Good morning. It's a huge pleasure to be here
and to think about this incredible moment
of history that we live in, the best time
by far to be alive. It's a period when things
are happening more rapidly to more people
in more parts of the world than at any moment
in history, so this is the slowest morning
you'll know for the rest of your lives. The
pace of change is accelerating and this is
not simply a fourth Industrial Revolution
which suggests it might be like the first,
which still hasn't reached some parts of the
world, the second, the third, this is different.
We're in a new Renaissance, an age of discovery
which is going to bring the most extraordinary
opportunities, but also as with the last Renaissance,
it's a tumultuous moment, a moment in history
which is very precious. So I want to share
with you some thoughts about how we can make
sure that this is the best time, not only
for us, but for future generations. That we're
able to seize this moment in history, recognize
its potential and ensure that we use it to
the fullest of our amounts.
The Renaissance was an incredible time. We
celebrated 500 years later because it took
not only Europe from being one of the most
backward places in the dark ages in the 1450s,
to by far the most advanced place on the planet
within an 80‑year period, but because of
the many other things associated with it,
the breakthroughs that were driven by the
first information revolution. Then it was
the Gutenberg Press.
Before that, only monks could read and write,
handwritten manuscripts, very few people had
these very expensive books. Everything people
knew came from authority, from the church,
a monopoly of knowledge. But with this revolution,
you had literally the exponential growth in
knowledge. 25 million books printed over
a 50‑year period, and billions of political
pamphlets. Ideas took off, and evolution accelerated.
We know that it happened because of the legacy
of these incredible people. Not only the art
which changed perspective, the humanism which
was brought into people's lives by the Da
Vincis, Michelangelos, but also because of
the scientific breakthroughs. Copernicus discovering
that we went around the sun, that there was
a universe, not we being the center of this.
And huge breakthroughs in technologies which
allowed people to circumnavigating the world.
Magellan, globalization 1.0, and from Venice
having been the center, prices plummeted,
things moved to the Atlantic seaboard.
Of course Columbus sailing here, bringing
a new discovery. And with that, of course,
incredible changes in what everyone understood,
how the planet worked, where their place in
it was and how they needed to think about
things. We are in a similar period of history.
The Berlin Wall that came down in November 1989
is for me the symbolic beginning of this phase,
but it wasn't just about the coming down of
physical and political walls. It was about
other things happening. Here, the U.S. integrating
with Canada and Mexico in NAFTA, China opening
up, 65 countries changing. I was living in
Paris when the wall came down.
I'm a South African, I was born in South Africa,
I was involved in the anti‑apartheid struggle,
I wasn't aloud to go back, I thought I would
never go back in my lifetime, and although
I thought this was an amazing thing that was
happening, I didn't think it would touch my
own life personally. Of course what we know
in retrospect is that within two months, Nelson
Mandela was released from prison, he came
to Paris, we met, he asked me to be his economic
advisor and to run the state bank, and I went
back and I realized in that experience that
things that seem unconnected to our lives
in this new phase become very intimately associated
with it.
So we all need to think globally, we all need
to think about things happening elsewhere,
which will touch our lives and how we will
touch others in this process of dramatic change
and interconnectivity.
Because the walls came down and 65 countries
became democratic, there was also a potential
for the technological revolution to take off.
The worldwide web developed at the same time,
and massive breakthroughs in science like
those associated with Hubbell. But what we've
seen subsequently is literally the exponential
growth of this potential, and that's why evolution
is accelerating.
There is more happening more quickly in the
world than ever in history. And we know more
because of this intimacy, whether it's sharing
a birthday party with people on the other
side of the planet, we can feel empathy, we
can see the pain and we can see the opportunity,
and this interconnectivity where we move from
the world of only about 200 million sharing
people the knowledge, to a world today with
6.5 billion people with access to information
is dramatically different.
When there were 5 billion people at the end
of '80s, only 2 billion people could read
or write but now in a world of 7.5 billion,
6½ billion people can read and write, that's
4½ billion more literate people and if you
believe in individuals and knowledge and education
as the drivers of change, the agents of change,
that's a whole order of magnitude of difference
and that's why the world is accelerating,
that's why we world in a tumultuous time,
knowledge is being transformed, shared, and
whether it's individuals going to share our
world, new Mozarts, Einsteins emerging from
the streets of Shanghai, else elsewhere, or
whether it's the team sparking off each other,
learning in new ways, the way that invention
is happening is fundamentally different to
the past.
So I'm incredibly optimistic that this is
a solutions platform. This is an ability to
learn which is unprecedented and it's creating
many things, including the most dramatic reduction
in poverty that the world has ever known.
We've seen 2 billion more people in the world
because ideas have traveled more rapidly.
Simple ideas, like washing your hands prevents
diseases, smoking kills you, ideas like that,
and very complex ideas, like those embedded
in new cures for cancer, new vaccines, traveling
around the world.
So average life expectancy in the world going
up by about 20 years. That took from the stone
age to the 1980s to get that sort of improvement
in average life expectancy. Infant mortality
going down dramatically.
