The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business
In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the future: a world where everyone is connected—a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and to harness.
Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley’s great leaders, having taken Google from a small startup to one of the world’s most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former
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Sophistry by Authors That Know Better -,
Authors Schmidt and Cohen have outstanding backgrounds that would help produce an very insightful and detailed book. Instead, we get non-stop pros and cons, and not even very insightful ones. It’s basically a summary of lots of bits and pieces that most readers are probably already familiar with – eg. background information about Moore’s Law, the rising number of people using the Internet and mobile phones, and how photonics is doubling the data coming out of fiber-optic cables every nine months, but no insight as to when Cox Communications (my local source of Internet frustration) and others will replace cable Internet with fiber-optics.
Continuing, we get one small example of some third-world residents are using cell-phones to improve profits (fishermen in the Congo), a quick reference to Xbox 360 capabilities, extremely superficial comments about the future of robots, Khan Academy, and 3D-printers, but nothing about the revolutionary potential for MOOCs in our colleges and universities, or the obvious limitations of 3D-printers (materials used, size, speed).
Then there’s babbling about improved physician-patient feedback for the health care sector – a tiring topic because that’s the least of the problems in American health care. The #1 problem in American health care is extremely high costs caused by lack of government regulation, thereby allowing providers to take advantage of the extremely inelastic demand for health care and bleed patients and payers to the point where we spend far more than every other nation – 18% of GDP, vs. 8% for Taiwan and Japan, 4% for Singapore.
Citizen participation in government is another topic they excite over – except Gavin Newsom already beat that topic to death while also ignoring the obvious data showing people just aren’t interested in doing so. Facebooking with friends is much more fun. (We can’t even get half the population to take a few minutes and vote using painless absentee ballots.) Then there’s an allusion to new technology bringing more jobs – except it hasn’t to date, compared to the jobs lost to new technology. (The authors should have read Martin Ford’s ‘The Lights in the Tunnel,’ written four years ago.)
Then there’s their seeing terrorists as becoming ‘far more vulnerable than they are today.’ Seems I just read something about the Boston Marathon terrorists using the Internet to become sold on jihad, and to learn how to make their bombs (they were caught primarily because of a local department store security camera); bin Laden learned years ago to cast off his satellite phone. Meanwhile, governments have learned to respond to Arab Spring-like groups by infiltrating groups and monitoring sites and Twitter feeds.
Finally, Schmidt pontificates and pumps his chest over China – seeing its imminent collapse thanks to an aroused public using the Internet and cell phones. Get in line Mr. Schmidt – you’re about #101,000 to make that call, and it hasn’t happened yet.
Bottom-Line: Schmidt and Cohen did themselves and the public no good with this book.
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|Reckless Reduction of Complexity and Humanity? see pg. 19 and pg. 66,
As an Afghan war veteran and an historian of technology, I found this book both important and valuable, but also disturbing in places.
Important and valuable for one overriding reason: for alerting a mass readership of the current and accelerating social-economic-military-political disruptions arising from the expansion of the internet.
Disturbing: for bias and the dangerous reduction of complexity that I found in the book, in several key instances. One example of this illustrates my concerns: see discussion of “More Innovation, More Opportunity”, starting page 18 and the key sentence, pg 19, two lines from bottom of the page. (I will discuss pg 66 and the claim that technology is neutral in the “PS” section, at bottom of page)
The issue in these two pages (18-19) was that of globalized competition for jobs, wherein borders and community boundaries fall in the face of internet outsourcing of jobs. Schmidt and Cohen celebrate that workers in Orange County must compete with workers in Uruguay….. and this is a good thing, they assert. But they oversimplify: what is the cost of living for a working family in Orange County compared to an overseas location? What are the working conditions of any number of overseas labor markets.
But the most striking case of bias and simplication(or even ‘objectifying’?) the working humans is this key sentence, near bottom of page 19:
“Globalization’s critics will decry this erosion of local monopolies, but it should be embraced, because this is how our socieities will move forward and continue to innovate.”
