Don't like clickbait?

Don't
click
So recently, some white guys and some black women swapped Twitter avatars, or pictures
online.They didn't change their content, they kept tweeting the same as usual, but suddenly, the
white guys noticed they were getting called the n-word all the time and they were getting the worst
kind of online abuse, whereas the black women all of a sudden noticed things got a lot more
pleasant for them.
0:34Now, if you're my five-year-old, your Internet consists mostly of puppies and fairies and
occasionally fairies riding puppies. That's a thing. Google it. But the rest of us know that the
Internet can be a really ugly place. I'm not talking about the kind of colorful debates that I think are
healthy for our democracy.I'm talking about nasty personal attacks. Maybe it's happened to you, but
it's at least twice as likely to happen, and be worse, if you're a woman, a person of color, or gay, or
more than one at the same time. In fact, just as I was writing this talk, I found a Twitter account
called @SallyKohnSucks. The bio says that I'm a "man-hater and a bull dyke and the only thing I've
ever accomplished with my career is spreading my perverse sexuality." Which, incidentally, is only a
third correct. I mean, lies! (Laughter)
1:32But seriously, we all say we hate this crap. The question is whether you're willing to make a
personal sacrifice to change it. I don't mean giving up the Internet. I mean changing the way you
click, because clicking is a public act. It's no longer the case that a few powerful elites control all the
media and the rest of us are just passive receivers. Increasingly, we're all the media. I used to think,
oh, okay, I get dressed up, I put on a lot of makeup, I go on television, I talk about the news. That is
a public act of making media. And then I go home and I browse the web and I'm reading Twitter, and
that's a private act of consuming media. I mean, of course it is. I'm in my
pajamas. Wrong. Everything we blog, everything we Tweet, and everything we click is a public act of
making media. We are the new editors.We decide what gets attention based on what we give our
attention to. That's how the media works now. There's all these hidden algorithms that decide what
you see more of and what we all see more ofbased on what you click on, and that in turn shapes our
whole culture.
2:41Over three out of five Americans think we have a major incivility problem in our country right
now, but I'm going to guess that at least three out of five Americans are clicking on the same insult-
oriented,rumor-mongering trash that feeds the nastiest impulses in our society. In an increasingly
noisy media landscape, the incentive is to make more noise to be heard, and that tyranny of the
loud encourages the tyranny of the nasty.
3:12It does not have to be that way. It does not. We can change the incentive. For starters, there are
two things we can all do. First, don't just stand by the sidelines when you see someone getting
hurt. If someone is being abused online, do something. Be a hero. This is your chance. Speak up.
Speak out. Be a good person. Drown out the negative with the positive. And second, we've got to
stop clicking on the lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeding linkbait. If you don't like the 24/7
all Kardashian all the time programming, you've got to stop clicking on the stories about Kim
Kardashian's sideboob. I know you do it. (Applause) You too, apparently. I mean, really, same
example: if you don't like politicians calling each other names, stop clicking on the stories about what
one guy in one party called the other guy in the other party. Clicking on a train wreck just pours
gasoline on it. It makes it worse, the fire spreads. Our whole culture gets burned.
4:15If what gets the most clicks wins, then we have to start shaping the world we want with our
clicks,because clicking is a public act. So click responsibly. Thank you.
4:30(Applause)
Why I take the piano on the
road and in the air
Recently, I flew over a crowd of thousands of people in Brazil playing music by George Frideric
Handel.I also drove along the streets of Amsterdam, again playing music by this same
composer. Let's take a look.
0:33(Music: George Frideric Handel, "Allegro." Performed by Daria van den Bercken.)
0:52(Video) Daria van den Bercken: I live there on the third floor. (In Dutch) I live there on the
corner. I actually live there, around the corner. and you'd be really welcome.
1:00Man: (In Dutch) Does that sound like fun? Child: (In Dutch) Yes!
1:02[(In Dutch) "Handel house concert"]
1:27(Applause)
1:39Daria van den Bercken: All this was a real magical experience for hundreds of reasons.
1:44Now you may ask, why have I done these things? They're not really typical for a musician's day-
to-day life. Well, I did it because I fell in love with the music and I wanted to share it with as many
people as possible.
2:00It started a couple of years ago. I was sitting at home on the couch with the flu and browsing the
Internet a little, when I found out that Handel had written works for the keyboard. Well, I was
surprised. I did not know this. So I downloaded the sheet music and started playing. And what
happened next wasthat I entered this state of pure, unprejudiced amazement. It was an
experience of being totally in awe of the music, and I had not felt that in a long time. It might be
easier to relate to this when you hear it.The first piece that I played through started like this.
2:48(Music)
3:13Well this sounds very melancholic, doesn't it? And I turned the page and what came next was
this.
