intelligent person that you’ve never
heard of he taught himself to read when
he was 18 months old he left school at
11
graduated at 14 and he got his PhD from
Harvard when he was the attained now
some of you are thinking wow who would
have thought that the Kentucky Fried
Chicken mom was so smart this is not
Colonel Sanders this man’s real name and
I kid you not this is actually his real
name Norbert Wiener which I suspect may
be part of the reason why he was so keen
to get through school anyway he was
mathematical genius and during the
Second World War the American military
approached him and asked him to solve a
mathematical problem and the problem was
this how do you shoot down an aeroplane
when the aeroplane is traveling at a
similar speed to the bullet if that’s
what was starting to happen so if you
imagine this disc is an anti-aircraft
turret and you’re in a plane and I’m
trying to shoot you down well if I just
aim towards you by the time the bullets
reached you you’re over there somewhere
so where should I aim that’s the
question and the natural way to think
about a question like that is from the
perspective of the turret because after
all I’m the one trying to shoot you down
right but of course your perspective as
the pilot is just as important because
you’re trying to avoid the bullet as
much as I’m trying to hit your plan and
what Norbert realized was that you can’t
solve that problem from either
perspective
you have to find some way of zooming out
and seeing both perspectives at the same
time and when you do that you realize
this is a feedback loop because I’m
getting information from you about the
direction that you’re traveling the
plane in and you’re getting information
from me about the direction I’m firing
in now because
Norbert was a really curious person and
he had all these contacts at MIT that he
was talking to every day he realized
that this this phenomenon of feedback
loops is universal it’s one of the most
fundamental principles of life because
if you think about it all organisms
exist in an environment and they have to
adapt to the environment to survive so
we’re constantly being influenced by and
influencing our environment that’s how
we maintain our blood pressure and our
body temperature it’s our managing to
stand upright right now but where it
gets interesting is it at a social level
all of us are one another’s environment
so if you think of what’s happening
right now in this space from your
perspective it probably feels like this
is the ultimate in one-way communication
because I’m doing all the talking you’re
doing all the listening right what do
you think from my perspective I’m trying
to glean all the information I can about
how this is going we’re trying to see am
i making eye contact is anyone yawning
did you laugh at the funny bit at the
start about Kentucky Fried Chicken and
that’s all affecting me it’s affecting
my state it’s affecting my physiology
which affects the words that I can bring
to mind which affects the words that
you’re hearing which affects how you
respond and each speaker has had a
slightly different dynamic today but
that system is the same now imagine
zooming out even further right up
through the roof and looking down at all
it’s this huge complex interweaving mesh
a feedback loop upon feedback loop as
we’re constantly bumping into each other
and working together and talking
together and using public services
society is this vast complex
interweaving system and this is the key
point Norbert wieners principle still
applies remember what it was you can’t
solve systemic problems from one
perspective it’s very simple but very
profound and you can carry on zooming up
from the town to the country to our
continent to our planet and the same
thing applies we can’t solve systemic
problems from one perspective now here’s
the problem you can’t not take a
perspective right I’m a speaker here the
audience if I have a bad back and I go
to hospital I can’t not have the
perspective of being a patient because I
have one but if one of you go to the
hospital to try and fix my bad back
you’re taking on the perspective of a
doctor or a physio or whatever
now something goes wrong in the hospital
who’s got the better perspective because
I suspect the patient and the doctor
will have very different ideas about
what’s going wrong well they’re both
both gonna be right and they’re both
gonna be wrong we need to find some way
of zooming out and seeing the overall
perspective of the system if we’re going
to be able to talk about the problems
that affect it let alone find solutions
and this question of zooming out I
believe it’s a question we’ve actually
already solved once as mankind what we
of the situation at the end of the first
day of the d-day invasion and want you
to imagine that all of us are generals
sat around a table looking at this map
just imagine the conversations that
we’re having but where we are and where
the enemy is where did we expect to be
and what are our objectives and do we
need to change your objectives and does
anyone need more support and now I want
you to try to imagine trying to have the
same conversations in an alternative
reality in which maps have never been
invented you say you need some sort of
underlying frame of reference about the
context in which you’re talking if you
want to be able to have a high-level
conversation that’s meaningful and we
don’t notice this really about maps
because maps are so mature as a
technology but nobody in 1944 was having
an argument about what Normandy looked
like right but where the beaches were
and where the forests and the hills and
the mountains after hundreds and
hundreds of years of cartography we know
what Normandy looks like so now we can
have the conversation we want to have
military positions are so that’s two
insights for you first one from Norbert
Weiner that we can’t solve systemic
problems societal problems from one
perspective and then the insight from
maps that maps give us this way of
zooming out on having a shared frame of
reference about what the thing is that
we’re talking about so that we can have
meaningful conversations about what we
want to have happen so what happens when
what do we need as a society and as a
world well I think what we need our maps
of how society works as a system we need
maps of how healthcare works and how
education works we need maps of how
central government works how central
government relates to the local
government we need maps of the electoral
system so that I understand what
actually it means when I cast a vote how
does that affect government what’s the
difference between government and
