The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business

by Eric Schmidt ( AI LI KE SHI MI TE ) . Jared Cohen ( JIA LI DE KE EN )

In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the a world where everyone is connected--a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and harness.Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley's great leaders, having taken Google from a small start-up to one of the world's most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to both secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton; he was instrumental in helping shape the way the U.S. government thinks about technology. Schmidt and Cohen have traveled the world--from the hot spots of the Middle East and Africa to the more stable European and Asian nations--meeting with world leaders, entrepreneurs, and activists to see and hear firsthand about the challenges they face. With the authors' combined knowledge and on-the-ground experiences, they are uniquely positioned to take on some of the toughest questions about our Who will be more powerful in the future, the citizen or the state? Will technology make terrorism easier or harder to carry out? What is the relationship between privacy and security, and how much will we have to give up to be part of the new digital age? How will war, diplomacy, and revolution change when everyone is connected, and how can we tip the balance in a beneficial way? When broken societies are rebuilt, what will they be able to do with technology?In this groundbreaking book, Schmidt and Cohen combine observations about the physical world with their insights into our digital future to outline in great detail and scope all the promise and peril awaiting us in the coming decades. At once pragmatic and inspirational--and wholly fascinating--this is a forward-thinking account of where our world is headed and what this means for people, states, nations, and businesses.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Technology, Science, Economics, Politics, Internet

Paperback

First published April 25, 2013

Reviews

[Don Tapscott]

Nothing has changed our lives more than the digital revolution.

And while countless books have been written on the subject, none has created such buzz as the recently released The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. Justly so; this is for your must-read list.

Schmidt is the chairman of Google and its former CEO. He is credited with building one of the most important companies in history. Cohen is director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Time magazine recently chose him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The book takes an old idea — that there are both digital and physical worlds — and extends it, arguing that today nothing less than two civilizations have arrived. One developed over thousands of years and the other is in its infancy. One is a world of old cultures, nation states, governments, institutions, power structures and laws. The other is a dynamic, ungoverned, even anarchistic world where boundaries are porous, rules are unclear and power is resilient and distributed. While these two coexist, each restraining the negative aspects of the other, they increasingly come into conflict.

In the next 10 years, the number of Internet users will grow from two billion to seven billion. We should prepare for massive disruption.

As Google executives, it would surely cause them and the company grief to take positions on all the controversial issues involved. So the authors have chosen to predict the future rather than polemicizing about how to achieve it. The upshot is a book packed with predictions on issues such as the future of states, revolution, terrorism, conflict, combat, citizenship and identity.

Familiar concepts and language of the old civilization are extrapolated to the new — producing fresh and often startling concepts that will cause the most diehard digerati to reflect deeply, yet will still be accessible to anyone who cares about the future.
It is a dizzying and disturbing future. Get ready for:

- Virtual honour killings. Identity, a citizen’s most valuable asset, will exist primarily online. In deeply conservative societies where social shame can be devastating, we could see a kind of “virtual honour killing” — dedicated efforts to ruin a person’s online identity, with material real or fabricated. In some cultures this might lead a young woman’s family to kill her. Already teenage girls in North America have committed suicide after being smeared by their peers online.

- Balkanization. Imagine if a country or even a group of deeply religious Sunni-majority countries — say Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria and Mauritania — decided to build a “Sunni web.” While still part of the larger Internet, it would become the main source of information, news, history and activity for citizens living in these countries. Their web would be constrained and limited to a narrow point of view.

- Internet asylum seekers. A dissident who can’t live freely under one country’s autocratic Internet and is refused access to other states’ Internets will choose to seek physical asylum in another country to gain a virtually unimpeded freedom on its Internet.

- Virtual sovereignty and statehood. Hounded in both the physical and virtual worlds, groups that lack formal statehood may choose to emulate it online. This opportunity to establish sovereignty virtually may well be a meaningful step to actual statehood. The Kurdish populations in Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq might build a Kurdish web as a way to carve out a sort of virtual independence.

- Virtual multilateralism. Authoritarian states like Belarus, Eritrea, Zimbabwe and North Korea — outcasts all — would benefit from by joining an autocratic cyber-union, where censorship, monitoring strategies and technologies could be shared.

- A new data permanence. What is tweeted, blogged or written on someone’s Facebook wall can never fully be stricken. This data permanence is an intractable challenge, but the type of political system and level of government control will determine its impact. In an open democracy, it will be a free-for-all in the short term.

- Cyber terrorism and war. Terrorist groups and states will make use of cyber-war tactics, though they will focus on information-gathering rather than outright destruction. Stealing trade secrets, accessing classified information, infiltrating government systems, disseminating misinformation — traditional intelligence agency ploys — will make up the bulk of cyber attacks between states.

Online vigilantism. We will see online mobs seeking individuals by sharing photos and descriptions of criminal or marginal behaviour, just as some newspapers wrongly pointed the finger at innocent bystanders in a frenzied quest to be the first to identify the Boston Marathon bombers.

- A “digital caste system” where “people’s experience will be greatly determined by where they fall in the structure.” The tiny minority at the top will be largely insulated from the downside of technology by their wealth or location. The two billion already connected are the world’s middle class. The next five billion will receive the greatest benefits and the worst drawbacks.

The book will stimulate debate, which is good.

Consider the issue of privacy. The authors fiercely defend privacy as a human right, but are pessimistic that it can be maintained. Among the reasons is that political hawks wait for terrifying incidents, such as the Boston Marathon bombs, to ratchet up their demands for cyber oversight. This legitimizes activities such as data mining, which sifts through our digital bread crumbs — phone calls, Internet browsing history, Google searches, bank records, credit card purchases and medical records — to inspect and predict our behaviour. Apple admitted this week that it stores Siri searches for two years. Google does the same.

The irresistible benefits of the virtual world are such that we voluntarily relinquish things we value in the physical world, like privacy, personal information and even security. Some might choose to live “off the cyber grid,” boycott the digital world, and live a quiet and simple life. Governments will soon view such behaviour as suspicious, and will build registries of citizens who behave so oddly. Your non-cyber behaviour will attract cyber scrutiny.

To be sure, we’re all giving away more information than we have in the past and governments and corporations everywhere are motivated to collect and exploit as much data as they can. But there are workable policies and approaches that individuals and institutions can take to defend this basic right. I wish the authors had talked to Ontario’s privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, to learn about her Privacy by Design concept, which has attracted many supporters.

It argues that privacy cannot be assured solely by compliance with laws; that it is the responsibility of every organization to make it its default modus operandi. The concept argues for a set of principles that can enable individuals to defend privacy and control over their personal information, help companies gain a sustainable competitive advantage and ensure that governments don’t lose trust. Rather than predicting a glum future, why not advocate for an approach that could achieve a different one?

