JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And blurring
and even banishing the line
between what it means to be a
kid, and what means to be an
adult, and whether you should
be treating kids like
adults, or like kids.
She is Judy Robertson, she
teaches at Harriet Watt
University here in the UK.
Her background began in
computer science and artificial
intelligence, but then she got
into game design and, in
particular, role playing games
that kids could play that would
be games that they could take
some ownership of
and help build.
Her most recent interests
include human-computer
interaction, such as the Nike
iPod, where, as you run, your
iPod is told by the Nike how
you're doing, and exhorts you
to run faster, and ups the
tempo of the song kind of
thing, and has been playing
a lot with the Wii.
I know in the Innovation Lab
there's a Wii there, that some
people have, the custodian in
the white coat at the lab said,
yeah, a lot of the executives
here, they come in and they
say, oh, really I couldn't, and
then they play for one minute,
and then 20 minutes later you
see them still whacking the
tennis ball back
and forth on it.
And she's been looking at the
new uses for Wii, including
being able to use that device,
the completely detached
pointer, to actually open
windows and do tasks that are
thought as kind of, not just
for kids, in interacting
with the machine.
So please join me in
welcoming Judy Robertson!
[APPLAUSE]
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So Judy,
you mostly recently have
been working on something
called Adventure Author.
You want to tell us a
little bit about that?
JUDY ROBERTSON: Yep.
Adventure Author is a
research project that I'm
currently working on.
And in the idea of it is to
enable children to make
their own computer games.
So it's children as producers
of technology rather than
consumers of technology, which
is a theme that a few of us
have touched on here today.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yeah.
So I'm curious, do you have a
reaction, say, to BeBo, where
they say, we let you
do this skinning.
Which doesn't mean to
take something off, but
to choose your look.
How central does that seem to
you to be to kids in a space?
JUDY ROBERTSON: Yeah.
It seems very useful for
children to be able to express
themselves online, and
both Josh and our BeBo
colleagues mentioned that.
But I think there's a
difference between
choosing and creating.
So if you are simply selecting
between the skins, then that
isn't so much creating
something, you could argue it's
expressing your individuality,
but it's not creating your
own ideas from scratch.
And certainly with Josh's
examples, I really like
Threadless, because people are
making their own art, and
sharing it with other people.
But if it's just a question of
buying things on Threadless,
then they're simply choosing to
buy something, rather than
making it for themselves.
So I'm interested in learners
constructing their own
artifacts for other
people to share.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: I guess it
actually raises an even larger
question, because I'd always
thought teenagers were
associated so much with
the idea of conformity.
They don't want to conform
with the generation up, they
want to rebel against that.
But it's so important not
to be seen as an outlier
from your peer group.
But so much of the message I
feel like we've heard echoed
from each of the people
today has been about this
individuality, design your own
thing, pick your own skin.
Is that a new quality that
you're seeing, then, this
individuality rather
than conformity?
JUDY ROBERTSON: I don't
think so, unfortunately.
I think that one of my concerns
about the points that Josh
raised earlier was that peer
pressure is a really difficult
thing for teenagers
to deal with.
And personally, I would
prefer to see less
pressure on individuals.
And so the Dating Game, the
game about, you know, when you
can get somebody to improve
you, sounds frankly
frightening to me.
And if I had teenage daughters,
then that's the last thing I
would want them to be doing.
And so that's my perspective
on that, but I'm probably
too old to appreciate it.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN:
Any reactions?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Boy, you
roll pretty fast there!
You say it's all about
flirting, and if you have
these games, all the better.
JOSH: I mean, that site could
to be used a lot of the things.
It could be used for, you know,
who wants to meet for a cup of
coffee next week, or you
know, who wants too--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: But you
don't believe a minute of that.
JOSH: No, I don't.
But the point of sharing that
side earlier, was to share that
technology and digital youth
are enabled with sites like
that to actually put a level
of glass wall between those--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: But here's
what I hear Judy saying.
I hear her saying that kids are
now so typically in easily on a
platform with a megaphone
that is very erratic.
Sometimes it's David
Weinberger's wonderful quote,
in the future everybody will
be famous for 15 people.
That's the kind of long tale.
Someone will read my blog, and
then at some point-- boom!
It takes off like crazy, and
your block becomes gateway to
an amazing business, and
there's some MySpace page,
especially if somebody enters
a contest, that can
go off the charts.
But Judy, I sense you saying,
maybe that's a lot of
pressure for a kid to have
audiences of millions?
Or is the fact that they're
all strangers mean,
that's fine, actually?
JUDY ROBERTSON: I think it's
important for children to have
an audience, and one of the
problems in classrooms is, the
typical audience
is the teacher.
The teacher's the person
who marks all the work.
And they're the person whose
attention matters most.
