Some illuminating books already have been written about Google's catalytic
role in a technological upheaval that is redefining the way people work, play,
learn, shop and communicate.
Until now, though, there hasn't been a book providing an unfiltered look
from inside Google's brain trust.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who spent a decade as the company's
CEO, shares his visions of digitally driven change and of a radically different
future in "The New Digital Age," a book that goes on sale Tuesday.
It's a technology treatise that Schmidt wrote with another ruminator, Jared
Cohen, a former State Department adviser who now runs Google Ideas, the Internet
company's version of a think tank.
The book is an exercise in "brainstorming the future," as Schmidt put it in
a recent post on Twitter — just one example of a cultural phenomenon that didn't
exist a decade ago.
The ability for anyone with an Internet-connected device to broadcast
revelatory information and video is one of the reasons why Schmidt and Cohen
wrote the book. The two met in Baghdad in 2009 and were both struck by how
Iraqis were finding resourceful ways to use Internet services to improve their
lives, despite war-zone conditions.
They decided it was time to delve into how the Internet and mobile devices
are empowering people, roiling autocratic governments and forcing
long-established companies to make dramatic changes.
The three years they spent researching the book took them around the world,
including North Korea in January over the objections of the U.S. State
Department. They interviewed an eclectic group that included former Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, Mexican mogul Carlos Slim Helu, WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange and the former prime ministers of Mongolia and Pakistan. They also drew
on the insights of a long list of Google employees, including co-founders Larry
Page and Sergey Brin.
The resulting book is an exploration into the opportunities and challenges
that lie ahead as the lines blur between the physical world around us and the
virtual realm of the Internet. Schmidt and Cohen also examine the loss of
personal privacy as prominent companies such as Google and lesser-known data
warehouses such as Acxiom compile digital dossiers about our electronic
interactions on computers, smartphones and at check-out stands.
"This will be the first generation of humans to have an indelible record,"
Schmidt and Cohen predict.
To minimize the chances of youthful indiscretions stamping children with
"digital scarlet letters" that they carry for years, online privacy education
will become just as important — if not more so — than sex education, according
to Schmidt and Cohen. They argue parents should consider having a "privacy talk"
with their kids well before they become curious about sex.
Not surprisingly, the book doesn't dwell on Google's own practices,
including privacy lapses that have gotten the company in trouble with regulators
around the world.
Among other things, Google has exposed the contact lists of its email users
while trying to build a now-defunct social network called Buzz. It scooped up
people's passwords and other sensitive information from unsecured Wi-Fi
networks. Last year, Google was caught circumventing privacy controls on Safari
Web browsers, resulting in a record $22.5 million fine by the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission. European regulators have a broad investigation open.
Google apologized for those incidents without acknowledging wrongdoing.
Schmidt and Cohen suggest that is an inevitable part of digital life.
"The possibility that one's personal content will be published and become
known one day — either by mistake or through criminal interference — will always
exist," they write.
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