The book also discusses copyright and piracy as if the intellectual property laws of the physical world are completely sensible and automatically applicable to the new world. Rather than making the case to completely revamp our laws, which I think is required, the authors side with the corporations and governments that demonize our music-downloading children as pirates. Since Canada didn’t fully adopt the flawed World Intellectual Property Organization’s 1996 treaty, Canada is “a haven for Internet piracy.”

A book addressing foreign affairs seems incomplete without a chapter on global co-operation, problem solving and governance. It’s a perfect arena for the authors to develop their core thesis. The physical world has a set of global institutions that came out of the Bretton Woods agreements after the Second World War — the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN and others, culminating in the G8 and G20. These institutions are increasingly ineffective. Contrast these to the new multi-stakeholder networks based on the Internet, where tens of millions of people are co-operating to solve problems in new ways.

Schmidt and Cohen are hopeful. “We believe the vast majority of the world will be net beneficiaries of connectivity, experiencing greater efficiency and opportunities and an improved quality of life.” They provide ample evidence that the arc of history is a positive one and toward freedom. “In the long run the presence of communications technologies will chip away at the most autocratic governments . . . it’s no coincidence that today’s autocracies are the least connected societies in the world.”

I’m hopeful, too. But I must confess after reading this disturbing book I’m struck anew by the enormity of the challenge to ensure that this smaller world our children inherit is a better one.

[Matt Heavner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slightly interesting and entertainment, but this felt like a big missed opportunity on the authors' part. (Maybe they had an algorithm write it?). This was a common recipe repeated over and over -- applied 80% to geopolitics and 15% lip service to business and 5% other. The recipe: start with a strong serving of techno-utopia, spin, counter-balance with a strong dash of pro/con analysis, repeat an idea or two, move on. For a "digital age" there was very minimal education -- a mention of Kahn Academy, some lip service to "education apps to help reconstruct/rehab former soldiers" in the last chapter -- I don't remember any look at MOOCs or other major educational trends. Also, this seemed to be "how will technology modify the current geopolitics" The long discussion of "how will people trust companies with their personal data" went to: some companies will be better, some will be worse. The customer will have to trust us.

Some generally interesting themes explored, but no new insight for anyone who is interested in these things. As I began this review, it felt like a missed opportunity.

[David Dinaburg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can live with top ten lists and online puffery touting the grandiosity of your regional cuisine—they’re obvious click-bait, simple to avoid. In the decades after the Rovian base-revving false dichotomy—“With us or against us”—it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between legitimate discord with popular sentiment and opportunistic nose-tweaking in a “Controversial Opinion Piece.” No, the real scourge of the internet is the insidious self-discovery examination essay. Cobbled together from bits and pieces of all the most appealing and least substantial internet dreck, a good self-discovery piece will leave its reader feeling certain it applies to them and that they—amongst the hundreds of thousands reading and forwarding it—are particularly special. Just such an article from the Huffington Post recently made the social media rounds—“Signs that you might be an introvert." It contained a whirlwind of the most benign character traits coupled with vaguely complementary societal cues: “Do you have a penchant for philosophical conversations and a love of thought-provoking books and movies?”; “Introverts observe and take in a lot of information, and they think before they speak, leading them to appear wise to others.”

It’s the online journalism equivalent of a palm reading; print enough mild flattery and genteel pleasantries and some portion of your target audience is going to jump on it. “Why yes, I do tend to notice more than others! What a great article, this is so me.” “When describing the way that introverts think, Jung explained that they're more interested in ideas and the big picture rather than facts and details. Of course, many introverts excel in detail-oriented tasks—but they often have a mind for more abstract concepts as well.” Just in case you’re detail-oriented. Or not. One way or another, this article is going to cover you. Unless you’re detail-oriented enough to notice that calling “introverts” “abstract big-picture-thinkers” but with enough breathing room to allow for excellence in “detail-oriented tasks” paints such a broad swath of inclusionary blather as to be meaningless. Are you good at anything and desperately seeking consolation for occasionally feeling uncomfortable? You might just be an introvert!

So perhaps The New Digital Age deserves credit for extracting and presenting the very essence of its subject matter; an indulgent, optimistic catch-all for a possible future direction for the Internet. Reflecting the brightest hopes of those reading with nary a smudge to be found, The New Digital Age is an infomercial for the glory of the inevitable digital utopia:

Haircuts will finally be automated and machine-precise. And cell phones, tablets and laptops will have wireless recharging capabilities, rendering the need to fiddle with charging cables an obsolete nuisance.

Those pesky haircuts. I can already see the fumblings of a non-union actor mashing together some cables in a hopeless, tangled mess. I couldn’t imagine anything more antiseptic and bland than a machine-encoded “perfect” haircut—if you want to try it now, go get yourself a Flowbee (cutting-edge 1988 technology) and then apologize to your barber when he or she has to fix what the robot did.

Perhaps you’re interested in how technology can make your life easier outside of machine-precise haircuts. All that time not at the salon gives you more time to connect to things that really matter:

By relying on integrated systems, which will encompass both the professional and the personal sides of our lives, we’ll be able to use our time more effectively each day—whether that means having the time to have a “deep think,” spending more time preparing for an important presentation or guaranteeing that a parent can attend his or her child’s soccer game without distraction.

Or maybe you’d like technology to keep you available all the time so you never disconnect from the things that really matter:

In the West, a mother could take a break from watching her child’s soccer game to explore a live global map (interactive and constantly updated) on her iPad, displaying who needs what and where. She would be able to independently decide whom to fund on the basis of individuals’ stories or perceived need levels.

This is the same sort of unreflective double-speak and optimistic pandering that the “Introvert” article contained; a sense that—no matter how incompatible some concepts may be—there is a way to flatten out the definitions to encompass whatever baggage a reader carris with them. Technology allows for no distraction at the soccer game; unless there is a single person anywhere on the globe that might need something that can be crowd-funded. If this were an independent film, the camera would pan down to the mother’s iPad screen so the audience can read a display; a pixelated version of her kid during his soccer game and the “need” field would read “Little Billy: PARENTAL ATTENTION.”

But such is life in The New Digital Age; what one hand giveth:

Just imagine the implications of these burgeoning mobile or tablet-based learning platforms for a country like Afghanistan, which has one of the lowest rates of literacy in the world….students stuck in school systems that teach narrow curriculums or only rote memorization will have access to a virtual world that encourages independent exploration and critical thinking.

