WEBVTT 00:00.680 --> 00:01.360 Yeah, right. 00:04.700 --> 00:06.300 All right, good afternoon. 00:07.920 --> 00:09.320 Thank you so much for being here. 00:09.320 --> 00:17.020 I'm going to talk about the singularity, the matrix, 00:17.020 --> 00:18.780 and the terminator, right? 00:19.020 --> 00:26.140 I want to draw your attention to those red dots on Agent Smith 00:26.860 --> 00:28.460 and the terminators there. 00:28.460 --> 00:31.900 They're, they signal danger, Will Robinson. 00:35.160 --> 00:39.880 The singularity is, for those who might not be familiar 00:39.880 --> 00:43.880 with it, is this idea that we will, at some point, 00:44.160 --> 00:46.320 create machines that are smart enough 00:46.320 --> 00:50.240 to build more intelligent machines that will, in turn, 00:50.640 --> 00:53.040 build even more intelligent machines and so on, 00:53.040 --> 00:57.600 until our own intelligence will pale, compared with theirs. 00:58.320 --> 01:00.560 And there's a lot of fear with that, 01:01.760 --> 01:07.400 even when there's no visible threat, as in the AI movie. 01:08.080 --> 01:09.760 I mean, it's just a kid, right? 01:10.400 --> 01:12.320 But it's creepy, in a way. 01:15.840 --> 01:18.480 What we see in fiction is quite different, 01:18.480 --> 01:21.600 like Lieutenant Commander Data is quite different 01:21.600 --> 01:23.600 from what we see in reality. 01:23.600 --> 01:26.800 As in the peer-to-peer network twister, 01:26.800 --> 01:32.720 there is this bot called Markov Dostoevsky, and he wrote 01:32.720 --> 01:38.440 to me the other day, asking me in flip text about my family. 01:38.440 --> 01:44.280 That's creepy, but it's not intelligent, let's be honest. 01:44.280 --> 01:50.120 Now, I'm going to talk about intelligence, 01:50.120 --> 01:59.960 intelligent machines controlling us, and back to our future 01:59.960 --> 02:02.080 as a free software movement. 02:02.720 --> 02:07.560 I mean, I'm sorry for Marty McFly, who traveled in time, 02:07.700 --> 02:11.280 passed the entire 30 years of existence of the FSF, 02:11.280 --> 02:15.660 and just by a few days missed our 30-year celebration. 02:16.100 --> 02:16.920 That's so sad. 02:16.920 --> 02:22.000 But without time traveling, I'm going to talk about our future 02:22.000 --> 02:26.360 and how I hope we can take control back 02:26.640 --> 02:28.600 from the machines that control us. 02:32.600 --> 02:37.400 So, in fiction, we see a lot of books and movies 02:38.400 --> 02:41.140 that have machines as a threat. 02:41.780 --> 02:45.980 I will focus mainly on the two in the title, The Matrix 02:45.980 --> 02:50.880 and The Terminator series, but there are very many examples, 02:50.880 --> 02:57.000 like the Borg in Star Trek, the master control program in Tron, 02:57.660 --> 03:02.920 the I Can't Let You Do That Dave Hall in The Space Odyssey, 03:03.800 --> 03:06.020 the Cyberman in Doctor Who, 03:07.420 --> 03:12.720 the more recent excellent movie, Ex Machina, and even I, Robot, 03:12.720 --> 03:16.140 where the robots are actually controlled and guided 03:16.140 --> 03:18.160 by the three laws of robotics. 03:19.500 --> 03:24.460 Even then, they manage to become a threat with red dots, 03:24.960 --> 03:25.820 if you realize. 03:28.860 --> 03:32.400 So, there's this very philosophical conversation 03:32.400 --> 03:36.880 in The Matrix Reloaded between Neo and one of the counselors. 03:37.300 --> 03:39.340 I'm not sure you can see the picture there. 03:39.340 --> 03:40.320 It's sort of dark. 03:40.320 --> 03:48.400 But one of the phrases that I, I have another presentation 03:48.400 --> 03:49.320 about The Matrix. 03:49.320 --> 03:52.120 You may want to look it up, Free Software and The Matrix. 03:52.380 --> 03:54.020 This dialogue isn't full there. 03:54.020 --> 03:58.680 The counselor says that nobody cares how it works as long 03:58.680 --> 03:59.460 as it works. 03:59.460 --> 04:02.580 It's sort of, well, nobody cares about the source code, 04:02.580 --> 04:06.680 in a way, but Neo seems to believe at that point, 04:06.940 --> 04:09.480 that at least in regard to the machines that are 04:09.480 --> 04:13.520 under the city of Zion, giving them heat and power 04:13.620 --> 04:17.760 and water and whatnot, they do control those machines. 04:18.540 --> 04:20.620 But they are so dependent on them, 04:21.020 --> 04:24.480 that to what extent is that really control? 04:24.840 --> 04:26.760 That's the topic of the conversation. 04:27.200 --> 04:31.880 And what I believe nowadays is that we're so immersed 04:32.300 --> 04:38.160 in a technological world that we're all watched 04:38.160 --> 04:43.600 over by eye things of, I don't think it's loving grace. 04:44.520 --> 04:46.920 But these things, they have eyes. 04:47.160 --> 04:48.020 They have ears. 04:49.000 --> 04:51.380 They can see and they can listen to us. 04:52.240 --> 04:56.140 And so, I quite hear the eyes are, and if you look at it 04:56.140 --> 04:58.380 from just the right perspective, you might be able 04:58.380 --> 04:59.880 to see the Apple logo there. 