Oh once you've got
towns and you're off and running in the
story of civilizations 10,000 years old
there's every reason to believe it'll go
in over 10,000 and in a way anything
that we do as innovators is blending in
with that long story a lot of it is
institutional and the things that
corporate misdeeds and government
misdeeds want to be need to be called
out need to be answered need to be
worked around
just you know a lot of it's just class
sometimes we try to get well if people
would just behave better than we
wouldn't have this particular problem
and the reason that Whole Earth Catalog
had access to tools under the title was
that as our function is that I had
believed Buckminster Fuller said early
on if all the politicians and the world
died next week it would be an exciting
week but wouldn't change that much but
if all the engineers and scientists died
next week we would be at a loss how to
carry on and that human nature is very
difficult to move it's very complicated
and rich thing tools are easy to move
they're easy to invent they're easier to
deploy when they work and so his
approach is the hack is just making a
better tool that works around the things
that you think are not working well in
the world and sometimes that is involves
inventing new institutions and so you
have nonprofits come along and then you
have a whole there was the private
sector and the public sector of
government and then a whole social
sector that's emerging in different
rates in different societies but there
it is it's a basically self-driving
service structure so these are all
institutional inventions with tools part
of what enables them to ideally be more
benign or truly beneficial that sounds
really general it does and I wonder what
happens when they fight back when what
they're interested in most is not being
benign but just continuing to exist
whether or not they serve a purpose it
is the case I know with corporations and
probably with governments that would you
know a lot of us get worked up about how
they're just about profits they're not
oh when you actually work with these
companies they're mostly about a
survival and typically wonders for them
a very competitive
industry whatever it may be and they're
all freaking out what's going to come
along and just blow them away and they
either either just failed and disappear
like Cedars is in the process of doing
in the US or they get gobbled up by
another company and sort of disappear
into that so that's survival instinct at
the institutional level can get pretty
tough and that is worth bearing in mind
because they they are legally people but
they don't act like people and I think
it's its right to call that out so
headed off everywhere you can sometimes
and one of the things I love about cory
doctorow x' book walk away is sometimes
just walk away find a way to live
separately
oh this was the thing that was done very
much in the 60s and it gave us a fair
amount of one education we went out all
started communes which failed it was
highly educational and how they failed
and it also gave us a sense that we
there were a lot of things we thought we
were dependent on that we were not
actually all that dependent on and so
you you find your own freedom from these
institutions that's an ongoing process
and it's not gonna stop and I think what
you want to do when you're building an
institution is haven't mind the
institutions that have gone somewhat
harmful or even pathological to notice
how that happened there and see if you
can head it off recognize it early on
the head off the things they're moving
in that direction but civilization is an
argument and sometimes blood is shed in
that argument that is probably with us
for a while so on the topic of walk
aways
you know the people here are building I
would say like the next generation of
human coordination tools mm-hmm think
it's a good general life saying ashtray
yeah
and the thing about that is it may end
up empowering a million subcultures
governance finance for all these kinds
of things which means that coordination
itself amongst those groups may be more
difficult in the future before it's
easier but I know that you're a big
concern your greatest concern for the
world right now is for example climate
change mm-hmm and we don't have much
time according to you about about this
topic so how do these things work
together well it is a question I keep
asking watching people what if you got
to help it off climate change and what
have you got well it's a good question
good question yeah yeah I bet I think
the question is more about this this
narrative of let's say mass walkaways
and everyone walks away
who's gonna steer the ship so this week
mm-hm
yeah walkway is a it's what adolescents
do that's what being or 20s is about
it's you know the origin of a lot of all
institutions Babylon governments are bad
I'm going to invent my way out of here
and cryptocurrency is my escape from all
those things and then you get a little
over and forms of collaboration you can
start reasserting themselves is
absolutely necessary and you're fine you
get into politics and in order to get
anything done you actually have to find
ways to compromise with the opposition
or you have a non-functional government
which we currently have in the US as a
failure to do that
and that is not a diminution that is a
growing into a form of responsibility
and maturity and public service that
just acknowledges there is no way fair
enough scattered applause so that does
get at something else that we talked
about briefly leading up to this but and
it's what happens as people age within a
movement because as you said it's it's
young people it's people who get upset
at their metaphorical parents and go off
to do their own thing and after a while
maybe they get tired maybe they have
other things to worry about maybe they
worried for their own safety or that if
their families or maybe they just sort
of stopped caring what happens as people
age who have started a movement and like
is there a way for movements to carry on
even as they lose their youth
most of the well this happened with
these hackers counts the pictures still
up here and they're my rule back then
was never do a second annual anything