The other hand taketh away:

It is, after all, much easier to blame a single product or company for a particularly evil application of technology than to acknowledge the limitations of personal responsibility...People have a responsibility as consumers and individuals to read a company’s policies and positions on privacy and security before they willingly share information.

If you want technology to be the driving force emancipating the downtrodden and shattering the shackles of ignorance, it merits explanation why the onus is on the end user to start out as a sophisticated consumer on par with a multinational conglomerate. But we never get any more discussion about how to square the idea that technology can free the teeming masses from their ignorance but only after the “I accept” button has been clicked. It smacks vaguely of colonial imperialism or noblesse oblige; a Digital Man’s Burden. A digression—what fascinating data-scraping algorithms might distinguish between the EULA-proof proto-technological naïf and the tech-savvy wunderkind—never materializes. Or even recognition that to begin distinguishing between the layman and the laity, data-scraping would have to pick apart personal information. No machine solutions can “assist” without first accessing information; so how then, can machine solutions be the answer to how and what information to share?

People will have access to ubiquitous wireless Internet networks that are many times cheaper than they are now. We’ll be more efficient, more productive and more creative.

Oh. Well that clears it right up. Everything will be better, and the Oxford comma will be forgotten. Got it.

I’m being flippant. And it’s not completely fair to cherry-pick two sections from the same chapter of the same book and juxtapose them for my own amusement, simply because they are logically incompatible and/or laden with parent-child soccer imagery. “Why yes, I can see myself sitting my child’s sporting event; this book really speaks to me!” Whatever. If you picked The New Digital Age up, you knew it was speculative. C’mon. Of course it is, it’s a forward-facing technologist’s manifesto by major corpo-politico field leaders.

And there are some cool tidbits and neat theories, which are sometimes palatably presented as theories and not definitive proclamations from the nascent Gootopia (it is not easy to portmanteau “Google” and “utopia.” By design, I assume).

Sometimes programs to secure sensitive information rely on 10 million lines of code while attackers can penetrate them with only 125 lines. “What we observed in cybersecurity,” Regina Dugan, a senior vice-president at Google and former director of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), said, “is that we needed to create the equivalent of an adaptive immune system in computer security architecture.” Computers can continue to look and operate in similar ways, but there will have to be unique differences among them developed over time to protect and differentiate each system. What that means is that an adversary now has to write one hundred and twenty-five lines of code against millions of computers—that’s how you shift the asymmetry.”

That’s cool. Let’s talk about how that’s going to happen! Yeah, Google, spill it about the histamine-blocking compu-bio-net servers that you’ve got cooking!

Someone found guilty of insider trading could be temporarily barred from all forms of e-commerce: no trading, online banking or buying things on the Internet. Or someone subjected to a restraining order would be restricted from visiting the social-networking profiles of the targeted person and his or her friends, or even searching for his or her name online.

Oh, okay, some fresh speculation instead. I guess we’ve moved past that cool stuff and will never hear about it again. But let’s really dig into the quagmire you’ve shoved the judicial system into with your offhanded remark; no more buying my vitamins or groceries or video games online because I broke SEC regulations?

Consider the impact of basic mobile phones for a group of Congolese fisherwomen today. Whereas they used to bring their daily catch to the market and watch it slowly spoil as the day progressed, now they keep it on the line, in the river, and wait for calls from customers. Once an order is placed, a fish is brought out of the water and prepared for the buyer. There is no need for an expensive refrigerator, no need for someone to guard it at night, no danger of spoiled fish losing their value (or poisoning customers), and there is no unnecessary overfishing.

I hope you’re not in the Congo, inside traders, because you sure aren’t getting fish without some e-commerce. And that’s contemporary; in The New Digital Age I have been led to believe that the future will be all online, all the time. Banning all e-commerce in the future sounds like a death sentence. What cruel barbarism the future brings! But I don’t make the speculative, ill-planned rules, I just try to, you know, think them through.

Speaking of the barren wasteland that digitalism is turning the Congolese markets into, what happens to the joy of browsing and perusing when even physical transactions have been reduced to the abstract e-commerce “on demand” style of procurement? This is the type of baseless speculative futurism of which I could use more. Perhaps the real fish stay in the river but the market stall is brimming with holographic representations, complete with some fake aromas modern florists and the Subway Sandwich franchise use to simulate the scents of heady bouquets and heavy bread loafs, respectively. “To smell this fish, please click “I accept.” By accepting, you have given permission for all data about your fish-selecting to be entered into a database so that in the future, only the fish we think you might enjoy will be presented. Unless one of those Congolese fisherwomen pay us a small advertising fee; then we’ll cram whatever shit she dredges out of the lake into your face first. Algorithms!” I can’t imagine a better future.

Look, I try to write serious reviews, I really do. But I have a hard time taking anything so pie-in-the-sky seriously. I mean, the GUI designers I know want to punch whatever art department was responsible for Minority Report and its cool looking—but functionally absurd—spawn of motion-controlled interface abominations. The practical and the actual rarely overlap; keyboard commands and shortcuts are so much faster than mouse-driven interfaces, but who’s going to learn keyboard commands? The only context I've even heard that “power users” spurn the mouse was during a discussion of the NCIS set design; the dorky science girl's computer didn’t have a mouse in at least one scene. There are now about 600,000 words on the internet dedicated to defending why that’s not a flaw but an intentional piece of visual character development: she’s a power user; the computer mouse is for babies; maybe she’s running Unix; and so on.

I’m not saying there’s no place for futurism; just don’t wave a crystal ball around my face and tell me you’re magical. Don’t try to trick me into thinking being an introvert is a cool thing because all the negatives normally associated with that personality type are either inapplicable in my case or are secretly positives.

And don’t tell me you know where the future is headed. Even if you were the CEO of Google.

When formulating policies, technology companies will, like governments, increasingly have to factor in all sorts of domestic and international dynamics, such as the political risk environment, diplomatic relationships between states, and the rules that govern citizens’ lives. The central truth of the technology industry—that technology is neutral but people are not—will periodically be lost amid all the noise. But our collective progress as citizens in the digital age will hinge on our not forgetting it.

Foreboding. And vague. Not vague in the lyrical “Technology is neither good nor evil; nor is it neutral,” bon mot from Dr. Kranzberg. It’s just...what is this saying? Tech companies have a lot of stuff to deal with...so, uh…did anyone in the audience recently lose someone whose name starts with an “S”?

[Jeremy Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had an initial assumption that a book about the future of digital technology by a former CEO of Google, that much of what would be discussed was how technology would improve the construct of the United States economy, specific innovations of web apps, mobile technologies, and a look inside more of Google's culture and the vision of the company. All three of these topics were wildly ignored and it would seem the co-author Jared Cohen actually had much of the focus on foreign impact of technology, specifically how to build up third-world and war-torn countries.