And that's not necessarily a
good situation to be in if your
teacher doesn't like you.
So having a real, a genuine
audience of friends, people
who care about what you're
producing if you're writing
a blog, people who read it
and give you constructive
criticism, is really great.
But sometimes I wonder whether,
if people have, say, more than
a couple of hundred friends, is
that a stretch of the word
friend, are they
really friends?
Are they really going to give
you some kind of constructive
criticism which you can
improve your work with.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So this
actually calls to mind, just to
put another thing on the table,
I've gathered a few examples
of kids' video blogs.
Blogs.
Where they're speaking in the
first person, to their own
webcam, and they want to say
something and they do it
regularly, and I gather BeBo
provides an umbrella under
which that can happen, as do a
lot of the other spaces.
So I just thought we might
to hear their voices a bit.
Let's see if I can
get this going here.
If you can put this
up on the podium.
The first gentleman is a boy
who had his blog on YouTube,
his blog featured.
It became the featured
video of the day, and
you'll see him react.
There are people here, one of
them is not real, and I'll be
interested to see what people
guess to be who's not
the real person.
[BEGIN VIDEO PLAYBACK]
I was featured on YouTube.
I got over 700
subscribers overnight.
I went to bed, and I woke
up, and I'm like, OK,
did my blog explode?
I don't like it when people
do this in their videos.
Hiiii!
It's me, Strega 24.
OK!
Hello, my name is Arthur.
I'm the real spice boy.
I am ready for school.
Today was the most
embarrassing day of my life.
God, I feel so worthless.
I mean, it's all coming back.
You see all-- I just come on
here, I express my emotions,
and I make friends.
And I get people to
subscribe to me.
So I'm like a YouTube
celebrity now.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So how
typical is this of the BeBo
population of bloggers?
Is this a good
spread of videos?
MICHAEL BIRCH: I'm guessing--
AUDIENCE: Which
was the fake one?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Well
I want you to guess!
MICHAEL BIRCH: I'm guessing
it's the Spiderman guy.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN:
You think Superman.
Got to get your branding
straight, here!
You think the Superman
guy's got to be a fake.
How many think Superman
was the fake?
All right.
The other choices were, Katie,
the girl on the couch, who just
whined for a second, yeah, a
few say that, and who
else did we have?
We had the spice boy.
Yeah.
How many think in the
spice boy was not real?
Wow, nobody believes spice boy.
You can't fake that.
Is that everybody?
There was also-- oh, the
29-year-old girl, right?
Wagging her finger.
How many think she
is the fake one?
Let's turn to our expert.
Who was it?
SPEAKER 2: The girl
crying, yeah?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: The
girl crying on the couch?
Judy, you're also our expert?
JUDY ROBERTSON: I voted
for the blonde girl.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So it was
the girl crying on the couch.
That was the one that's part of
an ongoing video soap opera
that started off as ambiguous
as to whether it was real or
fake, and then was later
revealed to be the product of a
guy named Zach, who hired
her as the actress.
But Zach himself was an
amateur, and decided this
would be a fun thing to do.
And I guess we have an
experience of that
in the BeBo space.
Is that right?
Tell us about that.
MICHAEL BIRCH: So the
LonelyGirl15 is the well-known
case of, something that started
off, everyone thought it was
real, ended up being fake.
So we're doing LonelyGirl
London, which was also
known as Kate Modern
on BeBo, and--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Are people
familiar with LonelyGirl15?
Yeah, some are, some aren't.
This is a phenomenon, I
don't know if you guys
want to explain it?
MICHAEL BIRCH: So it started on
YouTube in the U.S., it was a
girl blogging about her life,
about her parents, and then the
more she blogged, it ended up
she was involved in some sort
of order, some sort of cult
order, and it became less and
less believable and more and
more sort of fantasy-like.
And then they finally got a
lead, I'm not sure how, that it
was a professionally produced
production, that she was an
actress, and there were two
professional producers
who were creating it.
SPEAKER 3: And the fascinating
aspect of this, it's this soap
opera specifically for the web.
It's filmed in two to three
minute chunks, and it's an
ongoing series, and they're
still creating new
series of LonelyGirl15.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And now
there's a new series in
conjunction with BeBo
called Kate Modern?
MICHAEL BIRCH:
Kate Modern, so, indication
to the fact that
it's London-based.
The difference is, we're
up-front this time,
it's not for real.
We're not doing the whole
is it real, no it's not.
But again, it's
professionally produced.
And the difference between
this and traditional media,
traditional television, is that
the community can influence
the outcome of the story.
So each episode is literally
filmed one day, and added the
next, and then the community
feeds back in, they ask for the
the community to upload videos,
they help the community help
them solve puzzles about the
order, and that will actually
influence the direction
of the production.
