Have you heard of crazy toads?
Audience: Yes! No !
TN: Well, it’s the idea that the survival of the species
goes through a change of behavior,
and that it’s based on a few isolated individuals,
that at first, we take for crazy.
Toads live in one place, they breed elsewhere,
and so, every year, at the time of love,
they all cross, in a gregarious way, in the same direction.
But some, for obscure reasons, go against the grain.
Why ? Mystery, but it seems completely stupid,
since they have to find a partner like them,
and in addition to survive.
From the point of view of the species, zero pointed.
But, when changes in the environment,
because, for example, we build roads,
obviously, all normal toads are crushed.
In the end, it’s these weird toads that go in absurd directions
who will save the species
because they invent new ways.
In History, we have Christopher Columbus, gone to the west to find India,
or to Tim Berners-Lee who made a military network
the Internet we know today.
Today, I’m going to talk about crazy toads,
because I think we need it more than ever.
Myself, I was initially in the flow,
rather ahead of the group, we will say,
since at 30, I was the first female partner at McKinsey,
a big box of advice,
and so, I found myself brewing billions
with general directions.
At 36, I needed to do something else in my life,
and so, I decided to put my skills
serving the great ideals.
So I accompanied NGOs – the general management – voluntarily,
and very quickly, I thought, “It’s not going to do it.
It’s too slow, it’s too old school, too much in the flow. “
So, I became interested in hackers.
At the time – in the early 2000s –
you had people who hacked Linux,
Open Source and the first tools.
And there, I had my first intuition of crazy toad,
I said to myself: “And if we took this ethics of free,
and put it at the service of sustainability?
We would have much better results. “
And that’s what I did at the time, it was in the early 2000s.
Today, everyone knows Wikipedia,
but 17 years ago it was a weird idea.
Now you have carpooling, you have Airbnb, the Vélib, all that,
if you look closely, it’s the same principles,
it’s sharing, collaboration.
I did that with eco-neighborhoods, sustainable lifestyles,
all the goods and services that could be shared,
rather than keeping them to yourself.
For that, I was called
“The bee that pollinates ideas freely”.
(Laughter)
In fact, last year, I was with Cédric Villani,
the Fields Medal 2010 –
it’s the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics –
and Cedric, actually, it’s a crazy toad,
because beyond mathematics, he is very interested in society,
and what he wants is a more just, more harmonious society.
There, we are both helping an NGO
caring for the disabled and autistic,
giving them the means to express themselves
through musical devices absolutely unheard,
digital gear, works of art.
Another person who is also in the room
– you’ll recognize him somewhere with his crazy toad head –
it’s Florent Massot, a publisher.
At 17, he wanted to change the world with books.
He has built a lot of publishing houses,
he sold millions of titles.
It’s all about “Fuck me”, Virginie Despentes,
to the Dalai Lama at the other end with “The New Reality”.
You imagine the spectrum.
(Laughter)
That’s Florent.
Last October, together, we thought:
” What can we do ?
The ecological crisis is getting worse,
COP21, the IPCC, that’s not enough. “
And we said to ourselves:
“We have to change the way we see the problem.
We will say that it is a tsunami, because in a tsunami,
everyone is obliged to take charge. “
We thought, “We have Cedric on one side
with great minds, Nobel prizes, etc.,
we will ask him to help us to make a scientific coup.
On the other side, me, below who digs tunnels,
who pollinates, who makes projects, who engages,
the idea is that I can bring people,
and together we make a manifest,
that is, a source code that is available to everyone,
we make it playful, nice,
so that everyone will say to themselves:
“This tsunami, it concerns me, I enter the dance. “
And so I started doing this work in October.
In November, I was in the United States with my crazy toads,
and Donald Trump is elected.
There is consternation, what happened?
Very quickly, we come across the first thing, it’s the post-truth.
The post-truth is in 2016 the word that was the most used,
2016 is the year of the post-truth, in reality.
That is to say, you no longer have the true and the false,
but a continuum between the two,
a bit like gray between white and black,
where everything is more or less true, more or less false.
What makes the value of an info,
it’s the likes, all the networks send you.
