Translator: lisa thompson
Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Before we start,
I want to introduce
my grandma to you guys.
Here she is.
We call her mama.
This summer, we celebrated
her 95th birthday,
so she's been alive almost a century.
She's seen commercial flights, 
TV, the internet,
so a lot of change,
as well as some incredibly
inspiring social movements,
like gay rights, women's rights, 
the environmental movement.
Now, I love a lot of things about my nan,
but one thing that perhaps 
amazes me most about her
is how over the years,
she's managed to change 
her point of view on the world
as the world has changed.
So don't get me wrong.
In lots of ways, she's very, 
very traditional and conservative,
but there are other ways
where her views are so nuanced.
So just recently, for instance, 
she supported a friend financially
so that they could have the surgery 
to have a gender transition,
which I think is amazing at 95 years old.
So she's really open to change.
But something that hasn't changed
at all in my nan's lifetime
is politics.
So every four years,
she still drives 
to her local village hall,
where without even having to show her ID,
she takes a piece of paper,
she puts it in the ballot box,
and from then on,
she outsources all of her decisions 
for the next four years to someone else.
So in an era where we have the technology
to crowdsource 
all of our collective decisions,
she still outsources her opinion 
on every issue to someone else,
and in 2017,
I think that's mad.
So I want to do a little test
on that in this room, OK?
We're going to do a quick quiz.
We're going to do a vote,
and we're going to vote on our dress code,
how we all dress, all right?
So you're going to have two options.
Option one is you dress like a skater,
and option two is you wear a suit.
All right?
So we'll start with a raise
of hands for option one.
Who would like to dress like a skater?
OK.
And option two, to wear a suit?
Hmm.
I'm going to say there's a 52-48 split
(Laughter)
in favor of dressing like a skater.
Now, you're probably thinking 
this is ridiculous.
It's particularly ridiculous
because you might have wanted to wear,
let's say, jeans and a jacket.
Like, you probably 
wanted to choose the items.
But the question was choose one thing 
and choose the whole thing,
and that's how democracy today works.
We choose one ideology, 
and we adopt it wholesale.
So it strikes me
that everything has changed 
in my grandma's lifetime,
everything except for democracy.
And so this used to be 
understandable, right?
We couldn't vote on every issue
because the only technology we had 
was pen and paper and a box.
And so hierarchy was the only way 
you could scale participation,
but that doesn't have
to be that way anymore
because it's 2017,
and in 2017, 
we have amazing technology.
From Wikipedia to our likes, our swipes,
these are already methods we use 
to crowdsource our collective opinions,
and so for the first time in history,
we now have the technology 
to create true democracy,
which we've never seen before.
And so, this will be a form of democracy 
that I think will be more engaging,
more effective or more efficient,
and ultimately just more democratic 
than anything we've seen before.
So how can I be so sure about this?
Well, I'm sure because
it's already happening.
It's happening in companies.
So I help organizations 
to be run by their people.
Some people call them 
self-managed organizations.
And what we see is that organizations 
run by their people have happier people;
they have happier customers;
they're more profitable;
and they're more resilient
to economic ups and downs.
So how is this?
Well, I think there are three principles 
that explain this pretty neatly.
The first is that these organizations 
are always evolving.
So rather than, let's say,
take on huge projects or have
a five-year business plan or manifesto,
what they'll do is that 
they'll put their work in small chunks,
and they'll prototype
very fast and iterate.
So they're constantly changing 
what they do and how they do it.
A second important principle
is that they have, like, 
an obsession with the customer.
So rather than, let's say, 
go up the hierarchy
to decide if a customer's 
going to get a refund or not,
what they'll do is they'll let the person 
closest to the customer decide
because they trust that person
and they trust that organizing
themselves around the customer
will bring them more success.
And then a third principle, 
but perhaps the most important,
is that these organizations 
don't have powerful people.
They have really powerful processes.
So each team or each meeting 
would have a coach or a facilitator,
someone who's totally neutral, 
who has no say in the decision.
Their job is to focus on the process, 
the process by which the decision is made.
Their job is to help the group decide.
And that's what democracy is.
So once you've worked in this way,
working in an old-school organization 
just doesn't really make sense.
It's less human, 
and it's far less effective.
So with this in mind, 
I started asking myself this question:
If companies work better 
when they're run by people,
couldn't we scale that using technology
so that at long last, 
countries can be run by citizens?
And the answer is yes.
And the answer is it's already happening.
In small, innovative pockets 
around the planet,
it's being built right now.
So let's go through our principles 
and check this again.
Always evolving.
My friend Finner in Iceland
was a part of a group who crowdsourced 
the constitution of Iceland.
And the way they did it is every Friday,
they would publish a draft version 
of that constitution online
and get feedback from their citizens,
spending the whole following week 
adapting it for the world that we live in.
Second was customer focus.
Well, in Estonia,
their e-residency program 
asks users for feedback to such a degree
that they've changed numerous laws 
in just a few months,
a speed that you'd never see 
in another country
and which shows that they're organizing 
their government around their people,
and not the other way around.
And then finally, powerful processes.
So I'm on the board of a tech-democracy 
movement called My Vote,
and what we're doing 
is using blockchain technology
to create the first form 
of true direct democracy,
and the way we do that 
is that we have a robust process.
So, we start, as democracy should,
by asking the people what their will is
because that's what we should enact.
And so we put this, 
on every issue, to a decision.
We ask, "What's your will?"
Then, we have independent researchers 
give some key facts
so that people are informed 
in order to make that decision
rather than misinformed.
And based on those facts, 
if you choose to read them,
you can then choose between four options,
where you choose to support
or not support.
In other words,
we don't come in and say,
"We have an ideology 
that solves all your problems."
We ask what your will is and enact that
because that's what democracy is.
And so this is what
real democracy will look like.
It'll be more engaging,
but it will also be safer
because it'll be distributed.
So no ins or outs, 
left or rights, red or blues.
This will be a case
of asking people to vote frequently
on more nuanced, direct decisions
because when you do that,
it's mathematically impossible
for one ideology
to capture all votes on every decision.
So populism can hijack
one decision every four years,
but it can't hijack hundreds.
So this is really exciting for democracy.
This is why we're speaking to the UN, 
governments on most continents,
to make this a reality.
So my question to you and my ask of us all
is that we change the conversation,
that we don't just focus 
on being enraged with politics,
but we also become engaged 
in democracy itself.
Like, we don't just talk about 
what decisions are being made
and that are in the media,
but we also talk on 
how those decisions are being made,
and importantly,
that we support these tech 
democracy movements around the world
who are focusing 
on redesigning the system itself.
Because democracy needs an upgrade 
for the 21st century.
When Tim Berners-Lee gave us the web, 
he said, "This is for everyone."
And soon, I believe, we'll be able 
to say that for democracy too.
Thanks.
(Applause)
