in this bubble and it's hard to appreciate who it's like for a lot of people. you said something like compared to larry we're not that successful. we're successful. >> it was a private phone conversation. >> you found a transscript on the google server. [applause] >> i think we better move to the next question. >> henry, this is maybin. i'm here in the middle higher up. i chaired a planning committee from 2001 to 2004. i want to touch on something that henry said about the sense that doug had being a failure. he had a 200 year vision.

he had the colloquial standard but that was the unfinished revolution. i just want to touch on that he felt that we should have a vision of how technology could augment our humanity and we still have to live up to that dream and we fought to the last breath to get that message out. he did feel he was a failure. even though he had done so much because he looks to us to gather in community to honor technology for humanity. that fight still goes on. i like to hear your comments as well thinkers. when i went around with doug, that message was very hard for people to hear. you mean we aren't good enough. we're the masters of the universe. yet the 200 year dream of technology can do to help out humanity. [applause].

>> it's interesting to see your comment. i hear two different things now. i never met him in person. you mentioned that he didn't get enough recognition as a metric for a failure. maybe that was part of it. it's urged to implement this amazing vision and the slowness of society relative to his own life lock. on the recognition side, i think we should never use the recognition we get as a measure of success, ever. i think it's a big mistake. if you do this, you -- the true innovators are the true recognizers. recognition itself in my opinion is plainly the wrong metric. as is money.

the real question for me is always, how much do you affect people's lives to the better in the future. in that case, it's fair to say that he was probably ahead of his time. he was the first. he invented whole bunch of things to use everyday. all things we share have massively influenced people. it massively influenced people. he put things out that people would pick up. if he was around today, i would say hey, you have a symposium in your honor. >> another story occurs to me that your comment brought up --

one of my sort of weird illnesses that i collect music and instruments. i have lots of instruments. doug used come over and we'd look at these instruments. we both thought these were the best interphases. the thing about them each one of them took centuries to evolve. if you look at a modern clarinet or a violin, it wasn't like born in some -- it coininvolved with the culture of playing it over a long time. in some cases -- it was the refragment of the design that took that long. it still take that long. there's that notion that some things in technology can improve very rapidly. where you can just say let's

just make this faster and more efficient. that's great. there's something that takes their time and this notion that maybe in 200 years we'll have interphases that we use that are as good as a violin or a piano. i try to dream of what those might be like. in a way those are for the future. by definition, we can't see those things yet. we can't know them and you have to have a sort of trust with that old come about. can you imagine us catering to people 200 years from now. this is the wonderful thing you would have done. or else they're worship a little too much as some do our constitution or something and hang on every word we say. we need to leave some room for the future. >> okay.

>> my question goes back to an early point. it's regarding the ethics and economics of augmentation. i find this to be a very critical theme in mr. lanier's book. one of the beauties of technology is that it sort of mediates our perception of reality. however, with increasing mediation, there's complexity and there's also danger that it's difficult to see the consequences of our actions because of this mediation. this potentially could also undermine our ability to choose and to have responsibility because of this thick layer of mediation. based on this, do we see -- to hear some discussion -- is there a danger of with the technology we really contribute to the further concentration of wealth, knowledge and power in the hands of the very few. to the point where we have no

longer have any consumers to buy our product? >> i understood the question. the question was about technology most recent developments changing the balance of distribution of wealth. yes or no? the effect of most recent technology developments on wealth and global wealth on equity and different places in the world. we've witnessed a die divergence of wealth this country. the middle class used to be somewhere where you could stay. you have to keep running fastest and faster to obtain this. it's very concerning development for us as a nation. the division of the people who have a chance and people who don't have a chance. i think it's concerning development worldwide that has

to be addressed in my opinion. we have resources by giving some people enormous power and others no power at all. that's certainly the case. having said this, this goes hand in hand with the situation basic services becoming more and more available for everybody. it's not that -- this leads to a really bad situation but it's not quite as bad as it could be if the poorest and poorest getting worse. i'm a big fan of the estate tax. this has a chance to reset dynasties. really important. i'm coming from europe where we're much more socialist than you guys are. we are shocked how little is done for poor people in this country and people of color and so on. how badly we manage ourselves in terms of small number of people who have a chance to get a great

education. i also hope that we can invent knowledge to help that. my own company -- our objective is -- and make it available. -- our objective is to democratize education. we are using technology to -- and make it available. responsibility absolutely yes. we should think globally. beshould think about people. we have 7.2 billion of us. it's an amazing gift that we can turn into an amazing progress in the world. to think about how would use silicone valley for the world. >> i think i heard two different questions within your question. the first one you were asking is about whether the world becomes more obscure to us because it's so mediated by technology.

