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This is the story of a silent
revolution that affects
every person on the planet.

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It's about how we've become
complicit in a deal that's
reshaping our world.

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20 years after its creation,
the World Wide Web offers us

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unprecedented free
access to information.

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The benefit of a freely
available source

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of all the world's information, that
touches every human being who can
get near the internet is phenomenal.

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The Web is about connecting humanity.
The Web is humanity connected.

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But the Web's gift comes at a price.

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We pay in a commodity perhaps more
precious than gold with intimate
information about ourselves.

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People have to think more carefully

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about what information they want to
put out and how it should be used.

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I think people are only becoming
to understand what it might mean

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to post things about
yourself on the internet.

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You should not post a photo, you
probably shouldn't even take a photo
that you don't want spread. 

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I'd advise against sex tapes...

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I've spent the last ten years
writing about the Web's
"virtual revolution".

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This film is about perhaps the
most profound and disturbing

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shift in values it's brought about
and what that means for all of us.

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It's about how the thoughts and
desires we express on the Web

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are being traced, tracked
and traded in pursuit of profit.

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The product online is not the
content, the product online is you.

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There is a risk reward ratio here
and for us the reward is so great

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that whatever the risk is we try
and contain it and understand it.

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This is the story of the individual,
moral and social cost of free,

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and whether that
is a price worth paying.

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This is West Point.

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For over 200 years the academy here
has trained

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the United State's
Army's elite military leaders.

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This is where MacArthur,
Eisenhower and Schwarzkopf

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all learned the art of war.

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In the 21st century, cadets are
being trained

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not just in battlefield tactics and
grand strategy,

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but in how to deal with a threat
much closer to home.

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The Web is now part
of their curriculum.
You've all heard of Trojans.

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It basically puts your computer
under the control of someone else.

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Lt Col Greg Conti wants his cadets
to understand how the Web makes both

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governments and the people who use
it exceptionally vulnerable.

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The Web is one of most popular
technologies in history of mankind.

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Every day a new company comes online
offering new products, new services.

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And the tools are very compelling
and powerful, but what we're
doing is really disclosing

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an unprecedented amount of
information about ourselves to
third parties

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and that makes
me very, very concerned.

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Digital information's slippery
and once it's out there, it moves

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and you can't put the genie back
into the bottle once it's out there.

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Are we being naive about the amount
of information
we are putting online?

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We all want something for nothing.

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So every website we go to,
every shiny new tool or service
that is out there on the web,

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many people flock to it and we
need to consider as we are using
those tools what are we giving away

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in return
for this free product or service.

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What are the risks involved,
both on the what we are giving away

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and the fact that the service
may disappear tomorrow or bought by
another company?

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So we might like their mascot
now and we trust them, we like the

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colours of their logo but they might
not be the same company tomorrow.

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20 years on from its invention,
the web confronts us with

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a huge dilemma that is only now
becoming fully apparent.

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Our everyday use
remains overwhelmingly free.

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We read news for free,
do searches for free, and we connect
with friends and family for free.

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Or so we think.

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Few of us realise just how
we are paying.

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How much would you charge to let a
stranger read your personal diary?

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How much would it cost them
to find that your religious,
political or sexual preferences?

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Or, where your children
go to school?

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More than money can buy?

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But we give away exactly this kind
of information routinely every day

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and we are doing
it on an enormous scale.

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In a month, users around the world

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make about 76 billion
searches on Google for free.

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In a day, we post up 3 million
pictures and videos to show with
friends on Flickr for free.

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In a month, an estimated 350 million
of us browse through

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the world's
tens of millions of blogs for free.

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But now look at it
the other way around.

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And you'll see
that free is an illusion.

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Every month, Google gathers
billions of search terms that help

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them refine their search system and
sell highly targeted advertising.

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Every day, Flickr receives
3 million pictures or videos next to
which they can place advertising.

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Every month, some blogs allow
advertising companies

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to plant a tracking device
known euphemistically

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as a cookie on our computers
that reveal our interests to

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commercial networks,
so they can send us more relevant
web advertising.

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The Silicon Valley entrepreneurs
are the rubber barons of
the 21st century.

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Their manner of presenting their
ideas and power is much cleverer,

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more sophisticated, than the
19th century. But in 200 years,

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when we look back at the Googles
and YouTubes and Yahoos,

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we will see people
very similar to the Carnegies

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and Rockefellers and Stanfords who
drove the Industrial Revolution.

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We are being judged as we walk
around the internet

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by who the cookies say we are

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and who we declare we are by our
Facebook profile or Twitter stream or

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what information we put into
what website we might go to.

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This is a societal shift, not unlike
when we moved

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from the farms to the village,
from the village to London.

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All of a sudden, we had to develop a
social system that understood how we
lived cheek by jowl in crowded areas.

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The reality is
online life is a trade.

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You pay for a free Web
but the currency of information

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about who you are as a user and
what your clicks across the
Web say you're interested in.

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Every day in this way,
we are handing over the minutiae

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of our lives in exchange for a
free and convenient online space.

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To understand how we've
become consumed within the Web,

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we need to go back 16 years and look
at big businesses early attempts
to colonise the online world.

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A story that
begins bizarrely with a pizza.

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In 1994, Pizza Hut pioneered Web
commerce by taking orders online.

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It was called PizzaNet.

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This virtual revolution in fast food
happened here in sleepy
Santa Cruz, California

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which back then had one of the
most wired up populations on earth.

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Now, ordering pizzas online seems
obvious and routine, but at the time
this was a huge novelty.

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What becomes clear
when talking about PizzaNet

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is the incredulity with which
people treated this new innovation.

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It even made the front page
of the business section
of a national newspaper.

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As recently as 16 years ago,

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people just didn't know if
online commerce would work or not.

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The Web had originally been created
by scientists who wanted to share
information between themselves.

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Commercial data traffic was
outlawed.

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Back then, the Web and money were
not seen as things
that went together.

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The spirit of the Web
in the beginning was

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of people working under the
bedclothes with the light on.

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People working after other people
had gone home

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installing a web server sending
e-mails, by the way I...

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installed this Web server and put
photographs on it, hope you like it.

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It seemed like a brave new world,
like a new democracy,

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like a new way
of people coming together.

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There was this other dimension
to human experience which is

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hard to relate to today
that had nothing to do with money.

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But by 1994, the United
States Congress had lifted
the injunction on Web commerce.

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The Web was suddenly
open for business.

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People were now
coming online in numbers.

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They still expected a free space,

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but commerce saw a new
opportunity to make massive profits.

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While the early Web was
rooted in academia and

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the counter-culture of California,
the first great commercial venture

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had its roots in New York

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with the dream of a whole
new interactive
relationship with customers.

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I think the thing that we got right
is a true obsessive focus

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on customer experience.

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Amazon has become the world's
most popular online retailer.

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It has a customer base of
124 million people worldwide,

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buying products that range from its
core business, books, to anything
from TVs, to food, to clothes.