In this, an incredible thing happens, we get
2 billion more people on the planet. That
hasn't happened in this speed before. But
associated with this, a dramatic reduction
of 300 million in the number of desperately
poor people, that's never happened before.
And that's because of this interconnectivity,
because of the growth of opportunities, of
ideas, of markets, of jobs around the world.
So there's a huge amount to celebrate and
to look forward to because this planet with
its 6.5 billion connected people out of 7.5 billion
people gives us an opportunity for creativity,
which is simply unprecedented. Of course,
people are also coming together as they did
in the Renaissance, place matters more than
ever. Far from the world being flat, as has
been suggested, it's becoming more and more
mountainous, being in the right place at the
right time, being able to be at the forefront
of this process matters more, and our impact
on each other and the planet is greater because
of this interconnectivity and because of our
rising wealth. When we're in villages, we
don't affect others, but as our incomes grow,
we become more affected, every decision we
make impacts on people and on the planet.
The question is how will this tumultuous moment
play out, how is it going to evolve and are
we able to avoid the terrible lessons that
destroyed Renaissance of 500 years ago?
The ships that went to the new world that
came here to the Americas, as we know, not
only brought good things, but brought diseases
that killed most Native Americans, and they
took back diseases, syphilis and others, which
killed many millions of Europeans. This process
of interconnectivity leads not only to the
spreading of goods but the spreading of bads,
and in that Renaissance we had a pushback,
a dramatic fight against change.
You know about the bonfire of the vanities,
the burning of books, and in that process
knowledge was contested. The church did not
like its authority challenged. And the church
became increasingly corrupt. So Savonarola
and a group of fanatical monks in Florence
took the books, stomped out any progress that
happened before, diversity was stopped, gays
were hung from the trees, Jews, Muslims and
others from the city of Florence which had
been the symbol of diversity were hounded.
Of course, the church pushed back, and you
had the inquisitions. Massive, massive intolerance
that spread through Europe and was associated
with death and destruction, including my college
in Oxford where people were killed in the
corridors.
The hounding of experts and of science, the
total denial of facts in that time has a terrifying
echo today. We need to learn these lessons
about how societies adjust to change, how
we are able to ensure that people feel that
this progress is for them and that our age
of discovery will be different. And we need
to manage the interconnectivity to ensure
that it brings positive things and we are
resilient to the negatives. The swine flu
that starts in Mexico City is in 160 countries
in 30 days. This is work from the emerging
infections group in the Oxford Martin School,
which I've been the director of. We modeled
the spread of the swine flu with airline traffic,
so exactly replicates it, the super‑spreaders
of the goods of globalization are also the
super‑spreaders of the bads, in this case,
major airport hubs.
What we also need to understand is that these
new technologies and interconnectivity have
changed the relationship of individuals to
the state and to institutions. We have super‑empowered
individuals. Barings Bank had existed since
1762, for over 230 years, withstood the most
extraordinary political and economic changes
in the world and suddenly one day management
woke up and found their bank was no more because
one kid Nick Leeson having fun had had a bit
too much fun with new technology overnight.
This lesson of how we manage the super‑power
not least with biopathogens, with exponentially
declining prices, individuals can create smallpox,
Ebola or something else, put it on a drone
and fly it down our streets. These new powers
have released new responsibilities for individuals
and for the way that we react with each other,
we can cause much more good and we can cause
much more harm than ever in history.
What we saw and heard about yesterday of course
in the cybersphere, this is particularly acute
because it is the new nervous system of the
world, so how we manage this absolutely essentially
new system and take our own responsibilities
in it seriously is central.
And of course, recognizing that all technologies
are simply platforms, immense good but also
can be used for harm. ISIS is the largest
recruiter of foreign fighters since the Spanish
Civil War using social media platforms. Ensuring
that our platforms, that our technologies
are forces for good and that we're able to
mitigate and manage and understand the negative
uses is essential. Part of the globalization
story, part of the reason for its success
is this extraordinary integration, connectivity
and growing complexity, but complex dynamic
systems are very difficult to manage, very
difficult to understand attribution, cause
and effect, to have your levers, and whether
you're the best expert system in the world,
which is the financial system, the banks,
the central banks like the fed reserve, the
treasury, and at the global level the IMF,
by far more sophisticated with more data,
over 20,000 Ph.D.'s, a very narrow mission,
stability and global reach in power, totally
unable to see the financial crisis coming,
blindsided by change, by complexity, by the
blizzard of data, captured by ideologies and
short‑term politics, allowing a financial
crisis to happen. It's no wonder that people
don't trust authority and don't trust expertise.
We've let them down.
We allowed a financial crisis to happen which
I believe unleashed and here we are almost
ten years later a series of political and
other events, I do not believe we would have
the politics of the U.S. today or Brexit in
the UK or elsewhere without this failure of
this best expert system. So we need to be
humble and realize that globalization and
complexity require new ways of understanding,
new ways of management, and in this process
that people are being left behind dramatically.
In this new mountainous world, income inequality
and wealth inequality is rising dramatically.
