Terminal Values

Transcript

Hello Mumbai. Hi. Hold on. That's better. So I was promised and told that there's a huge screen at the venue and I've always wanted to be kind of a giant head looming over people, 1984 style. So I hope this is, I hope this is suitably intimidating. So yeah, you over there, come and listen to me. I don't think I haven't not noticed that you're on your phone over there in the third row. Yeah, this is all right. I'm sorry I couldn't make it. I'm in San Francisco right now, and this is pre-recorded because your Wi-Fi sucks.

But I'd love to have made it. This is sort of in solidarity for all the brilliant people from India who haven't been able to get visas for conferences that happen elsewhere. I mean, it's not that I couldn't get a visa. It's just that I couldn't get out of bed. So thank you for having me. My name's Danny O'Brien. I'm a digital rights activist. I have been for quite a long time. I used to go to the cypherpunks, the real world events, and I was on that list. I ended up being the only activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and then we grew a team and I become a director of strategy there.

I've helped work to protect people who use the internet at the Committee to Protect Journalists. And when I get nervous, I kind of start organizations. And one of the ones I did when it looked like UK was going to go a bit weird on digital rights and controlling everything that everybody thinks and blocking stuff, I helped set up the Open Rights Group a few years ago. And Open Rights Group is great. All of these organizations are fantastic. And please join them and give them some money. I'm still doing it for my sins, but it's been a bit of a weird vibe the last few years, you know?

And I feel like it's a strange twist, right? Because we've been building incredibly liberatory technology. I mean, you probably have made the cypherpunk dream come alive. We've actually built all the things that we dreamt of in the 90s. And there's other stuff. I mean, look at all this clever stuff I'm doing behind me and this stuff. But somehow that has helped. And stuff has got worse, particularly not just in the digital rights space, but the whole thing. I don't think people feel as optimistic as they used to.

And I think that's particularly pressing in the internet freedom space. What do I mean by internet freedom? I mean, you know, free speech, free software, free knowledge, freedom of association on the internet, secure and private personal technology under the control of its owners, of its users, and without borders, without censors, without limitations, you know, the great cyberspace dream. All of that has become constricted. And I think if you're fighting for those kinds of things, it's beginning to feel like, you know, modulating the frequencies, like to fight the Borg, it's not working.

And so I've been doing a lot of wondering about that. And I'd like to share that with you, Mumbai, because I think there's probably something we could do about it. So here's the question I want to start with. And it's a rhetorical question, because if you shout out the answers, I can't hear you. This is actually a recording. I'm not listening to you. But, you know, don't not pay attention, because I'll come and get you in your dreams. Here's the question I want, not really to ask yourselves, but to ask imaginary versions of your friends.

And the question I want you to ask is like, is the internet, it's defending the internet, most important thing, most important value in your life right now. And I think, you know, for you people, for all of us, it's like, we just immediately automatically say, yes, of course. But for most people, I think they have other things on their mind, right? Then they might, you know, they might list, you know, their own economic situation or climate change, right? Or the addictive nature of social media.

So there's a little bit of internet in there, but it's not like, it's not the network itself. It's not the technology. It's like somehow it's how it's been used. Or, you know, immigration, whichever side of that you're on, you know, if you're an immigrant, you'll be worried about being surveilled and monitored and stuff. But you know, you're fighting for your right to exist. And if you're on the other side, you'd be going, oh, no, we need stronger borders or whatever. Anyway, the point here is that the people have other things on their mind, including, I think, people who fight for digital rights.

I think after the last few years and beginning to think, oh, maybe the internet isn't the solution to all the world's problems. You start thinking about it in terms of, well, how can it solve those problems? If I have a thing that I want to achieve, maybe the way of thinking about the internet and maybe the way of arguing for those internet values that I mentioned before is to say that they help you, they can help you achieve those things. That if you want climate change, the amazing power, or fixed climate change, the amazing power of the internet to allow people to work together and build things will help that problem.

Or if you're worried about immigration on one side or the other, it'll enable you to talk to one another or develop solutions or policies, blah, blah, blah. So you're arguing that we need the internet to work because we have these big problems that we have to fix. So it pushes the internet down a little bit on the list. And the way that they generally talk about this is that it's instrumental. There's two kinds of values that you can have according to some folks, some sociologists. You have terminal values and then you have instrumental values.

And terminal values are the ultimate aims, right? That you're pursuing. And instrumental values in this version are the internet values, right? Like we have free speech so that we can talk to one another to achieve this thing. And I think that's how people mostly think and argue for the internet these days and technology. I think it's wrong. I've come to the conclusion, I think it's wrong. And let me tell you why the internet and technology, digital technology is now the substrate of thought and action, all thought and action.