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In 1994, Jeff Bezos was an
analyst for a New York hedge fund.

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He was struck by commercial
opportunities suddenly being
opened up by the Web.

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Web usage
was growing at 2,300 percent a year.

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I had never seen anything grow that
quickly, even though it was clear

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the baseline usage of the Web
was very small, most people had
not heard of the Web in 1994.

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It was also clear anything growing
that fast, though tiny today,
is going to be ubiquitous tomorrow.

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He had a very Napoleonic scale

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to what he wanted
do from the beginning.

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Meanwhile, the step on was
making the book store

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and that in of itself was a
very unusual undertaking.

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Bezos Realised the fundamental
problem with conventional
bookstores is their size.

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This one can hold about 5,000 titles

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so no matter how well run it is,
the choice will always be limited.

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What you can do online that you
could never do in a physical store

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is build
a bookstore with complete selection,

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universal selection, so that became
the founding dream of Amazon.

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Where Amazon blazed a trail,
others would follow.

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The commercialisation of the Web
was the beginning of a revolution

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in shopping, and a fundamental shift
in the Web's values.

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The rate of growth was astounding.
If you needed any other reassurance

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that you were to something huge, the
company was taking off like nothing
else in the history of retail.

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The global, instant and
free space had become a global
instant and free market.

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All around the world,
entrepreneurs seized upon a
way of making a killing.

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We were reinventing our
entrepreneurialism, our creativity

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and there was a sense some of the
older industries were changing,

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this was a time when youth and
vibrancy and dynamism would be
celebrated in a US-style way.

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This was a very exciting time.

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Excitement was justified.

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Between 1995 and 2000,
over 20 million dot com
names were registered.

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In a very few short years,
we've got the spectacle of
billionaire teenagers

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with barely descended testicles
spraying the Stock Exchange...

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Who can say what the e-world will
be like in another five years?

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This optimism that always attends
such a bright new technology and the
future it seems to beckon,

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didn't last long.
It didn't last long with me,
not because I'm cynical

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but because history has
given us enough examples.

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BELL RINGS

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The brave new Web became
synonymous with printing money.

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Investor stocks have gone
up an estimated one and a
quarter trillion dollars.

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Sales online have
doubled since last year.

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The '90s were insane.

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You were having buckets of
money poured over your head.

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In recent weeks, all the stock
indexes have rallied to new records

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led by the incredible surging
internet stocks.

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How hot is Nasdaq right now?

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Smoking. Red hot.

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America Online, the auction site
eBay and book dealer Amazon -

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all up
more than 40% in December alone.

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The internet has become the
centre of the technology universe.

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The internet is being
viewed, rightly or wrongly,
as the next Industrial Revolution.

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So much money sloshing around,
people getting crazy valuations
for their businesses.

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Every experiment got tried. Every
experiment got funded, including
things that didn't make any sense.

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Across the board, people had
invested millions in Web companies

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with a great name, a great idea,
but they hadn't figured out
how to make any money yet.

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Apparently, that
could be fixed later.

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It was a recipe for
financial carnage.

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In early 2000, the Nasdaq
lost a quarter of its value.

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Half of the dot coms were
simply obliterated in
the bust that followed.

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Some 3.5 billion in paper wealth
vanished in a year.

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In the froth of speculation,
investors have lost sight of

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the risks they were taking with
no certain prospect of a return.

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I think people got over-excited and
believed the Web was creating a

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completely new way of
doing business because it was.

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In many ways, it was totally
disrupting existing business models.

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I think people then thought
any old business might work which
was the logic that was flawed.

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People got confused and thought if
you had a lot of Web traffic,

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that must be incredible.

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No, building a lot of branches
is more of a unique asset

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that someone else can't duplicate.

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Building a website was an overnight
thing and so most of those companies

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were not adding that much value,
they just hoped somebody who knew

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what they were doing would buy them
or somehow their scale would allow
them to luck on to a business model.

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And yet, the dot com boom had drawn
millions of new users on to the Web
and made it mainstream.

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And companies had learned the lesson
that it simply wasn't enough
to create online versions

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of traditional shops, they had to
rethink what the Web could do that
would allow them to make a profit.

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Today,
there's a company that has worked
this out better than anyone else.

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Its origins are ture to the
ethos of the old free Web and yet

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it has become one of the biggest
money-making machines in history.

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It has changed what it
means all of us to be online.

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This company learnt to
make money from the Web,

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but in doing so it turned its
consumers into commodities. How?

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By transforming our innocuous and
apparently free search for
information

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into an enormous money-spinner.

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This company is Google.

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00:17:00,240 --> 00:17:03,360
It has turned our curiosity
into its gold mine.

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00:17:07,680 --> 00:17:10,920
Today, Google has an
extraordinary grip over the Web.

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00:17:10,920 --> 00:17:15,120
Google today is better than
Google yesterday because we
launched things to make it better.

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00:17:15,120 --> 00:17:18,880
It will be better tomorrow because
we will launch things tonight.

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00:17:18,880 --> 00:17:21,040
Google makes sense of the Web.

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00:17:21,040 --> 00:17:26,840
Every day, over 2 billion searches
are made via its search engines
in 40 different languages.

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00:17:26,840 --> 00:17:30,080
Normally, you would ask a smart
person for advice on anything but

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00:17:30,080 --> 00:17:31,600
now, you type it in to Google

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00:17:31,600 --> 00:17:34,920
and you get tons more information
than you ever got before.

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00:17:34,920 --> 00:17:37,040
But it's not just search.

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00:17:37,040 --> 00:17:41,360
It's free video-sharing site YouTube
is taking on television.

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00:17:41,360 --> 00:17:45,560
We crossed the 1 billion view mark
per-day that we're serving.

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00:17:45,560 --> 00:17:51,560
We can use Google to
fly over the planet
or look over our neighbour's fence.

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00:17:51,560 --> 00:17:55,200
It's even challenging the
biggest computer company of all,

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00:17:55,200 --> 00:18:00,600
Microsoft with a browser and
operating system to rival Windows.

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00:18:00,600 --> 00:18:06,880
And unlike Microsoft, what makes
Google so unique and special is they
have become one of the richest

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00:18:06,880 --> 00:18:09,440
and most powerful companies
in the world

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00:18:09,440 --> 00:18:13,760
by giving away almost everything
they offer to us consumers for free.

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00:18:13,760 --> 00:18:17,920
To understand what appears to be a
paradox, we need to peer behind

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00:18:17,920 --> 00:18:21,120
the screens into the world
that Google has built.

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00:18:27,920 --> 00:18:32,400
This is the beating heart of Google.

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00:18:32,400 --> 00:18:39,680
At data centres like this,
Google stores information about
the Web and what we search for.

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00:18:42,440 --> 00:18:47,480
In the last quarter of 2009,
Google made over 200 every second

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00:18:47,480 --> 00:18:51,880
from the transactions that
pass through data centres like this.

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00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:55,920
Its net profits for the year
were 6.5 billion.

