TED2018: Behind The Scenes
It was one of the greatest honors of my life to be invited to speak at TED2018, even more so because the idea worth spreading was not only my own, but that of a team that I’m humbled to speak on behalf of — Team Token. Preparing for that speech would prove to be one of the most humbling experiences I’ve had to date — countless revisions, dozens of rehearsals, and many weekends of soul-searching to perfectly package the spirit that motivates us at Token.
Ultimately, Steve Shapiro and Eric Mogil would help me deliver the talk we all could call our own — Democratizing Identity to Restore Trust within our Global Network. Thankfully, these two accompanied me to Vancouver and were able to capture some of the moments from our week at TED2018, which I compiled into a little video montage.
See below for an abstract of our TED2018 talk:
Democratizing Identity to Restore Trust within our Global Network
Humans are pretty special, but what makes us truly unique is that we’re able to share ideas and collaborate in large numbers. And this hinges on our ability to trust each other.
The internet has enabled humans to coalesce into a network of greater scale than ever before, which is a beautiful thing, because it greatly amplifies the number of humans we can collaborate with. But the ways we identify ourselves to all of these people, and systems just aren’t working anymore — 16.7 million people had their identity defrauded in 2017, just in the US . It’s crucial we solve this problem, because trust promotes the sharing of ideas, allowing us to collaborate globally.
Our ancestors, whose networks were only as large as the villages they lived in, couldn’t have imagined a global network that connected billions of people. It’s worth fighting to keep the internet free, but it’s also worth fighting for the internet to be trusted, and safe, so that the way we collaborate, exchange, and interact on this global network isn’t hindered by our inability to trust our fellow participants. And this is why my team and I are working to restore the direct lines of trust that let us freely collaborate on a global scale, the very thing that makes humans special.