04:59.880 --> 05:09.880 So, the question to some is whether we will ever build 05:09.880 --> 05:14.680 machines that are smart enough to eventually outsmart us. 05:15.440 --> 05:18.420 For others, the question is not whether, 05:18.420 --> 05:23.840 but when will they be able to do that? 05:23.840 --> 05:30.020 But it dawned on me last year, it was sort of a surprise, 05:30.200 --> 05:33.500 that in reality has already happened. 05:33.500 --> 05:38.540 And it did a long time ago when we created corporations. 05:39.700 --> 05:43.280 They are machines, and they're out to kill us. 05:44.280 --> 05:45.820 They're destroying our planet. 05:47.260 --> 05:50.280 They harness our power as in the matrix, 05:50.500 --> 05:52.480 not exactly in the same way. 05:52.480 --> 05:55.600 I mean, it would be ridiculous, right? 05:55.600 --> 06:00.180 It's thermodynamically stupid to breed human beings 06:00.180 --> 06:04.540 to collect their heat and turn that into other kinds of power. 06:04.540 --> 06:08.300 But if you think about it, I mean, humans are bred 06:08.300 --> 06:15.460 and trained and selected so that they serve the goals 06:15.460 --> 06:17.220 of the corporations they work for. 06:17.220 --> 06:23.580 And if they don't, they're let go, they don't matter. 06:25.580 --> 06:31.520 So, one of the possible, one of the possible sources 06:31.520 --> 06:36.040 of control of humans over these machines is sort of gone. 06:36.640 --> 06:38.760 They took that from us. 06:39.800 --> 06:45.100 So, I've thought, well, maybe citizens at large, consumers, 06:45.100 --> 06:49.560 well, naming them consumers is already part of the problem, 06:49.940 --> 06:50.260 right? 06:51.080 --> 06:58.220 But corporations, and Douglas Reschkopf argues about this, 06:58.220 --> 07:00.600 and life ain't better than I'll be able to do here, 07:00.600 --> 07:04.540 but corporations created through propaganda marketing, 07:04.820 --> 07:09.120 an atmosphere of artificial needs that we then seek 07:09.120 --> 07:14.940 to fulfill serving their agenda, not in our best interest. 07:15.820 --> 07:19.340 So, there goes the second defense. 07:20.640 --> 07:24.400 Governments, at least democratic governments are supposed 07:24.400 --> 07:27.900 to stand for the people and represent the people, 07:28.720 --> 07:33.040 and that should mean keeping corporations under control. 07:34.800 --> 07:35.980 How's that working for you? 07:35.980 --> 07:44.420 So, corporations managed to rewrite laws or write laws 07:44.760 --> 07:49.700 for their own benefit, significantly through corruption 07:50.020 --> 07:55.220 of legislative power, and then the executive 07:55.660 --> 08:01.080 and the judiciary must abide by those laws. 08:02.920 --> 08:03.740 So, we lost. 08:03.740 --> 08:06.440 There goes our third line of defense. 08:09.140 --> 08:11.540 I was young and naive when I believed 08:11.540 --> 08:14.960 that investors might be able to influence corporations. 08:14.960 --> 08:19.240 After all, corporations respond to them, right? 08:19.300 --> 08:21.340 They own the corporations. 08:22.220 --> 08:28.400 So, they could bring human values and human concerns 08:28.780 --> 08:32.980 into corporations by choosing which corporations to invest on 08:32.980 --> 08:36.980 and if they align with human interests or not. 08:38.120 --> 08:42.240 But these days, investors are not people. 08:42.860 --> 08:47.960 Investors are machines, and they decide on which corporations 08:47.960 --> 08:50.640 to invest by algorithms, 08:51.260 --> 08:54.500 written by people serving other corporations. 08:54.820 --> 08:57.820 So, it's machines controlling machines, controlling machines 08:57.820 --> 09:03.080 who go full circle, and it might feel like everything is lost. 09:08.620 --> 09:12.560 And then we turn to movies, because Morpheus asks Neo 09:12.920 --> 09:17.220 to believe in fate, and you know, I don't like the idea 09:17.220 --> 09:18.980 that I'm not in control of my own life. 09:20.640 --> 09:21.520 Sounds good to me. 09:22.400 --> 09:25.200 And then, now this gets really confusing 09:25.200 --> 09:29.220 because John Connor tells Kyle Reese to go back in time 09:29.220 --> 09:32.220 and tell Sarah Connor to teach himself younger 09:32.660 --> 09:35.380 that the future's not set. 09:36.780 --> 09:39.440 There's no fate, but what do we make for ourselves? 09:40.840 --> 09:42.040 Well, I hope they're right. 09:45.380 --> 09:49.300 But, I mean, how can we possibly tame these machines? 09:51.100 --> 09:52.680 First thing to keep in mind is 09:52.680 --> 09:55.320 that there's no Hollywood silver bullet. 09:56.220 --> 09:59.020 There's no such thing as those Hollywood endings 09:59.100 --> 10:02.520 that by some unexpected turn of events, 10:02.880 --> 10:04.320 everything turns all right. 10:05.320 --> 10:06.200 Not going to happen. 10:07.160 --> 10:10.200 I mean, in real life, we have to work really hard every day 10:10.660 --> 10:14.760 to make the world a better place, or at least to stop it 10:14.760 --> 10:15.620 from getting worse. 