SPEAKER 3: So it becomes
interactive viewing.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And it's
pretty clear that nobody
thinks, it's not like Orson
Welles, War of the Worlds,
nobody thinks it's real.
MICHAEL BIRCH: Well, what
happened with LonelyGirl15,
when it came out and it was
was discovered that it
wasn't real, the popularity
actually went up.
Now originally you may think,
that's the flurry of publicity
around this fake being
discovered, but even after this
flurry of publicity, for the
next couple of weeks, it
actually continued to rise.
And now I think it has
typically a million views of
each episode on the web.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Josh, you
have the, you offer the
authenticity meter a lot.
Does this is kind of stuff
worry you, or this is fine
because it's declared?
JOSH: I mean, personally I very
much dislike sort of Jack in
the Box style stuff like that.
I think it ended up OK with
LonelyGirl, and I would much
prefer to see solutions like
they came up with, where it's
clean slate from the start, and
interactive, and I think if
they're trying to build a
brand, they're actually going
to build a stronger bond
between their viewers and the
consumers from the start from
here, where there's so many
wary people with the
LonelyGirl, I would guess?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yeah.
And Yad, is it the same
phenomenon in your zone, that
there are certain people who
achieve sudden fame, and then
they're either revealed as
people who were creating
fictions in order to do it, or
they just happen to
be wildly popular?
SPEAKER 2: Well, I guess,
it's a little different.
But yeah, you have
those phenomena,
where people pretend.
But mostly to get just traffic
going to the website.
In particular, I guess the
famous Chinese blogging example
was that there were a couple of
Chinese web bloggers, women,
who were suddenly very popular.
But then, basically-- and they
were just popular because they
were just doing weird acts, and
you know, maybe partial
nudity or whatever.
But then it was sort of
literally 15-minute fame, and
then, they started creating
stories to become popular.
Such as, oh, you know, they
were no longer in the
front page of [? Okie ?]
or something like that.
And then, they started
saying, we got censored.
And then when they said that,
some of the Western media is
like, Oh, China censored,
let's do something.
And so the whole press started
looking at who was censored.
But of course it
wasn't censored.
But you have people trying to
use that, to try to continue
to get their sort of
virtual ranking up there.
JUDY ROBERTSON: So Judy, under
what circumstances do you think
a 15-year-old should start
blogging, video blogging?
JUDY ROBERTSON: When they have
something they want to share,
something valuable to say.
And then I think that
second point is important.
It's all very well to
share everyday trivia
that's happening.
But as educators, I think that
we can help young people say
stuff which is worth hearing,
and we can help them express
themselves more clearly.
You went to journalism school,
you learnt about writing that
way, you practiced writing.
But I think it's important
that in schools, children
are given some help with
expressing themselves.
And I don't think we're
doing that at the moment.
Because teachers don't
understand new media, and
they're not teaching people
how to use them effectively,
or indeed responsibly.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: At least in
the United States I gather that
there's been some movement, in
fact legislation stirring in
Congress that no one thinks has
a chance of passage, but
legislation that would actually
ban sites like MySpace and BeBo
from the schools, and a lot of
teachers who I think second
the emotion, at least.
They may not want to
see it passed, but.
Where are you on that scale?
JUDY ROBERTSON: I
disagree with it.
And unfortunately in the
UK, quite a lot of local
authorities ban access to
these internet sites.
Which I think is ridiculous,
because there's so many great
educational like, with BeBo and
MySpace and things like that
included, which children don't
get exposure to within school.
And teachers aren't able to
engage with the children's
popular culture.
They don't understand, there's
a big gap between the children
and the teachers who are
teaching them, and I think
that has to change.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So how
different, if you were czar,
would the curriculum in a
typical school for, I don't
know, twelve, thirteen,
fourteen year old kids, be?
JUDY ROBERTSON: I'm not
sure the curriculum itself
would be that different.
I think if I was ruling, I'd
structure it differently so
that there's a lot more
projects which were
cross-curricular instead of
going to your Math lesson, and
then your English lesson.
That there would be more
projects which were integrated,
and the way people would be
taught would be different.
So instead of the teacher being
the expert and standing up and
lecturing, the teacher would be
seen as facilitator, and would
be helping the learners to help
themselves, and to
help each other.
If you think about the
way-- sorry, did you
want to say something?
SPEAKER 2: Oh, no,
sorry, finish first.
JUDY ROBERTSON: If you think
about the way you've learned
now, you've learned to run your
businesses, you've learned how
to be very successful people.
You didn't learn that in school
through somebody standing
up and lecturing at you.
You learned through
exploration, and you learned
from talking to your peers.
And that's a kind of classroom
I would like to see.
Whether it's based around
technology or whether it's not,
I think that communication
is a very important aspect.
