Authors: Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen
Title: “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People,
Nations, and Business”
Publication: New York, 2013: Knopf; ISBN 978-0-3070995713-9;
314 pages, hardcover, indexed, 7 chapters, with Introduction and Conclusion
First, a note the authors: Eric Schmidt is executive
chairman of Google, which actually owns part of the copyright according to the
inside cover. Jared Cohen directs Google
Ideas and has considerable experience with foreign affairs, including work for
the National Counterterrorism Center in northern Virginia and has lived and
reported from hot zones overseas. (He paid his dues the same way Anderson
Cooper did as a young adult.) .
The book establishes the premise that the “Internet revolution”
(no, Al Gore didn’t invent it) has raise d the ante for individual freedom,
both in terms of opportunities (especially for persons and small businesses,
companies or countries) and in risks.
The book comprises seven long chapters, about “Our Future Selves”, “Identity, Citizenship
and Reporting”, “States” (i.e. sovereign countries), “Revolution”, “Terrorism”,
“Combat, Conflict, Intervention”, “Reconstruction”. The book tends to make
closely related points across the chapters, and it may have been difficult for
the authors to organize the details of the material without risking
repetition. I run into that myself with
my own book manuscripts – where best to make a certain critical point.
The idea that many people will own smartphones but not PC's, and use phones for everything but calling sometimes, somewhat characterizes the nature of progress, as Schmidt later told Fareed Zakaria.
The early portions of the book emphasize that the digital
revolution has changed “identity” forever. Digital life occurs in tandem with
real life. Parents now think about this
in choosing names for their children, wondering if unusual names will make them
stand out online, or whether a lower profile is safer. We’re more familiar with this problem as “online
reputation”, but the concept is evolving.
Privacy as we used to view it seems no longer possible. The book doesn’t say this directly, but it’s
clear that the implosion of the military “don’t ask don’t tell” policy for gays
in the military, partly founded on outdated ideas of “privacy” that had sounded
reasonable in 1993, is largely the
result of the Internet and social media.
(Mark Zuckerberg and Schmidt himself did more to make this happen than
did President Obama.)
Gradually, the book moves into the political stages. The enemies of freedom may be connected to
states or may not, creating a complex mix of dangers and possible
countermeasures. States can try to
restrict Internet access to their own people and to visitors by various licensure
systems, bur workarounds (like TOR) always develop. Imagination for what terrorists can try is
endless, but advances in law enforcement make apprehension more likely and
raise the risk. The book seems to have
been finished before the Boston Marathon incident. However, it’s clear that the perpetrators did
not envision how the omnipresence of cameras and “crowd sourcing” would lead to
their identification so quickly. It’s also apparent that the questions about “too
much information” – the ease with which criminals can use the Internet and
technology to plan attacks (now the 3-D printer enters the picture) is very
complex. It does raise questions about
the value of uninhibited plow of information.
The latest investigations even raise questions about just how much
religious and “jihadist” ideology,
spread online, motivated the brothers, or whether there were other more
disturbing personal factors.
The book makes the point that “revolution” is never easy,
and often replaces one totalitarian regime with another. At a certain personal level, revolution is
not easy to sustain, even in a digital world.
It requires personal and social motivation that transcends technology. The authors question whether there will be
many more “springs”.
The authors also discuss “reconstruction” after a
catastrophe, whether man-made or natural.
The digital world can become a tremendous ally for organizing rebuilding. But there are still social questions to be
answered, starting with the effectiveness of volunteerism the way it is often
organized now (bureaucratically). There
are good questions about individual readiness, such as the ability of
homeowners to house strangers from miles away if there is a huge
catastrophe. A local church here in
Arlington VA has spoken about this issue as “radical hospitality”.
The authors, while noting well the unprecedented opportunity
for self-publication and self-broadcast, don’t get into the downstream liability
issues as I think they could. These
include protection of minors, DMCA Safe
Harbor, Section 230, cyberbullying, piracy, copyright and patent trolls, the battles over SOPA and PIPA, and even the
possibility of frivolous (Aaron Swartz) or erroneous prosecution if one is
framed on the Internet.
They do discuss the potential scenarios for cyberwarfare and
cyberterrorism in some detail, and are somewhat hopeful that countermeasures
can keep up with them. But I think that
the authors could talk more about the physical threats, particularly from
electromagnetic pulse or even nature-driven geomagnetic storms. They do mention
radio frequency weapons as capable of undermining attempts to identify and
track people and entities, without enough clarity.
There is another YouTube video depicting the authors’ visit
to North Korea.
One could posit that there are other takes on the idea of "Revolution" that the authors don't consider, as in the notorious NBC television series.
Update: June 2
Julian Assange wrote a stinging op-ed about this book in the June 2 New York Times. It's titled "The Banality of 'Don;t Be Evil" and has link
here.