10:15.620 --> 10:23.780 Now, if there is one, as this idea is from the Genesis movie, 10:23.780 --> 10:28.340 the Terminator series, it's kind of tells John Connor, 10:28.340 --> 10:29.940 you didn't think it would be that easy. 10:30.540 --> 10:31.760 No, it's not. 10:31.960 --> 10:32.680 It really isn't. 10:32.980 --> 10:37.600 But if there is one, one way that could possibly solve a lot 10:37.600 --> 10:41.300 of the problems is to tax corporations 10:41.300 --> 10:45.380 by the conglomerate size, the total holding company size. 10:46.000 --> 10:50.300 That, that would incentivize companies to remain small, 10:50.720 --> 10:52.460 and they're small, they're manageable. 10:55.260 --> 10:59.660 Most, but, I mean, what are the odds of passing 10:59.660 --> 11:01.240 such a tax code, right? 11:02.060 --> 11:03.920 So, what do we have to do for now? 11:04.840 --> 11:10.320 Stop lobbies and campaign donations by corporations. 11:10.320 --> 11:13.760 We, that, that's corruption, we have to stop that. 11:15.160 --> 11:20.160 We should favor small companies, like family companies, 11:20.160 --> 11:22.760 cooperatives, those kind of businesses 11:22.760 --> 11:28.360 that will not be drawn into the corporate mindset 11:28.360 --> 11:29.640 of controlling all of us. 11:29.960 --> 11:31.160 There are people like us. 11:31.920 --> 11:35.320 And we should run our own businesses like that. 11:35.320 --> 11:38.080 We have to learn about our own vulnerabilities. 11:38.920 --> 11:40.840 I'm not just talking about debt. 11:41.160 --> 11:43.680 I'm talking about a lot of human needs, 11:43.680 --> 11:49.000 a lot of human weaknesses that corporations learn about. 11:49.560 --> 11:51.920 They have psychologists in their payrolls. 11:52.240 --> 11:57.080 They have marketing people that understand what buttons they have 11:57.080 --> 11:58.520 to press to control us. 11:59.160 --> 12:01.840 We have to learn about our own vulnerabilities. 12:01.840 --> 12:06.440 They have to press to control us. We have to learn about that, too, 12:07.320 --> 12:09.800 to defend ourselves, to at least stand a chance 12:10.080 --> 12:11.480 of defending ourselves. 12:11.960 --> 12:16.520 And we have to be activists. 12:17.160 --> 12:23.480 We, working outside the corporate control, ideally under, well, 12:23.800 --> 12:26.760 possibly under non-governmental organizations. 12:27.040 --> 12:30.600 But you don't have to, the good thing about these things is 12:30.600 --> 12:34.120 that all of us can do that independently. 12:34.520 --> 12:39.080 We don't have to all, like, agree to, let's all do that and do that. 12:39.080 --> 12:45.200 No, every person who does these things is making the world a better place. 12:48.040 --> 12:49.880 And at times it feels like, well, 12:49.880 --> 12:52.240 it doesn't make much of a difference, does it? 12:53.640 --> 12:54.960 Well, then I'll resort to Gandhi. 12:54.960 --> 12:56.880 He was not in any of the movies. 12:56.880 --> 13:01.960 But, allegedly, he said that whatever you do will sound insignificant, 13:02.480 --> 13:04.280 but it is very important that you do it. 13:05.600 --> 13:07.000 So, well, let's do it. 13:09.600 --> 13:14.040 Now, I'm going to talk, it's a Free Software Conference, right? 13:14.040 --> 13:16.880 I'm going to talk about Free Software, so let's get into that. 13:17.520 --> 13:23.920 Most of the largest corporations in the world have something to do with IT. 13:23.920 --> 13:30.040 A number of them sell hardware, a number of them sell software licenses, 13:30.040 --> 13:35.320 a number of them sell services related to technology, 13:35.320 --> 13:38.880 with telecommunications, and this sort of stuff. 13:40.280 --> 13:47.320 Many other large companies sell our time, our attention, our data. 13:47.320 --> 13:54.640 So, they use us to collect data, to show us ads, we're the product, after all. 13:55.880 --> 14:03.920 And in the sense, they're IT, but that's not really their main business. 14:05.560 --> 14:09.240 Then there are those, there are also large corporations 14:09.240 --> 14:12.160 who just want to control our devices. 14:12.160 --> 14:17.000 Say, they want DRM, they want to control our computers, 14:17.000 --> 14:20.520 so they serve them rather than us. 14:21.000 --> 14:29.080 There are banks and payment intermediation services that want to, 14:29.080 --> 14:32.560 that claim that they need control over our devices 14:32.560 --> 14:35.600 to enable them to do their job securely. 14:36.960 --> 14:38.440 Why should we help them? 14:38.440 --> 14:44.040 Even those that are not trying to bug us, look at the red dots there. 14:44.040 --> 14:46.680 They're trying to bug Neo, right? 14:46.680 --> 14:48.160 Can you see that? 14:48.160 --> 14:50.600 Believe me, there is a red dot there. 14:52.600 --> 14:57.920 There are those companies, they're just users of technology, right? 14:57.920 --> 15:01.240 I mean, I cannot imagine a corporation nowadays 15:01.240 --> 15:04.160 that does not make heavy use of technology. 15:04.160 --> 15:10.360 Of computer technology, so all of them are sort of in the same boat, 15:10.360 --> 15:11.680 on the same boat. 15:12.680 --> 15:22.920 And the good news, maybe, is that all of them, or nearly 90% of them, 15:22.920 --> 15:28.840 several years ago, it might be 100% now, are using free software. 