particularly technology from other people. for instance right now a lot of the news you read is selected by algorithms. and it's often gained by bunch of people trying to manipulate it. it becomes obscure why you reading what you reading. if you would ask know in the 1980's, once everything was network and people were sharing media and collaborating, would it possible for something like climate change denialism. they would say no it wouldn't be possible. it turns out to be possible. it turns out not only to be possible but it can be possible in a really politically powerful way that has an impact. i thought that couldn't happen. i think the way out of that, the way to sort of help people not lose touch with reality when there's so much technology

everywhere, there's so many incentives to manipulate it, is to make it as clear as possible so people can have as much exercise and expertise. i think we failed at that. i honestly do. i think we have an information system that's all about manipulation because it has perverse incentives. the way journalism has been click bait and it's being centralized, i don't want to go into it. you can read my book on that. this is a beef i have with the artificial intelligence world. if you say, here's serial deciding what you should read, since we're social creature, we tend to differ, okay. it creates a obscurity. if we're honest, it's an algorithm. what we should be doing is

visualizing for people what the algorithms should be doing so they have an opportunity to understand their world better as doug would have expected them to. i don't mind facebook offering that service. so people can look at the mechanisms, see what's driving it. we need a new kind of computer science that visualizes and makes clear what algorithms do. what could be more clear than that. that's the answer to the mediation issue i believe. more explanation less fantasy. less manipulation. then the second question about

the power distribution. it's tremendously concerning. in the personal computer era before everything got networked, there was interesting thing that happened to personal computers. which is like little shops. they buy an apple or two or mac and early pc, they would own their own data. the fact that those people own their data allowed them to have differential information in their own market which allowed them to be entrepreneurs. i'm convinced that the personal computer era did a lot to raise the middle class it gave so many people the ability to have unique information powers as small players if their market. which is what capitalism is about. that's an engineering issue we can follow.

what we're doing is not sustainable. >> one last question. >> we used to exchange visits. i was managing the stanford artificial intelligence lab. the demo he gave was a very good presentation of the state-of-the-art of computing. however, i disagree about the appraisal of it. it was called the mother of all demos i believe by some reporters who didn't know the state-of-the-art. there was one new idea

introduced in the talk. it didn't work. the thing that got the most attention was the point in click interphase using the mouse. the mouse was a less expensive way of pointing and clicking than the prior state-of-the-art, which was so called light guns and light pens. but it was not a new idea. the interphase has been around for 15 years at that point. it was introduced at m.i.t. on the whirlwind computer. lately widely used in the air defense system which i helped design.

that was not a new idea. it became popular, especially after the introduction of the personal computer. the new idea that doug showed was the one-handed keyboard. didn't work out. it was dropped. of course the mice now sort of fading being replaced by touch pads and the like. it has been somewhat blown up in perspective beyond what it really accomplished, so. i am sorry, that is a dissenting view.

[laughter] there's a couple things i want to say about that. tend to a great isolating the single contribution of his -- often he is introduced for the mouse and i don't think that's the important thing he did. he did a wholistic sensibility and demonstrated overall approach to technology for using it. i think you're keeping it into elements. i agree with you on the point of history. i do want to say if you were going to apply the same standards, it would fall into nothing really fast. if you want to play that game, i think your own field would suffer pretty badly. i don't think that's not the important field of play.

i have to say something else, back in those days, it was such charming place back in the hills in sort of weird decaying ultramodern building. there are levels of achievement that can't be described in terms of molecules. doug was molecular innovator. i will defend him on those terms. [applause] >> we're going to go with one more question, that would be you. >> my name is andre. i would like to go back to your last question. if you had to name three or four

things that you think would change the world most in the next 15 for 20 years, can you do that? i know it's difficult. three or four interest user things? >> the most important innovation for the next 30 years -- >> 20 years from today, what you guys think might change the world the most. >> i think you're not holding the microphone close enough. i think you're asking what do you think the most important innovation to seek? >> 15 to 20 years. >> i've been so wrong in predicting these things. it's amazing. i can tell you things i would love to see happening. something obvious, like moving to a much more sharing society.

we moved more into an on-demand society. you just push a button and a couple of machines. your food will come out of a machine. you don't have to worry about things like going shopping anymore. longevity and making people live longer. maybe the time between us and our deaths will be the same as it is today. lot of changes will take place that would render half the deaths survivable. massportation -- the hyper-loop which makes sense. we can change modes of

transportation. ourrization -- we rely on devices that can remember and we can share easier. people just know about it. many of the basic necessities can become free. it is already happening massively. a situation where a lot of things are inexpensive that were expensive. if we all worked less, it'd be better because we could share better. when you do all the things happening today, there's no thing new. maybe a few us will move to mars in