well it is my pleasure to be here it's
also kind of fun to be talking at Maker
Faire I apologize that my talk comes
with a legal disclaimer don't invest in
my company on the basis of anything I'm
about to tell you is what you should
take away from that but I thought what I
would do for the next thirty minutes was
talk a little bit about what we've seen
coming out of the work we do at Intel
about what it means to be human in a
world that is increasingly full of
digital technologies I'm willing to bet
many of you in the room have multiple
pieces of technology you have multiple
sites that you live in online and places
where you spend your time but what I
want to do is reflect here a little bit
on the ways in which there are things
about us as human beings
that persist despite the appearances of
digital technology there's lots of ways
to think about how I got into my job
there's usually a couple of things I
like to tell people by way of
introduction to myself the first is that
I'm Australian which means I have this
accent and I can't do anything about it
the second thing is I'm the child of an
anthropologist so my mother is someone
who studies people and I spent my entire
childhood living on her field sites in
central and northern Australia in the
1970s and 1980s so I spent most of my
childhood living with indigenous people
who remembered their country before
Europeans and before cattle and before
fences and who at the drop of a hat and
any request would take my brother and I
Bush with them and we would spend our
time running around effectively wild no
shoes we didn't speak English I didn't
go to school for years don't tell your
parents it had no effect on me and I
learned to kill things which was
excellent right was about as good as a
child would get going back to regular
school was very hard for me I was
required to wear shoes I was required
not to kill things in the playground it
was a big transition but it propelled me
into a very particular kind of life
right living with indigenous people in
that period of time it was really hard
not to be motivated to think about how
to change the world those were hard
conditions to see right and my mother
was very big in impressing on me from
the time I was a little girl that if you
could see a better world you were
morally obligated to go out and make it
happen
right that you should be actively
working to make a better world and so I
waited yeah exactly
my mother was a very smart my mother was
a very smart woman um and you know I
thought the way to do that was to get a
good education so I went to university I
came to the states to do it I went to
graduate school I thought I would be a
professor because that seemed like a
good way to help shape young minds in
some ways fortunately for me and
possibly for my students
I met a man in a bar in Palo Alto in
1998 and he changed my life I hasten to
add I didn't marry him but he pointed me
in the direction of industry and said
that people like me who studied human
beings and culture had a role to play in
the development of new technology which
was a startling thing for me I never
even contemplated that that was a
possibility and in September of 1998 so
16 years ago this month I joined Intel
and on my first day at work my new boss
sat me down and said we're very excited
to have a social scientist we don't
really know what you do but we're very
excited you're here and we need your
help with two things I'm like excellent
what are they my new boss says we need
your help with women and I sensibly
asked the next question which women
because that seemed reasonable my new
boss said all women and I'm like so
you'd like my help with 3.2 billion
women yes said my boss I'm like okay I
asked what do you imagine I will do with
3.2 billion women am i noob I said if
you could tell us what they want that
would be excellent okay so in my
notebook of the day I wrote down women
all and underlined it a lot and tried to
imagine what is the project you would do
as a researcher to understand all women
and what they would want it's not a bad
problem to have right except that this
new boss had said there were two things
and if the first thing is women all it
is frightening to imagine what your new
boss might think the second thing you
should study is and I'm sure I secretly
hope she would say men because then I'd
have everything but my new boss said
that my company Intel had an arrow W
problem and they needed my help and I
had to ask what's our o W my new boss
said that's rest of world and I was like
oh like where's world
that there is the rest of it my new SS
whole world is America and then there's
the rest of the world
at this point I realized I should go
back to my desk and possibly not leave
it again for a very long time because at
that point my job was explained everyone
who wasn't inside the building basically
to everyone who was and so my job became
spending time in people's homes all over
the world living with them going
shopping with them eating food with them
going to markets with them going to
temples and synagogues and mosques and
cricket games and museums and wet
markets the whole nine yards to try and
work out what makes people tick what
they care about what frustrates them and
what they want for themselves their kids
their communities their families even
their countries and then my job is to
boil all of that down and try and work
out how you use that to inspire the next
generation of technology development it