3:22(Music)
3:49Well, this sounds very energetic, doesn't it? So within a couple of minutes, and the piece isn't
even finished yet, I experienced two very contrasting characters: beautiful melancholy and sheer
energy.And I consider these two elements to be vital human expressions. And the purity of the music
makes you hear it very effectively.
4:18I've given a lot of children's concerts for children of seven and eight years old, and whatever I
play, whether it's Bach, Beethoven, even Stockhausen, or some jazzy music, they are open to hear
it, really willing to listen, and they are comfortable doing so. And when classes come in with children
who are just a few years older, 11, 12, I felt that I sometimes already had trouble in reaching them
like that. The complexity of the music does become an issue, and actually the opinions of others
parents, friends, media they start to count. But the young ones, they don't question their own
opinion. They are in this constant state of wonder, and I do firmly believe that we can keep
listening like these seven-year-old children, even when growing up. And that is why I have
played not only in the concert hall but also on the street, online, in the air: to feel that state of
wonder, to truly listen, and to listen without prejudice.And I would like to invite you to do so
now. (Music: George Frideric Handel, "Chaconne in G Major." Performed by Daria van den
Bercken.)
9:16(Applause) Thank you. (Applause)
The courage to tell a hidden
story
When I turned 19, I started my career as the first female photojournalist in the Gaza Strip,
Palestine. My work as a woman photographer was considered a serious insult to local traditions, and
created a lasting stigma for me and my family. The male-dominated field made my
presence unwelcome by all possible means. They made clear that a woman must not do a man's
job. Photo agencies in Gaza refused to train me because of my gender. The "No" sign was pretty
clear.
0:48Three of my colleagues went as far as to drive me to an open air strike area where the
explosion sounds were the only thing I could hear. Dust was flying in the air, and the ground was
shaking like a swing beneath me. I only realized we weren't there to document the event when the
three of them got back into the armored Jeep and drove away, waving and laughing, leaving me
behind in the open air strike zone.
1:19For a moment, I felt terrified, humiliated, and sorry for myself. My colleagues' action was not the
only death threat I have received, but it was the most dangerous one.
1:35The perception of women's life in Gaza is passive. Until a recent time, a lot of women were not
allowedto work or pursue education. At times of such doubled war including both social restrictions
on womenand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, women's dark and bright stories were fading away. To
men, women's stories were seen as inconsequential.
2:03I started paying closer attention to women's lives in Gaza. Because of my gender, I had
access to worlds where my colleagues were forbidden. Beyond the obvious pain and struggle, there
was a healthy dose of laughter and accomplishments. In front of a police compound in Gaza
City during the first war in Gaza, an Israeli air raid managed to destroy the compound and break my
nose. For a moment, all I saw was white, bright white, like these lights. I thought to myself I either
got blind or I was in heaven. By the time I managed to open my eyes, I had documented this
moment.
2:55Mohammed Khader, a Palestinian worker who spent two decades in Israel, as his retirement
plan, he decided to build a four-floor house, only by the first field operation at his neighborhood, the
house was flattened to the ground. Nothing was left but the pigeons he raised and a jacuzzi, a
bathtub that he got from Tel Aviv. Mohammed got the bathtub on the top of the rubble and started
giving his kids an every morning bubble bath.
3:33My work is not meant to hide the scars of war, but to show the full frame of unseen stories of
Gazans.As a Palestinian female photographer, the journey of struggle, survival and everyday life has
inspired me to overcome the community taboo and see a different side of war and its aftermath. I
became a witness with a choice: to run away or stand still.
4:06Thank you.
4:08(Applause)
Why thinking you're ugly is
bad for you
This is my niece, Stella. She's just turned one and started to walk. And she's walking in that really
cool way that one-year-olds do, a kind of teetering, my-body's-moving- too-fast-for-my-legs kind of
way. It is absolutely gorgeous. And one of her favorite things to do at the moment is to stare at
herself in the mirror. She absolutely loves her reflection. She giggles and squeals, and gives herself
these big, wet kisses. It is beautiful. Apparently, all of her friends do this and my mom tells me that I
used to do this,and it got me thinking: When did I stop doing this? When is it suddenly not okay to
love the way that we look?
0:59Because apparently we don't. Ten thousand people every month google, "Am I ugly?" This is
Faye. Faye is 13 and she lives in Denver. And like any teenager, she just wants to be liked and to fit
in. It's Sunday night. She's getting ready for the week ahead at school. And she's slightly dreading it,
and she's a bit confused because despite her mom telling her all the time that she's beautiful, every
day at school, someone tells her that she's ugly. Because of the difference between what her mom
tells her and what her friends at school, or her peers at school are telling her, she doesn't know who
to believe.So, she takes a video of herself. She posts it to YouTube and she asks people to please
leave a comment: "Am I pretty or am I ugly?" Well, so far, Faye has received over 13,000
comments. Some of them are so nasty, they don't bear thinking about. This is an average, healthy-
looking teenage girl receiving this feedback at one of the most emotionally vulnerable times in her
life. Thousands of people are posting videos like this, mostly teenage girls, reaching out in this way.