which speaks to what you're talking
about but the people at the high-res
common conference loved you so much that
they two years later did their own and
then another one who goes on to this day
and it's an old folks gathering which is
kind of great and you know it's like a
class reunion or something they never
the web came along without really
engaging them so other entities come
along and but frankly what happened is
good scientists good artists good
engineers keep moving we live longer
longer lives I'm 79 and their health and
you know my parents pretty much checked
out by the time they were in their 70s
so you know just into one generation
we're getting seen never longer and I
should say
your generation is killed with a lot
longer than that you're gonna have
three-digit lives 100 plus and 4 there's
children there's gonna be you know not
just grandchildren great grandchildren
maybe great great grandchildren to deal
with that if you're still doing the same
goddamn thing through that whole period
you better be doing it very well but
most people that move on and actually
being an artist in New York back in the
day was the great releaser for me that
if you're not you know if you get stuck
in a blue period you're not Picasso
you're gonna move on to something that
is much more dangerous and much more
interesting one of the Nobel Prize
winners in economics that I got to know
said that basically he changes his
discipline every 7 years and the thing
that you're worried about getting into a
little prize is that would stop you by
the way it stopped so many Senatus
you've gotten a prize like that so it's
not walk away it's keep moving well if
it's the question I think some questions
say again when I take some questions
from the audience
oh yeah all right does anybody any
questions if you do please come up to
the microphones
yeah there's microphones cheering yarn
these guys will call you out
we got one ready over here hi Stuart
really enjoyed this talk I just want to
tackle perhaps you asked a very
pertinent question what's blockchain
doing about your global change or
climate change and purp so many Jim
point if you look into it to make things
more efficient SERPs cut down processes
cut down wastage the other point as well
which is you know how do we look now for
all these people in the world we're now
getting more efficiently producing goods
and perhaps you digitized in the economy
so people will have more chance to
create stuff and create a digital
economy which involves moving electrons
around rather than atoms
maybe that's very abstract but we have
to you know we can't get creating more
stuff because they're running out of
stuff in terms of you know I know sort
of natural resources so perhaps there's
a way out for us that we create a
digital economy where people can still
create in different ways and yet we
serve each other without actually using
a more of the earth resources so does it
make any kind of sense to you at all I'm
not as worried about because I'm a
lifelong conservationist and and I
suppose environmentalist I think we
overstate the limits of resources you
know the bet that was made long ago by
Julian Simon with my old teacher Paul
Ehrlich as to whether the prices would
go up or down of a old basket of things
that they were looking at and Julian
Simon one the prices stayed down and
Paul they're like lost on that as well
as on population there's you're seeing a
version of that now and sort of
extrapolating from where you're going on
this finite earth thing existential
crisis there is an existential danger
from a is there's an existential danger
from climate change there's an
existential danger from extinctions
which are not happening as rapidly as
people think
any minute now somebody is probably
going to point out the existential
danger or plog gene
they already have what's the house at
work oh you know it's uh I I don't think
that's actually a real existential
danger but it's the personal it's the
danger of you know being able to for
example move value freely uh-huh no
that's that's that could be a danger for
someone that it could be yeah the idea
of say a private transaction is rather
terrifying so many people or just the
idea of putting more and more machines
on the blockchain like what happens when
they start to think without our help
mr. to have be love and money without
our help when they just start buying
things from each other I think that
there have been many fears expressed a
lot of them have to do with just sort of
fear of the unknown because black chains
make a lot of things unknown by design
yeah what's the AI gonna do but I think
there's also something very scary about
allowing people to interact with each
other without sort of coordinating
powers without authorities telling them
how they should do so and actually I'm
just gonna exercise stage privilege
right now and bring this to a topic that
I think I would like to hear you speak
on a little bit as well which is
informal economies slums and squatter
cities this is something that you've
written about quite a lot and I think
it's something that's extremely
applicable to what we're doing we're
talking about tools for you basically
for coordinating in in a situation where
there is no authority or anything maybe
the authority is unnecessary mm-hmm
orange agonistic or antagonistic and I'm
curious whether you see any assumptions
being made or sort of any conceits being
held that might find us building the
wrong tools or those tools in the hands
of the wrong people
hmm I wound up writing about it's a book
called Hortis discipline which begins
saying there's sort of three long
long-term narratives that are playing
out in this century that I was focusing
on of the book its urbanization
biotechnology and climate change those
are not stories they're gonna be over in
a week or a year or a decade they're
gonna go on all century and the
urbanization aspect I sort of started
with because that's the main event and
the villages of the world are emptying
out and you go oh my god those wonderful
villages well you know subsistence
agriculture is a big drag it's a that's
why the communes failed uh-huh in part
it is a ecological disaster often
because they're in marginal land it's a
