[APPLAUSE]
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: Thank you.
We live in astounding times.
Today is an astonishing day.
Well, it certainly is for me.
50 years ago, or to
be absolutely precise,
50 years and 18
months ago, which
doesn't seem very long as far
as I'm concerned, I had heard--
I was working for the
young BBC television.
And I had heard that there
was a huge lizard, the biggest
lizard in the world, which
lived in a remote island called
Komodo that was somewhere
out in the Far East.
And as was the way those
days, I found a companion,
and I said, "why don't we
go and try and find it."
Just as sort of carelessly, and
foolishly, and impractically
as that.
So he and I set off for Java.
And we got to Java, and of
course it was a magical place.
It was the mystic East.
It was extraordinary to me.
I had no idea that there were
people who lived like that.
When I was there,
I tried to find out
about this so-called Komodo
dragon, this giant lizard.
Nobody in Java had heard of it.
We were incredibly
inept, I must say.
But one way or another
we got to Komodo.
It took us 2 and 1/2 months.
We were standing
on a coral reef.
We had a little do with pirates.
We had quite a time.
It was a lot of fun.
And at last we got what
were the first television
photocast, television film, of
a creature the Komodo dragon.
Everybody knows the
Komodo dragon now,
but then it was unique.
It was a great adventure.
And then within a few years,
I think one of the key changes
was that airline, jet
air travel, came in.
And it was possible
to travel around
the world with some degree
of consistency and certainty.
And so we started
making different kinds
of television programs,
which enabled us to take
a much wider view of the world.
And then in the '60s, the
Americans went to the moon,
and we saw that
mind changing image
of that little blue planet.
It's a cliche now, but then
it really meant something.
Then you suddenly realized
for the first time
that the world wasn't
just a bright light where
you were, and sort of going
out into dimness, and romance,
and the unknown.
The world was one, and you were
a citizen of this one planet.
And soon after that, with
the satellite technology
we started really
revolutionary changes, which
have led us to this moment.
I think this is
a defining moment
that suddenly all of us here
can see any part of the world.
Some in not too
great definition,
some in extraordinary
definition.
The world is no longer
a vague romantic place
as it was 50 years ago.
The world, we are
all citizens of it
and know it in intimate detail.
And now comes the
important thing.
We not only now know it.
We are now able to take
responsibility for it.
All of us.
And that's a crucial
change in the perception
of the world's population
of this tiny planet
on which we live.
Television has been making
films about the natural world
for a long time,
and it was a vision
of one man who was head
of the BBC's unit called
Chris Parsons, who realized
that television worldwide--
this country, United
States, Australia--
had been accumulating
visions, great insights
of the natural world.
And he thought,
surely there ought
to be somewhere where these
things were coordinated,
where the best was sifted
out and put together,
where the details, the recording
of the sounds, the calls,
these things made,
could be stored,
where the facts could be put
together so that anybody could
get in touch with
this Central Library
and discover about
the world's wildlife.
Vividly, with wonderful
photographs, some still,
some moving, and with sound
recording, and with the facts.
And that became this
institution, Wild Screens
Archive.
And today it's the bringing
together of those two things.
This extraordinary
vision which we now
get from the
satellite which Google
has made available to everybody.
Google has come together
with Wild Screen, which
has this unique distillation of
the images of the natural world
so that any one of us can go to
a particular area on the globe.
What lives there?
Any one of us could
be concerned about
whether it's the Komodo
dragon, or a bird of paradise,
or whatever, and look it up,
and find exactly on the map
where it is.
Now the notion that the
world was mysterious
was actually a romantic one
and an entertaining one.
That has gone.
But I put it to you
that it has been
replaced with something much,
much more valuable, which
is knowledge.
And with knowledge comes
responsibility and also
the ability to do things, and
to take decisions, and to be
aware of what is happening.
Google can take you
to parts of the world
where you can actually
see a flock of flamingos
and know whether it's there,
or whether it's on the way out.
Google can look at
the Amazon rainforest
and see whether, in fact, so
you can see whether in fact it
is being destroyed.
We don't have to rely on the
soft words and deceiving words,
necessarily, of politicians.
We can see.
This is a huge and
valuable weapon
that has been put in our hands.
Put in the hands of
anybody and everybody
who cares about the future of
this greatly imperiled world.
In particular, the
natural part of it.
So for me, this is
an extraordinary day,
a day when I look
back on 50 years
to that extraordinary time when
we lived in just a little patch
and just had no idea what on
elsewhere, to becoming aware.
I think it's cause
for huge optimism,
and I'm thrilled to be here
at this particular moment
when Google and Wild Screen
Archive come together
to put a weapon of unparalleled
value in the hands of all of us
who care about
the natural world.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