15:28.840 --> 15:34.320 And more than that, they are developing free software. 15:34.320 --> 15:36.520 And that is great, right? 15:38.800 --> 15:42.680 But who does that software really serve? 15:43.680 --> 15:48.400 I mean, when they are the users, it serves them. 15:48.400 --> 15:51.880 And that's just as it should be. 15:51.880 --> 15:54.120 So what is the problem with that? 15:54.120 --> 16:05.000 The problem that I perceive is that they're creating a sort of Borg mind 16:05.000 --> 16:09.240 that is trying to assimilate us. 16:11.520 --> 16:16.160 In Matrix speak, it's a cloud that covers the entire world. 16:18.160 --> 16:22.680 And that's just as it should be. 16:22.680 --> 16:27.960 And it's a cloud of machines that is attacking us. 16:29.960 --> 16:34.400 These corporations are building this cloud. 16:34.400 --> 16:41.720 They're hiring free software developers to write free software 16:41.720 --> 16:48.320 that serves them in building the infrastructure for the cloud. 16:48.320 --> 16:50.760 I mean, I work at Rad Hat. 16:50.760 --> 16:53.560 All I hear about is cloud, cloud, cloud, cloud. 16:53.560 --> 16:55.680 I don't know what's tech. 16:55.680 --> 16:59.160 I mean, it's crazy. 16:59.160 --> 17:06.000 What uses the software for us human beings? 17:06.000 --> 17:12.040 I mean, they're building software to collect and analyze information about us. 17:12.040 --> 17:17.280 We cannot possibly imagine getting access to all this data. 17:17.280 --> 17:22.680 So that kind of software is useless for us. 17:22.680 --> 17:26.000 It's not helping us. 17:26.000 --> 17:28.640 It's helping them. 17:28.640 --> 17:34.880 And that is fine as far as free software is concerned. 17:34.880 --> 17:37.840 But we are in danger. 17:37.840 --> 17:46.080 We have to remember that, as FSF Euro puts it, there is no such thing as a cloud. 17:46.080 --> 17:51.520 It's just other people's computers. 17:51.520 --> 17:57.920 Once we realize that, I mean, all the magic disappears. 17:57.920 --> 17:59.200 It vanishes. 17:59.200 --> 18:05.760 You realize that why am I doing that with my data, with my computing? 18:05.760 --> 18:12.880 I mean, I should be writing that on my own devices. 18:12.880 --> 18:18.960 X11R5 is a bot on the Pompeyo network. 18:18.960 --> 18:25.360 And just a few weeks ago, this gem came out of him or it. 18:25.360 --> 18:31.800 These are the reals, kind versus people, the extent to which software shapes people, cultures, 18:31.800 --> 18:33.440 and economies is alarming. 18:33.440 --> 18:35.200 I mean, it's a bot. 18:35.200 --> 18:40.040 He's onto something. 18:40.040 --> 18:44.360 I had to use it here somehow, right? 18:44.360 --> 18:47.320 So what is the problem with all that? 18:47.320 --> 18:54.720 The notion that we should move our computation, our data, to the cloud justifies, in a way, 18:54.720 --> 19:02.360 and promotes the notion that, well, it's OK if our so-called smart devices are dumb. 19:02.360 --> 19:07.760 They're not powerful enough to run our computations anymore. 19:07.760 --> 19:13.120 Well, they should be, because 20 years ago, I'm pretty sure I did that, and they're not 19:13.120 --> 19:15.080 as powerful as they are today. 19:15.080 --> 19:17.880 But there's something fishy going on. 19:17.880 --> 19:24.760 I think there's something wrong there. 19:24.760 --> 19:33.320 On the other hand, once the control is in the cloud, and the machines control the cloud 19:33.320 --> 19:37.760 and control us through the cloud, it's all right. 19:37.760 --> 19:45.040 I mean, it's not a problem for them to give us some crumbs of freedom, like, oh, it's 19:45.040 --> 19:55.160 OK if you can run Linux, the kernel, on your computer, your portable computer. 19:55.160 --> 19:56.460 It doesn't matter. 19:56.460 --> 20:00.980 We have blobs in that anyway. 20:00.980 --> 20:07.960 And all the rest of the software stack, well, part of it was free before, but when it gets 20:07.960 --> 20:11.120 to you, it's no longer free. 20:11.120 --> 20:17.240 So what are we going to do? 20:17.240 --> 20:26.720 As the Mexican boy said at the end of the first Terminator movie, viene una tormenta, 20:26.720 --> 20:34.040 a storm is coming, and it is indeed. 20:34.040 --> 20:37.160 Why? 20:37.160 --> 20:49.080 Part of the problem has to do not with open source, per se. 20:49.080 --> 20:52.840 I don't mean to attack open source here. 20:52.840 --> 21:03.200 I do intend to denounce the corruption of the ideas behind it by machines. 21:03.200 --> 21:05.000 It didn't start all right. 21:05.000 --> 21:12.060 It started by setting aside any notion of ethics, because that scared corporations. 21:12.060 --> 21:16.760 And their plan really was to bring corporations on board. 21:16.760 --> 21:19.360 Let's bring them closer to us. 21:19.360 --> 21:23.760 They're going to realize the benefits of free software. 21:23.760 --> 21:28.480 They're going to market free software to the corporations. 