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00:18:55,920 --> 00:19:02,800
And that money comes from
advertising, tailored around
information that we give Google.

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00:19:02,800 --> 00:19:07,040
Every time we use Google,
we help them make money.

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00:19:13,360 --> 00:19:17,680
I've come to meet the Editor of
Wired Magazine -
Silicon Valley's bible.

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00:19:17,680 --> 00:19:21,320
He has charted the
rise and rise of Google.

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00:19:21,320 --> 00:19:24,600
One could definitely argue that
Google is an advertising company.

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00:19:24,600 --> 00:19:26,320
Lots of people do search.

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00:19:26,320 --> 00:19:31,880
We can argue Google's search is not
significantly better or worse than,

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00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:34,760
than Microsoft's, AOL's
or anybody else's.

253
00:19:34,760 --> 00:19:39,040
But its
hold over advertising is unmatched.

254
00:19:39,040 --> 00:19:42,600
Why do you think the Google
business model has worked?

255
00:19:42,600 --> 00:19:44,760
The Google business model is genius.

256
00:19:44,760 --> 00:19:50,480
All of the things it does - calendar,
mail, maps, photo management,
all that sort of stuff,

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00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:57,000
both can be given away for free
because the cost of delivering
that digital service to you 

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00:19:57,000 --> 00:20:00,000
is so low and increases
your attachment to Google.

259
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:04,400
And it will make money from you
some day and whether it makes
money when you go to search

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00:20:04,400 --> 00:20:05,440
and it runs ads there,

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00:20:05,440 --> 00:20:09,840
whether it makes money because it's
putting ads against other third
party content that you're using.

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00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:13,920
If you have a critical
mass of people using
Google as a search engine

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00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:18,080
and the largest pool
of ads against which to run
against these search terms,

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00:20:18,080 --> 00:20:20,000
you're able to match them better.

265
00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:23,800
And if you can match them better,
advertisers are inclined
to use you more

266
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:28,360
and this becomes a sort
of self-reinforcing,
positive feedback route.

267
00:20:28,360 --> 00:20:31,000
What Google has is
not such a monopoly on search.

268
00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:34,600
Its switching costs of search are
pretty, you know, one click away.

269
00:20:34,600 --> 00:20:38,720
What it has is the beginnings of a
monopoly over internet advertising.

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00:20:43,640 --> 00:20:47,120
The great irony is today's market
dominance is about as far away from

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00:20:47,120 --> 00:20:51,400
where Google started out
as it's possible to imagine.

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00:20:51,400 --> 00:20:56,200
To understand why Google's become so
rich and influential, we need to go

273
00:20:56,200 --> 00:21:00,320
back to a more idealistic period
in the company's history.

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00:21:03,640 --> 00:21:08,240
Like the Web itself,
Google began as an academic dream.

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00:21:09,760 --> 00:21:14,480
Stanford University in California
has a reputation
for academic excellence,

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00:21:14,480 --> 00:21:19,640
but its alumni have a track record
of converting research into money.

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00:21:22,480 --> 00:21:25,000
You don't go to Stamford and
not know that

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00:21:25,000 --> 00:21:26,720
there's a very high probability

279
00:21:26,720 --> 00:21:29,080
that when you get
to the end of graduate school

280
00:21:29,080 --> 00:21:31,960
you are going to start a company
or you might never finish

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00:21:31,960 --> 00:21:34,480
graduate school
because you start a company.

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00:21:34,480 --> 00:21:39,720
Back in 1996, Larry Page and
Sergey Brin were PhD students

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00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:44,640
investigating how they could sort
the good pages on the Web
from the dross.

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00:21:44,640 --> 00:21:47,880
The Web then consisted of about
10 million pages,

285
00:21:47,880 --> 00:21:51,000
compared to the tens
of billions today.

286
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:53,440
But it was expanding rapidly.

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00:21:53,440 --> 00:21:58,680
So it was already impossible
for humans to visit and
rate each Website.

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00:21:58,680 --> 00:22:04,560
Page and Brin developed
a way for computers to
automatically do the job.

289
00:22:04,560 --> 00:22:10,520
I went to meet their mentor
Professor Terry Winograd to find
out more about their breakthrough.

290
00:22:10,520 --> 00:22:13,120
They realised that every time
a person puts a link

291
00:22:13,120 --> 00:22:15,440
on their own Webpage
to some other page,

292
00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:16,840
they are in a sense voting,

293
00:22:16,840 --> 00:22:18,200
they're in a sense saying,

294
00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:21,080
"That's interesting enough
for me to put a link there."

295
00:22:21,080 --> 00:22:25,160
And therefore, if they could add up
all of those votes,
from everybody who built Webpages

296
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:27,960
they would get a result
which was going to be a very close

297
00:22:27,960 --> 00:22:30,800
approximation to what really is
interesting to the general public.

298
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:36,720
Page and Brin devised an
algorithm to calculate links
between pages on the Web.

299
00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:43,920
And it gave
an independent mathematical value
of how interesting a page was,

300
00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:46,200
based on the number
links to it and whether

301
00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:51,160
those incoming links
were from pages
that were themselves interesting.

302
00:22:53,080 --> 00:22:56,840
Page and Brin realised that what
had begun as academic project could

303
00:22:56,840 --> 00:23:00,280
actually be used to solve to one of
the biggest challenges on the Web,

304
00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:02,240
how to find what you're looking for.

305
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:06,960
So what is the relationship between
interestingness and search?

306
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:10,520
So having figured out a way to
decide which pages were interesting,

307
00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:12,200
to what degree, with PageRank,

308
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:15,440
then it was possible to give search
results that were much more useful.

309
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:20,600
When you did a search for "computer"
it would find all the pages
would say the word computer on it.

310
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:24,600
Then the ones that it gave me
at the top, the beginning of

311
00:23:24,600 --> 00:23:28,200
the first page, would be the ones
that have the most interestingness.

312
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:31,520
They're the ones I'd be
likely to want to go
look at, not the stray junk.

313
00:23:31,520 --> 00:23:35,560
So that improved,
to a tremendous degree,
the kind of results you could give.

314
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:41,320
This was perhaps the most
effective search engine yet.

315
00:23:41,320 --> 00:23:44,160
Page and Brin called it Google.

316
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:53,640
And Google benefited from the
Web's rapid expansion during the
dotcom boom of the late 1990s

317
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:59,000
because its link counting algorithm
actually got better as more
pages were added to the Web.

318
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:04,120
But they also faced a challenge.

319
00:24:04,120 --> 00:24:09,000
Each time someone used Google,
they used a little bit
of its computer servers.

320
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:13,720
A single digital transaction, like a
search, may have a negligible cost,

321
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:17,600
but millions of negligible costs
add up to a fortune.

322
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:21,640
The problem for Google was that as
the Web expanded, it required more

323
00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:26,440
and more expensive processing power,
and more and more expensive storage.

324
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:32,160
But it didn't have a real way
of making sure that money
was coming in.

