Clay Shirky: How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history

152,343 views ・ 2009-06-16

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:16
I want to talk about the transformed media landscape,
0
16160
4000
00:20
and what it means for anybody who has a message that they want to get out
1
20160
4000
00:24
to anywhere in the world.
2
24160
2000
00:26
And I want to illustrate that by telling a couple of stories
3
26160
2000
00:28
about that transformation.
4
28160
2000
00:30
I'll start here. Last November there was a presidential election.
5
30160
3000
00:33
You probably read something about it in the papers.
6
33160
3000
00:36
And there was some concern that in some parts of the country
7
36160
3000
00:39
there might be voter suppression.
8
39160
2000
00:41
And so a plan came up to video the vote.
9
41160
2000
00:43
And the idea was that individual citizens
10
43160
3000
00:46
with phones capable of taking photos or making video
11
46160
3000
00:49
would document their polling places,
12
49160
2000
00:51
on the lookout for any kind of voter suppression techniques,
13
51160
3000
00:54
and would upload this to a central place.
14
54160
2000
00:56
And that this would operate as a kind of citizen observation --
15
56160
4000
01:00
that citizens would not be there just to cast individual votes,
16
60160
4000
01:04
but also to help ensure the sanctity of the vote overall.
17
64160
4000
01:08
So this is a pattern that assumes we're all in this together.
18
68160
4000
01:12
What matters here
19
72160
2000
01:14
isn't technical capital,
20
74160
2000
01:16
it's social capital.
21
76160
2000
01:18
These tools don't get socially interesting
22
78160
3000
01:21
until they get technologically boring.
23
81160
3000
01:24
It isn't when the shiny new tools show up
24
84160
4000
01:28
that their uses start permeating society.
25
88160
2000
01:30
It's when everybody is able to take them for granted.
26
90160
4000
01:34
Because now that media is increasingly social,
27
94160
3000
01:37
innovation can happen anywhere
28
97160
3000
01:40
that people can take for granted the idea that we're all in this together.
29
100160
4000
01:44
And so we're starting to see a media landscape
30
104160
3000
01:47
in which innovation is happening everywhere,
31
107160
3000
01:50
and moving from one spot to another.
32
110160
2000
01:52
That is a huge transformation.
33
112160
4000
01:56
Not to put too fine a point on it, the moment we're living through --
34
116160
3000
01:59
the moment our historical generation is living through --
35
119160
3000
02:02
is the largest increase in expressive capability
36
122160
4000
02:06
in human history.
37
126160
2000
02:08
Now that's a big claim. I'm going to try to back it up.
38
128160
2000
02:10
There are only four periods in the last 500 years
39
130160
4000
02:14
where media has changed enough to qualify for the label "revolution."
40
134160
3000
02:17
The first one is the famous one, the printing press:
41
137160
3000
02:20
movable type, oil-based inks, that whole complex of innovations
42
140160
3000
02:23
that made printing possible
43
143160
2000
02:25
and turned Europe upside-down, starting in the middle of the 1400s.
44
145160
3000
02:28
Then, a couple of hundred years ago,
45
148160
2000
02:30
there was innovation in two-way communication,
46
150160
2000
02:32
conversational media: first the telegraph, then the telephone.
47
152160
3000
02:35
Slow, text-based conversations,
48
155160
3000
02:38
then real-time voice based conversations.
49
158160
2000
02:40
Then, about 150 years ago,
50
160160
2000
02:42
there was a revolution in recorded media other than print:
51
162160
3000
02:45
first photos, then recorded sound,
52
165160
3000
02:48
then movies, all encoded onto physical objects.
53
168160
3000
02:51
And finally, about 100 years ago, the harnessing of electromagnetic spectrum
54
171160
3000
02:54
to send sound and images through the air -- radio and television.
55
174160
4000
02:58
This is the media landscape as we knew it in the 20th century.
56
178160
4000
03:02
This is what those of us of a certain age
57
182160
3000
03:05
grew up with, and are used to.
58
185160
3000
03:08
But there is a curious asymmetry here.
59
188160
2000
03:10
The media that is good at creating conversations
60
190160
3000
03:13
is no good at creating groups.
61
193160
2000
03:15
And the media that's good at creating groups
62
195160
2000
03:17
is no good at creating conversations.