SPEAKER 2: My comment to that,
though, is, I mean that sounds
to me like it's Utopia.
Because a friend of mine just
recently went to Hong Kong,
and was going to sort of
teach New Media, right.
And she found that the
professors, none of
them had even blogged.
And that was her
journalism faculty.
And so she had to further
educate them, right
from the start.
But that generation of
journalists that are being
educated were going through
a faculty of, you know,
50-year-old, 60-year-old
professors in some cases,
who have no idea.
And maybe you can teach them
how to blog, but really to make
it a lifestyle for them, to
make them really understand
what this New Media direction
is supposed to be, it's going
to be very, very difficult.
So likewise, teachers are
already complaining, at least
where I'm from, about, we have
too much responsibility.
We have too many things to do.
And now we have to do this,
and now we have to do that.
And just to fall on another
point, we got hammered
a little while ago on
COPPA, just because--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: COPPA's
the Children's Online
Privacy Protection Act.
And it basically says that if
you are under thirteen, your
parents' permission is needed
before basically any
information can be collected
from you by website.
SPEAKER 2: Correct.
And of course we were prime
target, even though we hadn't
yet launched in the U.S.
Because there were children
signing up, possibly under
the age of thirteen.
But you couldn't really know.
They just wanted to
make sure we had this
protection in place.
But what I meant to say was,
what it exposed was, that kids,
they made the assumption that
kids under the age of thirteen
were innocent, and could be
influenced, and had no
idea about the web.
But just to finish that off,
I'm like, that may have been
true ten years ago,
I don't know.
But I look at kids today,
and I'm having like--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: This should
be something, people over fifty
aren't allowed to sign on
without their kids' permission!
SPEAKER 2: Perhaps.
But I'm having really difficult
debates with 8-year-olds,
9-year-olds, who definitely
are way ahead of the curve.
And so, why should they be
deprived of this, when they
have the intellectual
capacity to deal with it?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Great point.
Michael and Xochi, how many
users of BeBo are under 13?
MICHAEL BIRCH: Knowingly none.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN:
Knowingly none!
That was a coached
answer, right?
Knowingly none.
Tell us more.
MICHAEL BIRCH: I mean,
it's American law.
The caveat is that you
do have to be over 13.
I think this is based on
research in the U.S. that the
maturity of a child is not
sufficient to know how to
conduct themselves online
until the age of 13.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Until
their bar mitzvah.
MICHAEL BIRCH: So, you know, we
have to go with the trend of
research, and that's
what we're doing.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So when I
sign up for a BeBo account,
I'm ready to sign up, it asks
me my birthday, what year.
And if I put in my real
birthday and I'm 12,
what does it tell me?
MICHAEL BIRCH: It'll say that
you can't register, and it
won't allow that computer
to register going forward.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So then I go
to my friend's computer, and I
change my birthday to
be a little older.
MICHAEL BIRCH: Well
unfortunately there's no,
online, in the online world,
there's no real validation of
who someone really is.
It's impossible for us to
protect against people
who wish to deceive us.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So you're
saying at the moment we have
this kind of fig leaf
protection, this pretext that
everybody knows is false.
Where I guess kids, it's often,
I guess on YouTube or on
MySpace you'll see kids as 99
years old very frequently, and
I guess it's because they
always just start at the
beginning and they say, yeah, I
was born in 1906, which is
about as far back
as you can go.
I feel bad for the 102-year-old
who's like, what do I do!
And then we just indulge this
fiction, maybe because we think
it's not that big of a deal!
MICHAEL BIRCH: Yeah.
I mean, there's more that we do
do, we do scan for certain
text, so people may give away
indications by saying which
grade of school they're
in, or they in text, so--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And
then what happens next?
MICHAEL BIRCH: So we search
for them and then we
cancel their memberships.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: You say, hi,
I'm in third grade, and then
you go back to your BeBo page,
that you've just so carefully
picked your skin, and you've
uploaded your video,
and it's all gone.
Thank you for playing.
Does it say, we've iced it, and
in three years we'll unlock it,
and you can just pick up
where you've left off!
Extraordinary.
Is there a special customer
service template to write
back to the kids who have
their accounts cancelled?
MICHAEL BIRCH: We do have
special templates, yeah.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN:
Peace out, sucka!
Are there questions on
this aspect of things?
Interventions?
Who has a kid, or is worried
about kids, or wants
to speak to this?
Tell us who you are.
Oh, you've got the mike.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE],
Net-a-porter.
I can tell you for sure
there's one under
13-year-old who's on Bebo.
So just in case
you were worried.
We know that young people--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: You're just
going to leave it at that!
AUDIENCE: No, I'm
trying to go on.
But I just wanted
to correct a fact.