325
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:34,360
Larry would come back
for advice now and then.

326
00:24:34,360 --> 00:24:37,560
He'd come to the office and we'd
have a chat about the technology

327
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:40,000
and what they were building
and it was all great.

328
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:43,240
And then I'd say, "How are you
ever going to make money with this?"

329
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:48,080
And he would give this sort of
smile, little look and say, "I don't
know, we'll figure that out later."

330
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:53,560
Most search engines at that time
were funded by advertising, but
Larry and Sergey didn't like that.

331
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:58,560
In fact, this is the research
paper that they used to present
Google to the academic community

332
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:04,080
and what they said was, "We believe
the issue of advertising causes
enough mixed incentives that

333
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:10,280
"it's crucial to have a competitive
search engine that is transparent
and in the academic realm."

334
00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:15,200
This is what Google
looked like in 1998.

335
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:19,080
Free of adverts, simple,
clean and white,

336
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:22,840
Google's looks hark bark to the
amateurism of the early Web.

337
00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:27,080
Yet whatever the ideals,
Google still had to pay its way.

338
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:32,200
Charging consumers to search
was quickly dismissed as an option.

339
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:40,040
Instead, Google realised that they
could use their search engine
to revolutionise advertising.

340
00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:44,720
This is what would change
our relationship with the Web.

341
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:48,840
They knew that, by definition,
when we search for something,

342
00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:53,480
we're telling Google our precise
wants and desires.

343
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:59,200
And with a system like Google's
those could be easily
captured and traded.

344
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:03,240
What if you knew precisely what
your customers wanted at any time

345
00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:05,360
and could instantly
provide them with it?

346
00:26:05,360 --> 00:26:10,120
Well, that's the holy grail that
marketers and advertisers have
been searching for for decades

347
00:26:10,120 --> 00:26:15,680
because with that information they
could create tailor-made ads that
would target directly the customers

348
00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:20,000
who were likely to buy their
products without wasting
money on the people who wouldn't.

349
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:24,400
Just two years after voicing
doubts about advertising,

350
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:31,120
Page and Brin went into advertising
and changed that industry forever
with a system called AdWords.

351
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:39,840
Type in a specific search term,
and specific adverts appear in
two sections of the Google page.

352
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:43,200
Now, if you click on one of
those adverts, money flows

353
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:49,800
straight to Google as the advertiser
pays for your traffic to their site.

354
00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:52,200
For the consumer,
it's as simple as that.

355
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:58,000
But what makes this special
for advertising companies
is that it's so targeted -

356
00:26:58,000 --> 00:26:59,520
a selling process

357
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:03,240
initiated by a consumer looking
for something in particular.

358
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:08,760
Unlike the failed dotcoms, adverts
seemed to be the perfect marriage

359
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:11,840
between what the Web can do
and what consumers want.

360
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:14,120
The first rule
of the internet is that

361
00:27:14,120 --> 00:27:17,760
you can speak to each individual as
though they're a different person.

362
00:27:17,760 --> 00:27:21,480
It's not a broadcast mechanism,
it's a narrow-casting mechanism.

363
00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:26,000
AdWords is a single ad
to a single person every time.

364
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:33,920
It's catching people in motion, it's
catching people who are already

365
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,280
in motion towards something.

366
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:40,440
Already goal-oriented,
already halfway there.

367
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:46,480
Through targeted
advertising to consumers,

368
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:51,720
Google, and ultimately the Web,
had found a way to pay for itself.

369
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,960
But Google's ambition ran
even deeper than money.

370
00:27:56,640 --> 00:27:59,560
Page and Brin wanted to
transform the Web itself.

371
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:05,040
They built into their advertising
machine the analytical insight of
their search engine.

372
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:10,400
And, crucially,
this was what cemented
Google's influence on the Web.

373
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:17,040
Their goal was to filter
for consumers relevant ads
from the irrelevant ones.

374
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:20,720
So every time you activate
AdWords by searching on Google,

375
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:24,480
it unleashes a chain of events
which can be illustrated like this.

376
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:30,320
Let's say a car company wants
to see their ad appear at

377
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:34,200
the top of the page when someone
searches for the words "new car".

378
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:37,040
They tell Google the amount
they're willing to pay

379
00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:38,720
to make their advert appear.

380
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:42,440
The process is actually an auction,

381
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:46,000
so lots of companies might be
competing for the top spot.

382
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:52,160
But Google doesn't necessarily give
the top spot to the highest bidder.

383
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:56,480
It judges ads based by how
relevant they are to the search

384
00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:01,400
and a range of indicators
of the quality of the
advertising company's Website.

385
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:05,640
In simple terms,
P, the price the winner pays,

386
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:08,600
is related to the value of bid
multiplied by quality.

387
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:10,920
This gets top billing.

388
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:15,680
In this way, Google doesn't
just rake in profits,
but positions itself

389
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:20,440
as a powerful arbiter of quality
and relevance online.

390
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:24,640
Google will make the entire world's
information available to you

391
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:28,200
and occasionally will
show you some advertisements.

392
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:32,760
If you want to click on those ads,
there might be something very
valuable for you to click on,

393
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,080
but you don't have to.
I think that's the trade.

394
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:39,360
AdWords is what made Google
the dominant player on the Web

395
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:43,200
and very quickly the rest
of the Web fell into line
behind this model.

396
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,840
Offer your products and
your services for free,

397
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:50,680
while funding it behind the scenes,
with highly targeted advertising.

398
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:54,200
The irony is that
this ultra capitalist model

399
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:58,760
requires that the Web stay true
to its non-capitalist roots.

400
00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:01,640
It has to remain an open network,

401
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:07,560
easy to search, with no pay per
view, and no areas Google can't go.

402
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:12,400
This open vision of the Web
also requires us users to play

403
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:18,360
our part, consuming the eye candy
in a virtual sweet shop
of free content.

404
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:21,440
The longer we're online,
the more attention we pay,

405
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:27,160
the more information businesses
of all kinds can capture and the
more advertising they can sell.

406
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:36,440
The product online is not the
content, the product online is you.

407
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:41,840
The product online are the
eyeballs looking at that content

408
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:46,680
and as much information about how
to influence the hands

409
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:50,320
connected to those eyeballs as
possible.

410
00:30:55,920 --> 00:31:00,440
But if trading information on Web
users is the driving principle

411
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:03,160
behind a "free" Web,
then where do you stop?

412
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:07,840
Where does the boundary lie
between our rights and the search
for profit?

413
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:13,360
Today we are experiencing
surveillance we could scarcely have
imagined 20 years ago.

414
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:15,880
Here's one example amongst many...

415
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:18,080
Google's e-mail system.

416
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:26,760
Every time you send a Gmail, it
automatically scans the text inside

417
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:29,720
to find keywords that might
reveal what it's about.

418
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:34,920
So if you write the word
"beach" in your message,

419
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:39,200
then ads down the side of
the page might be about holidays.

