Sam Hyde’s 2070 Paradigm Shift
The following is a transcript of Sam Hyde’s 2013 TED Talk at Drexel University.
Sam Hyde is a video journalist and documentary filmmaker from Brooklyn, New York. His work spans every continent and has been featured on television and in print (Discover, NatGeo, Vice, and others). He recently returned from Mogadishu, the most dangerous city on earth, where he shadowed the heroic al-Mahamud women on their quest to clean up the streets and restore humanity to their war-torn country. In 2014 he will be investigating the methamphetamine trade in Mongolia.
2070 Paradigm Shift
Guys, pat yourselves on the back right now. Okay? Let’s do it. Come on, everybody, I’m not gonna make you, I’m not gonna let you stop until I see everybody doin’ it, let’s pat ourselves on the back. There we go. You two! You’re patting each other, that’s cheating. Ah, you, you couldn’t keep your hands off her, could you? Yeah, hey, I don’t blame ya, she’s a cutie!
Hey guys, right there is for saving the worlds, worlds, world. I’m looking at young minds right now, you guys are all intelligent, I know that you did good in school, I didn’t do that. You especially, you’re very smart.
Look at us. We’re the machine that keeps the world going. Okay?
I’d like to start this talk off with a parable. A story if you will.
I was at a college, a second tier, not an ivy league school, a second choice school, and I was in a class. And there was a student in that class, okay? And the, the teacher, he was spouting some horrible nonsense, about how, it was something about how women’s rights are not legitimate, something that everybody knew was false, but if anybody had spoken up, he would’ve taken extreme joy in failing them. Okay? Nobody spoke up. One person raised his voice. Once person started talking. The teacher couldn’t believe it, the classroom couldn’t believe it either. But in the end, he had logic on his side. And at the end of the day, he proved his point. That student was Albert Einstein.
And that same sense of childlike play and innocence that we know from Albert Einstein, I can sense it in this room today.
TEDx Drexel University. Dreexel, Drexel university. Next X.
So you gotta be thinking to yourselves right now, “who’s this 22 year old kid up on stage, with a chip on his shoulder, and his heart on his sleeve, and the world in his eyes”?
Well, that’s a tough question, asking somebody to define who they are. I much prefer to ask: “what inspires that person”?
What inspires you? What inspires you? What inspires you?
What inspires me is teaching African refugees how to program Javascript. What inspires me is finding out how to use maglev trains to get resources to the moon! These are the challenges that tomorrow’s gonna face. Okay? How are we gonna get clean drinking water to 2 billion Chinese people?
The second thing that inspires me are ideas. Ideas are amazing. Ideas are like currency. Ideas are what drives the world. Ideas are what we need to get to the next stage. And not just great inventions like the train — little things like this microphone, that enables me to speak to the unwashed masses. TED talks are another great idea. Where would we be right now?
And we have to talk about it, because great ideas don’t come in all shapes and sizes. 9/11, September 11th. And we’re gonna use some reverence here and not be silly about this, but, look at what they accomplished with no weapons and just 11 guys who didn’t even speak English! And that proves that sometimes great ideas are actually horrible ideas.
I’m Sam Hyde. I’m an important thinker. I’m a creator, innovator, artist, idea. But above all else, I’m a passionate childlike innovator.
I’ve been all around the globe working on cutting edge projects of all kinds, and I’m here to ask you one question, “where are we at”? Where are we? We’ve got all this great technology. We’ve got 7 billion people in the world! And according to U.N. projections, it’s gonna go up to 50 billion people! That’s a lot of mouths to feed. And I don’t think they’re gonna be able to feed themselves, so we better start coming up with some robots to bridge that gap!
The West’s sick addiction to fossil fuel is going to make this planet uninhabitable for the future generations. You’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen the movie An Inconvenient Truth. What’s going on is we’re too selfish and we’re driving our cars too much and that’s getting nature out of the picture.
Now we looked at the data and what we found surprised us. What we foundwas that culture is a sewer. We’ve got lewd media. We’ve got nasty bedroom things on TV. And they’re sexualizing young girls, and it’s getting to the point where even I have a problem with it. And that, it shouldn’t be that way.
Folks, we’re all world citizens, living together, with one social contract, one economic future, we’re all tied together. There’s no more individual anymore, it’s just the hive. So we have to stick together. We have to stick together, and learn how to share. We have to learn how to share.
Now studies show that we work hard. It’s true. Everybody in this room’s a hard worker. You’re a hard worker, you’re a hard worker, you’re a hard worker. I know cuz you’re here, okay? But studies show that we don’t play hard enough. We gotta play harder! It’s, because it’s that sense of childlike playing that’s gonna save us in the end — Albert Einstein.