At the same time, the content is one big, dream session with Eric and Jared simply "guessing" what the future will look like in the future with technology and what they believe conflicts and restoration will look like in the future. The authors do not hold back, talking about how dictators and terrorists can use this technology as well as countries being able to spy on their citizens.

That being said, the two have an amazingly genius understanding of the future. Not only are they looking at how the world could look in the next 30 years, but how technology integrates into it, and how all of this will mesh together. Their thoughts are complex, if not completely speculative.

I am a bit lost into the purpose of this book as it is one big dream into the future while offering tomorrow's steps to get to the future. I give this a 3 out of 5 stars. Long and monotonous at times, but you cannot doubt the brilliance of these two men.

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tricky book to categorize and review, because it's not clear what The New Digital Age is supposed to be. I think I figured it out in the end, but that doesn't help too much.

The book seems to be a futures work, exploring what's coming next with technology. But it's also written by two people whose identities call that into question: Jared Cohen, the head of Google's Ideas lab (now "Jigsaw"), and Eric Schmidt, the head of Google (and now Alphabet). Cohen did some work in foreign policy circles, which leads the reader to view New Digital Age as about geopolitics, which is also is. Indeed, much of the book is about politics. Schmidt's co-authorship makes us consider this a kind of corporate manifesto or vision statement, which the book also is, although more quietly. That's quite a multi-headed beast to take home from the library (an institution pretty much invisible in the book).

So how does NDA (heh heh) work? Each chapter focuses on likely technological developments in the near and medium-term future within a specific domain: identity, journalism, international relations, revolutions, terrorism, war, and national reconstruction. The time scale is a bit hard to parse; I'm guessing somewhere between tomorrow and 2050. It's not a scholarly book, as it doesn't engage with debates and soft-pedals research. It's more like a big, rich op-ed, or series of blog posts.

There are some fun futures ideas, like parents picking childrens' names based on how they work with search engines (37-8). I might use their "virtual kidnapping" term (154), which neatly adds pungency to the problem of identity theft. We could see international data verification monitoring teams (194) and the informative haptic battle dress (203-4) occur. International treaties regulating drones (208) seem likely, as are increasingly engaging shadow or exile governments (229-230)..

NDA takes pains to not be too optimistic or utopian. Although the authors conclude on a note of networked technology bringing humanity more good than ill, each chapter offers problems that Android can't solve. Nations will be balkanized (92). Cyberwar will ramp up (103ff). Revolutions will be partly sparked by digital tools, but end messily (130ff). "Generally, the logic of security will always trump privacy concerns." (175) The efficacy of phones-for-arms deals is "unclear" (248). We will all likely live within a "digital caste system" (!) (254).

The book has multiple contradictions and strange passages. Early on (54) it suggests criminal processes will move from the local to the global; later on (249-50), the reverse. Social media barely appears (perhaps a reaction to the spectacular flameout of G+). For instance, a futures-oriented discussion of communication about diaspora populations (223-4, 230) ignores how crucial is social media to already making that happen.

Education - a major focus for my attention - barely appears in the book, which is odd, given Silicon Valley's interest in revising .edu, and Democrats' putative support for schooling. We get a brief glance towards the Khan Foundation (21) and not much more. Libraries don't exist - not in the future, but in the text. Ditto museums. I'm honestly not sure what to make of this.

Also lacking is any serious discussion of economics. We don't learn much about transformations to labor or finance. Labor unions don't appear. (Cf the caste comment?)

NDA has an odd fascination with political figures. It draws on Rwanda's president Paul Kagame without really mentioning the many problems of his often horrific regime (245ff) . Like Hillary Clinton, Schmidt and Cohen rely fondly and uncritically on Henry Kissinger (148ff). The authors are far more skeptical of Julian Assange. Kissinger over Assange: now there's a political stance in a nutshell.

What is perhaps most disappointing is how pedestrian the book turns out to be. Almost all of its points and references are familiar to anyone paying attention to technology. Yes, drones are becoming more important. Hacking is rising. Many governments are using the internet to crack down on dissidents. Terrorists and insurgents are likely to combine virtual with physical attacks. Etc. NDA seems intended not for technologists, but for tech-clueless policymakers.

So what does this tell us about Google? Explicitly, not much. The book doesn't reference Google's sprawling digital empires, not does it criticize the entity's major competitors, Apple and Facebook. Few companies appear, actually. There isn't much about current business or economics. Instead NDA celebrates entrepreneurship and business opportunities to come. Is that the voice of a Google seeing itself beyond mere competition, becoming a force of nature? Along those lines, the book repeatedly insists on internet connections growing, suggesting Google will keep on with its various projects (Fiber, Loon) to boost people online. Recurring recommendations in favor of strong, persistent digital ID, like India's Aadhaar (78), imply that Google hasn't given up on that drive, no matter what happened with Google+.

But this book isn't just about Google. It's very much about America as superpower. As Assange fumes in his review,

“THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century.

Jared Cohen worked for both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, the latter close to Hillary Clinton. So NDA really tells us much about what a likely Clinton(2) White House will try to accomplish. That includes an aggressive foreign policy (don't miss the Kissinger link), expanding internet connections, trying to forestall radicalization, growing state power (note the Steven Pinker-informed chapter 6), and accepting both data and income inequality (don't miss that caste system line). I wonder if NDA actually points to stepping back from Responsibility to Protect and towards a concern with ethnic and gender identity:

We believe that, in the future, massacres on a genocidal scale will be harder to conduct, but discrimination will likely worsen and become more personal. (184)

We've seen strong signals of the latter in the Clinton primary campaign this past year.

Put Google and the Department of State together and you have a glimpse of emerging and aspirational American hyperpower: confident, thoroughly global, combining virtual technology with soft and very hard power. Or that's the vision offered by these two authors. Consider it a pitch for positions and influence within the second term Obama administration (the book appeared in 2013), or for next year's Hillary Clinton administration.

So can I recommend The New Digital Age? Sort of. NDA is a fascinating historical document, pointing to the confluence of digital business and American governmental power. It's a post-utopian book, showing us a different way forward than some Silicon Valley boosters commend.

If you are a policymaker, or someone who feels unfamiliar with current technology trends, the book will be useful.