poverty trap and they're not in the cash
society and so there's no way out people
go to town and they go to town and where
you begin in town if you don't have any
money because you're coming from a
village is to go to the squatter cities
to the slums and then there's this
informal economy going on there of talk
about microfinance I mean these are you
know rickshaw ride fees that you're
working with and swapping something into
a teacher so that your kids can go to
the private school 100 yards away from
where Shack you're living in and that is
where the main demographic event of our
world is going on it is where women are
having fewer children because in the
country you need seven kids in order to
run a farm and in town you want to have
two kids and they're gonna be high
quality kids gonna try to get them
education so they can prosper in town
two or less and then the women if
they're with a jerk in the village
they're stuck with a jerk but they get
to town they don't have to put up with
it anymore you know they're gone they
take kids with them and start things and
women are doing the urbanization into
the world as near as I can tell
so then what helps that well
I usually got all these personal
computer conferences back in the 80s and
not into the 90s and they would always
end with this last session would be
about how we're going to fix the digital
divide where us rich people have all
these cool tools and those darn poor
people they don't get to have these cool
tools but we'll make sure that we get
them and vollis would be bowed and all
that Kevin Kelly pointed out you know
thank John for the rich people who will
spend insane amounts of money for a new
tool that doesn't work yet and will help
it down with their extra money help it
down the learning curve to where it
actually works at which people at which
point important people grab it and run
to the horizon with it and so when cell
phones hit the developing world they
proliferated and you can get a better
cell signal in most of Africa than you
can in most of the United States and
there's more stuff going on with cell
phones and now smartphones than in many
other places and they invented them
they're ways to do money with empathy
and in Africa and so on there is so much
resourcefulness there's so much
ingenuity it is it takes a lot of skill
to be poor to manage poverty to manage
yourself out of poverty these are very
able people and they will take any tool
that helps them get up in the world and
if you if you can generate tools and
sort of make them accessible and they
get invited in and you don't come in
saying hey yeah we're here to fix your
cooker situation or the way you do
commerce here and in Mumbai that usually
doesn't fly unless it's really good
so get invited and then watch it
transform by the locals into local
businesses into whatever it is that
works with their culture with their
situation and when it works it can fly
fast like cell phones there and I think
potentially blockchain if it really
really can deliver value
in an easily leverageable way people
will grab it as they grab cellphones and
if it doesn't it won't we take another
question
yeah nice I wanted to ask what is
underpriced or what do we not understand
the value over the importance of whether
that's culture or technology what are
the things that we're not really getting
the fundamental relevance of I'm so hard
of hearing I need that repeating he
asked what are we what are we under
valuing what are we under valuing or
under pricing or misunderstanding the
importance of what are the things that
we should be really focusing on that
we're not paying enough attention to I
don't know enough to answer that well
I'm still at the oh my god this is
astounding level and so I see nothing
but glory in all directions here and so
I can't do critique yet probably ever
but there boy are there people here who
can I know it's not what the hell
invited newbies gonna just be all Gaga
and that's me hey one more question
thank you so this is a room full of
people endeavoring to build very
powerful tools historically those who
have created powerful tools in earnest
goodness have then seen those tools
immediately weaponized by those who
don't really care about that mmm and
then a power power taken away from those
with good will and moved into those who
will use the tools for their own self
improvement is there any advice you have
to the people in this room actively
building on how to create a create a
nuclear reactor without creating a
nuclear weapon
[Applause]
this may be one of the functions of good
government is a kind of a regulatory
oversight and a book I'm recommending
along with finite and infinite games is
a new book by Michael Lewis called the
fifth risk it happens to be about the US
government but it tells astonishing
truths for people that didn't know
things were out there the government
government's very but a lot of amazingly
valuable stuff goes on a government that
is not actually taking enough advantage
of data collection in particular and of
course we all worry about data
collection in terms of invasion of
privacy and so on but a lot of us just
what's the ground truth of the Society
of the Irian and and then with that
ground truth you're the tools you're
making weekly coordination tools like
yours can reflect can learn about
reflecting stuff that's real in the
world
so working with government helping make
sure that transparency is part of the
deal one of the reasons this book of
Michael horses is pretty angry is that
the current administration in the United
States is trying to shut down access to
this information because they disapprove
of it because it's science basically and
that's the thing for fighting so you
know a funny situation so don't need
instead of fighting government or trying
to fight for government at its best and
I think this kind of is one of the
things the etherium group is better at
and say the Bitcoin crowd is figuring
out what are the points of already
existing institutions like governments
that are worth not just honoring but
really engaging in helping and helping
keep non destructive not harmful it is
you know there's lots of ways things can
go wrong and one of the functions of