is basically the best job on the planet
and you can't have it because it is mine
when I am NOT doing that job though one
of my other jobs is to talk about the
future and it's great to be getting to
do it in this building which is such a
historic site for that as I came into
the auditorium you can't help but come
past all the pictures of all the World's
Fairs that have gone before right and
all the moments when we imagined what
the future would be like and the make
community make magazine this whole
movement is in no small part about
telling stories about the future we
might want to have or the futures we
want to have and so part of my job is
about doing that right about telling
what the stories of the future are and
sometimes we get it just a little bit
wrong this is a picture from 1958 from
California where the local electricity
company predicted four things they
predicted that there would be a box
outside of your door that heated your
house in winter and called them in
summer that's not bad air conditioning
central heating check they predicted
that you could have an oven in your
kitchen that would cook your food in
minutes not hours microwaves check they
predicted that lights would come on when
it got dark yeah home automation they
also predicted that there would be
self-driving cars on the freeways by
1970 kind of not so much what is of
course fascinating here is that those
stories don't go away right the story of
self-driving cars has been with us since
the 1930s
we are still tell
we are closer to executing on it but
some of the same challenges persist
right now the vision would look
different I suspect if you were to look
at an ad today for self-driving cars it
wouldn't necessarily have dad behind the
steering wheel and mom in the passenger
seat and two children in the back
playing some very complicated form of
Scrabble because I think you all have
cell phones and it probably wouldn't be
a tie in suit and she might be driving
god forbid
so one of the things that's really
interesting is that when we tell stories
about the future we are anticipating
change right we think the world is
changing really quickly we always talk
about it everything is moving really
fast everything is changing all the time
and we know how to look at images and
movies and photos and know that they're
in the past right you look at this image
here and you know this is what
television looked like in America in the
1950s maybe some of you remember this
not many and you don't have to admit to
it but we know that's the past right and
there's all kinds of clues in it and you
know if I put this picture up you know
oh god it's the future or at least the
present and it looks like everything is
different
televisions are no longer black and
white their color they're no longer big
and boxy they sit on a wall the content
is no longer delivered over the air it
comes via DVDs and the internet and
cable and you don't have to poke your
kids to change the channel because
there's a thing called a remote control
looks like a lot has changed but the
reality is the reason we still love
television has nothing to do with the
technology it has to do with the fact
that as human beings what we really love
is a good story and no matter how that
story is delivered to us we have made
quite happy and so on the one hand all
the technology looks different but the
reality is underlying it there is a very
simple human motivation to hear a good
story that hasn't changed in hundreds of
years television is just the latest way
to deliver a good story as was radio and
movies before it as is the internet and
YouTube today but underlying it is a
desire for a good story and it's my I
don't know work an argument for the day
at least that there's a series of things
that are deep in us as human beings as
cultural beings that don't change very
quickly their manifestations may look a
little bit different but they are
fundamentally and profoundly things that
make us human and they just don't move
that quickly and I think there are five
of them that have been profoundly I
don't know ever-present for a very long
time and they're really easy right
number one is we need friends and family
you may not like your family you may
wish you didn't have to travel with them
all the time or see them on holidays but
you still need them there may not always
be your biological family but the notion
of having a family and of having friends
is one of the principal ways in which we
define ourselves because human beings
are ultimately social creatures and our
friends and our families that's part of
how we think about who we are it's also
for those of you who are thinking about
technology development entrepreneurship
any one of those things technologies
that support friends and family have
always been successful when the
telephone first came along people were
not mostly calling each other up to give
long complicated instructions for
business they were calling each other up
to go what are you doing can I come see
you when are you coming to see me
you're late it was all social stuff
right it wasn't deeply technical think
of the most popular internet websites of
our era they're mostly not about
productivity Friendster
to Facebook you would hardly say
Facebook is a productivity tool designed
for work you would say however it is
incredibly important to us because we
are social creatures there's a whole lot
of other technologies that have
succeeded over the last 20 years in no