There is at least one person
under, and I know who she is.
We know that young people can
be very cruel to each other,
and that peer-to-peer digital
bullying is alive and well.
What do we feel about whether
anybody has a responsibility to
deal with that, or is this just
another fact of digital life?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN:
Great question.
Reactions.
Who wants to take it?
Xochi?
XOCHI BIRCH: I'd be
happy to take it.
Well, unfortunately, children
have bullied each other since
the beginning of time, and now
they are doing it online.
We do have a customer-care
team, and they do try to
address these issues, but it's
very difficult on our side, to
authenticate, I mean, to really
understand, to know,
what's going on.
So we do try to remove any
offensive material as soon as
we see it, just because it's
not the type of activity we
want to encourage, but we do
know it goes on, and I think
that's where we have to start
talking about educating our
children about bullying,
and how hurtful it is.
And just because you can't see
the person face to face that
you're bullying, you're
obviously damaging that
person emotionally.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: How often do
you think people sign on with
pseudonyms enough, that should
they really run into a kind of,
for a kid a PR disaster,
Superman in school and that
kind of thing, they can
basically migrate to a fresh
account, declare reputation
bankruptcy and start again?
XOCHI BIRCH: Yes, you can
do that, it is quite
easy to do that.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Other
thoughts on this point, yes?
SPEAKER 2: You know, on the
topic of online gaming then,
this has become a big issue
in our area, because of the
maturity of the market.
And if you haven't heard about
it, particularly South Korea
and China, and even Hong
Kong, has had cases of kids
committing suicide over the
loss of their digital assets.
Because that was their
identity, that was important.
Often also you have the cases
of children playing too
long, and then basically
have overexhaustion.
So that's a darker side of
that type of environment.
So from our point of view,
some of the countries have
started creating laws.
For instance, Thailand has
said, you can't play online
games from a certain
hour to a certain hour.
China's recently introduced
something where they have said
that they're forcing the game
operators, that the longer
you play, the more
penalizing it becomes.
So essentially, I can play
the first two or three
hours just fine.
I can create the same
amount of assets.
But on the fourth hour,
I can only create 50%.
I have to work twice as hard.
On the fifth hour-- and
on and on, and on.
And eventually, if I keep
playing, I start losing assets.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Which from
the corporate perspective
is a disaster.
Because what you really want
is stickiness, you'd love to
have people in all the time.
SPEAKER 2: It is, however,
there's a flip side to it, and
the flip side is, you don't
want people to start talking
about how this kid, or this
this guy, committed suicide
because of that game.
And there are some
learnings to be had there.
And from our point of view, we
have to enforce it, and we have
to be extra strict, and we have
to tell people about
these things.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So will
you enforce that even in
states where the law
doesn't require it?
Yes, just because in this
case we have a global
brand to protect.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So it'll
be true in the U.S. even
if the U.S. doesn't--
SPEAKER 2: Exactly.
Because the last thing we need
is sort of a news article
that says, kid dies,
playing Hello Kitty.
JUDY ROBERTSON: It's really
important, the last thing you
need is somebody to die while
using your product, never mind
what your reputation
let suffers.
SPEAKER 2: Exactly, so there
are many impacts, I agree.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Subtle
distinction, here, right?
The last thing we need
is the bad press!
No, that's the second
to last thing we need!
Judy?
JUDY ROBERTSON: But to
answer the question, whose
responsibility is it?
Everybody's responsibility
here, whether we're parents
or just citizens in
an online community.
But particularly for teachers,
and the problem is that
teachers don't recognize that
it's their responsibility.
They think the internet is
another place where bad things
happen, they don't really
want to get involved with.
And they don't know what a
proper responsible code of
behavior would be
in the internet.
And I think that teachers need
our help in this, in educating
them about what's appropriate,
so they can discuss it
with the children.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yes.
Michael and Xochi, I think
there was maybe a couple things
you wanted to show from BeBo on
the child protection angle,
less protecting them from
themselves, I guess, and more
from the kind of, in that
initial video, the guy at the
fence that may be coming
after them or something.
Yeah, if can put up the podium
thing again-- There we go.
There is the National Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children, and I gather you
guys are in a partnership
with them, right?
So here is one link you
sent me, to a page for
somebody named Tanya.
Hey guys, well my name's,
Tanya, and Childline is great,
I hated my life before, but
thanks to them I'm better.
I was being picked on at home,
et cetera, et cetera, and
now things are better.
Tell us about how
Tanya came about.
MICHAEL BIRCH: This is actually
the second time we've
worked with the NSPCC.
We did so a year ago and it
was incredibly effective.
We had 140,000 BeBo members
engaging with the NSPCC
brand, taking polls.
And they wanted to
repeat a year later.
It's done a little bit
differently this time.