government yep one of the things the
government's view is collect weather
data
and people are much less killed by
hurricanes now than they used to be
because weather prediction has gotten
good in the last 20 years really good
likewise medicine a lot of medical
research goes on under the National
Institutes of Health and things like
this and that is why medicine that used
to be a flip a coin whether going to a
doctor was going to help or make things
worse now is pretty much across the
board it'll mostly help so find the
institutions that are doing valuable
things burrow in to where the good stuff
is and help the good stuff and do what
you can to head off or work around the
bad stuff and you know eternal vigilance
but don't solve a problem just because
you can imagine it this is Jimmy Wales
tells the the fable of the steak knives
where he was finding that with the
programmers that were coming around
Wikipedia when it was starting up they
would figure out all different kinds of
problems would happen and they were
designed software that wouldn't I would
see that problem and immediately head it
off well the problem didn't exist yet
and Jimmy Wales said is you're you are
making the steak knife problem this is
you hire an architect and you're gonna
run a steak restaurant and the architect
says I hear you're gonna have these
sharp knives on every table well that's
obviously very dangerous anybody could
go berserk and kill not overly everybody
at their table but everybody at all the
other tables we've got to put these
little cages around each table and sort
of modularity that'll have you know at
least isolate the bug yeah except nobody
actually does that in these restaurants
and so Jimmy says wait till you have a
problem be really alert for the problems
ask people to tell you about the
problems early and often and you know go
right after them but if you over
anticipate them you will design freedom
out of the system
thank you I think that time for one more
question
hi my name is Matthew de Silva and I'm a
journalist for courts first I just want
to say I feel privileged to be in the
same room as you
I just finished reading the innovators
and I was astounded just by your history
and I'm just I'm so feel so lucky to be
here
my question is about the kind of
inequality even within the blockchain
space even in the blockchain space
there's a lot of economic inequality
there like from the very starting point
of a project whether it's in governance
or distribution of tokens or just in you
know social power and I was wondering
how you might suggest addressing those
kind of inequalities as projects grow
hmm I don't know enough I really try not
to opinionate I'm hopelessly ignorant
this is one of those cases but thank you
for the praise and it's a nice book that
Walter Isaacson wrote thank you for
being here well that was disappointing I
wanted to challenge you a little bit
though maybe we can end on this instead
about not building for problems that we
haven't discovered yet
mm-hm I think Wikipedia is the best
example of what can happen if you don't
build for problems that haven't happened
yet Wikipedia is like one of the shining
beacons of what can happen when Humanity
gets together on the internet I think
that there are other things where we
didn't anticipate problems that we maybe
should have I think social media for
example is a terrifying place and there
are things that maybe weren't inevitable
but that feel in evitable now given the
decisions that we made and like is there
a balance between anticipating the
horrible things that could go wrong
without building so many walls around
ourselves that we can't have any fun I
happen to live an early version of
social media with the well back in the
1980s
and we discovered trolls see you we were
there for everything and we discovered
the main role which is never feed the
troll we discovered flame wars we
discovered a mob action
I got mobbed at one point and became so
disgusted I left the well I felt like
was a failed experiment but it was a
better experiment than many and here I
will get into I think somewhat
controversial area here which is that
anonymity is way better in theory than
it is in practice and to the extent that
blockchain can give verifiable identity
that's going to be one of its great
values in the world not only in the
developing world where people need an ID
in order to own property and get loans
and things like that but that BOTS can
be bots on social media I mean the
original idea of Facebook as I
understood it is is that you know you
were basically verified by mutual
friends who said this is a real human
being within this his real name and I
wish that we had done that with well we
had pseudo anonymity in the well because
I'd already seen anonymity be really
really pathological on other systems and
I as near as I can tell there are
special cases where anonymity can be
important where privacy can be important
for private conversations are important
but general a lot of anonymity in
general discourse is destructive and a
whole part of blockchain is protecting
privacy but I think a whole part of it
is going to be in a sense the opposite
of being to really be who you are and
and the thing I try to make clear on the
well when we started is you know the
byline I put out there was you own your
own words
I didn't want to be sued for people you
know it's holding each other that got
missed taken into thinking that you had
property rights over your own words
which is another stupid question you
have a responsibility for your own words
but there needs to be a responsibility
bearing creature behind that for that to
actually hold and so that's where I come
down on that one
and I think would try to the end of
everything all right of time you want it
you want it yeah I just was like to
thank you again Stuart for being here
it's been really a pleasure getting to
know you and I'm really glad that this
was the DEF CON that you came to because
it has been amazing and to the
organizers you are amazing this thing
that you created has really it's been
extremely special and so thank you and
thank all of you and we'll see you next
year
yeah thanks guys
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
you