420
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:49,040
Or if you write about your pet, you
might get ads for pet accessories,

421
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:50,680
medicine, dog walkers.

422
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:59,800
If you're arranging to go out on
the town with friends, ads for
the local hotspots might show up.

423
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:08,600
Or recipes for weight loss,
then you'll get ads for healthy
food or dieting courses.

424
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:15,800
The e-mail service
you are getting is free, but
Google's computers are listening in

425
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:22,360
on the contents of your e-mail
and matching them with advertising
they think might be relevant to you.

426
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:24,360
That is the price that you pay.

427
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:32,360
Google points out that all free
Webmail services scan e-mail
and that G-mail respects privacy

428
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:35,920
because content is not
revealed to outside parties.

429
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:41,720
On their Website, they say,
"We let you know what information we
collect when you use our products

430
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:47,320
"and services, why we collect it
and how we use it to improve
your experience".

431
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:54,160
But this isn't just about
Google and e-mail.

432
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:58,120
Online advertising
goes further still.

433
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:02,200
Advertisers are eager to know about
our activity right across the Web.

434
00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:07,480
To better understand what we want,
they're tracking
our browsing habits.

435
00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:11,800
It's called behavioural targeting.

436
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:16,560
Think of it like going on a shopping
spree and accumulating lots of bags.

437
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:21,200
When you buy something,
you become laden with bags.

438
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,520
The branding on the bags
quickly gives a way to onlookers

439
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:28,320
where you've been and what types
of things you've been buying...

440
00:33:30,600 --> 00:33:33,160
..and what you're likely
to buy in the future.

441
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:36,840
All of which is very valuable
to advertisers.

442
00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:44,560
This is how the online version
of that works.

443
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:48,280
When we visit a site that contains
advertising, the advertising

444
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:53,320
company's server sends back at us
a cookie.

445
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:56,480
A tiny file that identifies
our computer uniquely.

446
00:33:56,480 --> 00:34:01,680
Now as we surf the Web, the cookie
in effect tracks where we go,

447
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:05,360
registering our interests
with the advertising company.

448
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:09,680
They then target adverts
more accurately.

449
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:11,600
Visit a car site, get car ads.

450
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:14,080
Visit a travel site, get travel ads.

451
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:15,760
It's that simple.

452
00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:19,640
Yet also for many, deeply worrying.

453
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:22,440
By monitoring somebody's
Web behaviour,

454
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:25,240
you can build up a picture
of who they're talking to,

455
00:34:25,240 --> 00:34:27,840
what they're reading,
what they consume and that

456
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:34,360
can be an incredibly intimate, er,
and potentially powerful profile
of somebody's life.

457
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:37,800
Many of these judgements can only
be quite poorly made out

458
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:40,280
because they don't know
the context you're in.

459
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:45,680
So if I'm looking up, somebody's
looking up material on, er, cancer,

460
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:50,400
is that for me?
Is that for a friend?
Is it for a piece of coursework?

461
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:53,960
And of course,
real decisions can follow from that.

462
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:59,920
I'm really not
so vexed by behavioural
advertising and targeting.

463
00:34:59,920 --> 00:35:04,240
I think that as long as it's
transparent at some level and

464
00:35:04,240 --> 00:35:10,280
you the consumer or user have the
ability to find out what is being

465
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:14,640
used to your supposed benefit,
then I feel quite relaxed about it

466
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:17,760
and actually think that
it can be an exciting leap forward.

467
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:21,880
So, we've seen that we pay
for Web search

468
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:24,560
through being
targeted with advertising.

469
00:35:24,560 --> 00:35:30,880
We pay for some e-mail systems
by having our e-mails scanned
for advertising opportunity.

470
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:35,800
And we pay for browsing sites
by being tracked through cookies.

471
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:38,680
Consumers are becoming the consumed.

472
00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:41,360
We are watched and traded.

473
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:45,480
If this wasn't enough,
Web commerce seems to be evolving

474
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:49,600
one step further and perhaps
in a more troubling direction.

475
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:53,840
It is attempting to bury itself
deeper in our minds, to try

476
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:58,200
to shape what it is that we want
even before we want it.

477
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:02,680
And this is where the old dotcoms
come back into our story.

478
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:08,280
Like Google, today many
online retailers have got

479
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:12,560
clever in collecting and analysing
information on their customers.

480
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:16,040
We study your past purchase history

481
00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:19,920
and then use that
in a statistical way to...

482
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:23,960
make predictions about what other
things in this massive catalogue

483
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:26,760
of products that
you might be interested in.

484
00:36:26,760 --> 00:36:31,560
What Jeff Bezos is talking about
is a whole new level
of interaction with

485
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:37,800
customers and something that's
defining the new commercialised
Web - recommendation engines.

486
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:39,720
As you start looking for cameras,

487
00:36:39,720 --> 00:36:42,880
you start to see people who looked
at this also looked at that,

488
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:46,560
people who bought this, people
who clicked at this, bought that.

489
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,440
Um, you know, in this,
the course of your clicking,

490
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:51,760
the service becomes
more useful to you.

491
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:55,960
One way to think about that is we
are sort of redecorating the store

492
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:58,280
for each customer who walks in.

493
00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:01,560
If you think about a physical store
that would be impossible.

494
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:05,360
You can't run around and
re-arrange the furniture and put

495
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:10,920
the products that that particular
customer might like most up front.

496
00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:15,480
Very, very difficult.
But in an online store
of course you can do that.

497
00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:19,800
You can redecorate the store for
each customer and help people find

498
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:23,560
things that they might not have
been able to find any other way.

499
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:28,360
Recommendation engines
enable businesses to constantly

500
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:32,480
personalise their offerings
to match our interests
and behaviour.

501
00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:37,200
This intimate knowledge of customers
gives Web companies a head start

502
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:40,200
in competition
with real-world retailers.

503
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:44,520
One of the best examples is in how
it's helping Netflix, an entirely

504
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:50,480
Web-based film rental company,
to rival the bricks and mortar
giant Blockbuster.

505
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:53,080
We look at movies
as a really rich area

506
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:56,280
to try and understand
human behaviour

507
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:58,640
and how to create a better experience

508
00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:03,480
than any other video system, so that
people watch more and more movies.

509
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:10,240
Fundamental to their business is a
computer algorithm called Cinematch
that uses customers' preferences

510
00:38:10,240 --> 00:38:13,960
to identify other DVDs
that they might like.

511
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:16,800
Movie taste is very personalised.

512
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:20,520
But what we realised is if we asked
people to tell us what other movies

513
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:24,000
they've loved, in the past,
that our computer systems can

514
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:29,640
do a really good job of helping
them choose movies that they're
more likely to enjoy in the future.

515
00:38:29,640 --> 00:38:37,440
Netflix now has over 12 million
subscribers and a turnover
of 1.5 billion per year.

516
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:42,560
Millions of people obviously enjoy
these recommendation systems

517
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:44,760
and are happy
with what they get in return.