I was in Rwanda. I was with a little start-up you may have heard of. Tesla. Okay? Elon Musk was there. Team of innovators, artists, creators, ideas, thinkers. And we were giving iPads to this village of Africans. And it so…fffffrrreeeeaaaakkkyyybecause there’s something to it, you just “doop doop”, swipe it, and it works. But these guys, we gave them like 2-hour tutorials, and they couldn’t figure out how to use the freakin’ things!
By my calculations we have 5 years until the world ends, unless we can start to reverse things like POLLUTION and WAR…POLLUTION, WAR, THESE ARE BIG PROBLEMS. FIX IT, NOW!!!
Close your eyes. Everybody in this room close your eyes. I’m not gonna do anything weird or sensual with you. Close your eyes, we’re gonna change some minds right now. Everybody close your eyes okay? I want those eyes closed.
Now look, this is a pivotal moment in human history. Right now, in this room, Drexel University, TEDx, next X, this is the time to be doing this. Take this moment in. Breathe deeply okay. Neurons are firing in your brain right now, you’re more alert, you’re astrally projecting, you’re getting a little bit high on the sound of my voice, I have a nice timbre to it, I know that I’m a good public speaker. You’re drinking bulletproof coffee, and you don’t even realize you’re getting all jagged up in the head listening to my presentation, you’re gonna remember this forever.
2070 future! Now! WHAAAT?! WHUUT?
2070 predictions. The next 50 years are gonna be some serious stuff.
Sea floor farming. 75% of the world’s surface not being used by agriculture. On the sea floor, you’re gonna have sea beets, sea yams, sea cabbage, have ya ever had a sea salad? Have ya ever had sea-cheesy-baked-potatoes that BLEW YOUR SOCKS OFF?
Trash economy. The abundance of trash. What are we gonna do with it? Are we gonna put it on an island? Are we gonna make it somebody else’s problem? Or are we going to take the initiative and take this problem by the horns? Trash economy. You use cubes of trash as money. Everybody becomes rich, it’s a gold rush.
Walk with me. Most of the major cities will be replaced with vast pleasure domes, used exclusively by the excelceites — who are the neo-upper-class — while the displaced hordes of lower-class depth-grobblers will live underground in tiered cities, endlessly toiling away for nuggets of neo-plasmin.
Video games are going to get more realistic.
Super fuel-efficient vehicles getting 80, 100 miles per gallon? It’s not that crazy. You think I’m nuts right now for suggesting something high-tech like that? Flip side of that coin: gas, $10 a gallon. You can’t win them all, but we can make do, cuz we’re gonna have solar power also…
Race riots. Extreme racial tension and unrest. It’s called the knockout game and eventually white people are gonna get tired of playing it. That’s all I’m saying…
Due to the massive birth increase, we’re gonna have a shortage of milk. What this means is, the Neo-Earth-Good-Government-League is gonna have to genetically modify all humans — male and female — to lactate once a month. Once every month, you’re gonna be going to a lactation processing center where they’ll hook you up to all kinds of weird things. Now, due to some fluke, about 3% of the population produces about 500% as much milk, so they’re gonna have to be farmed constantly. And it’s very painful, but they’re gonna be rounded up by FEMA and their milk will serve the greater good.
Guys, what’s the one problem right now that’s not gonna be around in 2070? The elderly and the disabled. Cuz we’re just GONNA KILL EM! …WE’RE JUST GONNA KILL EM!
So we looked at the data. We’ve got robots policing the streets. 2070, we’ve got gay marriage. Surprise, surprise, bigots! Okay? Sorry, in 2070, gay people are gonna be allowed to get married! Get used to it!
SodaStream will do for soda what 3D printing did for assault rifles.
State-enforced homosexuality. I don’t have a problem with that, it’s equal…
Facebook as your birth certificate.
3D printers are kid’s toys and the newest 3D printer: your kid is gonna be printing up 3D Muslim Barbie dolls.
2070, gay men have actually developed reproductive organs inside of their…area…and a new generation of children are born from inside gay men.
Good luck searching for Al-Qaeda on the Internet, you’d have better luck going next door and asking them in person…
Can we get one final pat on the back everybody? Pat yourselves on the back. Please do it. You are gonna be the future, that’s a good thing. You’re going places kid…
2070: Israel, straight up ripped off the map. BYE! BYE BYE!!! BYE!!! Not my choice, it’s… probably what’s gonna happen. Okay.
Now it’s, now it’s time for you, cuz you are the, you plural, is the star, like YouTube here, like the Time magazine cover. You guys are the star, I’m just some crazy guy, I’m not cool. What predictions do you have? 2070. Make a real one, let’s have something real here.
I’m gonna have your mind uploaded to my BlackBerry. You’ll be here. You’ll be cryogenically frozen, I know it. Anybody have any predictions? What do ya think’s gonna happen in 2070.
I think there can’t possibly be anything worse than what we have right now.
Thanks for having me here.