So, instead of checking the sources and what people say,
we trust that he is someone nice
who says something.
And you come back like that in a kind of bubble
where you self-confirm what you want to hear.
The second thing: here on the screen is Steve Bannon.
This is the number two of the White House,
he was compared to Goebbels, Hitler’s number two.
This man is resolutely “alt-right”,
it means extreme neo-Nazi American right.
He said publicly that he wanted to kill all Muslims.
It has two entities, among others;
the first is Breitbart News,
it’s a box that makes fake news,
that is to say false news of “alt-right” tendency,
and in an industrial way, it floods the social networks.
On the other hand, it has Cambridge Analytica, it’s a box of big data,
she takes all the data on the social networks,
and with this information,
they make a very precise portrait of each person.
The boss boasted that with 64 likes, he knew exactly everything about you:
you are in love, go get married, go have a child,
your sexual preferences, possibly, for whom you would like to vote.
Assemble both, it’s an industrial war machine,
because you take Breitbart info,
and you swing exactly what you need
to each voter who hesitates to vote for Trump.
We know the result: he said publicly
that he felt it was thanks to him that the Brexit had happened
as well as the election of Donald Trump.
In the end, here is this program:
you see these little black dots,
these are alt-right sites.
They take all these “fake news”
and sway them in the heart of the network.
These color points,
it’s us, a bit of Care Bears, and so, all this information coming in,
it’s enough for a few people in the network to like them,
and after that, it spreads everywhere and we can not stop it.
On these images,
you see a kind of cancer.
These black spots encircle us, because in addition, they collaborate.
So they encircle us, they choke us.
So, beyond the ecological tsunami,
I said to myself: “We have outright a much more serious tsunami,
it is the cancer of the planetary spirit. It’s the head that is sick. “
Third thing here: you hear all the time about autonomous cars,
of robots, artificial intelligence – IA –
looking closely,
I realized that 2016 was also a pivotal year.
At the end of last year,
Google Translate has switched to machine learning.
What is it ?
It’s a much more advanced form of AI
in which the machine learns to learn on its own,
and it improves continuously at a prodigious speed.
We thought it would not happen for a few years.
AlphaGo beat the world champion go,
we thought it would come in 10 years.
When I told the experts, they said:
“The digital genius is out of the bottle. “
What is it exactly ?
In reality, this form of AI is quite different,
because it is inspired by our brain function
since we were born when we come out of the belly of our mother.
The machine, in fact, what it does is that it learns by mistake.
At first, she knows absolutely nothing, she tries,
and every time she crashes, she eliminates the solution.
But she does it very quickly,
and in this way, she gradually builds her knowledge,
and faster and faster.
So the challenge for her is big data,
because it is with this mass of data that she will understand and learn
everything you need to know to grow.
For the moment, we will say: “First, what big data, what is it?
Where do they come from? These big data is us.
These big data is what you leave on the Internet,
but it’s also your mobile phone, your car,
tomorrow your fridge.
All this information, these digital traces that you leave,
that’s what makes it possible to feed the machine.
That’s why we say that data is the black gold of the 21st century.
GAFAM: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft,
are fighting to get their hands on this manna.
Why ? Because they understood that it is by taking this manna
that they will be able to feed each their little digital genius in the laboratory
and play a little bit to the sorcerer’s apprentice,
their purpose being obviously that their little genius
be smarter than that of the boyfriend to sell us more things.
Then you will say to me:
“What will happen when this baby becomes an adult? “
There, we do not know how to say it, we just know that it will happen.
At one point, he will be as intelligent as we are,
and in many fields, it is already beyond us.
For some, it will happen in 2045 – that’s Kurzweil of Google.
Some experts in Europe talk about 2026.
Some even from 2020.
But I would say, it’s not so much when it’s going to happen,
the important thing is to say that the infant,
he feeds on what is said to him.
So, if you tell him lots of dirty words, that’s what he’ll learn.
So, the real question for me is: who are the fairies around the cradle?
What is ethics? What is the control?
What backup system we have around that,
if everyone starts making digital geniuses in his laboratory?
