>>> Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Would you please take your seats. Our program will
begin in two minutes. Thank you. >>> Thank you! Good morning. We're back again.
You know, I know that everybody's come together. I mean, yesterday the whole day was such a
-- you know, I was just absorbing everything sitting there. And two or three things, you
know, struck me. You know, about unity coming together. There's
a Sufi saying which says, "When you see with the heart, all the masks fall down."
"When you see with the heart, all the masks fall down."
It's a saying for unity and not to be cowed down by fear mongers, people who want to divide.
Culture humanizes what politics demonizes. And in these days we live in with all that's
happening in the world, you know, with pastors in Florida and mosques all around the country
and everything that's happening in the Muslim world. There's another Sufi saying that says,
"People will scare you by saying there's a snake in the corner. There's a snake in the
corner. But, when you turn the lights on, it turns out it's an old piece of rope."
So all of us, I felt, yesterday whoever spoke was turning on the lights gradually so that
we could come together. I've just actually, because of this -- you know, I always believe
the artist should just shut up and play your guitar. But I just finished writing a book
which straddles growing up in America and in the Muslim world. The book is called "Rock
and Roll Jihad." It's on Amazon. And what the story tells you, really, is that
all these boundaries that we create, they're self-created.
You know, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles work seamlessly with Cavalli. And I just want to
leave that seed with you this morning. Have a great day.
[ Applause ] >>> Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dennis
Woodside. [ Applause ]
>>Dennis Woodside: Good morning, everyone. Everyone have a good time last night? Enjoy
it? Good. Who went on the hike? Impressive. You guys all made it back. Better than I did.
Thank you for coming again. I've been to seven Zeitgeists now. And the
most valuable part of this experience for me is really bumping into some of those fascinating
people in technology and business today. For example, yesterday I found myself at lunch
-- true story -- with Professor Seligman who gave that wonderful talk on flourishing.
And along comes Nouriel Roubini. And, you know, if you're in a good mood and you're
happy and you see Nouriel coming your way, then turn the other way.
[ Laughter ] Anyway, Professor Seligman and Nouriel get
into a little discussion about the future of the world, the future of mankind, whether
we're going to destroy ourselves. And Professor Seligman, of course, being the optimist says,
"I think everything's going to be okay." Professor Roubini comes back with 15 reasons
why it's not going to be okay and we're all doomed.
So I'm sitting there. It's like watching a tennis match. I'm happy, and then I'm sad.
I'm happy, and then I'm sad. This goes on for some time. They start getting a little
argumentative. I start looking around for Sebastian Junger and his Viking helmet to
calm the storm. But it all worked out. That's the kind of thing that can only happen at
Zeitgeist. That's why we do this event. Today we have a program lined up that I think
is really powerful. We have some great leaders in the room. What always fascinates me is
what motivates some of these people? Why did they take the decisions that they did, and
why did they take the actions that they did? So what I'd encourage all of us to do is try
to put yourself in the shoes of the people who are up here on stage. Try to experience
life the way they did. As an example, imagine that you return home from this conference
and you find that your government has confiscated your land. There's 300 impoverished farmers
now living in your front yard. Right? What would you do? What action would you take?
Would you resort to violence or force to remove them?
You're going to hear from a fellow named Alberto Vollmer from Venezuela. His family has been
in Venezuela for 100 years. His family runs a rum company there. And the way he reacted
in that situation is just extraordinary. Or suppose you believe fervently in a single
Islamic state, Somewhat of a radical view. You travel to Egypt. You're studying. You're
imprisoned there. You're tortured for four years. How is that going to change your world
view? Do you become more radical in your beliefs? Or do you completely change your outlook?
You're going to hear from Maajid who is going to talk about his experiences.
Imagine you grew up dirt poor in the Bronx. Thanks to your mother, thanks to hard work,
you get an education, you come back. You want to make a difference. You see a lot of programs
that are making a difference. But you don't see anything really addressing all the root
problems. All the problems that are present in that kind of an environment.
So what do you do? What makes you feel like you can make a difference when so many others
haven't? You're going to hear from Geoffrey Canada
who started an organization called Harlem Children's Zone that's affecting thousands
of children's lives one block at a time. And, finally, we are going to go a little
off menu. Try to put yourself in this situation: You're in the 8th day of a 2,000 mile bicycle
race. The world's best cyclists are gunning for you. You fall. You skid across the pavement.
You're bruised. You're hurt. Why do you get up? What motivates you? You've already won
this thing seven times. Why do you do it? So we're going to hear from Lance Armstrong
a little later on today about what motivated him.
So I'm really excited about hearing from some of these leaders. We have a lot of other folks
who I think are going to be fascinating. And, hopefully, you'll leave here inspired by some
of people around you. In addition to all these sessions, we're going
to have some -- do something a little bit different. How many of you have been to an
unconference? A couple people. So the idea in an unconference is there's no agenda and
anybody can speak about what they want. So we have 15 intrepid volunteers from this
audience who have agreed to come up here and speak for five minutes on a topic of their
choice. If you're going to speak, could you raise your hand? People? Couple people? All
right. I don't know where the others are. They're
still hiking, I guess. Maybe they're not going to show up, and I'm going to have to stand
up here for five minutes. I don't know. But we'll have some presentations on vaccinations,
music theory. It should be very interesting. Some are going to be great, and some are going
to be memorable. [ Laughter ]
All right. So before we get started, this is a special audience. As the person is leading
the Americas for the business side from Google, I want to thank you for coming. And I want
to thank you for your business. It's a tradition of ours to give a little gift at this event.
I think this year we've got something pretty special.
How many of you have heard of Google TV? Most people have heard of Google TV. That's a service
that allows to you search over all your content -- your DVR, Netflix, anything on your cable
provider. And now how many of have actually tried Google TV? So that's a problem. Right?
[ Laughter ] We like to solve problems. How many would
like to try Google TV? All right. So let's solve that problem. What do you think? So
thanks to our friends at Sony and Best Buy and the Geek Squad and DISH, we're going to
provide everybody in the audience with a Google TV experience. You're going to get a Sony
Blu-Ray DVD player that's programmed with Google TV. It's going to be installed by the
Geek Squad experts in your home. You're also going to get a DISH DVR and three months of
service all included also installed. That's our thanks to you. Thank you.
[ Applause ] So please thank our partners at Best Buy,
at Sony and at DISH and at the Geek Squad. And hope you enjoy your Google TV.
I don't have a very hard job. [ Laughter ]
So to start off, I want to introduce Jared Cohen. Jared is a Rhodes scholar. He's an
author. He's one of the youngest members of the State Department. He served under both
Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of State Clinton. He spent quite a few years in the
Middle East. He actually was telling me earlier he actually has been in a, basically, a terrorist
camp to see how they train members of Al-Qaeda, and he is just joining Google, I think this
week or next week, as the director of Google Ideas. So please welcome Jared.