Geek Speech (23rd November 2011)
Actually much broader than that, this speech to the IAAC covers how the Internet has changed society and how politicians must react to that. (Even if they don’t want to.)
One of my favourite parts:
The freeing of public data over the past ten years has been driven by geeks, it’s true, but their arguments were merely foreshadowing a general shift in the mindset of the population at large.
A much broader point, well-made:
Ten years ago, your verdict about the meal in front of us could only have been shared with a few – your neighbours, your friends, your partner. The only opinion that mattered, that would have travelled, would be the professional critic’s, distributed in print.
We assume that every meal we eat, every hotel bed we sleep in, every piece of culture we consume, is something we can have an opinion on, and have it be given the same importance as an opinion from anyone else. There are rating sites online for you to rate just about anything, legal or not, and the sheer weight of amateur reviews outdoes the professionals for authority most of the time.