EIC 2012 Keynote: "Che cosa sono le nuvole?” (What are the clouds?)

Well, we're delighted to welcome a whole series of punchy brief keynotes this afternoon. I hope some of you will have counted how many we have. There's quite a number it's in double figures. This is a wonderful way to stoke up our thinking as thought leaders at the beginning of the week, this will require our speakers to stick within their time limits.

And one reason why I think I have been asked to host this afternoon is because I have a, a certain reputation for brutal timekeeping at conferences, delighted to welcome up our first keynote presenter, who is Emilia Mardini, whom many of you will know. I believe he spoke here last year. He is the director of the center for science society and citizenship in Rome. He is by training originally an MD and a psychologist psychoanalyst. He has worked in bioethics and now into technology policy. And he's also a good personal friend Amelio. Thank you, Nigel.

I, I I'm worried. This is the worst way to start the series of keynotes with a psychiatrist of the worst kind and a psychiatrist psychoanalytically trained. So I'm going to be more confused, more foggy than clouds. So it is the worst way to metabolize your launch.

My, let me, let me just tell you how I'm arrived to technology ethics. My first interest was, and I spent my, my first part, my health part of my professional career with a private practice, a clinical practice.

So I, I worked with people and I understood that you can understand individuals if you understand groups, if you understand society because human beings are strange animals, we are, we like autonomy. We like Liberty. We are individuals, but we live in a web of human relations. And without human relations, we, we do not exist simply. And this tension is probably one of the reason of a lot of diseases and even mental disturbances.

But from, from society, you start dealing with technology with products of society. What is technology? Huh? What is this why we should respect this object? Because it is not an object. This is a crystallized human being within this small, small object within this mobile, there are thousands millions of human beings, intelligence life experience technology is materialized. Life technology must be respected for this. So my presentation, I have no time, 20 minutes, and I know very well. Our chairman is very strict, so I I'm no time to develop strong sound arguments.

I'm adjusting, sharing thought better. I'm trying to share thinking with you. So Technology, in order to understand technology, we have to understand the all meanings that are carried out by technology. Technology is not only a means to an end, something for doing something, something else. But technology is also, language is also a way in which we express our wishes, our fear, our fantasies, and even the way in which we select towards is meaningful.

I understand very well that calling a technology cloud, it's also a way to market it, but remember there is always a sense behind walls and behind the way in which war in which we call objects, What is the relationship between clouds and entities? Okay.

I, I've worked a lot on identity technology in the last decade, chiefly on biometrics. You know, the, the, the traditional interest towards identity technology is related to the interest for the state nation statewide states and interest in, in identification for horrible reasons, for taxation, conscription, and administration of justice.

This is the reason why people are so worried by identify card identification technologies, because it is, this is an historical memory that each time that the state want to identify citizens, they want to do it for tax them chiefly, or to send them to, to fight a war or, or other horrible things or to jail them. But actually there are other reason which makes identification extremely relevant to individuals, claims of right, establishing any kind of contracts of trade and ensuring ownership.

So this is the reason why in this moment in identification, technology is extremely important and extremely relevant to people because they can ensure these basic rights to the majority of people in the world, which cannot afford rights, ownership, contracts, because they do not have secure entities. Two third of the inhabitants of the world in this moment do not have certain identity documents in their hands, But to understand the role of identity today, you have to understand what happened with the information revolution and to understand the information revolution.

You should go back as a, an example to the industrial revolution. What is the difference between these two groups of people? These are where poor people, these were workers. What Made, what turned poor people into workers, the discovery, or the creation of a new good of a new commodity lab. The industrial revolution invented a new merchandise label. The labor market, the idea of labor market was unthinkable before industry. So in the 17th century, I was poor in the 19th century. I was rich of my work. I can sell my work formation revolution.

What is the difference between these two teenagers in the fifties? That was an Adant today. This lady can sell information. She's rich. She's no longer a poor Adant, but she's rich because she has a merchandise, a good, a commodity that didn't exist in the fifties. And exactly as the indu, the revolution was possible. Thanks to technology. The information revolution is possible. Thanks to technology because technology is the instrument.

The means, which turn simple information into digital information and digital information is the key because digital information is a commodity can be marketed, but, and this has, this has created a gold rash. We have discovered hundreds of goldmines. This is the goldmines of the information society. We are producing information because information is a commodity. This pose a problem that poses the problem of money in this environment. Could we use the same money we used in the past?

This is, these are the four functions of money. Traditionally, initially money where commodity was commodity money. I take commodities, just a slightly transformation of the battery system of the battery economy. I take one kind of community and turn it into money. The next step was representative money. I take any a piece of paper or whatever, and is representing the commodity on certain moment. The gold standard, which was a commodity money was not tenable any longer was in the, in the seventies or last years was the first and attempt to use the dollar as a standard other experience.

