[Music] [Music] [Applause] I woke up on the morning of the 24th of June 2016 and I couldn't believe my ears every single one of my social media connections and every one of my new streams was very very confident that we were going to vote to remain so did I and they get it so wrong don't worry this is not a talk about brexit this is a talk about the echo chamber what it is and where it could take us in the future the echo chamber is an environment much like a social media Network where an
individual's thoughts beliefs and opinions are echoed back toward them and opposing thoughts and beliefs and opinions are are never seen so you don't get the option to see them or hear them and whether you believe in it or whether you like it or not the echo chamber is there so think about all your social media feeds Big Data algorithms are deciding on what content you should see based on your likes your dislikes your browsing history your purchasing history and the likes and dislikes of your friends followers and connections and this is not that newer thing
we've often decided on which newspaper we want to read or which News Channel that we want to see but we've had the opportunity to see those different newspapers or different channels but now 68% of Americans use social media as their sole source of news so now more than ever the echo chamber is more dangerous but it's not just the algorithms that are doing it we ourselves are perpetuating it every time that we post a social media a lot of us don't post for ourselves eles we post for them we post content that we want to
see liked or shared or commented on and we do that because we want validation and and that's that's not a new thing human beings have often wanted validation it's number three on maso's hierarchy of needs right after physiological and safety comes love and belonging and every time that we get that virtual pat on the back we get a little release of the chemical dopamine which feels good so if it feels good then maybe we should do it more right well maybe not because if we just continue to create content and upload content that is not
for us but for them all we're doing is perpetuating other people's Echo Chambers but I'm just as guilty of this as anybody else and when I was going through this process of of writing this talk I was starting to think well how do I want you the audience to feel about me as I deliver this and I wanted you to think that I was articulate and intelligent but I had to take a step back from that because Ted is about ideas worth spreading it's nothing to do with how you might feel about me and and
I believe this idea is is something that we should all listen to so it was it was really good and it was an interesting process for me to move away from that too so let's get off of our screens and start getting into um the real world now the Oken chamber is not just it's not just in our social media it's not just in our new new feeds it's on our streaming video platforms it's on our dating websites imagine millions of people every day getting connected by algorithms and that makes sense right because you wouldn't
want to be connected to somebody that you're not going to get on with so let's take the echo chamber away from our screens into the real world a few years ago 2014 Google created the Google Glass uh it was a pair of glasses that you could wear and it had what's called a mixed reality layer so you could see data as well as the real world so you could be walking down the street and you might be able to see directions as you walked it wasn't a massive success expectations were very high and people had
a lot of concerns about privacy but just four or five years later things have changed we are a lot of us are using our phones as augmented reality Windows to look at data into the real world there are 12 different manufacturers of uh smart glasses on the market today Google themselves have applied for patent for Google contact l lenses and Forester says that by 2025 there'll be 14 million Americans wearing smart glasses every day so let's imagine that we're all wearing these smart glasses right now and as I look out onto you and the audience
I can see your social media statuses or I could have sentiment analysis plugged in and maybe by looking at your Expressions I can understand what you're thinking and feeling or maybe I could create a filter so that when you look at me through your glasses you see bunny ears or big bright blue eyes so now let's imagine that we are in a supermarket and as you walk down the aisles maybe you start to see certain products with a haze or a glow or a halo around them and these could be products that you've bought before
they could be products that are part of a recipe that you've been looking at or they could just simply be products that a supermarket is trying to sell to you I mean this must sound familiar because this is happening every day on our screens now let's take it a bit further and let's imagine that we're in a coffe shop and as you look around certain people have got a glow around them or halo around them and those big data algorithms that control our social media and professional networking feeds are deciding who that we're going to
get on with and so they're starting to highlight them again this is happening right now on on social media let's take it a bit further those same Big Data algorithms that control those feeds decide that there are certain people in that coffee shop that you're not going to get on with so they completely block them from your view let's just think about that for a moment if if you would I'd just like you to turn and look at the person that you came with today now this person could be your your friend colleague your husband
your girlfriend your child imagine a data algorithm had decided that the two of you wouldn't get along and so you never even met so what's wrong with this well most people would say that it's good to spend time with people that you're going to get on with you don't want to spend time with people that you don't get on with but if we don't debate and if we don't Challenge and listen to other people's perspective then how can we other empathize uh and how can we we take on a different way of thinking and and
and be inclusive of people's perspective throughout history we've seen people that have become better versions of themselves because they've spent time looking and listening at a different perspective or a different way of doing things where would BJ Borg have been without John mackenro where would Gary Kasparov have been without IBM's deep blue when that world champion of Chess was beaten by a computer program he went away and and he looked and he analyzed the way that that program had played chess so that he could come back an even better player and we see this in
corporations as well back in the 80s with IBM and Microsoft con constantly leapfrogging each other to try to become the best to try to create the best possible products and now we see it with apple and with Samsung and what happens when you have corporations that have absolutely no competition well then you get Blockbuster if this technology had existed 50 years ago then maybe Steve Jobs and Steve wnac wouldn't have met and created Apple one of them was a Buddhist and one of them was an atheist if this technology hadn't existed a hundred years ago
then maybe Winston Churchill who who famously changed his political ideologies and his parties twice before he was elected in 1940 well maybe he wouldn't have had the the the foresight to be able to help the Allies win the war just imagine for a moment a world where everybody in it shared your opinion where every single belief and opinion that you have was the same as everybody else well then maybe every day when you wake up it would be like the 24th of June 2016 we've seen it recently we've seen it in America where Republicans are
actually voting with their feet and they're moving to areas where there are more Republicans and what you get there then is you get homogenized communities with extreme views so the EO chamber is out there and it is dangerous but there is something that we can do all of us but we have to act now we have to seek out different types of cont content across social media those algorithms are only showing us what they think we want to see so we can show them something different go out and meet different types of people next time
that you create something on social media or upload something to social media let's do it for us and not for them sort your social media feeds by most recent rather the most popular so we're not all just perpetuating the same content round and round pick up a different newspaper pick up the Sun the times the guardian in the mail you might not agree with it but millions of people do and it's so important to get their perspective keep your eyes and your ears open because one day you could meet somebody or hear an idea that
could change your life forever thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