518
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:49,880
But I worry that in the process
perhaps we've lost something.

519
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:53,840
I wonder if recommendation systems
don't defeat the point of the Web.

520
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:57,840
Isn't the vast possibility
that the Web offers for serendipity

521
00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:01,720
to bring us unexpected new ideas
from accidental encounters,

522
00:39:01,720 --> 00:39:03,720
being replaced by a process that

523
00:39:03,720 --> 00:39:08,240
apparently broadens our horizons,
but actually sells us
the same things?

524
00:39:08,240 --> 00:39:13,120
Amazon, because we carry
universal selection,

525
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:16,480
really de-homogenises culture.

526
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:20,360
It lets people pick
the products that they want.

527
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:24,760
You get to read the books that
YOU want, not just the books
that were cherry-picked

528
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:29,560
and hand-selected to fit
into a store of a certain size.

529
00:39:31,240 --> 00:39:35,520
But just because the Web now enables
us to choose from a vast selection,

530
00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:39,120
that doesn't mean we actually
take up the opportunity.

531
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:45,040
Faced with overwhelming choice,
consumers tend to stick
to what they know.

532
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:49,280
In practice what's become apparent
is that we still huddle together

533
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:51,880
in groups that confirm
our existing beliefs.

534
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:54,480
Now for companies who want to
sell us things,

535
00:39:54,480 --> 00:40:00,560
manipulating that little aspect
of our psychology means
massive financial returns.

536
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:03,080
Some of the chance and
some of the spontaneity

537
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:06,320
has to be ironed
out of the system for it to work.

538
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:07,960
I mean, it's not a randomiser,

539
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:10,600
I mean, it's doing
something very deliberate.

540
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:14,440
It's doing a kind of collaborative
filtering as it was called early on

541
00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:18,960
and it's finding patterns
and it's trying to use those
patterns to sell you something.

542
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:23,200
Recommendation engines are
very good at figuring out

543
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:28,760
what people like me would do
and telling me what that is,

544
00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:32,200
so I can then find out what
people like me do.

545
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:35,800
I can become much more like
a person like me.

546
00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:42,280
We are 100% about trying to improve
our consumers' enjoyment of movies.

547
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:45,800
And we help them get the movies
that they're going to laugh at most,

548
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:49,880
cry the most, love the most,
it's all about pleasing the consumer.

549
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:53,160
And if that narrows, that's fine,
if that broadens that's fine.

550
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:57,800
Recommendation engines, by telling
me what people like me do

551
00:40:57,800 --> 00:41:02,360
and encouraging me
to be like a person like me,

552
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:07,440
they help me to become more
prototypically

553
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:11,680
one of my kind of person.

554
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:16,320
And the more like
one of my kind of person I become,

555
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:22,480
the less me I am, and the more
I am a demographic type.

556
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:34,480
It may be too early to judge the
long-term cultural impact of
recommendation systems,

557
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:38,200
but there's a deeper and more
pressing concern

558
00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:40,920
about how we pay for a Free Web,

559
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,320
and our massive use
of online retail.

560
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:48,240
We are actively contributing
to vast databases

561
00:41:48,240 --> 00:41:51,000
of information
about ourselves.

562
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:55,480
16 years of Web commerce has
utterly transformed

563
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:59,080
what privacy means
in the 21st century.

564
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:32,160
These are real people's
intimate thoughts.

565
00:42:32,160 --> 00:42:36,720
Just a tiny fragment of searches
made anonymously by
people who believed

566
00:42:36,720 --> 00:42:39,240
they were using their
computer in private.

567
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:48,000
In 2006, the American computer giant
AOL released a file

568
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:54,800
containing every search made
by 650,000 of their users
over the previous three months.

569
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:59,400
Each user was identified
only by a numerical code.

570
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:05,160
But one journalist at the New York
Times was concerned that these
outwardly anonymous searches

571
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:09,880
in fact were so personal,
that they would reveal
the identity of the searcher.

572
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:13,200
How long would it
take to unmask them?

573
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:18,480
One kind of popped out at me,
erm I think in part because it
had a lot of searches,

574
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:23,880
that were obviously local searches,
like, you know, "landscapers in
Lilburn, Georgia" was one.

575
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:26,920
And that's not something
you're going to look for if,

576
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:29,960
if this is some town you know across
the country from you,

577
00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:33,160
chances are you're looking for a
local, a local business.

578
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:38,400
The user was known only as
Number 4417749,

579
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:42,280
and this person's searches
soon became much more intimate.

580
00:43:43,240 --> 00:43:47,600
There were a lot of searches
for medical ailments,

581
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:52,200
you know, effects of nicotine, there
are some things about depression.

582
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:55,320
Paranoia. Paranoia, a whole bunch
about paranoia.

583
00:43:55,320 --> 00:44:02,640
We sort of thought this
was maybe an older lonely man,
with a lot of health problems.

584
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:06,560
David was honing in on his prey...

585
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:10,400
Along with the regular searches
of businesses in Lilburn, Georgia,

586
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:15,080
a lot of searches also revolved
around the surname Arnold.

587
00:44:15,080 --> 00:44:18,640
I went on to an online phonebook
and looked up people with that name.

588
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:20,720
There were 11 of them,

589
00:44:20,720 --> 00:44:23,600
one of them lived on Shadow Lake,
I went back to the search queries
and looked

590
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:27,560
and it said Shadow Lake subdivision,
Gwinnett County, Georgia,

591
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:30,320
and I said, you know,
"That's got to be the person."

592
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:34,600
After just a few hours' work,
and using nothing other than
these searches

593
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:38,520
and the telephone directory,
David had identified his target.

594
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:43,200
She was a 62-year-old woman
called Thelma Arnold.

595
00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:44,480
She was pretty shocked.

596
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:48,800
She said, "You know I had no idea
someone was looking over
my shoulder,

597
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:51,920
"you know my whole, this
is like my whole life is on here."

598
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:57,320
Thelma explained that many of the
searches for medical information
were not for her,

599
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:01,600
but for her friends who
didn't have access to the internet.

600
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:06,120
People are just typing in questions
that they would probably ask
another human being

601
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:08,840
and yet here they are at their
computer

602
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:12,120
and they think that the internet
is the source of all knowledge

603
00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:15,120
and they have no idea that
anyone is recording this stuff.

604
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:20,040
Think back to the search terms

605
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,200
you've stuck into the search
engines over the past week.

606
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:26,480
It's likely that you can't
remember most of them.

607
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,760
But as the AOL story shows us, it's
these incidentals that,

608
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:31,080
when pieced together,

609
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:34,600
can give us a surprisingly
revealing picture about who we are.

610
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:37,800
There are so many things
that people do on the Web now

611
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:39,800
which are very, very intimate.

612
00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:43,760
In a way, if you know what
somebody's browsing on the Web,

613
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:49,880
you'll find out whether somebody is
gay and wondering about coming out,
looking at other people's stories,

614
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:53,920
somebody belongs to a religion
that is very different
from the one around them.

