[ Applause ]
>>Eduardo Paes: So first thing I'm going to
say was not -- I was not supposed to say,
but you see how hard is the life of a politician.
I mean, Malcolm just came here asking for
money, said that he wanted to get some money
to be speaking here, and I have to say, Nikesh,
don't come with $20 here because can you imagine
the picture?
That would be called bribery, if you come
with a $20 bill here.
[ Laughter ]
>>Eduardo Paes: So I mean, I'm so happy to
be here without getting any money.
That's the politically correct way to say
that.
And I mean, I always like to introduce myself
by saying that I have the best job in the
world.
And I really do.
I mean, Rio, as you know, is a beautiful city.
Rio and Brazil are facing an amazing moment.
I mean, we host the World Cup next year, the
Olympics in '16.
The city is improving its infrastructure.
Lots of investments are coming to the city.
But I could not come here to brag about that.
I mean, actually I came here, the main reason
I came here, the main thing I wanted to tell
you, is that in spite of all of this, Rio
and Brazil, we are facing a very delicate
moment.
People -- thousands of people are out in the
streets complaining and challenging the political
establishment, which I'm part of.
And the weirdest part of that is that we are
not in a political crisis, we don't face -- we
don't have a dictator, we are not in an economic
crisis, we don't face high unemployment rates.
I mean, the country's doing well.
But we are in a political turmoil.
And when I say that, I mean, if you look at
everything that's happening to the world,
I would say that this political turmoil is
not for Brazil.
I mean, this is -- when I mean "us, we are
facing a political turmoil," I mean, us as
the world.
So I would say that the main reason for this
political turmoil is a crisis of what we call
representative democracy.
So for us to better understand, I would like
to go very fast into history here, but go
back like 2,700, 800 years in history to the
birthplace of democracy, the Greek polis.
I'm supposed to have something to show here.
So we know that the city-states where decisions
were made were taken by every one of the citizens,
single citizens.
The square, the people's agora, where great
debates took place.
This model that we call today direct democracy
became, at a certain moment, infeasible because
the cities grew so much that it was no longer
possible to listen to everyone's opinion.
After that, we had two major transformations
that brought us to what we have today.
First, the Roman republic, which gave us our
first assembly.
That was between 500 B.C. to the first century.
And then the English Parliament in the 14th
century, which later acquired the notion of
social contract and, along with that, representative
democracy.
But the fact is that since then -- and obviously
I'm being very fast here, but since then,
we didn't change much.
I mean, obviously we learned quite a lot in
terms of equality, popular sovereignty, I
mean, some rights, more people participating,
but the notion of representation didn't change
much.
And the point I want to make from here is
like we have two recently new phenomena that
I think can help us changing the way we govern
these days.
I mean, the first one would be the rising
power of cities.
And I'm not saying that because I'm here,
but we know that the moment of supremacy of
representative democracy was also the moment
of supremacy for nations.
I mean, the Cold War, the economic blocs,
the world wars, representative democracy has
put countries in the spotlight, and as a consequence,
they have the states.
Today it's not like that anymore.
I mean, the world is becoming -- and we heard
that here today -- the world is becoming more
and more urbanized.
Cities, local governments, they gain power,
and at the same time a lot of responsibilities
that they did not have before.
So if you talk about health, education, if
you talk about creation of jobs, trends in
the economy, that's to do with the local government.
So this is the first phenomenon.
The second phenomenon -- and allow me a cliché
here -- was this digital revolution that shrunk
the world.
I mean, communications between a citizen -- citizens
in the same city became so intense, so vibrant,
maybe even more than it was in the agora,
in the Greek agora, in the people's agora.
But the difference is that in the square,
people would go shouting on the square, and
nowadays people go ahead and use caps lock
on Facebook.
That's the difference.
But the intensity of communications has become
much more intense.
So I think these two phenomena, the power
of the cities and the digital revolution,
if we put them together, they can show us
a pathway to this crisis of representative
democracy.
So the web, the digital world, has become
our square, our agora, and the metropolis,
the cities, they can become our polis, and
representative democracy is no longer enough.
And the beauty of that is that people, especially
the youth, they've already realized that.
I mean, people, they fiscalize, they denounce,
they get together, they hit the streets, they
get organized via the web, they protest.
If you look at these scenes here, I mean,
there are some movements that we just -- I
mean, all over the world.
This is in Brazil.
And this one is a beautiful one.
It's like two months ago right in front of
the city hall of Rio, so I want to thank you
guys in Google, Twitter, Facebook for -- look
what you brought us.
[ Laughter ]
>>Eduardo Paes: I mean, everyone complaining
against this mayor.
[ Laughter ]
>>Eduardo Paes: But to make -- to make a long
story short, people want to participate.
I mean, they have -- they want to have more
contact with public authorities.
They want to participate more in the decisions.
I mean, there's not any more just the moment
of the elections, of the voting.
That won't give us the legitimacy that we
need.
I mean, the ballot box, that won't give us
the legitimacy that we need.
I mean, this legitimacy has to be renewed
every day in real time.
So the point I want to make here, and I'm
finishing my speech -- I think I'm a little
bit late on time here -- but the point I want
to make here is if we want to talk about a
different environment, a different way of
governing, I mean, it has to be -- the place
has to be the local level.
I mean, it has to be on the cities, the polis.
If we want to find the means, the environment,
to get that done, I mean, it has to be in
the digital world, the world that you guys
here run.
And it is -- it can get together to be -- to
become a new way of governing.
So I don't have the answers to the problems
we face today, to this change of landscape,
but I think that we politicians, we as a society,
in places like that we need to find new ways
of governing.
So this means participation, this means transparency,
so this might mean a new way to government,
polisdigitocracy.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