And I'm not, I don't mean that, you know, nobody goes out and touches grass. I mean that it's just such a huge sizable chunk of it that if there's anything we've broken on the internet, if we introduce censorship, if we introduce like a little bit of surveillance as a treat, you know, for the, for governments or corporations, if we strip away anonymity then it breaks everything else, right? In particular, it stops us being able to decide what our final values are, right? If you're living in a world where you can't freely communicate and you don't have the privacy to come to decisions in your own head, you make the wrong decisions, right?

Or you make less good decisions. And in particular, you might, you might change your mind, right? You might say, well, okay, I'm actually thinking this thing, but I've listened to enough people and I have enough context now to decide that I'm going to do this. Or you have the privacy to like mull over these things and read the books you need to know this or do experiments with other people or, you know build tools that let you realize, oh, I was wrong. Well, you know, a little bit wrong, or I want to do this a bit different.

And the more you distort this substrate, the more you kind of impinge on it, the harder it gets to really achieve the ends, not only of what you want, but what you might want in a better world. Like you might change your mind. Hmm. So the other part of this is that I think if you start thinking about pursuing internet issues for another goal, and it's a political goal, you start thinking, well, I don't think other people who disagree with me on this goal need to have this. So I want to be able to talk freely and associate freely and use this cool technology, but maybe other people shouldn't have that.

Like maybe we should draw a line there. This is too powerful to just be used by everyone. Maybe it should just be used, you know, maybe we should just have free speech for my people, or maybe I'll say it's free speech, but then I'll draw some perimeters around it and go, well, you know, if you're not, if you're not in the gang, you don't get the real technology. I'm sort of being vague here, but I think you can kind of project it like into cases like pick your poison, right? Like Elon Musk, sort of very concerned about free speech, starts Twitter, and then maybe it's like, okay, people will accuse them and probably of like blocking different people, or, you know, you will decide about misinformation.

Anyway, I hope you get the idea. And I think that happens to activists too. I think if you're fighting for a bunch of values and you're thinking about it in instrumental terms, you start watering down those original ideas. And the more you water them down, they, the more that they stop helping create a better ecosystem for everyone. So I think the real terminal values, or at least in this sort of situation, at least for somebody like me, are the terminal values, right? Are those ideas, free speech, free software, free knowledge, free association, all of that stuff.

I think that we need to pull back from this idea of only doing it for certain purposes and certain names in our rhetoric and how we behave and just go, no, actually, we're going to make a stand, a radical stand for just giving this to everyone and like building it in to the whole ecosystem. So it's a universal human right that everyone can use.

So I think I mentioned before that when I get anxious and then I get worried, I like, ugh, I go, ugh, and then I spit out an organization. And I've done it before and it's been, it's been pretty, it's been pretty good work. At the very least, you can test out a theory. If you think other people are going one way, you can fork, you know, a friendly fork, and you can go and work with those people and do, do your own thing. So Mumbai that's what I did. I'm starting a new organization, a global organization.

So we'll say it's founded in Mumbai, even though I'm in San Francisco right now. And I'm inviting you to join us. So this is the new, oh, okay. Just in the corner, let me just drink. So here it is. Oh, I'm sorry. Does people not speak the local language? That's actually a political issue in itself. So let's switch to English. The global lingua franca. I, you all culturally appropriated it from my people, frankly. Colonious. Anyway, so this is the site, go and visit the site. If the wifi can take it, otherwise bookmark it, or just email me at d@terminalvalues.org.

If you can't get into any of these things and I'll put you on a list. I don't know what we're doing. I know I'm doing it with some really great people including Farzaneh Badii, who's one of the best thinkers I know in the realm of internet governance. This is going to be a global organization to fix these problems. And you're invited to participate and you can pledge some money. I won't hold you to it. Like, this is just like, get an idea of how much money we might get if we manage to convince you that this strategy is going to work and that the values that we have are the values that you have.

And we're going to use all the technology available, whether it's glowing heads AI, cryptocurrency, all of that stuff. And we're going to work with everyone, anyone who wants to work with us. We're not going to draw lines or borders there. So pledge if you can, and I know if you're in crypto, you're probably pretty YOLO. So oh, there we go. Oh, there we go. So if you are impatient and you just want to make sure that this thing really happens send some money to these QR codes, and I will feel extremely guilty and go, Oh shit, I have to do this for real.

And when I do, I'll think of you Mumbai and I will make sure that we do it for you and for the internet and for everyone. Okay. Thank you. That's it. You can stop now. Oh, let me put these back up because otherwise you might that was made you might be just about to give me a million dollars. Or North Korea, cause you don't know who I am. I mean, I could just be AI generated. I mean, frankly, I look AI generated. It's perfectly reasonable supposition. But yeah. Okay. I'm done. Okay. You can stop the video now.

Stop the video. Stop the video. Miko. Stop the video, Becca. There's nothing more to be seen. Go to the website. Give me money. Hold on. I can't remember the key. Oh, is this as big as it gets? That's annoying. Okay. I really am done. You can please stop. Please stop. This is getting embarrassing. I don't want to be a giant head for the rest of my life. Thank you.