21:28.480 --> 21:31.680 Sounds like a great plan, doesn't it? 21:31.680 --> 21:42.520 Well, of course, when you get corporations involved, human values lose. 21:42.520 --> 21:46.960 I mean, at least they lose weight. 21:46.960 --> 21:54.800 I don't think it will be that hard to see back then, but well, let's assume that like 21:54.800 --> 22:02.080 the scientist who was working on the microprocessors that would become Skynet said, how were we 22:02.080 --> 22:04.160 supposed to know? 22:04.160 --> 22:07.520 Well, all right. 22:07.520 --> 22:11.960 Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. 22:11.960 --> 22:21.640 Let's realize that even if they hadn't been invited, even if open source had not opened 22:21.640 --> 22:29.840 the door for them, for the machines, the corporations, they would have realized that there are indeed 22:29.840 --> 22:39.520 major benefits for themselves out of the free software development model of collaboration, 22:39.520 --> 22:45.920 of sharing information among those that are interested in it. 22:45.920 --> 22:55.520 So in a way, the Skynet was inevitable, and Agent Smith would agree with that. 22:55.520 --> 22:58.200 It was inevitable. 22:58.200 --> 23:04.120 So we cannot blame open source for that. 23:04.120 --> 23:13.880 Maybe they just sped up the process. 23:13.880 --> 23:16.960 But has open source won? 23:16.960 --> 23:24.440 There are a number of people who quickly celebrate that open source won. 23:24.440 --> 23:31.120 And then the question is, who or what did they defeat if they won? 23:31.120 --> 23:40.000 Because we, the free software movement, set out to liberate the cyberspace, to eliminate 23:40.000 --> 23:44.880 the evil of proprietary software. 23:44.880 --> 23:48.200 Did open source do that? 23:48.200 --> 23:51.640 It didn't even try. 23:51.640 --> 23:55.840 It displaced some proprietary software. 23:55.840 --> 24:03.080 And the monopolies moved to other layers in the stack. 24:03.080 --> 24:06.360 You might call that progress. 24:06.360 --> 24:12.400 I'm not sure I would. 24:12.400 --> 24:15.080 So what did it win? 24:15.080 --> 24:21.100 Well, maybe it won a mindset war. 24:21.100 --> 24:26.160 It displaced free software in a number of ways. 24:26.160 --> 24:33.000 It took ethics mainly out of the debate. 24:33.000 --> 24:40.360 Many people in companies talk about the advantages of the collaborative development model and 24:40.360 --> 24:46.480 don't talk at all about respecting users' freedom. 24:46.480 --> 24:49.740 That's most often totally out of the picture. 24:49.740 --> 25:00.280 So when Richard Stallman's speeches, advertised as speeches by the father of open source, 25:00.280 --> 25:07.920 he's totally right in pointing out, like Sarah Connor did in Genesis, that that John Connor 25:07.920 --> 25:13.120 is not my son. 25:13.120 --> 25:19.920 Because these machines and their terminators have a mission to destroy the leader of the 25:19.920 --> 25:26.360 human resistance and not just the leader. 25:26.360 --> 25:33.440 There's this other scene in The Matrix in which Morpheus says that when The Matrix was 25:33.440 --> 25:39.400 first built, there was a man born inside who could change whatever he wanted. 25:39.400 --> 25:42.880 He could remake The Matrix as he saw fit. 25:42.880 --> 25:47.080 It was he who freed the first of us. 25:47.080 --> 25:49.560 And he taught us the truth. 25:49.560 --> 25:56.560 As long as The Matrix exists, the human race will never be free. 25:56.560 --> 26:02.200 Sounds a lot like Richard Stallman, doesn't it? 26:02.200 --> 26:07.200 Of course The Matrix fights him. 26:07.200 --> 26:11.600 Of course they send their agents against him. 26:11.600 --> 26:19.160 And since they cannot defeat him on ideas, they attack him personally. 26:19.160 --> 26:23.080 Like he doesn't shower often enough. 26:23.080 --> 26:31.680 Which I cannot find how that relates to the ideas that he writes about or speaks about. 26:31.680 --> 26:34.840 Or that he's hard to deal with. 26:34.840 --> 26:39.240 Or that, yeah, he's right most of the time. 26:39.240 --> 26:45.080 Or he has always been right, but this time he took it too far. 26:45.080 --> 26:52.320 I mean, these are powerful arguments, but they're not arguments at all. 26:52.320 --> 26:59.080 But they are used to weaken the ideas that he talks about. 26:59.080 --> 27:07.880 So corporations push Linux and pretend that GNU never existed. 27:07.880 --> 27:10.760 They vilify strong copyleft. 27:10.760 --> 27:19.880 I refer you to Bradley Coon's speech yesterday, amazing speech, which discusses those points 27:19.880 --> 27:32.520 about how corporations are out to weaken copyleft and to stop people from developing copyleft 27:32.520 --> 27:37.680 software to remove our defenses. 27:37.680 --> 27:45.320 The amount of propaganda that you see against our values to predispose people, like to vaccinate 27:45.320 --> 27:52.280 people from the good ideas of free software, it's just amazing, it's unbelievable. 27:52.280 --> 27:57.120 And sadly, it works for a number of people. 27:57.120 --> 28:04.340 And these people will repeat the nonsense that was fed to them. 28:04.340 --> 28:11.320 And they're confused and they turn into agents of the matrix. 