Parliament how do they relate to central
government how do policy decisions made
their effect the services that we all
consume see we all have different
perspectives on these things but we
don’t have a reference map to tell us
what’s true what can be empirically
validated so what would these maps look
like well to be honest I’m not entirely
sure what they’ll end up looking like
because we haven’t really started making
them yet but I’ve got an idea what
they’re gonna start off looking like
because we’ve had a stab at making one
okay just because it’s topical we
thought we’d start off by making a map
of the European Union your interests
laugh at that and if you think when you
go into Google Earth and you zoom right
out and see the whole of the planet this
is the equivalent view of the European
Union but just like Google Earth we can
zoom in on different parts and see what
they look like inside and see how they
work I’d love to spend five minutes
going through this and explaining to you
how the EU works but instead we put the
URL at the bottom so feel free to
explore this yourselves later on what I
really want to draw attention to is the
different quality of conversation that I
believe maps like this could make
possible so if you think of the sorts of
conversations we were trying to have
last year about the European Union yeah
is it democratic is it an invasion of
our national sovereignty is it a waste
of money is there too much bureaucracy
well with a map you can start just more
meaningful questions so is it democratic
or not well if you look at the top here
here’s the European Council the
spiritual reason may goes off with all
of her her counterpart Heads of
Government from member states and they
provide the strategic direction in to
the European Commission which drafts the
legislation which is then discussed down
here by the council that’s all of the
cabinet ministers from the different
countries they’re all elected and the
European Parliament who of course we get
to elect directly once they’ve voted the
legislation in the Commission is in
charge of enforcing it so the Commission
is the one bit in the whole system that
is not either directly or indirectly
elected by us but it does take its
strategic direction from the council
which is all of the heads of state it
has a huge amount of power it’s got more
civil servants than any of the other
groups combined so is it sufficiently
accountable I don’t know
but you can see how much more of a
meaningful question I’m asking how much
more of a meaningful conversation we
could be having than just everything
being black or white or what about the
question about the number of bureaucrats
is this a waste of money well I know
want to zoom in and start looking around
and seeing you well which ones
is anybody here looked like they’re
doing anything that might be useful and
again I don’t know the answer to that
question but once again can you see how
the conversation can become more
meaningful
now I’m only we only built this as an
example to show you what could be
possible what I want you to imagine is a
world in which this Maps like these are
just the norm where if you want to know
how Oxford City Council works you can go
into your map a map that’s visual like
this that you can understand I want you
to imagine a world in which the same
maps are being used by policymakers in
Whitehall as are being used by primary
schoolchildren to understand how the
society works that they’re growing up
into can you imagine what a difference
that would make to question time in 20
years time when those kids grow up or to
political hustings or general elections
if we all actually understood how the
systems that make up society work on
which part we play in them imagine what
it would be like if instead of me
moaning about my council tax over here
and then magically dustbin men come and
potholes are filled over here
if I could actually trace the connection
between the two and understand the
complexity of how you get from one thing
to the and up to another and I could see
I’d love to say at this point that’s it
that would change everything and walk
offstage but truth is that wouldn’t you
see there’s a deeper problem here which
is that each of us are continually
walking around with maps in our heads of
how we believe the world works
and to be honest unless we’re willing to
challenge some of those maps why would
things like this even be of interest why
renounced all of his military research
and became a pacifist
I’d like to imagine him starting off
with this simple simple I say simple
very complicated mathematical problem of
automating a gun turret trying to figure
out how to shoot down a plant and then
noticing this pattern and moving out to
these ever-expanding views of systems
until eventually saw the whole world and
realized the real question here is not
how do I shoot down the plane the real
question is why are these people trying
and that’s why I think maps like this
need to exist it’s two stimuli at that
type of curiosity about how the world
works because it’s not something that
we’re naturally designed to do very
tend to find when I sit down next to
someone and start talking to them and I
find that they’ve got a very different
view of the world to mine
I mean very different like yeah morally
repugnant ly different after a while I
stopped listening to what they’re saying
because I have my map of the world I
know they’re wrong so why would I have
to listen to them and this map of the
world starts to become like a gum turret
I’m not listening to them anymore
unlined enough all the bullets of my
arguments right and my counter arguments
are my insults of my counter insults and
I am watching the trajectory of what
they’re saying not really listening
right because I want to shoot them down
so the next time that happens to us I
thought a challenge it could be today it
could be this week could be this month
the next time that happens to us why
don’t we take the risk taking the
difficult step of grabbing that
opportunity and stepping outside of our
Maps I’m just taking a little stroll
around in other people’s it’s very
simple to do all you need to do is ask
some questions I don’t mean questions
like your why are you such an idiot
I mean questions like what do you mean
by that
when you use that word I think you mean
this but but what do you mean by that
this this way you describe the world
where does that come from
what experiences have you heard the
because I believe that we all did that
these maps will help but if we all did
that together the world wouldn’t just be
more compassionate place it would also
be a more meaningful [Applause]