But this is not exactly a feasible situation, as we all know in this moment, but what is the lesson to be learned first? There is no need on official currency. As a matter of fact, the market decide what is the needed money and money is a living creature. They change over time. And basically it is the market with the side, the destiny of occurrence and the information revolution is using is based more and more on electronic money. Electronic money is crystallized information. Today. We already speak of digital cash, but digital cash is still something old is stored money.

Basically, you still need When you use this card, which is a debit card, you need money on your bank account. Maybe you can have gold on your bank account money. You need a commodity, but already when I pay with the credit card, Hmm, Do you really need money on your bank account?

No, you need trust, Which Is a strange commodity. But with this one, this is a priority pass. I paid lounges in the airport, but it is not a credit card. What is that? The new currency is fluid, much more fluid than normal money is not issued by state. In most airport. I can use the American express to check in, in the airport. If I use electronic check in, they ask me my passport or an alternative a credit card. So this is also an instrument to certify my identity, but it is not issued by a state. It is issued by the American express. American express is guaranteed my identity.

So what is the gold standard of currency entities? The new gold are entities, and this is the triangle. The same technology is creating this triangle cloud computing, identity management E money. They are the same, the different size of the same object, the same technology and the same concept behind. There are some even today, there are some application already that this is an application. The wallet in the clouds, it's a Google application, but this is very rudimental, very preliminary applications.

I can predict that in the future, you, we are going to use much more sophisticated application In social science. You use this technique to validate hypothesis. This technique is called negative case analysis. You take a case which apparently demonstrate that your hypothesis is wrong. And then you analyze that case to test your hypothesis. So I took as a validating test, the Bitcoin Bitcoin is an anonymous currency.

Maybe, you know it, which is used online, especially in the so-called deep web or dark web to pay transaction in which you want to remain anonymous. And as, as head, it was in the limelight in the last year is bit Bitcoin. Basically you have to deposit, you have to deposit money anonymously, and you receive anonymously this currency, this electronic currency, but From An economic point of view, a financial point of view. Bitcoin is having a, a sad evolution. I'm not an economist.

I'm not able to analyze this kind of graphs, but economists that tell told me that Bitcoin is not a big business in this moment, but I'm more interested in this. As a matter of fact, Bitcoin is not anonymous. You can trace back all transactions. Also with Bitcoin. It is obvious because you have to remember this basic law of the electronic world. Nothing is anomalous online.

Never, never forget it. Forget the fantasy. The dream of the night anonymous transaction online. It is not possible. Everything can be unraveled online, but we have this scenario. The inter economy, these figures are astonishing are missing by 2015 half world population will be connected. The internet economy today is the fourth world economy. More than Germany. In this scenario, you need to ground electronic money on a certain Ground. And I repeat the only way to do it is to ground electronic money on identity.

And this is the reason to me, why the fight around identity management, the discussion, the controversial, the corals about state privacy and so on. It's so important because it doesn't concern only issues like data protection, but it concern the world economy of the next future.

Of course, at this point, one can pose the question, whether this is desirable, but I think this is a pointless question. As a matter of fact, doesn't make sense to ask whether a trend is desirable. You have to learn how to go learn trends rather than discuss if it is good or bad. And this is a very strong trend because it's driven by one of the most strong drivers for human being, which is the wish to real, to, to, to materialize without time and space, limitations, desires, wish wishes. The internet is our collective dream.

Of course, we have to pay attention because as a psychiatrist, I know very well that it is that the border between dreams and nightmares is very subtle. Saint Saint, the Renaissance, Spanish Saint Spanish lady, a mystic once wrote that wish. We should hope that God does not satisfy all our prayers. If you want to curse someone, if you want to wish a bad destiny to someone wish him that God will satisfy all his prayers. We desire things that in our interest, it will be better, will never become reality. So when we have a dream like the internet, we should pay a lot of attention said.

So I want to conclude my lecture, my conversation with you with the region of my speech. I told you that the internet is a dream, but when I say that is a dream, I don't mean that it is something real because dreams are real more than reality. And I started by saying that clouds is a word, which describe an utmost, a phenomenon in the sky, but also technology and clouds and clouds. Computing are two dreams. They are fantasies and technology can be beauty and deep rooted in human mind as clouds. And they both speak of human beings.

This is the end of the PA movie about clouds Emilio time Could have. And I started by saying that we should respect this object. I would like to conclude that we should respect technology as we respect clouds. Thank you. Thank you very much.