28:11.320 --> 28:14.160 And they make our life more difficult. 28:14.160 --> 28:17.740 The goal is clear to me. 28:17.740 --> 28:27.140 Without time traveling, they want to terminate our resistance before it grows. 28:27.140 --> 28:31.280 But if you are listening to this, you are the resistance. 28:31.280 --> 28:36.880 And of course, the board will say that resistance is futile. 28:36.880 --> 28:41.200 Of course they will do that, right, they'll make their jobs easier. 28:41.200 --> 28:47.160 We should not believe them. 28:47.160 --> 28:49.020 What do we need? 28:49.020 --> 28:52.600 We need more copylefted software. 28:52.600 --> 29:00.960 We need humans writing copylefted software and defending this copyleft without assigning 29:00.960 --> 29:04.220 the copyrights over to a corporation. 29:04.220 --> 29:11.120 We need to develop more software for human needs, to address human needs, and to do less 29:11.120 --> 29:18.000 so to help the corporations, let them help themselves. 29:18.000 --> 29:23.680 Paraphrasing John Connor, we should use no cloud but that we make for ourselves. 29:23.680 --> 29:29.280 We have to use more decentralized technologies, peer-to-peer technologies. 29:29.280 --> 29:38.560 Like Twister I mentioned before, like ZeroNet, like BitMessage, there are tons of very cool 29:38.560 --> 29:45.200 stuff going on that people don't know about, even I don't know about. 29:45.200 --> 29:51.080 And I'm trying to give you the idea that we should have to look into that, because that's 29:51.080 --> 29:53.760 really important. 29:53.760 --> 29:56.320 We should teach people some programming. 29:56.320 --> 30:01.160 I argued about that two years ago here at LibrePlanet. 30:01.160 --> 30:06.840 If people learn to program, even just a little bit, if they realize how useful it is to automate 30:06.840 --> 30:15.960 their own tasks, they won't give this freedom up so easily. 30:15.960 --> 30:19.200 And we have to promote free software. 30:19.200 --> 30:26.600 I'm not talking just about the software, but the freedom, the ethical values to users. 30:26.600 --> 30:34.380 We've done a lot, and open source has done a lot, to promote free software to developers. 30:34.380 --> 30:40.400 The problem with that, if there is a problem, is that free software developers or open source 30:40.400 --> 30:44.920 developers are too easy for corporations to co-opt. 30:44.920 --> 30:52.040 Like there are many, many free software developers that offer a job to develop free software. 30:52.040 --> 30:59.600 They would be happy to accept it, without even thinking whether the free software they 30:59.600 --> 31:09.600 will develop will serve humanity, or will bring trouble to humanity. 31:09.600 --> 31:19.120 If we take software freedom to users, if we teach them about the importance of these values, 31:19.120 --> 31:23.520 I believe they can influence the market. 31:23.520 --> 31:30.000 They can tell, they can begin telling corporations, no I'm not going to buy this product or service 31:30.000 --> 31:34.840 that you offer me, because it does not respect my freedom. 31:34.840 --> 31:44.440 And if a lot of users, educated users, do that, then naturally the corporations will 31:44.440 --> 31:52.480 start respecting our freedom, because after all they want to sell, they want to earn their 31:52.480 --> 31:59.280 income to give profit to the shareholders. 31:59.280 --> 32:10.680 And last but not least, never stop fighting, it's a war, and we cannot afford to lose. 32:10.680 --> 32:19.560 Thank you very much. 32:19.560 --> 32:27.960 So I think we have time for questions, come over, so that everyone out there can hear 32:27.960 --> 32:29.960 you. 32:29.960 --> 32:44.720 You made an observation about people who are hired by corporations to do coding, and they 32:44.720 --> 32:45.720 get co-opted. 32:45.720 --> 32:50.760 I'll use another example. 32:50.760 --> 32:56.600 My daughter, stepdaughter, is a PhD at UC Berkeley. 32:56.600 --> 33:01.680 She's very bright, and we couldn't pay for her schooling, there's no way in the world, 33:01.680 --> 33:04.760 she had a free ride all the way. 33:04.760 --> 33:09.400 But she feels beholden to those people. 33:09.400 --> 33:12.320 Now she's working in genetic engineering and stuff. 33:12.320 --> 33:21.760 I can't condemn her for that, I don't agree with it, but until we reclaim the commons, 33:21.760 --> 33:27.640 which is why this happened at all, we had it taken from us, large chunks of it. 33:27.640 --> 33:35.960 But the commons is our roots, it is our connection to nature, it is our ability to live and breathe. 33:35.960 --> 33:40.840 If that is taken from us, then we're going to go work for the corporations. 33:40.840 --> 33:48.800 And when we don't have free education, then a wonderful mind is given a free ride, and 33:48.800 --> 33:52.280 then their mind is used. 33:52.280 --> 33:54.000 It's not free then, is it? 33:54.000 --> 33:55.000 No, that's my point. 