[Sergei_kalinin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Одна из самых страшных книг, которые мне довелось прочитать в последние года три :(

Начну с эмоций:

1) 80% содержания книги - про цифровые и реальные войны/революции (сегоднящние и обязательно грядущие), про конец эпохи приватности, кибер-терроризм, кибер-преступность и прочие невесёлые вещи, обитающие в виртуальной реальности.
/Гы... Иногда книга читалась прям как эдакий киберпанк-постапокалипсис-боевик)))/

Кто-то из великих (вроде как академик Сахаров) сформулировал: "Любая новая технология, созданная на благо человека, достигнет максимального прогресса и распространения тогда, когда станет использоваться против человечества". И это в точку про Интернет :(

2) "Новый цифровой..." - это почти как "прекрасный новый мир" у Хаксли. Частная жизнь умерла окончательно и бесповоротно, и каждый наш вдох и выдох под контролем "большого брата".

Мы уже почти целиком в Матрице, и наш выбор (типа "Закрыть или всё же оставить свои аккаунты в социальных сетях?") фактически уже ничего не значит - наша виртуальная личность будет жить и здравствовать независимо от нашего желания и выбора.

Если думаете, что это приступ осенней паранойи :) - читайте уважаемых авторов-экспертов... Лет через 50-100 благодаря спутникам (беспилотникам; установленным под каждым кустом веб-камерам и т.п.) видео-изображение поверхности планетки Земля будет создаваться/мониториться в реальном времени. Добавляем к этой картинке идентификацию по лицам (и прочей биометрии) - и вот уже Большому Брату пофигу - есть вы в соц.сетях, или нет - он просто вас всё время ВИДИТ. И это лишь ОДИН ИЗ способов существовать "под микроскопом" в прекрасном новом мире...

3) Представьте себе нож. Это просто технология - служит она добру или злу, зависит от нас, от нашей системы ценностей. Можно написать книгу "33 способа быстро зарезать прохожего в подворотне", и можно написать книгу "Руководство по неотложной хирургии". Вот у авторов получился исключительно первый вариант :(

Они даже не делают попыток излагать материал о "светлом будущем всеобщей интернетизации" хотя бы нейтрально. Нет, для них данная технология - это носитель и проводник ценностей (политических и экономических) западнизма. И эти ценности (без выбора) "весь остальной" мир просто обязан принять :( Без вариантов... Главнюки, одним словом :(

Наверняка вы слышали словосочетания вроде "Твиттер-революция", "сетевая война" и т.п. Данная книга - вполне себе руководство по всем этим штукам. Нехилое такое руководство (Джин Шарп отдыхает). Может быть не очень подробное, но с обилием кейсов и сжатым изложением основных стратегий и методов. Технически грамотный человек поймёт.

Кейсов (хороших или плохих) про западные страны вы в книге не найдёте, а вот про то, как данные технологии использовали замечательные египетские / ливийские / сирийские и т.д. "борцы за свободу" - сколько угодно. А также вы найдёте там идеи о том, как эти технологии можно применять для борьбы с недемократическими режимами в Китае, России, Северной Корее и т.п.

Дивная книга :( Вот почему-то рецепты изготовления тротила в домашних условиях не издают, а подобные "руководства для сетевых террористов" - запросто. Справедливости ради заметим, что в книге рассматриваются не только возможные методы нападения, но и методы защиты. Т.е. книга в равной мере будет полезна всем участникам этой увлекательной догоняйки...

4) Книжка - в смысле идей по применению "всеобщей интернетизации" - очень узколобая, не выходящая за пределы американского идеологического дискурса. В лучших совдеповских традициях передовиц газеты "Правда" :( Особенно, если речь идёт о социальных и политических кейсах. Например, анализируя ситуацию в России, уважаемые авторы опираются на (а) публикации в СМИ, (б) публикации в Интернете. О да, это конечно аналитика! Я тут тоже недавно на заборе такое прочитал!

Короче, крайне тенденциозно всё это, притянуто за уши :( Единственное отчетливое понимание после прочтения: кто сильнее (т.е. чьи руки максимально контролируют данную технологию и максимально грамотны в ней), тот и диктует своё видение "прекрасного нового мира" всем остальным. Остаётся лишь пожать плечами, и идти совершенствовать навыки написания боевых троянов ;)

Из плюсов:

1) Неплохая книга по футурологии. Именно "неплохая", т.к. в ней на 95% только ближайшие тенденции, те, которые уже существуют.

2) Если интернет-войнушка - ваш путь (независимо от того, на какой стороне силы вы :)) - то парочка интересных идей в книге обязательно найдётся ;)

3) Главная задача книги - ответить на вопрос о том, как виртуальная реальность меняет общество - в целом выполнена. В книге довольно много интересных фактов/феноменов из области сетевой психологии и социологии. Немного поверхностно, но в качестве обзора "про всё" - очень даже неплохо.

[Daniel Clausen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb famously called prediction a kind of charlatanism. Prediction, in his opinion, should be a liberal art -- something creative, entertaining, thought-provoking, but always to be taken with a grain of salt. This is an opinion I share. And thus, it’s a great delight that “The Digital Age,” written by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas, is a creative and exploratory journey into the geopolitics of the digital era (and the digitalization of geopolitics).

The book is well-written, well-thought out, and at times provocative. If it comes up short, it is not in the quality of its analysis, but rather in its ability to make one think. Indeed, many of the insights that come from their analysis of technology are the kinds of predictions that someone like me (who has a very shallow tech background) could have thought of. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The book refuses to take the prediction of possible uses of technology too far into the realms of the speculative. Each insight has firm grounding in the present.

One problem is that the book often floats between visions of techno-optimism and techno-neutralism. The authors respond to the charge that they are being Pollyannaish in the “Afterword” section of the paperback section by stating definitively that technology is neither “good” nor “bad” but rather neutral. A second close reading of the book is warranted here, but my impression was that the two authors sympathize (more) with the potential positives of greater connectivity and individual empowerment.

The book also works between two other extremes -- one of inevitability and techno-determinism (the spread of connectivity is impossible to stop; and connectivity is almost impossible to roll back) and one of geopolitics (which posits the continued presence of strong states). These various views are not irreconcilable -- but many will find the book’s indecisiveness a drawback. The short answer is that the book fails to state clearly what is obvious -- the degree to which any of these various scenarios will unfold is unknowable. And indeed our attempts to find the answer and prevent certain outcomes influences the likelihood that each scenario will occur.

Liberal traditions of International Relations which stress the pacific influence of trade, technology, and democratization often gell unevenly with approaches that stress realism and geopolitics- - the influence of state power, relative military power, and geography. What often makes books like “The Digital Age” uncomfortable reading for IR scholars is that they work within both traditions eclectically. Tensions between these two traditions are rarely the subject of overt theoretical exploration, but rather, are worked out through literary techniques. Indeed, the book’s strengths in many ways flows from its ability to bypass theoretical rigor in order to attain literary and journalistic flexibility. Its exploratory chapters and journalistic storytelling make it both more thought-provoking and entertaining. As the book itself testifies: its goal is to contribute to a conversation about the responsible use of digital technologies.