We basically have
fictional case studies.
So it's based on very
common interest--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So Tanya's
like his friend in Pittsburgh,
Ali, a composite.
Exactly, yeah, representative
of a certain issues, and
there's different profiles
for different issues
that children face.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So
here's this disclaimer.
So some adult wrote this thing?
JOSH: That's fake copy, yeah?
MICHAEL BIRCH: Yeah,
that's fake copy.
JOSH: I was going to say, the
spelling's a little off.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: You mean
the misspellings are wrong?
Yes, it should be
misspelled differently.
MICHAEL BIRCH: A little bit
like, the panel here today's
dressed very casually, because
we're pretending to be young.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Some of
us have dealt with reality!
MICHAEL BIRCH: But the copy
here is obviously written by an
adult who is also pretending
still to be young, so,
intentional misspellings.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And so this
person is online right now.
Who is actually
online right now?
MICHAEL BIRCH: The person
managing that profile.
So people at the NSPCC actually
managed these profiles, they
communicate with members, and
they use it as a way for
children to reach out to them.
And also you can't conduct,
on a public profile,
too much communication.
So what they're optimally
trying to do is to get them to
call Childline, and interact
with them on a private basis,
and actually help
these children.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So for
example, Little Miss Sunshine
wrote 18 hours ago, that's
what it was like for me.
Can I talk to you sometime if
I need to speak about it?
Write back.
Do we think Little Miss
Sunshine is real, or fake?
It's somebody real who believes
this is real, or somebody fake
who believes this is fake?
MICHAEL BIRCH: I'm almost
certain it is a real member
who's trying to reach out.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: This
is a real person who
believes it's real?
MICHAEL BIRCH: No, they believe
the NSPCC is real, and they
want to communicate
with the NSPCC.
JOSH: Does the user base
know that Tanya is fake?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Well it
does say at the top, there's
this huge disclaimer.
There's-- the one it's really
hard to do is guarantee
that anyone will read text
and really understand.
So she's reached out in a
comment, and then the NSPCC
will contact her privately,
and continue a dialogue.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: It does seem
like, you were brave, good on
you, does sort of sound like--
no, maybe they're speaking
to the character.
Judy, do you have a
reaction to this?
JUDY ROBERTSON: I think this
is a great project, really
responsible for you
people to do this.
And I've a similar project by a
group of therapists in Ireland
who were working with
adolescents and had various
mental health problems.
And what they did instead of
creating fictional personas,
was they talked to people with
real life problems, but they
created stories based on them,
but not with video content
obviously, but they had
voiceovers, then, by the
children with pictures and
artwork which matched the
message they were telling.
And the good thing about that
was, that it was very powerful
to hear the voice of the person
who had had that problem.
It was very moving
to have that.
So that's maybe something
you could think of next.
MICHAEL BIRCH: I mean, the
NSPCC, they're trying to reach
out to the massive audience of
youth, and if the youth spend
a lot of time on BeBo, a
significant amount of time.
So we have 8.8 million
registered members in the UK
alone, and about 5% of page
views on the internet,
according to Comsco, are
actually on BeBo.com.
So whereas a lot of people
here are probably over 30, I
imagine, and very few people
using it, that a lot of their
children and other people
would actually be on it.
So it's a fantastic way for
them to reach out where people
are spending their time.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Got it.
I saw a question or a comment
over here, I know we
don't have much time.
Oh great, you're
right at the mike.
Go for it.
Tell us who you are.
AUDIENCE: Andy Hart,
[? Burley-Mall ?]
group.
Two quick questions.
I read on the BBC site, within
China there are 2 million
internet addicts in
hospital, is that correct?
SPEAKER 2: There are, as of I
think, two years ago, China
actually accepted the internet
addiction as an actual internet
addiction syndrome, and so they
have clinics to deal with that.
I actually don't know if
it's 2 million, but it
wouldn't surprise me.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Some of
them maybe spoofed accounts.
AUDIENCE: Someone said
that you shut down their
account, their assets.
When I build a BeBo page,
or any page on any social
network, who owns that asset?
And I'm thinking
about portability.
If I get to a certain age and
want to move on to another
social network site, can
I take my stuff with me?
Do I own it?
MICHAEL BIRCH: Anything you
upload, whether it's your own
music, your own photos, that
the copyright of that
belongs to you.
Your video.
So you can take that and do
whatever you like with it.
We don't claim any rights
to what you've uploaded.
Or if you've written, we have
an author's product, so we
encourage young writers.
In fact we did a competition
recently called Nanotales.
We had 3,000 entrants, 100
finalists, and then in the
spirit of BeBo we let the
community pick the final
25, and they're going to
become published authors.
And they're benefiting
from this.