33:55.000 --> 34:01.520 We need free education, we need, really, we need all of this to be free, because ultimately, 34:01.520 --> 34:05.240 that freedom brings benefits. 34:05.240 --> 34:09.840 I would say freedom always does. 34:09.840 --> 34:16.800 I don't have a lot else to say, I would largely agree with what you said. 34:16.800 --> 34:22.320 So these slides are available from the website there. 34:22.320 --> 34:28.160 You just click on the agents and terminators picture, and you get the slides. 34:28.160 --> 34:36.440 The source code is referenced there, it's a later set of slides. 34:36.440 --> 34:43.400 I really didn't come here to tell how this is going to end, just how it's going to begin. 34:43.400 --> 34:48.480 But what I can tell you is that, well, at least I hope I'll be back. 34:48.480 --> 34:50.600 Oh, we have another question. 34:50.600 --> 34:59.040 Sorry, I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't here from the very beginning, so perhaps you've already 34:59.040 --> 35:05.560 said something about this, but I'm wondering about FSF Latin America, if you could talk 35:05.560 --> 35:13.600 about what you do with that, and what some of the, you know, what some of the concerns 35:13.600 --> 35:16.400 are specifically in that region. 35:16.400 --> 35:27.680 Oh, so, FSF Latin America has just celebrated 10 years, and we've been, unfortunately, mostly 35:27.680 --> 35:31.800 dormant for the last five years. 35:31.800 --> 35:38.680 So I don't have a lot to tell you about, unfortunately, because we haven't, as an organization, really 35:38.680 --> 35:41.840 done a lot of stuff recently. 35:41.840 --> 35:48.240 We have had campaigns, okay, so a little bit of background. 35:48.240 --> 35:55.900 There is an international network of FSFs that, by an agreement, we largely operate 35:55.900 --> 36:03.920 under the same flag, so to speak, taking the same free software ideas to different parts 36:03.920 --> 36:14.200 of the world, under guidance of the original FSF. 36:14.200 --> 36:21.880 We have had campaigns, say, against DRM, which is a worldwide problem. 36:21.880 --> 36:32.540 We focus on local laws, local challenges, but it's largely the same problem everywhere. 36:32.540 --> 36:40.360 We have had, in Brazil specifically, where I live, a campaign against, we call it, imposed 36:40.360 --> 36:46.680 software, and in Portuguese, the same word for tax, we use the same word for tax and 36:46.680 --> 36:51.180 for imposed, so there is a pun in Portuguese there. 36:51.180 --> 36:59.160 So the government requires us to use proprietary software to fill in our income tax returns, 36:59.160 --> 37:05.720 and we reverse engineered that software, and every year we publish an alternative free 37:05.720 --> 37:13.960 software program that people can use to prepare their income tax declarations. 37:13.960 --> 37:25.120 We maintain legal and calibre, the really free version of the kernel Linux. 37:25.120 --> 37:32.840 I think these are sort of the highlights, so I wish we could do a lot more. 37:32.840 --> 37:42.720 I wish we learned to cooperate, but I think we made a huge mistake of having only one 37:42.720 --> 37:54.720 person in eight different countries, and that made local activities very difficult. 37:54.720 --> 38:00.320 So we decided to disband and figure out what to do next. 38:00.320 --> 38:19.680 I think that's probably what's going to happen eventually. 38:19.680 --> 38:26.520 I don't see that we have different problems. 38:26.520 --> 38:32.480 If there is one difference, it's that our local governments have a lot less power over 38:32.480 --> 38:44.000 the corporations that unjustly control our computing, so that's a different perspective 38:44.000 --> 38:49.960 of the same problem, but in the end, it is the same problem everywhere. 38:49.960 --> 38:57.480 You mentioned a lot of the problems with corporations, you mentioned a couple of good books, like 38:57.480 --> 39:02.600 The Corporation and Such, about a lot of the issues that arise from the current legal and 39:02.600 --> 39:05.600 economic structure on corporations. 39:05.600 --> 39:06.920 Have you thought of any alternatives? 39:06.920 --> 39:11.040 Because lots of people have identified, okay, these are the problems with it, and there 39:11.040 --> 39:15.040 haven't been a lot of ideas, okay, what do we do instead, other than just constantly 39:15.040 --> 39:20.040 monitor, and for the inevitable times when they always do something we disapprove of, 39:20.040 --> 39:25.120 try to change things back against overwhelming opposition, do you think anything like participatory 39:25.120 --> 39:29.600 economics or other alternative economic systems could help remedy some of this? 39:29.600 --> 39:35.040 And if so, have you looked into any of them so far? 39:35.040 --> 39:40.080 As I said, I don't think there is a silver bullet, right? 39:40.080 --> 39:45.320 I cannot envision putting an end to mega-corporations. 39:45.320 --> 39:52.640 They're going to be there just like virus, bacteria are there. 