What makes the work particularly refreshing is that a book about technology can be -- at least at times -- so thoroughly geopolitical and anti-utopian in its view of technology. There will be no final technological solutions to the problems of geopolitics and political order. Issues of sovereignty, security, competition between nations, competition between ethnic groups will be extended into the realms of technology and these technologies will have disruptive effects on state power and influence. If our lives will be made better in the future, they will certainly be no less geopolitical.

However, the book does best when it sticks to technology. In fact, the book was a much needed introduction to issues of technology for me, and I would imagine many other policymakers who feel they were born a generation too late. In short, this book will be a must-read for technology neophytes like myself with a geopolitics background -- at least for a few more years when yet more disruptive technologies come out. Again, predictive analysis is charlatanism of a necessary kind. It works best when it informs, makes grounded leaps, and makes you think. The book does just that, and thus, is a very good read.

[Betsy · Rating 2 out of 5]

[22 April 2020]
I bought this book when it first came out in 2013, but just got around to reading it. Not as dated as you might think considering it purports to predict what's going to happen with respect to technology in the future. But the authors are not talking about gadget technology. No flying cars, or virtual reality, or robots (except in war). Instead they talk about what happens to societies and people because of the expansion of the internet and communications technology. In effect, they say there will be two realities, the physical reality we've been dealing with for thousands of years and the virtual reality that is just becoming widespread. They talk about the ways the two realities will conflict with and complement each other, and the ways that people and entities, especially governments, will have to learn to deal with both of them. It's not really a hopeful future they see. More connection, but much less privacy. More possibility of activism, but more repression. I don't know enough about any of it to judge the accuracy of their predictions, but it was a moderately interesting read and pretty short.

[Marks54 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high expectations for this book given the two authors. A co-founder of Google and a rising star of the foreign policy pundit circuit, what's not to like? ... actually there is quite a bit not to like and I was very disappointed by the book. It was not a complete disaster, but had wandered into that neighborhood by the concluding chapter.

The book starts with the premise that the Internet and related digital technologies are engines of great change in the world that will influence much of how we live in the future. (BTW, the phrase "in the future" is used 150+ times in the book, in case you are slow on getting the point.) To be honest, I was already aware of this point and would willingly concede it -- since it has been the focus of hundreds of books and articles in the past 15 years. The authors then move to the similarly novel point that these digital technologies can be forces for good but can also cause great harm if they are used to bad ends. OK, the technology is a tool whose value depends on its use? I would also grant that - and recall reading about it in other books as well.

The book then makes its attempt at a unique contribution by showing the potential negative consequences that may result from the use of digital technologies in various political, foreign policy, and national security areas. In a series of chapters, the potential threats from digital technologies from state intrusion, revolution, cyber-terrorism, regular terrorism, and plain old war are outlined in painfully hypothetical detail. Long lists of potential negative developments are presented, most of which as far as I can tell are possible/plausible but have yet to happen.

Yikes!! The possibilities are really scary. But don't worry, because for each scenario, a parallel hypothetical scenario is presented to show how the other side will adjust to minimize the negative effects and eventually adapt over time. So relax, the world isn't going to end ... except that it really might end if all of these events occur ... but they probably won't.

Throughout this, the data/technology sections take advantage of opportunities to feature Google products and reference the actions that Google is taking to adjust to threats. (So Google isn't out to control the world? .... or is it?) The foreign policy sides of the discussion add little new either. It will be possible for there to be virtual states and treaties in virtual world - sort of like in the real world. (Virtual is mentioned over 100 times in the book.)

The problem with this is that outlining contrasting lists of hypothetical developments is not difficult to do. What is difficult is to provide the reader with new ways of thinking about the world of the future that are not just simple add-ons to how we think about the world today. Anyone can draw up lists of hypos to worry about. I was hoping that a co-founder of Google and a rising member of the punditocracy could do a bit better than that.

I guess that the arrival of new ways to think about the future is something that might or might not happen in the future. It certainly has not happened in this book.

... and that is unfortunate.

[Jim Crocker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, here's what's going on here. This book got a new copyright in 2014 and a new title: The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives. And a new introduction, as well. This new intro comes up when you sample it on GoodReads.

It's the intro that's blowing my mind and "transformation" is one huge part of it. Yeah, the good and the bad, the anarchy and the new power of individuals to be heard.

Like I'm finding people like me all over the world. Yunno. Into blues music, databases, writing, art, expression, astrophysics. And we can create these places (nodes) out there where we can talk about beer and any damn thing we want to. And that's just awesome cool. And there's pretty much nothing anyone can do about either.

[E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The opening chapter presents an exciting image of the future, though I had some serious questions about it (like, where is all that electricity going to come from?). Much of the book is frightening, as it imagine future impacts on war, terrorism, identity, etc. The final chapter is very encouraging, as it imagines the changes that digital technologies will bring to reconstruction after a disaster. They are also very optimistic about the future.

I have blogged in detail about the book, with a separate post on each chapter. I refer you there for more discussion: http://www.escottjones.typepad.com/

[Chad Kohalyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

These two speak as the establishment, and some of their proposals will scare proponents of the open Web. Many of their other proposals are basically blue sky solutioneering. I think this book will appeal to those already in power, which is disappointing because I find their view is far to statist and establishment to reflect the true disruptive power and decentralized nature that Web connectivity gives us. But policy writers will point to this book as a mandate from the "tech elite" which makes it an important read. Study it closely and highlight as much as you can. There are many layers here. Think of who the messages are intended for, and be very critical in your assessment.

[Jiwa Rasa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buku tulisan tokoh utama Google, Eric Shmidt dibantu oleh Jared Cohern bekas penasihat Condolezza Rice da Hilary Clinton. Buku yang menceritakan tentang dunia digital dan masa depan dunia dan manusia. Antara kebebasan individu dan kekuatan negara akan ditentukan melalui kekuatan dunia digital. Dunia digital bagaikan dunia demokrasi yang sebenar di mana setiap individu punya suara. Bagaimana dunia akan menghadapi aktiviti keganasan dalam keadaan semua perkara dihubungkan melalui dunia digital.

[Tamara · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book where the good guys are white men, the US government and corporations, and the bad guys are middle easterners and other non-white folk.

The digital prediction stuff is sometimes interesting, most of the time just a reflection of what is already happening around the world.