63
197160
2000
03:19
If you want to have a conversation
64
199160
2000
03:21
in this world, you have it with one other person.
65
201160
2000
03:23
If you want to address a group, you get the same message
66
203160
3000
03:26
and you give it to everybody in the group,
67
206160
2000
03:28
whether you're doing that with a broadcasting tower or a printing press.
68
208160
4000
03:32
That was the media landscape
69
212160
2000
03:34
as we had it in the twentieth century.
70
214160
2000
03:36
And this is what changed.
71
216160
2000
03:38
This thing that looks like a peacock hit a windscreen
72
218160
2000
03:40
is Bill Cheswick's map of the Internet.
73
220160
2000
03:42
He traces the edges of the individual networks
74
222160
2000
03:44
and then color codes them.
75
224160
2000
03:46
The Internet is the first medium in history
76
226160
2000
03:48
that has native support for groups
77
228160
2000
03:50
and conversation at the same time.
78
230160
3000
03:53
Whereas the phone gave us the one-to-one pattern,
79
233160
3000
03:56
and television, radio, magazines, books,
80
236160
2000
03:58
gave us the one-to-many pattern,
81
238160
2000
04:00
the Internet gives us the many-to-many pattern.
82
240160
2000
04:02
For the first time,
83
242160
2000
04:04
media is natively good at supporting these kinds of conversations.
84
244160
4000
04:08
That's one of the big changes.
85
248160
3000
04:11
The second big change
86
251160
2000
04:13
is that, as all media gets digitized,
87
253160
2000
04:15
the Internet also becomes the mode of carriage
88
255160
3000
04:18
for all other media,
89
258160
2000
04:20
meaning that phone calls migrate to the Internet,
90
260160
2000
04:22
magazines migrate to the Internet, movies migrate to the Internet.
91
262160
3000
04:25
And that means that every medium
92
265160
2000
04:27
is right next door to every other medium.
93
267160
5000
04:32
Put another way,
94
272160
3000
04:35
media is increasingly less just a source of information,
95
275160
3000
04:38
and it is increasingly more a site of coordination,
96
278160
3000
04:41
because groups that see or hear or watch or listen to something
97
281160
3000
04:44
can now gather around and talk to each other as well.
98
284160
4000
04:48
And the third big change
99
288160
3000
04:51
is that members of the former audience, as Dan Gilmore calls them,
100
291160
2000
04:53
can now also be producers and not consumers.
101
293160
4000
04:57
Every time a new consumer
102
297160
2000
04:59
joins this media landscape
103
299160
2000
05:01
a new producer joins as well,
104
301160
2000
05:03
because the same equipment --
105
303160
2000
05:05
phones, computers --
106
305160
2000
05:07
let you consume and produce.
107
307160
2000
05:09
It's as if, when you bought a book, they threw in the printing press for free;
108
309160
3000
05:12
it's like you had a phone that could turn into a radio
109
312160
2000
05:14
if you pressed the right buttons.
110
314160
2000
05:16
That is a huge change
111
316160
3000
05:19
in the media landscape we're used to.
112
319160
2000
05:21
And it's not just Internet or no Internet.
113
321160
3000
05:24
We've had the Internet in its public form
114
324160
2000
05:26
for almost 20 years now,
115
326160
2000
05:28
and it's still changing
116
328160
2000
05:30
as the media becomes more social.
117
330160
2000
05:32
It's still changing patterns
118
332160
2000
05:34
even among groups who know how to deal with the Internet well.
119
334160
3000
05:37
Second story.
120
337160
2000
05:39
Last May, China in the Sichuan province
121
339160
2000
05:41
had a terrible earthquake, 7.9 magnitude,
122
341160
3000
05:44
massive destruction in a wide area, as the Richter Scale has it.
123
344160
4000
05:48
And the earthquake was reported as it was happening.
124
348160
6000
05:54
People were texting from their phones. They were taking photos of buildings.
125
354160
3000
05:57
They were taking videos of buildings shaking.
126
357160
3000
06:00
They were uploading it to QQ, China's largest Internet service.
127
360160
3000
06:03
They were Twittering it.
128
363160
2000
06:05
And so as the quake was happening
129
365160
3000
06:08
the news was reported.
