What is data? Mmmmmm, yes, what is data? Imagine two of your old college friends just had a baby. They post a selfie, and of course, it’s adorable, and of course, you “like” it. But soon, you notice that your news feed starts to change. You see promotions for a baby sling that would be perfect for new parents, and it’s even got a logo of your old college. And look, there’s a discount. So— so— so— you buy it. You’ve got a gift for your friends, a store’s made a sale, and somewhere, there’s a giant tech company that just earned a little commission on the whole thing. An incredible cloud of transactions like this is the value that makes the digital economy as it is today. I’m here to tell you that you’re being shortchanged. The road you’re on, John Anderton, is the one less traveled. I came up with a few crazy scenes in “Minority Report,” the one where our hero is trying to run away from the police, but he’s being grabbed by each billboard into advertising so they can see where he is. John Anderton! You could use a Guinness right about now. It was supposed to be cautionary. But instead, people just think it looks cool. And in Silicon Valley to this day, decades later, people say, “Oh, that new thing you’re designing, it looks like it came out of ‘Minority Report.’ That’s so cool.” And I’m like, oh, God, like, what does it take, what does it take for people to recognize a dystopia? I kind of feel like it backfired. What has happened is heartbreaking. The whole world has become darker. The way humans respond the most intensely is with fear or anger. People who are afraid, people who are angry, they pay attention. We’ve created a whole civilization based on tricking each other. Let me show you what I mean. In order to sell you that baby sling, a social media company used data. They know a world of things about you and your friends, the least of which are that your friends just had a baby, that you all went to the same college. But there’s even more. The algorithms that run the whole thing, they’re always adjusting, doing little micro-experiments to try to find that little variation that’ll keep you clicking, that’ll get you to click on “Buy.” You don’t just see your own friends. You see these other people who are selected because the algorithm thinks they’ll get you. They might look a little richer, a little thinner, a little cuter, something like that. The algorithm doesn’t even know. It just knows that these images get you. Even in this video right now, there are algorithms snatching your data with a plan to trick you in the future. So look, here’s the thing. This whole shadow economy that runs our world now and concentrates all the wealth and reduces your future would not be possible without the data that’s coming from you and your friends. You are the fuel for it. You’re giving away all your data for free. You don’t know what data’s been taken from you. You don’t know how it’s ultimately used. You don’t have any opportunity to take pride in it. You don’t have any opportunity to make it better. To you, it’s a mystery, so you pretend it’s nothing. But it isn’t nothing. When you realize that data is the new oil, when you realize that this thing being taken from you that you don’t think about is the future economic value, is your future economic value, it’s your future economic power. The biggest internet I.P.O. ever. —values the company at more than $31 bill— —multibillionaire today. All of a sudden, I hope you can see you’re giving away everything in exchange for almost nothing. We need to affirmatively, positively invent a different system that doesn’t screw everybody up in the first place. And you know what? I think we have a solution. I think we have charted a way out of this mess. And I really can’t wait to tell you about it.