[Ion Rotari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soon everyone on Earth will be connected - main idea of the book, on which all further predictions are made. As simple as this idea may sound, as difficult (childish) it probably was to build up on. A little thought experiment: try predicting how things will go between 2 connected people, let’s say through marriage. Statistically speaking, your guesses will be around 50% accurate. Just 50% prediction accuracy for the simplest connection! Now extrapolate and try predicting what a billion interconnected people may come up to in 20 years. Whatever you predict, it may or may not come true (50/50). The most important here are all the things you will miss predicting, as you cannot really predict now the science breakthroughs for the coming 20 years, as well as all the subsequent changes (science breakthroughs have the potential of disrupting everything, and to easily crash your prediction sand castles). Considering that you will miss predicting the game-changers, your accuracy as a foreteller diminishes dramatically. Consequently, the conclusion: no matter how thoughtfully you build predictions, they are just sand castles in the path of waves of change.

Schmidt and Cohen are well aware of the limitations of their prediction exercise, yet take it from a little different angle: you have to think about the future, as you will live the most of your life there. Thinking of the future, yes, taking the guesses (no matter how educated) for granted, restraining.

All in all, it was a pleasant read, just not as enriching as expected.

[Lauren Ooi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am one of those distracted readers who have anything from two to five books lined up on the reading table at the same time, jumping from book to book depending on the mood and brain juice left for the day. I have to confess - I have been struggling to get through this book for a while now - 'The New Digital Age' has been languishing on my reading table for more than 6 months, but I'm proud to report that I've finally finished it last weekend.

I have to say, it was a matter of hitting my stride with this book, because once I got past the first 30%, the rest was interesting enough to speed through in one week. It starts off ominously with this quote from Schmidt, "The Internet is one of the few things that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand," and indeed, the rest of the book is an treatise that tries to better understand and, therefore, navigate this unwieldy beast.

The moonshot sounding title set up my expectations that this was a prophesy of the digital future from the oracles at Google, filled with sci-fi worthy predictions of how people would live in an age of new technology. Unfortunately, this falls short of that, as the technologies that they talk about are more or less available today, albeit some in more nascent stages. But hey, if you miss the moon, at least you're in the stratosphere.

By any measure, this is still an ambitious and detailed assessment of the digital paths that are open to states and people in the near future - how will we think about identity, privacy; how will revolutions be fought and won; how will conflict, terrorism - and our response evolve; even how will we re-think disaster reconstruction.

The authors travel to an impressive list of places in the world, many of those dangerous and controlled by regimes that are markedly oppressive and abhorrent of the freedom that the Internet brings. However, that doesn't mean that they are un-privy to the powers that new technologies bring, albeit to carry out their nefarious agendas.

Many subversive plots are suggested that could be used by authorities to undermine shady characters. (Side note - as a Singaporean, the premium I place on privacy vs national security strikes me as being very different from some Western opinions.)

Bearing in mind that this book was written over 3 years (2011 to 2013), if we look at what is happening today, it seems fairly accurate in espousing on the direction that these new technologies are headed. Take the issue of cyber-security, that was the subject of many lengthy chapters - the authors discussed different ways of how warfare and political mischief could be committed in this arena. Several high-profile breaches have occurred in the 3+ years since - eg the hacks on Sony, multiple NSA leaks, DNC etc, the last of which are alleged to have direct impact on the 2016 US elections. The authors end that chapter pleading for more whitehats to join the fight against mis-use of his information.

One uncomfortable omission in this book is how private corporations (Google, Amazon, Facebook etc) are increasingly playing a bigger role in influencing how these new technologies are unfolding. I can imagine that this might be a sensitive topic for the authors to address, but the scant mention of these private players seems to me to opt for the easier, but less rewarding path.

Having said that, this book remains a rich read, offering insights into a breadth topics, ranging from national security, terrorism, education, economic policy, business, to foreign and domestic aid. (And this isn't even an exhaustive list!)

The possible futures imagined in each of these mammoth areas tell of a world brimming with possibilities to improve the lives of millions, if not billions, but also of the catastrophic devastation that can be inflicted to mankind if these new technologies are not guarded and used for benign/noble purposes.

In conclusion, when it comes to navigating the New Digital Age, this book doesn't have all the right answers, but it sure asks some interesting questions.

[John Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had a completely different expectations of the book coming from a tech professional background. I initially picked up the book to discover what's in store for future of business opportunities with advancements in tech. However the book revealed a lot more shocking truth behind our future with technology. "The New Digital Age" is a must read for everyone living in the 21st century.

[Fer Zaragoza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si ya estás familiarizado con temas de inteligencia artificial y sus futuras aplicaciones, no te recomiendo en absoluto este libro. Será una lectura muy repetitiva y poco fructífera. En lo personal fue una lectura muy cansada y poco novedosa en el área. Además, el autor no aterriza muchas de las ideas que trata de plasmar en el libro. Sin embargo, si quieres tener una idea de lo que se aproxima en la era digital, puedes considerarlo como libro de consulta.

[Olga Pogynaiko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ну, просто дуже страшна книжка про інтернет.

Кінцевий підсумок цієї книжки, як на мене, сформульовано в цитаті на ст. 88: «На життя в демократичних країнах сильніше впливатиме думка натовпу». А звідси – ріст популізму в політиці, що триває не лише у нас і то не перший рік. Правду кажучи, це стрьомно. Не дивно, що назва книжки «Новий цифровий світ» відсилає до антиутопії Гакслі.

Я би в жодному разі не радила читати цю книжку людям, схильним до манії переслідування і теорій змови, а також людям із вразливою психікою, якщо тільки ви не шукаєте приводу покинути цивілізацію і поїхати жити в дику глуш. Всім іншим – читати неодмінно. З олівцем. І робити нотатки. І конспект. І думати. Ну і таке.

Повний відгук тут: https://instytutka.wordpress.com/2019...

[Tigran Mamikonian · Rating 2 out of 5]

For anyone who use Google and understand the role of this great firm in progress the book co-authored by legendary Google CEO seem to be must read... the same was for me.

This book despite promising title gives very limited practical information about future of the business and life in the new digital age...
Key takeaways from this book would be:
1. The future will undergo huge changes driven by technology and internet
2. The politics will be altered (physical and cyber wars/affairs should be conducted in parallel) and the technological/information battle will intensify
3. Almost all business distribution will move to online and such services as Kiva, Kickstarter, etc. will prosper
4. Technological penetration will lead to equalization of opportunities, making both easy to damage/terror, but enabling to better track history and testify misconducts

I had an initial assumption that this book will be much about how technology would change economy, specific innovations of web apps, mobile technologies, and a look inside more of Google's culture and the vision of the company. All three of these topics were wildly ignored to my great surprise.