130
368160
2000
06:10
And because of the social connections,
131
370160
2000
06:12
Chinese students coming elsewhere, and going to school,
132
372160
3000
06:15
or businesses in the rest of the world opening offices in China --
133
375160
4000
06:19
there were people listening all over the world, hearing this news.
134
379160
4000
06:23
The BBC got their first wind of the Chinese quake from Twitter.
135
383160
5000
06:28
Twitter announced the existence of the quake
136
388160
3000
06:31
several minutes before the US Geological Survey
137
391160
2000
06:33
had anything up online for anybody to read.
138
393160
4000
06:37
The last time China had a quake of that magnitude
139
397160
3000
06:40
it took them three months to admit that it had happened.
140
400160
5000
06:45
(Laughter)
141
405160
1000
06:46
Now they might have liked to have done that here,
142
406160
2000
06:48
rather than seeing these pictures go up online.
143
408160
3000
06:51
But they weren't given that choice,
144
411160
3000
06:54
because their own citizens beat them to the punch.
145
414160
3000
06:57
Even the government learned of the earthquake from their own citizens,
146
417160
4000
07:01
rather than from the Xinhua News Agency.
147
421160
3000
07:04
And this stuff rippled like wildfire.
148
424160
2000
07:06
For a while there
149
426160
2000
07:08
the top 10 most clicked links on Twitter,
150
428160
2000
07:10
the global short messaging service --
151
430160
2000
07:12
nine of the top 10 links were about the quake.
152
432160
3000
07:15
People collating information,
153
435160
2000
07:17
pointing people to news sources,
154
437160
2000
07:19
pointing people to the US geological survey.
155
439160
2000
07:21
The 10th one was kittens on a treadmill, but that's the Internet for you.
156
441160
4000
07:25
(Laughter)
157
445160
1000
07:26
But nine of the 10 in those first hours.
158
446160
3000
07:29
And within half a day donation sites were up,
159
449160
4000
07:33
and donations were pouring in from all around the world.
160
453160
4000
07:37
This was an incredible, coordinated global response.
161
457160
4000
07:41
And the Chinese then, in one of their periods of media openness,
162
461160
2000
07:43
decided that they were going to let it go,
163
463160
2000
07:45
that they were going to let this citizen reporting fly.
164
465160
5000
07:50
And then this happened.
165
470160
2000
07:52
People began to figure out, in the Sichuan Provence,
166
472160
2000
07:54
that the reason so many school buildings had collapsed --
167
474160
3000
07:57
because tragically the earthquake happened during a school day --
168
477160
4000
08:01
the reason so many school buildings collapsed
169
481160
2000
08:03
is that corrupt officials had taken bribes
170
483160
2000
08:05
to allow those building to be built to less than code.
171
485160
4000
08:09
And so they started, the citizen journalists started
172
489160
3000
08:12
reporting that as well. And there was an incredible picture.
173
492160
3000
08:15
You may have seen in on the front page of the New York Times.
174
495160
2000
08:17
A local official literally prostrated himself in the street,
175
497160
4000
08:21
in front of these protesters,
176
501160
2000
08:23
in order to get them to go away.
177
503160
3000
08:26
Essentially to say, "We will do anything to placate you,
178
506160
2000
08:28
just please stop protesting in public."
179
508160
3000
08:31
But these are people who have been radicalized,
180
511160
2000
08:33
because, thanks to the one child policy,
181
513160
2000
08:35
they have lost everyone in their next generation.
182
515160
3000
08:38
Someone who has seen the death of a single child
183
518160
2000
08:40
now has nothing to lose.
184
520160
2000
08:42
And so the protest kept going.
185
522160
2000
08:44
And finally the Chinese cracked down.
186
524160
3000
08:47
That was enough of citizen media.
187
527160
3000
08:50
And so they began to arrest the protesters.
188
530160
2000
08:52
They began to shut down the media that the protests were happening on.
189
532160
4000
08:56
China is probably the most successful
190
536160
4000
09:00
manager of Internet censorship in the world,
191
540160
3000
09:03
using something that is widely described as the Great Firewall of China.
192
543160
4000
09:07
And the Great Firewall of China
193
547160
2000
09:09
is a set of observation points
194
549160
2000
09:11
that assume that media is produced by professionals,
195
551160
4000
09:15
it mostly comes in from the outside world,
196
555160
3000
09:18
it comes in relatively sparse chunks,
197
558160
3000
09:21
and it comes in relatively slowly.
