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the RSA makes a big deal out of the fact
that it was founded in Roth Mills coffee
shop in 1754 this simple idea that there
have always been places where people
gathered and because water was so
dangerous you'd get sick from drinking
water so the safest thing to drink in
England as in America was alcoholic
beverages they would drink ale and other
alcoholic beverages and that leads to a
certain kind of social life a certain
kind of intellectual life you might say
and the simple change the discovery of
coffee the importation of it changed the
nature of social interaction obviously
if you go from a depressant to a
stimulant you get more interesting
conversations we're at a similar turning
point now we are several years into a
transition that may be much bigger and
that is of course the transition from
intellectual life based on face-to-face
interactions publishing in journals in
physical build meeting and physical
buildings to a virtual world in which a
lot happens online at a very very
different time scale it's a very
interesting time to be thinking about
intellectual life and what a 21st
century enlightenment would look like
that's the big question people are
asking here at the RSA and so when I was
invited I was told in November the RSA
will be celebrating the next phase in
our history of opening a 21st century
enlightenment coffeehouse now here's the
line though that concerned me we want to
create opportunities for people from
every background and discipline to join
together to exchange ideas and
experiences to debate the big challenges
facing us as a society undergoing rapid
change into the turbulent politics and
to work together toward a more
enlightened future and what I recognized
in this invitation text is this way of
looking at the world this is one of
those beautiful songs I've ever heard
John Lennon's Imagine is a world in
which if we could just get rid of the
things that divide us all of us just
living life in peace together wouldn't
that be great
and this is a vision that tends to
resonate on the left in particular there
is a very noble sentiment there is a
truth to it but I think as it plays out
it tends not
work for reasons that seem unexpected
but actually are quite expectable and
that's what I want to talk to you about
today I'm going to offer you a metaphor
of society and here it is the Titanic
was built to be unsinkable they built it
with these watertight compartments even
if actually four were to be punctured
into filled with water there are
boundaries there are barriers it won't
flood the ship won't sink so we can go
really fast through the icebergs it's
unsinkable as you know the iceberg
created a gash across several of the
compartments several compartments were
flooded immediately by the iceberg so
the in other words had the two
compartments been truly watertight it
probably would not have sunk so here's a
guy a youtuber named Rosales ten in his
bathtub he took a plastic model of a
Titanic he created sixteen compartments
he put coins in each of the compartments
as weight as you can see he put a kind
of a gash roughly where the the gash was
in the hull of the Titanic so you see
the water as it spills over one
compartment the front goes down further
and then that increases the speed at
which water goes to the next compartment
which increases this etcetera and at
first the dipping is slowed but in the
end is very fast so that's my metaphor
for you all right
let's apply the metaphor so Facebook's
mission in 2004 their mission statement
was to give people the power to share
and make the world more open and
connected in 2017 when they discovered
that simply connecting the world can
change major American elections they
updated their mission now they say to
give people the power to build community
and bring the world closer together the
company itself has engaged in some very
bad practices but the people I believe
are generally a good people ethical
people this was a simple image back in
2010 by a facebook intern plotting out
how Facebook is connecting the world and
of course it's vastly more connected now
than it was in 2010 these are just some
images of networks what kind of society
is a better society one in which there
are people who are disconnected entirely
or one in which everyone's connected
indirectly or one which everyone's
directly connected and you might think
well the more connections the better but
there are a few problems with that that
if 99% of people are really good
and you connect everybody you still can
get all kinds of terrible things
happening the the alt-right pioneered or
developed ways of using the Internet to
provoke people for fun it's it's
humorous but it produces it expresses
nasty sentiments the Internet can be
used to harass people this is what I'm
most alarmed about it's not arguments
that take place it's actual threats
intimidation death threats rape threats
horrible racist rants so you're
unleashing all kinds of nastiness when
you connect everybody especially if
there's anonymity obviously manipulators
Cambridge analytic I may have influenced
elections using Facebook data a study a
very important study done in science by
a group at MIT Deb Roy's lab found that
when they looked at how information
spread on Twitter what they found is
that false information especially if
it's emotionally evocative spreads
faster than true and yes Russian BOTS
forwarded this sort of stuff but if you
take all the Russian BOTS out it doesn't
actually make a difference because
essentially in America we hate each
other so much that were all Russian BOTS
happily forwarding nasty fake stuff
about the other side the net effect
according to some people including some
of the founders of Facebook and other
social media companies is that social
media is ripping apart society that
certainly is the way it feels and so
we're beginning to ask questions in the
last two years such as can liberal
democracy even survive social media the
existence of governments and social
media social democracies as we know them
is not as sure a thing as it was just
four years ago when you connect people
in this way expect unexpected problems
networks are complicated important
things but if you knock down all the
walls or if the walls fail if you
connect everybody in this way you're
gonna have some unexpected problems
secondly a 21st century enlightenment
like anything else about social
engineering is very very hard to predict
it really could go in ways different
than you expect
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