small part because they let us be social
creatures digital cameras digital movie
players the same way with super 8 from
my childhood but technologies and
experiences that support this almost
always succeed second one that hasn't
changed is we actually want to belong to
a community right we want to get to hang
out with people who share our interests
our practices the things we do this one
has been around for a really long time
whether this was guilds in the medieval
era he wanted people who knew how to do
the thing
did whether it is social clubs whether
it is belonging to a sporting franchise
probably not the NFL at the moment but
you know let's imagine maybe baseball
it's still pure you know it's you
support a particular team you want to
belong to a particular club you're an
alumni of a particular University all of
those are ways where we create community
with people who share our interests this
is also why sites like Pinterest are
really successful right we create a set
of places where people who share our
preoccupations with a particular thing
can come find us pretty much every
single booth out there is designed to
attract people that share your
particular preoccupation whether it's
about conductive thread whether it's
about sewing whether it's about
soldering whether it's about robots
there is someone out there who shares
your interest and in its extraordinary
exquisite pleasure when you find them
because finding people who like the same
things you do is another really
important part of what it means to be
human right the third one is we want to
belong to something that has meaning
beyond ourselves so you could think of
this as being religion we want to
believe in a higher power
you could think of this as being about
an ideology we want to believe in
democracy in freedom in women's rights
gay rights we want to believe in a cause
basically something bigger than
ourselves and it has frequently been a
way that technology is used to mobilize
people who share our beliefs in
something whether it's as simple as
using hashtags on Twitter as a way of
constituting social movements to
television shows and radio there's a
whole lot of ways where technology has
always been part of telling a story
about a bigger meaning so think of this
also as about some of the ways we talked
about things like the Arab Spring we've
talked about all manner of stuff here
but as human beings it's not just enough
to be part of a family and have friends
it's not just enough to have people who
share your practices you want to have
people who share your values you want
something bigger fourth one
unsurprisingly to anyone in this room I
would say from birth to death this is
true we want to use object to talk about
who we are to ourselves and to other
people
the weather it's the choice of your
baseball cap whether it's the choice of
your sweater whether it's the choice of
your shoes and socks everything you have
put on your body was done with some
level of consciousness even those of you
who think you just picked it up off the
floor put it on and walked out the door
I'm willing to bet there's a certain
sourcing set of sentiments that go about
what's on the floor and what isn't the
cars we drive the technology objects we
own the apps we download all of them say
something about who we are right and all
of the ways we choose to use those
things are hugely important if you strip
human beings away of and you just let
them be naked would be profoundly
uncomfortable for more than one reason
and part of that reason is we need stuff
to tell other people who we are and also
to tell ourselves so when we think about
what it is to be human this piece is
hugely important and then last but by no
means least one of the hugely
identifying things that makes us human
is we like to tell lies and keep secrets
and I'm sure there are some of you going
I don't tell lies and that actually
isn't true the average human being tells
somewhere between 6 to 200 lies a day by
the time you get to 200 you associate
Pathak let's be clear but you can get to
6 pretty easily that was an excellent
breakfast thank you yes you look great
in those clothes
I really thought that talk was
interesting no you're not bothering me
and you're at 4 already and you probably
not even out the door yet there's a
whole series of the writing we don't
necessarily tell them because we are bad
people
they're not necessarily about wanting to
confuse or bewilder or mislead people
some of it's just about being social
right and about not wanting to upset
people not wanting to disrupt the rhythm
of the day there's all kinds of reasons
why we tell lies but technology makes it
easier you can lie without having to see
someone's face some websites for some of
you in the room when you signed on to
them you lied about your age because
they needed you to be over the age of 14
and you weren't and possibly your
parents knew that when you did it so
sometimes the lies are socially
sanctioned right and there are certainly
ways in which all kinds of technologies
let us do this
I have a colleague of mine at Cornell
University who studies lying on the
internet and he decided the easiest
place to look at it the one that was the
least controversial was an online dating
site now perhaps unsurprisingly a
hundred percent of Americans when polled
admitted to lying in their online dating
profiles 100 percent that's everyone now
that's kind of staggering because I've