198
561160
3000
09:24
And because of those four characteristics
199
564160
2000
09:26
they are able to filter it as it comes into the country.
200
566160
4000
09:30
But like the Maginot Line,
201
570160
2000
09:32
the great firewall of China was facing in the wrong direction
202
572160
3000
09:35
for this challenge,
203
575160
2000
09:37
because not one of those four things was true in this environment.
204
577160
6000
09:43
The media was produced locally. It was produced by amateurs.
205
583160
2000
09:45
It was produced quickly. And it was produced at such an incredible abundance
206
585160
5000
09:50
that there was no way to filter it as it appeared.
207
590160
4000
09:54
And so now the Chinese government, who for a dozen years,
208
594160
3000
09:57
has quite successfully filtered the web,
209
597160
4000
10:01
is now in the position of having to decide
210
601160
2000
10:03
whether to allow or shut down entire services,
211
603160
4000
10:07
because the transformation to amateur media
212
607160
3000
10:10
is so enormous that they can't deal with it any other way.
213
610160
4000
10:14
And in fact that is happening this week.
214
614160
2000
10:16
On the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen
215
616160
2000
10:18
they just, two days ago, announced
216
618160
3000
10:21
that they were simply shutting down access to Twitter,
217
621160
3000
10:24
because there was no way to filter it other than that.
218
624160
4000
10:28
They had to turn the spigot entirely off.
219
628160
4000
10:32
Now these changes don't just affect people who want to censor messages.
220
632160
4000
10:36
They also affect people who want to send messages,
221
636160
3000
10:39
because this is really a transformation of the ecosystem as a whole,
222
639160
3000
10:42
not just a particular strategy.
223
642160
2000
10:44
The classic media problem, from the 20th century
224
644160
4000
10:48
is, how does an organization have a message
225
648160
2000
10:50
that they want to get out
226
650160
2000
10:52
to a group of people distributed at the edges of a network.
227
652160
2000
10:54
And here is the twentieth century answer.
228
654160
3000
10:57
Bundle up the message. Send the same message to everybody.
229
657160
4000
11:01
National message. Targeted individuals.
230
661160
2000
11:03
Relatively sparse number of producers.
231
663160
2000
11:05
Very expensive to do,
232
665160
2000
11:07
so there is not a lot of competition.
233
667160
2000
11:09
This is how you reach people.
234
669160
2000
11:11
All of that is over.
235
671160
3000
11:14
We are increasingly in a landscape where media is global,
236
674160
3000
11:17
social, ubiquitous and cheap.
237
677160
3000
11:20
Now most organizations that are trying to send messages
238
680160
5000
11:25
to the outside world, to the distributed collection of the audience,
239
685160
4000
11:29
are now used to this change.
240
689160
2000
11:31
The audience can talk back.
241
691160
2000
11:33
And that's a little freaky. But you can get used to it after a while, as people do.
242
693160
5000
11:38
But that's not the really crazy change that we're living in the middle of.
243
698160
4000
11:42
The really crazy change is here:
244
702160
3000
11:45
it's the fact that they are no longer disconnected from each other,
245
705160
4000
11:49
the fact that former consumers are now producers,
246
709160
3000
11:52
the fact that the audience can talk directly to one another;
247
712160
3000
11:55
because there is a lot more amateurs than professionals,
248
715160
3000
11:58
and because the size of the network,
249
718160
3000
12:01
the complexity of the network is actually the square
250
721160
3000
12:04
of the number of participants,
251
724160
2000
12:06
meaning that the network, when it grows large,
252
726160
2000
12:08
grows very, very large.
253
728160
2000
12:10
As recently at last decade,
254
730160
2000
12:12
most of the media that was available for public consumption
255
732160
3000
12:15
was produced by professionals.
256
735160
2000
12:17
Those days are over, never to return.
257
737160
4000
12:21
It is the green lines now, that are the source of the free content,
258
741160
3000
12:24
which brings me to my last story.
259
744160
3000
12:27
We saw some of the most imaginative use
260
747160
2000
12:29
of social media during the Obama campaign.
261
749160
3000
12:32
And I don't mean most imaginative use in politics --
262
752160
2000
12:34
I mean most imaginative use ever.
263
754160
3000
12:37
And one of the things Obama did, was they famously,
264
757160
2000
12:39
the Obama campaign did, was they famously put up
265
759160
2000
12:41
MyBarackObama.com, myBO.com
266
761160
2000
12:43
And millions of citizens rushed in to participate,
267
763160
4000
12:47
and to try and figure out how to help.
268
767160
2000
12:49
An incredible conversation sprung up there.
269
769160
3000
12:52
And then, this time last year,
270
772160
3000
12:55
Obama announced that he was going to change his vote on FISA,
271
775160
3000
12:58
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
272
778160
2000
13:00
He had said, in January, that he would not sign a bill
273
780160
2000
13:02
that granted telecom immunity for possibly warrantless spying
274
782160
4000
13:06
on American persons.
275
786160
3000
13:09
By the summer, in the middle of the general campaign,
276
789160
2000
13:11
He said, "I've thought about the issue more. I've changed my mind.
277
791160
2000
13:13
I'm going to vote for this bill."
278
793160
2000
13:15
And many of his own supporters
279
795160
2000
13:17
on his own site went very publicly berserk.
280
797160
5000
13:22
It was Senator Obama when they created it. They changed the name later.
281
802160
3000
13:25
"Please get FISA right."
282
805160
2000
13:27
Within days of this group being created
283
807160
2000
13:29
it was the fastest growing group on myBO.com;
284
809160
3000
13:32
within weeks of its being created it was the largest group.
285
812160
3000
13:35
Obama had to issue a press release.
286
815160
3000
13:38
He had to issue a reply.
287
818160
3000
13:41
And he said essentially, "I have considered the issue.
288
821160
2000
13:43
I understand where you are coming from.
289
823160
2000
13:45
But having considered it all, I'm still going to vote the way I'm going to vote.
290
825160
4000
13:49
But I wanted to reach out to you and say, I understand that you disagree with me,
291
829160
3000
13:52
and I'm going to take my lumps on this one."
292
832160
3000
13:55
This didn't please anybody. But then a funny thing happened in the conversation.
293
835160
4000
13:59
People in that group realized
294
839160
2000
14:01
that Obama had never shut them down.
295
841160
4000
14:05
Nobody in the Obama campaign had ever tried to hide the group
296
845160
4000
14:09
or make it harder to join,
297
849160
2000
14:11
to deny its existence, to delete it,
298
851160
2000
14:13
to take to off the site.
299
853160
2000
14:15
They had understood that their role
300
855160
4000
14:19
with myBO.com was to convene their supporters
301
859160
3000
14:22
but not to control their supporters.
302
862160
3000
14:25
And that is the kind of discipline
303
865160
2000
14:27
that it takes to make really mature use
304
867160
4000
14:31
of this media.
305
871160
3000
14:34
Media, the media landscape that we knew,
306
874160
4000
14:38
as familiar as it was, as easy conceptually as it was
307
878160
3000
14:41
to deal with the idea that professionals broadcast
308
881160
2000
14:43
messages to amateurs,
309
883160
2000
14:45
is increasingly slipping away.
310
885160
3000
14:48
In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap,
311
888160
4000
14:52
in a world of media where the former audience
312
892160
2000
14:54
are now increasingly full participants,
313
894160
4000
14:58
in that world, media is less and less often
314
898160
4000
15:02
about crafting a single message
315
902160
3000
15:05
to be consumed by individuals.
316
905160
3000
15:08
It is more and more often
317
908160
2000
15:10
a way of creating an environment for convening
318
910160
3000
15:13
and supporting groups.
319
913160
2000
15:15
And the choice we face,
320
915160
2000
15:17
I mean anybody who has a message they want to have heard
321
917160
2000
15:19
anywhere in the world,
322
919160
3000
15:22
isn't whether or not that is the media environment we want to operate in.
323
922160
3000
15:25
That's the media environment we've got.
324
925160
2000
15:27
The question we all face now is,
325
927160
2000
15:29
"How can we make best use of this media?
326
929160
2000
15:31
Even though it means changing the way we've always done it."
327
931160
4000
15:35
Thank you very much.
328
935160
2000
15:37
(Applause)
329
937160
6000
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7