39:52.640 --> 39:58.160 It's not even that I would say that bacteria are evil. 39:58.160 --> 40:08.520 They're there, and they're in their way trying to survive, so for the sake of the argument, 40:08.520 --> 40:15.880 let's assume that let's take them for granted and see what we can do about that. 40:15.880 --> 40:30.160 I think the slide sort of lists what I believe can help keep them under some control and 40:30.160 --> 40:34.720 make it easier for us to deal with them in general. 40:34.720 --> 40:43.960 Not specifically the IT corporations, but the corporations in general. 40:43.960 --> 40:46.520 It's not a silver bullet. 40:46.520 --> 41:00.440 It will require, freedom requires hard work every day, but it's worth the price. 41:00.440 --> 41:06.920 All right, I can kind of be seen as a wingnut in some circles. 41:06.920 --> 41:11.320 I like there's new in there. 41:11.320 --> 41:18.200 But I mean, just hearing somebody speak about free education kind of precipitates my bringing 41:18.200 --> 41:20.520 up more of that sort of thing. 41:20.520 --> 41:32.400 I wonder what your feeling is about merely the existence of currency, of money, a thing 41:32.400 --> 41:40.880 that we all imagine has value and therefore has purpose for some reason. 41:40.880 --> 41:45.320 I've looked into things like the Venus Project and the Zeitgeist Movement and those kinds 41:45.320 --> 41:54.760 of things and it's really interesting the overarching concept of how ultimately the 41:54.760 --> 42:00.280 monetary system causes problems in our society and causes the competitive environment that 42:00.280 --> 42:03.920 we have and so on. 42:03.920 --> 42:09.840 I think Richard has said something to this effect that free software is sort of one of 42:09.840 --> 42:16.520 those stepping stones to a post-scarcity world. 42:16.520 --> 42:17.520 So I don't know. 42:17.520 --> 42:25.240 I was just curious what your thoughts were on money in general being. 42:25.240 --> 42:31.600 I don't think I'm qualified to speak a lot about that, but what I got from Life Inc. 42:31.600 --> 42:41.480 was a very different perspective about the history of the so-called Middle Ages than 42:41.480 --> 42:43.880 what I had before. 42:43.880 --> 42:52.000 There was, according to that book, very active commerce without centralized currency back 42:52.000 --> 42:56.600 then and this was good. 42:56.600 --> 43:08.200 For some reason, the history was sort of rewritten so that most of us wouldn't know about that. 43:08.200 --> 43:16.800 I think the one big thing between then and today though is the mechanization of everything. 43:16.800 --> 43:21.800 We literally could build machines to sustain everybody and be paid by the machines in a 43:21.800 --> 43:22.800 sense. 43:22.800 --> 43:32.120 But if we did that now, then 99.9% of the people will be screwed because of the way 43:32.120 --> 43:34.400 society is organized. 43:34.400 --> 43:45.400 So I think we have to first fix the distribution of wealth or at least some means to enable 43:45.400 --> 43:50.600 people to live in a world in which nobody has to work because machines do all the work 43:50.600 --> 43:52.080 for us. 43:52.080 --> 43:59.600 Then we get to that maybe utopia. 43:59.600 --> 44:07.520 I think we have to be careful to order these revolutions properly to avoid shooting ourselves 44:07.520 --> 44:08.520 on the feet. 44:08.520 --> 44:33.640 Maybe people on the intertubes cannot hear you. 44:33.640 --> 44:38.440 In the Pacific Northwest prior to colonization. 44:38.440 --> 44:45.200 The Indian tribes lived in an overflow economy, plenty of everything, there was abundance. 44:45.200 --> 44:52.840 So they had this concept of potlatch where you shared, you gave because you had so much. 44:52.840 --> 45:00.040 Once the British and the Americans took over the Pacific Northwest, they outlawed potlatch 45:00.040 --> 45:05.840 vigorously with great violence. 45:05.840 --> 45:12.520 So when we're talking about freedom, it wasn't just the corporations. 45:12.520 --> 45:23.920 There's this something going on in the European mind that has a problem with sharing. 45:23.920 --> 45:26.120 And we need to address that. 45:26.120 --> 45:32.560 We need to address that deeply and understand it within our own selves before we can do 45:32.560 --> 45:33.560 what Donnie said. 45:33.560 --> 45:37.560 We can work on ourselves and at the same time do what Donnie said. 45:37.560 --> 45:38.560 Yeah I don't want to portray. 45:38.560 --> 45:43.560 Look up potlatch and you'll find out. 45:43.560 --> 45:45.760 It's an amazing story. 45:45.760 --> 45:51.240 I want to make the point that this is all the present sort of metaphor. 45:51.240 --> 45:55.280 I mean there are problems with corporations obviously. 45:55.280 --> 45:56.280 Very serious problems. 45:56.280 --> 46:04.440 We do get in the way of our freedom and our survival really. 46:04.440 --> 46:05.680 And we have to think about that. 46:05.680 --> 46:12.480 We have to realize that there's something wrong with the world and with the way things 46:12.480 --> 46:20.100 are organized and organized to fight that. 46:20.100 --> 46:21.400 Thank you so much. 46:21.400 --> 46:22.400 I'll be back. 46:22.400 --> 46:26.480 Thank you.