So, where are the problems? Look closely to the subtle bias in this sentence, at least two instances, that can slip into the reader’s subconcious. Exhibit one: to use the word “MONOPOLIES” when referring to local workers is a needlessly perjorative phrase, especially in the US. Are all local workers monopolies? For example, is a locally owned franchise insurance agent, who pre-internet typically would meet his clients ‘face to face’, is he/she a local monopolist? Does it improve our society when this local worker is undercut by an internet insurance wholesaler from, say, Mumbai? Exhibit Two: doesn’t this sentence need clarification and a nod toward complexity when the authors assert this borderless competition is good, that “this is how our societies move forward”? Let us stop and think about this phrase…what society? the local society which has now lost the insurance agent’s job? What about the EXTERNALITIES working here, for example, what if the insurance agent was also the coach for the Little League Team? Is the internet insurance wholesaler in Mumbai flying into Orange County to coach the team? How does society capture these exerternalities, by taxing internet commerce, perhaps?
We need our corporate leaders (Schmidt and Cohen) to be a bit more fair on these topics, to avoid imbedding loaded language and phrases and simplifications in such an important work.
But in the end… we all should read this, with a CRITICAL EYE. It is our society, our local society, that is in being “reshaped”.
PS: I have received a surprising number of direct emails or responses to my review. Some asking for greater expansion on my thoughts. So, here they are. I mention my experience both in Afghanistan and as an historian of technology. Why? Part of my job in Afghanistan was helping to put back together a society that was ‘reshaped’ too quickly, in Afghanistan’s case, by war. I realize the difficulty of putting societies back together after they are disrupted by war, OR technology. The reference to historian? I served many years in technical fields, from nuclear reactors to networks, and then was given the gift of years of study and reflection, leading to an advanced degree in history of technology. Such years of study help me to see this New Digital Age through a lens of long term, socio-technical change. There is an argument to not stray to far from our natural, human, physical roots… and I believe the debate over that distance we can safely move beyond the ‘natural’ may be the debate of our time. (for more, see naturalworldwideweb.com)
A question asked: why did I mention in the title that certain parts of this book could be a recklessness tied to reductionism. Isn’t reductionism just a form of simplification? Isn’t that what authors often must do? True…. but for authors of such stature, on such an important issue, over simplification when presented to a mass audience can, in my mind, be a form or recklessness (and, I grant, this may be the result of page counts and the deadlines, editorial pressures which Eric Schmidt missed completely).
But let me show again another example of this Reductionism? See Page 66… this might be the more significant example. Here the authors assert that “The central truth of the technology industry–that technology is neutral but…
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|Grim future, not as deep as expected,
The names of the authors carry a certain amount of weight and I dove into the book having certain expectations.
The book did not disappoint, however it was also not extremely WOW-ing as well. Because of how new the publication is, many things are extremely relevant and at the same time, it seems awfully grim.
This book will only serve to be a passing footnote discussing technology and its implications. Personally I would stick with Toffler’s texts.
If you have some time to spare, this text is interesting but not worth the money. Just pick it up from the local library.
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|Cool watch with one very weird flaw,
What attracted me to the watch was the cool, minimalist design. It’s a solid color, it’s a stark, clean face. Minimal, clean design.
So why the hell are the words “LED WATCH” printed on the face of the watch?
I KNOW it’s a watch. It’s on my wrist. Everyone ELSE knows it’s a watch, because I’m checking the time with it. IT DOES NOT NEED A LABEL!
I figured that was just a sticker that I could peel off, but NO, it’s printed UNDER the glass, making it impossible to remove. So stupid.
Fits well, nice and big, clean design with delightful retro 80′s Red LED’s that are lit up when you press the button. Lucky you, you’ll never be asked what it is because the words LED WATCH are printed right on the face and you’re NEVER getting them off.
Still, for the price, an excellent value. A cool watch marred by one absolutely terrible design choice.
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|Mirror watch,
It’s a nice watch for people who like to check their teeth after eating or that make-up is in place. I love it!
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|great watch,
this is a great looking watch for casual styles but the mirror break easily if you drop it on the floor.
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