So, to summarize, not a tsunami, but three:
ecology, the post-truth and in fact, the cancer of democracy,
and thirdly, this digital genius
which is developing everywhere without our knowledge.
Faced with this, we feel that it escapes us,
and somewhere,
that our way of informing us, of giving us opinions,
to choose our friends, to see the world,
all this is dependent today on this big machine.
The worst thing would be that tomorrow we become the product,
and that without our knowledge, it is these geniuses, good or bad,
who do what they want with us.
So, in front of that, I gathered my crazy toads.
There we are 34, at Treilles, near Marseille, early April.
You have an extraordinary diversity, from 21 to 75 years old.
You have here founding fathers of Europe
who were with Jacques Delors in 1993,
You have Olivier, patron of Doctors of the World and the Red Cross,
who has resigned to take care of putting the collaborative at the service of NGOs.
You have Alice who created Singa for refugees.
You have Fatima who has given the word back to the suburbs since Sarcelles.
You have of course collaboratives such as Ticket for Change, OuiShare
the Barbarians.
You have big data with an exemplary start-up
who does a lot of things in poor countries.
And of course the CNRS.
In short, all this small world met for a week
to write this manifesto.
There, I will quote Seth Godin, a marketing guru.
Godin, he says, “Want to change everyone today,
it does not mean anything anymore. “
Obviously, there are too many “narratives”, too much “storytelling”.
A story for everyone, it does not work anymore.
Then take the change one by one, it’s too slow.
So what do we do ?
Godin, he suggests: “To make the change, make culture,
and to cultivate, create cohorts. “
What are cohorts?
It’s a group of passionate people who want to change together.
And the first step, the most important thing, is to put them together,
to coordinate, synchronize.
We learn about our weaknesses, our faults,
and we take the time it takes for this group to resonate.
Once it’s done, well, with diversity and collaboration,
it creates extraordinary things, it creates these ferments of culture.
And that’s what we did at Treilles.
I would say we have a source code, which is already online,
which will be published as a book in September.
And this source code is simply the responses of the 34 to the three tsunamis,
each, with his angle of attack,
but all, making lots of connections,
totally impossible to predict at first.
This source code is an invitation to all to say to oneself:
“This tsunami, it interests me, one of the 3, me too, I can do something. “
As soon as we start, we can make cohorts.
Who says cohort then says this culture will unfold.
A week later, Florent was on the plane to Dharamsala.
He had an appointment with the Dalai Lama
who wanted to talk to Western youth.
Florent brought with him three young French YouTubeurs,
including Adèle, 15, three million followers.
At the end of the interview, the Dalai Lama turns to Adele,
and said to him: “You, the young French,
you have a universal responsibility.
It’s up to you to revolutionize consciousness. “
France abroad is the French Revolution,
it’s Night standing, it’s the Bataclan, it’s Charlie, it’s all that.
But it is also this image.
This photo was taken during the occupation.
Paris was German.
This photo is the flame of hope, love, resistance.
This photo has been around the world.
Me, I believe that France has no lesson to give to the world,
especially not.
By cons, what we can do, as with this photo,
it is to share our flame.
So, all that and crazy toads what is it in the end?
First thing: crazy toads, because there are three tsunamis,
there are more and more who run in all directions.
And finally make a crazy toad
finally, it’s just, dare, a first time, go against the meaning
and maybe continue after.
Imagine, if a first time, it did Columbus,
what can 30,000 times do if they intersect
and that we have the means to put them in a cohort.
Even five, six, ten people.
So, we’ll start making culture ferments,
everywhere, in a decentralized way, and that can make a difference.
It’s like this story of starfish being thrown into the sea.
The second thing is that the crazy toad,
in fact, it’s someone who does not take himself seriously,
who has no idea why he is here,
he has no political purpose, he just has his inner flame that guides him
and that makes him advance in the darkness.
It’s not a disturbing person finally.
If you ever come across a lost crazy toad,
lost in your garden, well, do not hurt him,
let him continue his zigzag route,
where he wants to go, it does not matter, let him do it.
Look at him with kindness, and I hope then that maybe,
it will make you want to move too.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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