2:17But what's leading them to do this? Well, today's teenagers are rarely alone. They're under
pressure to be online and available at all times, talking, messaging, liking, commenting, sharing,
posting it never ends. Never before have we been so connected, so continuously, so
instantaneously, so young. And as one mom told me, it's like there's a party in their bedroom every
night. There's simply no privacy. And the social pressures that go along with that are relentless. This
always-on environment is training our kids to value themselves based on the number of likes they
get and the types of comments that they receive. There's no separation between online and offline
life. What's real or what isn't is really hard to tell the difference between. And it's also really hard to
tell the difference between what's authentic and what's digitally manipulated.
3:21What's a highlight in someone's life versus what's normal in the context of everyday. And where
are they looking to for inspiration? Well, you can see the kinds of images that are covering the
newsfeedsof girls today. Size zero models still dominate our catwalks. Airbrushing is now
routine. And trends like #thinspiration, #thighgap, #bikinibridge and #proana. For those who don't
know, #proana means pro-anorexia. These trends are teamed with the stereotyping and flagrant
objectification of women in today's popular culture. It is not hard to see what girls are benchmarking
themselves against. But boys are not immune to this either. Aspiring to the chiseled jaw lines and
ripped six packs of superhero-like sports stars
4:10and playboy music artsits. But, what's the problem with all of this? Well, surely we want our kids
to grow up as healthy, well balanced individuals. But in an image-obsessed culture, we are training
our kids to spend more time and mental effort on their appearance at the expense of all of the other
aspects of their identities. So, things like their relationships, the development of their physical
abilities,and their studies and so on begin to suffer. Six out of 10 girls are now choosing not to do
something because they don't think they look good enough. These are not trivial activities. These are
fundamental activities to their development as humans and as contributors to society and to the
workforce. Thirty-one percent, nearly one in three teenagers, are withdrawing from classroom
debate. They're failing to engage in classroom debate because they don't want to draw attention to
the way that they look. One in five are not showing up to class at all on days when they don't feel
good about it. And when it comes to exams, if you don't think you look good enough, specifically if
you don't think you are thin enough,you will score a lower grade point average than your peers who
are not concerned with this. And this is consistent across Finland, the U.S. and China, and is true
regardless of how much you actually weigh.So to be super clear, we're talking about the way you
think you look, not how you actually look.
5:50Low body confidence is undermining academic achievement. But it's also damaging
health. Teenagers with low body confidence do less physical activity, eat less fruits and
vegetables, partake in more unhealthy weight control practices that can lead to eating
disorders. They have lower self-esteem.They're more easily influenced by people around them and
they're at greater risk of depression. And we think it's for all of these reasons that they take more
risks with things like alcohol and drug use;crash dieting; cosmetic surgery; unprotected, earlier
sex; and self-harm. The pursuit of the perfect body is putting pressure on our healthcare systems
6:35and costing our governments billions of dollars every year. And we don't grow out of it. Women
who think they're overweight again, regardless of whether they are or are not have higher rates
of absenteeism. Seventeen percent of women would not show up to a job interview on
6:56a day when they weren't feeling confident about the way that they look. Have a think about what
this is doing to our economy. If we could overcome this, what that opportunity looks like. Unlocking
this potential is in the interest
7:12of every single one of us. But how do we do that? Well, talking, on its own, only gets you so
far. It's not enough by itself. If you actually want to make a difference, you have to do
something. And we've learned there are three key ways: The first is we have to educate for body
confidence. We have to help our teenagers develop strategies to overcome image-related
pressures and build their self-esteem.Now, the good news is that there are many programs out there
available to do this. The bad news is that most of them don't work. I was shocked to learn that many
well-meaning programs are inadvertently actually making the situation worse. So we need to make
damn sure that the programs that our kids are receiving are not only having a positive impact,
8:06but having a lasting impact as well. And the research shows that the best programs address six
key areas: The first is the influence of family, friends and relationships. The second is media and
celebrity culture, then how to handle teasing and bullying, the way we compete and compare with
one anotherbased on looks, talking about appearance some people call this "body talk" or "fat
talk" and finally, the foundations of respecting and looking after yourself. These six things are
crucial starting points for anyone serious about delivering body-confidence education that works. An
education is critical, but tackling this problem is going to require each and everyone of us to step up
and be better role models for the women and girls in our own lives. Challenging the status quo of
how
8:59women are seen and talked about in our own circles. It is not okay that we judge the
contribution of our politicians by their haircuts or the size of their breasts, or to infer that the
determination or the successof an Olympian is down to her not being a looker. We need to start
judging people by what they do,