It's still their copyright.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Although I
suppose, as with Nanotales,
which I have up on the podium
here, you have a non-exclusive,
worldwide, paid-up perpetual
license so that if you ever
want to do the best of BeBo,
hey, they uploaded it, they've
given it to you, they can also
take it, but you're allowed
to do what you wish with it.
MICHAEL BIRCH: I mean, I don't
know the exact details of
the Nanotales completion.
I'm sure there's competition
rules, so you can
find out about that.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Right.
Yeah?
SPEAKER 2: On that topic for
online games, The feeling
is quite different.
Because the assets that you
create are generally, there's
some games like Second Life or
there.com, which maybe treat it
as as what I build is yours,
but most of the online games
say that the assets I develop
inside the game, which are
usually created by the game
company anyway, belong
to the company.
So, however, quasi-illegal
sort of item trading
is a huge businesses.
It's a Couple hundred millions
of dollars at least.
And so companies like,
item-based, specialize just in
trading these virtual items.
But from game companies
that actually don't
technically allow it.
So it's a black market trade.
And there have been cases, and
we've been involved in some of
these cases, where people, we
would block the accounts
because what happens is,
it creates an imbalance.
Basically, gold farmers are
creating virtual gold, virtual
items, and then they would sell
them to other people, which
would upset the game balance,
because people would be
wealthier, or people would
have more, other things.
And so we have the
right to stop them.
And then we get huge amounts
of complaints, because
they're saying, well,
you know, they're mine.
Although technically
they're not.
Because the question here, I
guess, is, because I invested
the time, you know, thirty
hours of hard work, to create
this asset, why should I
not be allowed to sell it?
As opposed to creating music
and uploading it to a website.
That's different, because
it was his content.
But what if he creates
something virtually from an
asset that was already
virtually there, like a game
that he achieved to get it over
many days of work, should he
not be able to sell that?
And of course,
that's the debate.
So this raises another great
question, which is, to the
extent that we see an
intermingling going of
tried-and-true brands,
corporate properties for which,
certainly prior to the year
2000, the name of the game was
to control your brand, to
manage it, to make sure doesn't
get tarnished in any way, we
see that intermingling with
kids for whom we were told
earlier in the conference that
user-generated content is not
even Zeitgeist anymore.
It's just mainstream.
It's like part of
the whole deal.
How do you reconcile the need
to be able to control one's
brand, and how it's portrayed,
with the idea that you want to
let it go, and let the kids
play with it, and see
what they come up with?
I don't know if anybody has--
JUDY ROBERTSON: Can I just
stand up for the kids
before we go on with this?
Because I think that we've
been rather unfair in
characterizing them.
And particularly by saying that
they're very materialistic,
that's one thing, and also
that they get bored easily.
Because in the work that I
do in schools, kids can
concentrate very intensely for
long periods if they have a
task that's interesting enough.
So if we see them slipping and
multitasking between things,
and casual gaming, it's because
we're giving them activities
that encourage that
sort of behavior.
And the thing about being
materialistic, it's because
we're selling them
lots of stuff.
But I've seen kids when they're
making games, really starting
to explore the identities and
explore spiritual values and
what it means to be growing up.
And thinking about things more
deeply, I suspect, than some of
the marketing types that
we've seen here today.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And how much
in the mainstream sites that
kids use, the brands that we
do know about, do you see a
balance, in your views struck
well, on eliciting from kids
the kind of behavior you think
is constructive and helpful?
JUDY ROBERTSON: I think it's
relatively rare, and kids do
need help from adults
in doing that.
As experienced humans, having
lived for a bit, they need
our guidance in this.
And again, I think
that's education helps.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: We were
talking about the difference in
some sites as to whether or not
it very quickly, upfront, tells
you in a social networking
site, how many
friends you have.
Because that can very
quickly become the
metric of your success.
The greater that number,
the better off you are.
And I see that BeBo doesn't
tell you how many friends you
have, doesn't it advertise it.
MICHAEL BIRCH: That's correct.
We don't think that, if
you advertise a number
on a profile, it becomes
almost a competition to
increase that number.
So we don't disclose, although
you can work it out by going to
see how many pages of friends
there are, we don't put
it up on the profile.
And I mean, the well-known
case, on MySpace, friend
collecting, it's the big thing.
How many friends have you got?
I think the maximum may
be well over a million.
And also, you know, no one
really has a million friends.
And the experience of BeBo
is more about connecting
with your friends.
And a lot of the products
are designed about
feeding information.
So if your friend uploads
a photo, you see photos
from your friends.
And when they're not real
friends, it starts breaking
down becoming far
less utilitarian.
So we actively discourage
friend-collecting.
SPEAKER 2: So on your point.
I agree, but also disagree.
I agree that there's
responsibility, but I'm not so
sure that adults really know
what's best for the kids.