lived in America for a very long time
and I've never seen a place for a
hundred percent if you agreed to
anything but apparently online a hundred
percent of Americans lie in their online
dating profiles now unsurprisingly men
and women lie differently men lie about
their height
women lie about their weight men lie
more often but women are less likely to
get caught so you should just think
about those things briefly also turns
out we like to keep secrets right there
are things we choose not to put on the
Internet there are things we like to
keep to ourselves clearly there are a
whole lot of people in the last week and
a half who are experiencing the problems
of having their secrets released I think
I cloud think Jennifer Lawrence think
you know celebrities and things that are
just also very wrong nonetheless this
piece here is also really important and
people who have cracked the code for
this tend to be really successful so
five things right friends and family
community something bigger than
ourselves the idea that we use objects
and the idea that we're not always
entirely truthful other things that have
in some ways been unchanging for a
really long time it's also the case
however that there are a series of
things that have always been changing so
the series of things that are very
vulnerable to technology right that
technology has always transformed these
things and they're the ones that
whenever we talk about technology would
kind of cite these as if oh everything
is different because of these things one
of them is we now and in fact always
have worried about our reputations we've
had this conversation about privacy and
security and Trust but now we also worry
about what are people going to think of
us what does it mean if you can look at
my entire digital portfolio of
activities on the Internet what is the
judgment you will make about me and it's
one thing to have said you know I worry
that the government knows how much money
I'm making or my educational
is another thing to imagine that there
are multiple institutions both
commercial and private that may know
things about you that you didn't choose
to tell them but the idea of privacy has
always been complicated there is no
universal human agreed to stand at about
privacy if i sat every single one of you
down in this room and said define
privacy you'd all give me different
definitions because one of the
challenges here is it changes with age
with gender with history with where you
came from with what you have to keep
private versus what you don't and we
know it's under rapid transformation at
the moment and the places where this is
playing out are on you know some of them
are straightforward right you know how
many passwords do you have company
websites do you log onto but we also
start to see the emergence of a set of
services that are trying to play to this
whether it's Bitcoin tour next
generation anonymization services people
are struggling to think about how do you
maintain a certain level of anonymity in
a world where everything is recorded but
the idea that our reputations are under
threat that our privacy is under threat
that's the conversation we've been
having about new technologies for 200
years in front of the American Congress
in 1910 I believe when the first debates
happened about whether we should
electrify American homes the congressman
in the United States Congress declared
the reason not to electrify American
homes would be if you put lights on
people could see if people were home at
night and know what they were doing and
electricity was judged to be a violator
of privacy and also it also make us
unsafe because if you could see if
people were home you would know if women
were home by themselves or children you
could attack them
so think about the fact that we now
think about electricity and light as a
form of safety 100 years ago it was seen
as being quite the reverse so we know
this one has been under transformation
for a really long time as is this really
complicated dynamic as human beings it
turns out we're constantly craving
excitement but we actually occasionally
need to be bored my useless fact for the
day the word boredom didn't actually
exist in English until 1858
it was coined ironically by Dickens for
those of you who read Dickens at
university or high school you will
understand the irony there it is a word
that could only come into existence when
you had choice basically boredom is what
happens when you can make choices until
you have choices to make there is no
boredom it's just the stuff you have to
be doing which is interesting right but
it turns out that as human beings
biologically physically and
psychologically we actually need to be
bored periodically there's a thing that
happens in our brains when we are bored
that lets us reset and recalibrate them
so those of you in the room who are my
age will remember in the summer times
when our parents kicked us out of the
house and said come home when it's dark
or you're hungry but not beforehand and
we would usually say things like but mom
I'm bored and in my instance my mother
would say well go mow the lawn thing and
I was never that bored ever I would go
make up things to do I would go find
games I would go do repetitive tasks I
would go daydream it turns out those
things are hugely important it's one of
the ways our brains actually spur
creativity and one of the challenges for
those of us in the room who are parents
and in fact frankly for those of us in