The top 1% in the U.S. and in most advanced
economies share of income has gone up by over
10% over this period, and the reason is that
place, skill, matters more than ever. And
if you're not at the right place, if you don't
have ability to live in New York or San Francisco
or the Valley or Mumbai or Shanghai or London,
you're locked out, highs prices toward income
is at record highs, congestion is harder than
ever, transport costs are further, you can't
leave your elderly parents or children because
child chair and elderly care is declining,
so if you live in the Midwest, certain towns,
your chance of getting a job are lower than
your parents, your life expectancy is lower
than your papers, and your housing mobility
is lower than your parents. You're less likely
to move home. It's no wonder people say globalization
is not working for us, we don't like this,
let's have the old world where we can try
and manage our risks, go back to this past
that we imagine is somehow better.
Of course this is profoundly misguided, but
it's based on a real perception of real threats
and anxieties. It's based on a failure of
globalization to be inclusive and by the gains
to be captured by a group of society which
has not shared them more widely.
So in this process, we see a widening risk.
As we move to a world of automation and one
of the groups I create in the Oxford Martin
schools says that 47 percent of U.S. jobs
are vulnerable to machine intelligence over
the next 20 years and much higher share in
some other countries, we need to think deeply
about the future of work, how this is going
to play out, and give meaning to creativity,
give meaning to volunteerism, give meaning
to social care and many other jobs because
the middle rungs of the job ladder, any routine
rules‑based job in manufacturing, in call
centers, in back offices, are likely to be
done by AI and robotics.
For developing countries this is a particularly
acute challenge because the progress of countries
from agriculture to services is through a
stage where people do these routine rules‑based
jobs, whether it's in textiles or in call
centers, in back offices, and so we need to
fundamentally rethink the development ladder.
This is a different exercise. We have the
capacity to manage, we have the capacity to
manage the change, and it's not people that
are changing that are revoting against change,
it's people left behind. London did not vote
for Brexit, New York and San Francisco did
not vote for Trump, Paris did not vote for
Marine LePen, Munich did not vote for AFP,
these are people unlocked out of change, unable
to change, the popular change is people fear
change too fast. No, people fear not being
able to participate, not benefiting, not having
the change bring them lives with real meaning
as they go forward. As we think about this
process, our interconnectivity needs to guide
our thinking more and more.
As we become wealthier and more connected,
everything we do spills over to others. When
we decide to have a fish, are we destroying
the fiduciaries as we destroyed the north
Atlantic cod? The spillover effects, what
economists call externalities or commons failures
become more and more acute as more and more
people become more and more connected. What
we see of course is that nature does not respond
to market signals. There's not more atmosphere
created or land or water or animals. With
climate change, we have a particularly acute
challenge, and it's one of course that we
are focused on.
But it's dramatic and the need and the scale
of change, change in the way we think. When
the rhino horns are worth more than gold,
they do not reproduce more. So we're going
to have to recognize that our market signals
need to be tempted. The freedoms that we have
and that we've created are going to have to
be restrained. We can't simply say if we have
enough money, we'll buy that or do that. We
have to respect the fact that in this interconnected
world, our decisions impact on others in unprecedented
ways and on the planet.
Natural systems have natural thresholds. 200 million
people taking antibiotics is fine. 2 billion
people, none of them will work. So how you
allocate resources in a complex integrated
world changes the way that one thinks.
We're not simply nations like Lego blocks
that we can disconnect from each other. Our
lives, our countries are entangled and this
and it's this entanglement which defines the
way we think going forward.
One of the reasons I'm incredibly optimistic
is that there are just so many more and so
many more diverse brains and all the literature
we read on innovation and problem‑solving
tells us that diversity, in all respects,
increases the rate and potency of innovation
and solution finding. So we move from a world
where we mainly had white males, brilliant
people, creating our Renaissance of 500 years
ago, extraordinary, to a world today where
we can draw on everyone on the planet, and
we've heard some of the extraordinary things
from this stage of people shifting the dial,
change makers bringing solutions in dramatically
fast and new and exciting ways. It's that
excitement that comes out of diversity, that
we can celebrate and see as the cause for
optimism.
The Oxford Martin School stem cell lab is
drawing on stem cell labs around the world
to do extraordinary things. This period of
genius, this is the lab technician's skin
turned into a heart cell. This period of genius
is unlocking potential which will improve
all of our lives, and we heard that from the
great medical breakthroughs of yesterday.
Reasons for optimism abound, including even
in politics, where we see Macron coming from
absolutely nowhere with no political party
starting a whole movement and becoming a president,
and Jacinda in New Zealand, 37‑year‑old
becoming the Prime Minister, no one had heard
of him two weeks ago. All of us have the power
to do things in new ways and change the world
for better, and more scientists alive than
ever before in history, we even see the nation
of world coming together and agreeing on climate.
Science makes a difference, and coming together
will make a difference in this.
So I'm incredibly optimistic. I'm optimistic
that although we can see the dangers and as
some have argued like Lord Martin Rees, this
could be our final century because we destroy
each other and the planet in many ways, I'm
very optimistic that with this potential,
we the people, we the change agents, individually
and collectively can ensure that this is the
moment in history that we will celebrate in
500 years' time, from acting with perseverance,
imagination, and for each other. Thank you.