615
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:57,200
There are all kinds of very, very
sensitive things that people do.

616
00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:00,560
This massive ability to communicate
with other people

617
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:01,760
all over the world,

618
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:05,560
this massive ability to access all
kinds of information

619
00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:10,200
and services and so on, all of
that positivity has a dark side.

620
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:16,960
And the darker side of the Web to
some extent includes the ability
of those behind the screen,

621
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:23,120
those who are providing
this space for you
to you know to monitor you.

622
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:26,400
The average person seems very
pragmatic about it,

623
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:29,800
as long as it works and as long
as all the laws are followed,

624
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:34,400
they seem perfectly
happy to share personal information
to make their experience better.

625
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:41,160
Eric Schmidt is right.

626
00:46:41,160 --> 00:46:44,000
We consumers of the Web
voted with our feet -

627
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:46,360
we're complicit
in the deal for Free.

628
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:55,320
Our complacency is illustrated
by a little-known but quite
revealing slice of Web history.

629
00:46:55,320 --> 00:47:00,400
In 2005, a non-profit organisation
called the Attention Trust,

630
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:03,880
tried to re-assert our ownership
of data that we put on the Web.

631
00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:07,080
It's sounds like a no-brainer,
doesn't it?

632
00:47:07,080 --> 00:47:10,760
The kind of thing that
would be taken up by millions.

633
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:15,840
I went to meet one of the
founders, Seth Goldstein,
to find out what happened.

634
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:20,040
All this attention data
that we are producing

635
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:25,040
we're spending more our time online,
more of our time doing social things,

636
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:28,560
you know, online, how can we
claim ownership of it?

637
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:35,240
So they created a piece of software
that anyone could download and
plug in to their Web browser

638
00:47:35,240 --> 00:47:39,600
that would automatically store a
record of our activity on the Web.

639
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:42,120
Crucially, we owned this record...

640
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:45,520
not the Attention Trust and
not Google or anyone else.

641
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:50,680
And only we could exchange it with
others, on our terms. The result?

642
00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:54,000
Well, very few took
up the technology.

643
00:47:54,000 --> 00:47:56,040
Attention Trust failed.

644
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:03,320
Do you think that
we're perfectly happy
in this trade that we're engaged in?

645
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:06,320
I don't think people know
how they feel about it.

646
00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:10,160
So when you say perfectly happy,
it's like they've looked at the
alternatives

647
00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:11,760
and like, "No, no, I'm happy."

648
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:15,120
I think if you said perfectly, um,

649
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:20,640
dumb about it, dumb and happy,
or sort of happy and naive,
yeah, that's probably more like it.

650
00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:24,680
It's not that
important to them right now.

651
00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:26,560
There's no clear cost.

652
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:32,680
Are we simply sleepwalking
into surveillance, rather

653
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:35,800
than thinking about the amount of
information we give up on the Web

654
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:38,600
and how that might
come back to us later?

655
00:48:40,120 --> 00:48:42,440
There are a lot of sort of
social critics who say

656
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:46,360
this is exactly how you devolve
in to a fascist state

657
00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:49,280
or a socialist state
or a dictatorship

658
00:48:49,280 --> 00:48:56,680
which is you invite it in and ignore
the consequences and, and, and then
all of a sudden it's 1984, you know?

659
00:48:56,680 --> 00:49:01,320
Um, and I think
there's some merit in that.

660
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:05,960
An Orwellian future may
seem a little far-fetched.

661
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:12,600
But as masses of data about us is
stored up on the Web, the issue
isn't so much who owns the data

662
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:15,760
as who might own it
in an unknown future.

663
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:24,760
Danah Boyd is a sociologist at
Harvard University who believes

664
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:28,600
there are lessons from history
in how data collected today

665
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:33,240
can have unintended
consequences tomorrow.

666
00:49:33,240 --> 00:49:36,040
There's been times in history
where we've collected data

667
00:49:36,040 --> 00:49:38,440
without thinking of how
it would get used.

668
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:40,320
Often for really good intentions.

669
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:42,680
A good example of that
is in the early 1900's

670
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:48,160
the Netherlands started collecting
all sorts of information about its
citizens for the best of intentions.

671
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:50,760
One of the bits of data
they collected

672
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:53,960
was people's religion in order
to give people a proper burial.

673
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:59,320
They had no idea that in 1939,
when the Nazi's invaded
the Netherlands

674
00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:02,800
that that data would
be used for how it was used.

675
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:05,600
We have companies collecting massive
amounts of data.

676
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:09,680
People don't have an imagination of
what it means to aggregate all
of that data.

677
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:15,120
They have these expectations of what
possible terrible things can be done
with these huge dossiers.

678
00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:18,240
Most companies aren't quite sure
what to do with them yet.

679
00:50:18,240 --> 00:50:22,160
The companies are trying to
work it out which is why they're
collecting all of this data.

680
00:50:22,160 --> 00:50:24,440
And they're not
quite sure where it's going.

681
00:50:25,240 --> 00:50:28,960
But perhaps just as troubling as
these huge automated databases,

682
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:34,480
are the databases we freely add
intimate information to ourselves.

683
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:39,400
The great wave of
Web innovation since Google
has been in social media.

684
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:44,760
Networking though video, micro-blogs
and sites like Facebook
and MySpace.

685
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:48,280
Young people have
pioneered this revolution

686
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:54,280
and Danah Boyd is studying
how they feel about living in
an online commercial space.

687
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:57,720
There's so much data being
collected about us online.

688
00:50:57,720 --> 00:51:01,960
Do you think that kids
are complicit, do you think
that they know what's going on?

689
00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:06,560
Or do you think that they are naive
about what's going to happen
with their data trail?

690
00:51:06,560 --> 00:51:11,320
The irony is that young people
actually understand the
corporation-advertising trade off

691
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:15,760
better than they understand the long
term implications of that data,
and information.

692
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:17,520
So one of the things you'll hear is,

693
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:20,600
"Well if it gives me ads you
know, that means it'll be free.

694
00:51:20,600 --> 00:51:22,480
"And you know, I'd rather be free."

695
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:25,240
Part of it is they've never
known a non-commercial world.

696
00:51:25,240 --> 00:51:28,880
Advertising is
pervasive in their lives.

697
00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:35,840
A generation growing up with the Web
may be embracing commercial reality
in return for free convenience.

698
00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:40,640
But aren't they missing out on
what the old Web once promised?

699
00:51:42,240 --> 00:51:45,600
What we've done is
limited the range

700
00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:50,240
of human expression and activity
on the internet

701
00:51:50,240 --> 00:51:53,000
to those things
that are market-friendly.

702
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:58,360
Look at the devolution of people's
personal presence online,

703
00:51:58,360 --> 00:52:05,400
from the quirky, individualistic,
highly-personalised websites,

704
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:09,880
the homepages of the HTML mid-90s,

705
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:15,160
to the now utterly conformist
and rigid profiles

706
00:52:15,160 --> 00:52:19,400
on something
like MySpace and Facebook.