And coming from an environment
such as China, or other
communist countries, where
censorship is widely practiced,
although much better than
before, there is a very fine
line where you draw between
what you give them
with you don't.
And what I can see, in the
name of education, you
can do a lot of things.
And you can block
a lot of things.
So, unfortunately, I don't
think the world has many people
like you, in that respect.
So from my point of view, the
more freedom of information
there is, the easier
it would be.
Because eventually, there will
be people who can help, as
opposed to trying to stop it.
I mean it's a tough line, I
understand the balance issue.
But you can take it the
complete other way once
you start somewhere.
JOSH: I want to jump in to the
question you were asking a
little bit, because I have
some thoughts about it.
My group always thinks about
human beings online, and people
having real lives on the
internet, what their
digital lives are like.
And when we think about
marketing or advertising a
brand online, we always
imagine, what would be like if
they had an online life, if a
brand had an online life?
And it's really sad and almost
sort of distressing to think
that most brands are sort of
the rambunctious person at the
party, that's yelling and
screaming, and they really
don't have quite a good
online life at all.
They're bad online citizens
most of the time.
So thinking about integrating
or marketing brands online, you
have to imagine, what would it
be like if they were, if they
practice some of the things
we talked about up here
as their online life?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN:
Give us an example.
JOSH: You know, an example
would be, rather than spending
marketing money on banner
advertising, what would it be
like if that marketing money
went towards creating a blog,
or a website, or a resource or
something people would
use and interact with?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Well, here's
maybe the best way to focus
that question, and a nice
one to kind of wrap it up.
Because I've been intrigued at
the amount of what we've seen
today has been almost a
politicization of commerce
and of marketing.
And not by politicization.
I don't mean bringing
of ideology to it,
political ideologies.
I mean people are asked
to vote with their skin.
They show their loyalty to a
brand not just by what T-shirt
they wear, but by deciding to
change the status message in a
way that represents it and are
given often the tools by
that brand to do so.
So if I'm actually a
politician, I'm a political
candidate, I don't know if I'm
running in the UK, or in the
U.S., or somewhere in Asia.
How careful do I need to be?
And on the other hand how
much opportunity is there?
Should I start my blog, but
I've got to make it real, and
say, God, I had a terrible
speech today, and I couldn't
stand the people in the
audience, and blah!
Or is it just, another
great and successful day!
Turn into tomorrow's blog!
JOSH: There's obviously a
certain amount of spin that
has to happen on anything
as a politician, or a
brand, or anything.
But there's a level of
authenticity and transparency
and honesty that the digital
user expect to receive, that
I don't think they are.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Was Barack
Obama right to seize his
MySpace page from a fan who had
registered lots of friends, but
basically controlled the page?
JOSH: I didn't know
he seized it, but--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN:
Presume I'm right.
JOSH: No.
But he's made a lot of
other right moves.
Like he's on Twitter, and
he's actually talking
about what he's doing.
Sort of engaging as if he
was a real human being.
Whereas Coca Cola will go
on Twitter and they'll
say, buy Coke.
Or they'll find some other,
they'll make a fake persona to
go on Twitter, and then 100
twitters in, it'll say,
going to have a Coke now.
And like, there are
a lot of more--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Who
would have thought?
JOSH: --stickier and more
ingenious ways to do that that
will have a longer-lasting life
than just 100 twitters and
then, going to have a Coke now.
XOCHI BIRCH: I think brands
realize now, it's a long-term
relationship, and that's what
you're trying to build.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yeah.
Well, some words that echo
back to me from yesterday.
Whoever here on the stage said,
it's not return on investment
anymore, it's return
on involvement.
And I get a sense from each
of you about the extent to
which you kind of live and
breathe the stuff that you
study, and that you do.
It's not just you might have
been in the cinderblock
businesses if only that had
opened up as an opportunity.
And ditto, too, when you're
talking about the kids, Judy,
and what you're working on, and
just that kind of excitement, I
guess, is a form
of authenticity.
And I also think back to
Linden Labs yesterday
with, what was it?
Collaborative creativity.
And the idea of being able to
sit around the table, and have
some good thoughts, and send it
out half-finished to the world,
and let them see if they can
take it the rest of the way.
And just the hope is, we don't
find our kids too badly
burned in the meantime.
I didn't really hear, because I
don't know that we've, any of
us, has come up with one, a
really satisfying answer
to bullying problem.
And I think there's obviously
some dimensions that, for some
of these kids, the bullying can
be far worse when it's done on
such a global scale and stage.
And we're going to have to keep
working on that, and thinking
about it, and in five years
them together again, we're
going to have to be told
what the digital natives in
youth are all up to today.
If you can all join me in
thinking our panelists, they're
terrific, thank you so much.