the room who are human beings is that
the seductive siren call of the blinking
lights on your digital device stop you
from ever spending time not doing
anything because there's always
something to do and the consequence of
this is we are not bored often enough
and being bored turns out to be a
straight shot highway to creativity so
if you can work out how to create down
time in which you are not sleeping and
you are not surfing the web but you're
actively bored this is a good thing by
the same token if you're in the business
of mining big data or writing algorithms
you have a different challenge which is
that as human beings our preferences
tend to go too well I like the
Housewives of New Jersey so I'm gonna
like the Housewives of Orange County and
Houston and maybe New York City until
suddenly you think huh Mad Men looks
really good because we like repetition
until we don't one of the challenges
there is if you make content
if you deliver content if you deliver
experiences your hard work to do is to
work out what is the moment at which
people are bored enough that they are
willing now to be surprised and it turns
out surprising people without also
creeping them out is really tricky so
you've got that dynamic at work it is
also the case and has been for a really
long time we desperately want to be
different from one another from other
countries we want to be able to say we
are this they are that that anxiety that
technology is collapsing difference is
really old there was some delightful
stuff in the 17th and 18th centuries
about what it meant that there were
boats going to the East India Company in
India to Australia where they going to
create this sort of homogenous cultural
zone and of course it didn't happen in
the 1700s and it's not happening in 2014
but the notion of difference and of
sameness is a place that we are
constantly anxious and then only two
more of these that I think are important
one is that we desperately want to feel
the differences in time we live in a
world where the devices in our lives in
our hands in our backpacks function best
when they are constantly connected
constantly connected to power constantly
connected to content constantly
connected to the Internet as human
beings we function better when we are
intermittently disconnected that's why
in most major world religions there is a
time for meditation and a time for
prayer a time for retreat that's why
historically there was nighttime in
daytime we have bled those things into
each other in really complicated ways
but as human beings both our need for
downtime and sleep but also for
different patterns of use is hugely
important and it's something that is
always kind of worried and argued about
right the Industrial Revolution changed
our ideas of time so did indoor lighting
so has the Internet but this notion that
we want to know that the day is
different from the night that weeks are
different from weekends that time zones
matter is this really interesting space
of anxiety and trouble and then last but
by no means least we occasionally want
to be forgotten I come from an
engineering tradition where people
constantly talk about how much memory we
can use to basically upload the entire
of everything that has ever happened to
us as human beings
the one day in the not so distant future
we'll be able to have everything we do
and think and say recorded and available
to us and the reality is that's
terrifying as human beings we
desperately want to forget some of the
things that we said and some of the
things that were said to us we don't
want to have to be remembered for
everything we ever did think about the
fights that are going on in Europe right
now about the right to be forgotten what
does it mean to have parts of the things
that you did not always on the internet
in full color for the rest of eternity
and I think there's a piece here about
what makes us human about not wanting to
be remembered but also wanting to be
able to be I know this sounds odd coming
from a technologist but wanting to be
forgiven I think it's not just forgotten
but forgive him so where does that leave
us I think it's these 10 things to pay
attention to so if you are designing new
technology if you're thinking about how
to raise kids in an era of digital
technologies if you're thinking about
where your next business might be if you
plated the column on though
gosh I can do this on the left hand side
or in the blue you'll always have a hit
if you find something over there right
because those are the places that work
if you want to do something disruptive
and unexpected it's on this side on the
purple side on the right-hand side
because those are the ones where there
is the biggest opportunity to swage
people's anxieties and to do something
innovative but the reality is every time
someone says to you everything is
different now everything is changing
culture is changing really quickly if I
can leave you with one thing it's that
you should take a step back from that
claim and ask the question is that
really true because while the technology
is changing really quickly the things we
care about and the things we worry about
haven't changed in hundreds of years and
ultimately those are the things that
make us human those are the things that
give me hope and those are the things
that will shape what the next 50 years
of technology looks like too so that's
where all the opportunity is so with
that I want to say thank you
you