707
00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:24,640
You can no longer define yourself by
anything, you must define yourself

708
00:52:24,640 --> 00:52:29,200
by what books you buy, by what
movies you like, by what actresses
you aspire to,

709
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:36,600
by whether you are single,
married, or looking, by things
that the market understands.

710
00:52:38,640 --> 00:52:43,040
But the problems facing the
younger generation run deeper still.

711
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:48,640
I'm concerned that there is
little understanding of one the
fundamentals of digital information.

712
00:52:48,640 --> 00:52:53,120
Once it's on the Web,
it is almost impossible to erase.

713
00:52:54,640 --> 00:52:58,720
All our interactions on the Web,
from our Facebook
and Twitter status updates,

714
00:52:58,720 --> 00:53:01,160
to news that we share
with family and friends,

715
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:05,680
to gossip that's spread about us,
will be on line for ever.

716
00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:09,000
The Web effectively makes us
immortal.

717
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:11,720
The upside is that we can live on.

718
00:53:11,720 --> 00:53:18,200
There are thousands of dead people
who are still receiving updates
and even being poked on Facebook.

719
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:21,880
But the downside is that young
people, who are growing up in public

720
00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:24,240
by living so much of their
lives on the Web,

721
00:53:24,240 --> 00:53:30,160
will have to face living with all of
their youthful indiscretions that
can be accessed by anyone.

722
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:37,200
Future bosses, future partners,
future friends, and that's
for the rest of their lives.

723
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:43,680
The fact that you are just a regular
person does not entitle you to any
guarantee that pictures of you drunk

724
00:53:43,680 --> 00:53:46,880
and passed out are not going to
be spread across the internet.

725
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:49,800
And so in a sense we all have to live
like celebrities

726
00:53:49,800 --> 00:53:53,600
because there's that potential
that we'll be treated like them.

727
00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:58,720
One of the biggest threats
comes from consumers themselves.

728
00:53:58,720 --> 00:54:00,600
Young people in particular

729
00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:05,240
who are having no doubt
wonderful fun on
social networking sites,

730
00:54:05,240 --> 00:54:10,080
meeting lots of people but
forgetting the permanency
of that kind of engagement.

731
00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:15,360
If people consider companies
holding their DNA fingerprint

732
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:19,320
they somehow get a lot more
emotionally disturbed

733
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:25,680
by the thought that decisions might
be taken about insurance,
health care provision, lifestyle,

734
00:54:25,680 --> 00:54:28,440
on the basis of that
genetic fingerprint.

735
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:31,600
The digital fingerprint is
every bit as valuable.

736
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:37,240
Do you really want these intimate
details about yourself to be
available to so many people

737
00:54:37,240 --> 00:54:41,080
and will you feel the same way about
what you did last night

738
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:43,880
not just in the morning,
but 40 years later?

739
00:54:47,200 --> 00:54:54,560
We have seen how we are all trading
a little bit of our privacy each
time we search and network online.

740
00:54:54,560 --> 00:55:00,280
In return for a Free Web,
our privacy has become a commodity.

741
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:05,800
We are economic units in what has
become the new commercial frontier.

742
00:55:07,400 --> 00:55:12,800
We've entered this deal in many
cases unwittingly
perhaps because a deal

743
00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:17,520
just isn't the experience that
we think we're having on the Web.

744
00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:21,880
On a computer at home or communing
with our mobile while travelling,

745
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:25,560
we feel we're in a closed,
private bubble.

746
00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:31,080
But the reality of the Web's open
networks is that we are in effect
always public.

747
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:38,160
What we do on our computers has the
potential to be seen, analysed and
used by others all around the world.

748
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:43,000
The Web disrupts our sense of
public and private space.

749
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:47,760
We're not just transacting with
one computer, we're having
a conversation

750
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:52,400
with a multitude of computers
across the globe.
And we are being watched.

751
00:55:52,400 --> 00:55:58,240
That is what makes
this such a revolution,
and the dawn of a new era.

752
00:55:58,240 --> 00:56:00,800
Some genies when they're let out
of the bottle

753
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:02,800
can you know can cause problems

754
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:06,200
and they certainly
can't ever go back in the bottle.

755
00:56:06,200 --> 00:56:12,000
When cars first arose people were
horrified at the deaths on the road.

756
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:14,240
Horrified, they couldn't believe it!

757
00:56:14,240 --> 00:56:18,840
I mean there were, there were
hundreds of people being
squelched every day.

758
00:56:18,840 --> 00:56:23,440
It was grotesque. And if you'd just
braked in a car at 30 miles an hour

759
00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:28,080
you'd kill yourself on the
steering wheel, you'd break your
neck. People were dying all the time.

760
00:56:28,080 --> 00:56:29,600
Did they say...

761
00:56:29,600 --> 00:56:32,960
"That's it then,
we can't have cars, sorry"?

762
00:56:32,960 --> 00:56:38,320
In the same way as if someone says,
"Actually mobile phones do give out
microwaves and will give you cancer,"

763
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:40,920
are we going to say,
"That's the end of that"? 

764
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:44,560
Not on your Nelly!
There's a risk-reward ratio here

765
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:50,400
and for us the reward is so great,
that whatever the risk is we try
and contain it and understand it.

766
00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:53,960
I don't like this extremist view
that the Web is a danger zone

767
00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:56,440
where unpleasant people
can more easily find

768
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:58,000
their vulnerable targets.

769
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:01,440
That's the extremities as it always
has been in every society

770
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:04,040
and as long as you
educate to make people safe,

771
00:57:04,040 --> 00:57:06,880
I think the bulk of what
happens on the Web is interesting,

772
00:57:06,880 --> 00:57:12,040
exciting, supportive,
fun, entertaining and magic.

773
00:57:15,040 --> 00:57:19,080
Paradoxically, what makes us exposed
as never before

774
00:57:19,080 --> 00:57:22,960
is also what makes
the Web such a magical opportunity

775
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:29,480
to share, roam and nose around
in the riches of human knowledge.

776
00:57:29,480 --> 00:57:32,240
But as commerce comes to dominate
the Web,

777
00:57:32,240 --> 00:57:38,080
I believe we must wake up and
understand the true cost of Free.

778
00:57:38,080 --> 00:57:42,280
How it's redefining privacy,
personal space

779
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:45,520
and perhaps, ultimately,
who we are.

780
00:57:57,120 --> 00:57:59,760
How do you feel about
your privacy online?

781
00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:01,560
Join the debate at -

782
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:09,040
And follow the links to
the Open University

783
00:58:09,040 --> 00:58:13,440
for more from those
reshaping the Web and the world.

784
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:20,200
Next time, the impact of the Web
on how we think and how we relate.

785
00:58:20,200 --> 00:58:26,120
How our kids are becoming,
for better or for worse,
the Facebook generation.

786
00:58:49,360 --> 00:58:52,400
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

787
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:55,440
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk