tisdag 28 maj 2013

Larry Page om att låta folk experimentera med samhällsformer


För snart två veckor sedan höll Larry Page, vd:n för Google, sluttalet för Google I/O. I talet, som finns transkriberat här, och som börjar 2:39:40 i videon ovan, ger han en väldigt optimistisk syn på framtiden.
Technology should do the hard work so that people can get on with the things that make them the happiest in life. ...

The opportunities we have are tremendous. We haven’t seen this rate of change in computing for a long time. Probably not since the birth of the personal computer. But when I think about it, I think we’re all here because we share a deep sense of optimism about the potential of technology to improve people’s lives, and the world, as part of that. ...

We should be building great things that don’t exist. Right? Being negative is not how we make progress. And most important things are not zero sum. There’s a lot of opportunity out there. And we can use technology to make really new and really important things to make people’s lives better.
Nu är det säkert redan bekant för alla som läser bloggen att han också kom med ett förslag på hur vi skulle kunna gå framåt i världen, nämligen att låta ha en del av världen öppen för en fri experimentering av olika samhällsformer, för de som vill. Lite sent tänkte jag nu iaf lägga upp hela hans tankar här, som kom efter en fråga från en i publiken, som dyker upp 3:15:20 i klippet ovan.
[Kevin Nielsen from New Jersey: I was intrigued about your comment about the positivity and the negativity and I’m very interested in helping other people be positive about technology—as you are—and I’m interested in what your advice would be to help us sort of reduce the negativity and focus on positive, and focus on changing the world.]

I think people naturally are concerned about change. And certainly not all change is good. I do think the pace of change in the world is increasing. Part of what I would think about is, I think that we haven’t adapted mechanisms to deal with some of our old institutions like the law and so on aren’t keeping up with the rate of change that we’ve caused through technology.

You know, if you look different kinds of laws we make, and things like that, they’re very old. I mean, the laws when we went public were 50 years old. Law can’t be right if it’s 50 years old. Like, it’s before the Internet. That’s pretty major change in how you might go public.

So, I think we need to—maybe some of you, maybe the million people watching you all love technology—maybe more of us need to go into other areas and help those areas improve and understand technology. I think that that’s not happened at the rate at it needs to happen.

The other thing in my mind is we also haven’t maybe built mechanisms to allow experimentation. There’s many, many exciting and important things you could do that you just can’t do ’cause they’re illegal or they’re not allowed by regulation. And that makes sense, we don’t want our world to change too fast.

But maybe we should set aside some small part of the world...

You know, [I?] like going to Burning Man, for example. Which I’m sure many of you have been to. Yeah, a few Burners out there. That’s an environment where people try out different things, but not everybody has to go. And I think that’s a great thing, too.

I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out some new things and figure out: What is the effect on society? What’s the effect on people? Without having to deploy it into the normal world. And people who like those kinds of things can go there and experience that. And we don’t have mechanisms for that. So those are the kind of things I would think about.
I also think we need to be honest that we don’t always know the impact of changes. We should be humble about that. I’m not sure getting up on stage and saying, “Everything is amazing,” and so on, is the right thing. Maybe we should be more humble and see what the effect is, and the doubt, as we go. So those are kind of my thoughts.  
Och visst är det ett otroligt rimligt argument? Världen förändras, men politiken hinner inte anpassas efter samhället, så vi behöver förändring, men förändring är jobbigt för vissa och inte all förändring är bra, så därför är det bra att testa dessa idéer på något ställe för att se vad effekterna blir, (implicit) innan de adopteras av resten av samhället (om alla andra också gillar det). Väldigt likt de argument som vi för fram i Ofuss.

Pages idéer fick en hel del uppmärksammad på internet, men hur är det i Sverige? Varken SvD, DN, Aftonbladet eller Expressen har något om dessa radikala förslag. Inga svensk bloggare verkar ta upp det heller. Statens ovänner har dock en liten kommentar om det.

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