[MUSIC]. I'd like to start this part of the lecture we were just talking about societal innovations and how society constrains innovation. And the perspective this week, is really the perspective of sociology and the anthropology. So, those are two sort of ways, the academic ways of looking, we'll understand how they think about this thing called innovation and how society behaves with respect to it. I like to think of this as how society projects its values. So, innovation is, in fact, a way that society projects its values. The way that we assert ourselves, the way that we intervene in the world, the way that we change the world in ways that actually are more in line with our values. But also it's how society protects its values. And so, how society says, you know, this witness thing is special to us and your innovation threatens that, so were not going to allow that to happen or, or going to ignore that thing, we're going to ban that thing, we're going to make it illegal for you to do that thing. And so, this is what we're interested in, how society puts it's values out in the world, but then also how society acts to protect those values. The three things we're going to look at, we're going to look at values and identity. And it's sort of the collective beliefs that the society holds. How it makes sense of those things, where identity comes from. We're going to talk about social control. Again, the guidance and the behavior and holding people accountable and how that works and also the history. Right? So what came before? What are the obligations that we incur because of what came before in the past. And so, this is the, few of things we really need to really think about and actually understand how is it that these three things can constrain innovation for us? Let's start with social values and personal identity. So, the collective belief in sense of self that we have these, you know, whether we're a part of something, whether we feel like we're a part of something, whether we stand apart from something. These things are all define with respect to society, right? There have to be other people around us in order to have these, these, like, sense of belonging or the sense of, of difference and, and separation from something else. And so, the social identity let's talk about this as who we are, you know, so though as a society, who are we? What do we aspire to? What do we feel like we hold dear? What are the things that are important to us as a society? Let me give you a little example here how we are together. So, when you get old, apparently you're supposed to go play a lot of Bingo. And so, we see in America, at least there's a and so this, this cultural understanding, I guess we're living at the understanding of this game Bingo. Bingo is a parlor game, it's a game of chance. You have a ball, a little thing and you pull a ball out. And, and basically have to put marks down on your card. And what happens is, is very different from this thing we call gambling, like going to a casino. In some ways, it's sort of the same but sort of it's not, actually, because gambling in casinos is a very different thing. Bingo is considered a a Gentil sport. It's, it's something that is, is acceptable, right? versus gambling, which is something that is actually looked down upon in our society. Well, interestingly, a company came up with a way to combine these two things. What they did was they actually built a dev-, device that has a Bingo math. So, in ter, in terms of regulation this thing runs like a Bingo machine. There's a server in the back room and what happens is the Bingo game is called and the results are paid up as a slot machine. So, if you get black out like in Bingo which is a certain score then you get three bars, bar seven, bar seven, bar seven and win the jackpot in that way. And so, what looks like you're playing a slot machine was actually a Bingo machine. Why would they do this? Well, it turns out that Bingo is regulated differently than slot machines. Slot machines are these very highly regulated gambling machines and there's they're, they're not called games of chance. They're, they have odds. They are, are very tightly regulated. There are only certain states in the United States where you're allowed to do this, a thing called playing gambling, do, do proper gambling. On the other hand, Bingo, Bingo you can do pretty much anywhere. And so, what happened was, a lot of these machines started appearing in places where people conventionally had not wanted gambling. They had not seen gambling. And so, when you go to the machine and say hey, this looks like the slot machine. They say no, it's just, it's just a Bingo machine. And so, in many municipalities, they had to begin to change the laws and really sort of crack down on this kind of, of subversion of the law that society says, you know, Bingo is not this. Bingo is this. Bingo is is this, is this kind of person, this nice person. This person not doing it for money. She's not trying to live off this. she's also not ruining her life or, or gambling away her life savings unlike people who place, spend time in places like this. And so, here a company has actually taken something that was a positive, that's positive value on Bingo, and changed it into something else. What's society's response to that? Well, society will kick back and say this is not us, this is not how we see ourselves. I'm going to return for a second to the human cloning example in the same way. And so Dr. Boisseliee thought for some reason this might be a good idea to clone a human. Why would you think that's a good idea? What do you think it is in in a person that would say, you know, I'm going to clone a human. In act that basically causes all the world to become, you know, revolted. Turn to revulsion and then sort of turn against you, ban what you're, doing, what you're trying to do. One thing she may have thought that it was a good idea is because of this guy. This is Rael. Rael is an interesting character. Back in the 70s, Rael's is a Frenchman. back in the 70s, Rael, was driving this car and he saw a light on the top of a volcano. And so, when you see a light on top of a volcano, normally you don't drive towards that. You drive the other way, right? because there's a light on top of the volcano. Maybe the volcano's exploding, maybe a meteor's hitting, whatever. But anyway, Rael went up to the mountain. And when he got up there, he said he saw the silver craft, and with the door down and out of the door came someone. And this was, who came out. this is actually not the real alien. This is the artist's rendering of the alien. But this alien being came out of the spaceship. It was a spaceship that came down and this alien being came out. And the alien being talked to him. And, and the alien being he calls him the designer. And the designer is basically an alien who had done some cloning and had put us here. We're actually humans on earth because we're the result of these cloning experiments or these cloning colonizations may, may call. I've not spent enough time in the, or understanding their religion to understand this. But basically, Rael founded a religion around this idea that these aliens came to him and talked to him about what it is that, the reason that humans are on earth. And it turns out that Dr. Boisselier, so this is Dr. Brigitte Boisselier is a bishop in his church. And so, as a bishop in this UFO religion, which is centered around cloning, of course, she's going to clone. That becomes the highest value, that becomes something that they want to do, that they think cloning's important because, you know, they were, were, we're here because of, of these clones of alien races. And so, she's going to help us get closer to that, that being by this thing called cloning a human. In fact, they were thinking about, at least there is some suspicion that they were going to clone Michael Jackson. And Michael Jackson was big in these supporter of this organization. And so, but they claim that, well they won't give you a lot of information about whether, in fact, they're going to try to clone Michael Jackson or not. So, the Dr. Boisselier claimed the birth of a first cloned human? Why? Well, because it was central to her society's values. So, she was outside of the dominant society. They have a cult like organization. she's a high member, a high priest in that, in that cult. And so, this idea of cloning was central to her values even though she wasn't looking around and sort of seeing what was going on around outside of the dominant societies Society's values. And so again, these values are driving this behavior at the same time, it's driving her behavior from the inside where society on the outside is pushing back saying that's not okay.