9:20not what they look like. We can all start by taking responsibility for the types of pictures and
comments that we post on our own social networks. We can compliment people based on their
effort and their actions
9:37and not on their appearance. And let me ask you, when was the last time that you kissed a
mirror?Ultimately, we need to work together as communities, as governments and as businesses to
really change this culture of ours so that our kids grow up valuing their whole selves, valuing
individuality, diversity, inclusion. We need to put the people that are making a real difference on our
pedestals, making a difference in the real world. Giving them the airtime, because only then will we
create a different world. A world where our kids are free to become the best versions of
themselves, where the way they think they look never holds them back from being who they are
10:26or achieving what they want in life. Think about what this might mean for someone in your
life. Who have you got in mind? Is it your wife? Your sister? Your daughter? Your niece? Your
friend? It could just be the woman a couple of seats away from you today. What would it mean for
her if she were freed from that voice of her inner critic, nagging her to have longer legs, thinner
thighs, smaller stomach,shorter feet? What could it mean for her if we overcame this
11:02and unlocked her potential in that way? Right now, our culture's obsession with image is
holding us all back. But let's show our kids the truth. Let's show them that the way you look is just
one part of your identity and that the truth is we love them for who they are and what they do and
how they make us feel. Let's build self-esteem into our school curriculums. Let's each and every one
of us change the way we talk and comapre ourselves to other people. And let's work together as
communities, from grassroots to governments, so that the happy little one-year-olds of today
become the confidentchangemakers of tomorrow. Let's do this. (Applause)
How to reinvent the
apartment building
When, in 1960, still a student, I got a traveling fellowship to study housing in North America. We
traveled the country. We saw public housing high-rise buildings in all major cities: New York,
Philadelphia. Those who have no choice lived there. And then we traveled from suburb to
suburb, and I came back thinking, we've got to reinvent the apartment building. There has to be
another way of doing this. We can't sustain suburbs, so let's design a building which gives the
qualities of a house to each unit.
0:51Habitat would be all about gardens, contact with nature, streets instead of corridors. We
prefabricated it so we would achieve economy, and there it is almost 50 years later. It's a very
desirable place to live in.It's now a heritage building, but it did not proliferate.
1:18In 1973, I made my first trip to China. It was the Cultural Revolution. We traveled the
country, met with architects and planners. This is Beijing then, not a single high rise building in
Beijing or Shanghai.Shenzhen didn't even exist as a city. There were hardly any cars. Thirty years
later, this is Beijing today.This is Hong Kong. If you're wealthy, you live there, if you're poor, you live
there, but high density it is, and it's not just Asia. So Paulo, you can travel in a helicopter 45
minutes seeing those high-rise buildings consume the 19th-century low-rise environment. And with
it, comes congestion, and we lose mobility, and so on and so forth.
2:17So a few years ago, we decided to go back and rethink Habitat. Could we make it more
affordable?Could we actually achieve this quality of life in the densities that are prevailing
today? And we realized, it's basically about light, it's about sun, it's about nature, it's about
fractalization. Can we open up the surface of the building so that it has more contact with the
exterior?
2:46We came up with a number of models: economy models, cheaper to build and more
compact;membranes of housing where people could design their own house and create their own
gardens. And then we decided to take New York as a test case, and we looked at Lower
Manhattan. And we mapped all the building area in Manhattan. On the left is Manhattan today: blue
for housing, red for office buildings, retail. On the right, we reconfigured it: the office buildings form
the base, and then rising 75 stories above, are apartments. There's a street in the air on the 25th
level, a community street. It's permeable. There are gardens and open spaces for the
community, almost every unit with its own private garden, and community space all around. And
most important, permeable, open. It does not form a wall or an obstruction in the city, and light
permeates everywhere.
3:51And in the last two or three years, we've actually been, for the first time, realizing the quality of
life of Habitat in real-life projects across Asia. This in Qinhuangdao in China: middle-income housing,
where there is a bylaw that every apartment must receive three hours of sunlight. That's measured in
the winter solstice. And under construction in Singapore, again middle-income housing,
gardens,community streets and parks and so on and so forth. And Colombo.
4:30And I want to touch on one more issue, which is the design of the public realm. A hundred years
after we've begun building with tall buildings, we are yet to understand how the tall high-rise
buildingbecomes a building block in making a city, in creating the public realm. In Singapore, we had
an opportunity: 10 million square feet, extremely high density. Taking the concept of outdoor and
indoor,promenades and parks integrated with intense urban life. So they are outdoor spaces and
indoor spaces, and you move from one to the other, and there is contact with nature, and most
relevantly, at every level of the structure, public gardens and open space. On the roof of the
podium, climbing up the towers, and finally on the roof, the sky park, two and a half acres, jogging
paths, restaurants, and the world's longest swimming pool. And that's all I can tell you in five
minutes.
5:39Thank you.
5:41(Applause)