So this book emerged from the article in political magazine it haven't gone far from that, just describing the far fetching fears and guess of authors. Sometime I had impression that the book was "written"/collected by some algorithm...

However I'd recommend this book to anyone who is preparing for political career and doesn't have any clue about huge effect of technologies and internet on politics... I'd give 1 star for the book, but adding 1 more for my honour to Eric Schmidt...

(also please read a good review of this book by following this link https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[M. Ardhya Irawan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cukup menarik. Mengajak kita memperkirakan apa yang kira-kira akan terjadi di masa depan pada aspek kehidupan sosial-ekonomi-budaya-masyarakat-negara-hubungan internasional, dengan segala perkembangan internet dan teknologi informasi yang sudah terjadi saat ini (dan akan terjadi di kemudian hari). Ada prediksi yang positif-optimis, ada pula yang (bisa jadi) negatif, utamanya dalam buku ini (menurut saya) berpusat dalam 3 hal, konektivitas, revolusi data, dan otomatisasi.
Semakin kita terkoneksi dengan internet (melalui perangkat-genggam terutama) semakin banyak data dan informasi bisa kita akses, meski harus semakin waspada juga terhadap "jejak-jejak" yang tertinggal dari aktivitas kita di dunia maya karena dampaknya (mungkin) akan terasa juga di dunia nyata. Kita pun perlu semakin pandai memverifikasi informasi yang kita terima.
Banyak peluang dan inovasi bisa dilakukan dengan perkembangan internet kedepan. Banyak juga diantaranya yang coba diprovokasi (dan yang sudah dilakukan) dalam buku ini. Mulai dari yang konteksnya pemanfaatan pribadi, hingga tentang bagaimana menggerakkan massa bahkan hingga lingkup negara dengan perangkat internet kedepan.
Namun pada dasarnya perkembangan internet dan teknologi informasi ini tetap kembali pada unsur manusia sebagai penggagas dan penggunanya, mau dimanfaatkan untuk hal baik atau yang lain. Kira-kira demikianlah, :D

[Jason Huett · Rating 3 out of 5]

The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen is an interesting read about technology and how it shapes our future. The book starts off by stressing the importance of connectivity and how it will level the playing field for everyone. People will benefit greatly from being in the virtual world as opposed to the physical one. They “will find that being connected virtually makes us feel more equal – with access to the same basic platforms, information and online resources – while significant differences persist in the physical world” (p. 13). Most of us spend an overwhelming amount of time in the virtual world, thus sharing information about ourselves wherever we go online. This puts our online identity and security at risk, so we will have to go to great lengths to protect it. This is especially important for schools, “Parent-teacher associations will advocate for privacy and security classes to be taught alongside sex-education classes in their children’s schools” (p. 37). Connectivity affords people the opportunity to gain power over the state because of their “newfound independence – in ideas, speech and conversation – that will test these boundaries” (p. 83). The state fears this and will strengthen state control of information through the Balkanization of the Internet. The people’s “government, by contrast, would largely prefer that these users encounter a virtual world that allows the powers that be to mirror their physical control, an understandable if fundamentally naïve notion. Each state will attempt to regulate the Internet, and shape it in its own image” (p. 84). Revolutions will be a breeze to start but much harder to finish. According to Schmidt and Cohen, “popular uprisings can overthrow dictators, but they’re successful afterward only if opposition forces have a good plan and can execute it. Otherwise the result is either a reconstitution of the old regime or a transition from a functioning regime to a failed state” (p. 129). As far as terrorism goes, being connected will make it more difficult for them to hide their activities, but it will open up many new vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, the Internet will be the key tool for recruiting new members. The presence of conflict will continue to rise, and utilizing robots and drones in warfare will come to fruition in the distant future. Following a conflict or a natural disaster, a reconstruction effort will have to be put in place, and rebuilding the communications network will be top priority. Schmidt and Cohen suggested, “looking ahead, upgrading broken societies to the fastest and most modern version of telecommunications infrastructure will be the top priority of all reconstruction actors, not least because the success of their own work will depend on it” (p. 218).

The title, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business, is misleading because it mostly discusses technology and the future of people and nations. There are very little discussions about businesses or how technology affects our personal lives. In the beginning, I was excited to read this book because I thought it would provide insights and predictions on technology and technology devices in our personal lives. This was the main reason why I chose the book. I am sad to say that I was very disappointed when I found out that it had little to do with that.

From start to finish, The New Digital Age talks about technology and connectivity and how they play a major role in shaping our future society. Basically, the authors are giving us a glimpse of possible future scenarios where technology will be the link between our virtual world and physical world and how society and the state will try to utilize it to their advantage. As mentioned above, it’s an interesting read, especially if you’re interested in technology and how it affects the interaction of society and the state. For me, it was a little hard to digest, and I found myself struggling to finish the book. I enjoyed reading the first three chapters and chapter 5: Our Future Selves; The Future of Identity; Citizenship and Reporting; The Future of States; and The Future of Terrorism. I particularly enjoyed reading chapters one and two, as I had made some personal connections to them. The other chapters did not peak my interests and were a struggle for me to finish the reading.

One message I took from this book is that we should be weary of our digital identity and security when we’re online, as everything we do can come back to haunted us, past, present, and future. We will be held accountable for the information we provide, from the websites we visit to the comments we make on Facebook, Twitter, etc. What information we think we permanently deleted can still be retracted. This is a very scary thought!

The New Digital Age is a popular and credible book due to the fact that its writers are Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. Eric Schmidt is an American software engineer, a businessman, and the Executive Chairman Google’s parent Alphabet. He has served as the Chief Executive Officer of Google (2001-2011) and Novell (1997-2001). He also served as the Board of Trustees for Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, and Princeton University, New Jersey. Jared Cohen is the President of Jigsaw (formerly Google Ideas) and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff (2006-2010) and an advisor to Condoleezza Rice and later Hillary Clinton. During the June 2009 protest in Iran, Cohen asked Twitter to postpone its planned maintenance so that it wouldn’t temporarily shut down service in the country because the protesters were using Twitter to communicate with the outside world. Cohen is the author of three books: The New Digital Age (2013); Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East (2007); and One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide (2006). With their combined knowledge, expertise, and wealth of business and personal experiences, Schmidt and Cohen are well equipped to deliver reliable and well thought out scenarios of the future to help us better understand them. Through our understanding of these possible future scenarios, we can better prepare ourselves for what’s to come.

[Laurel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't learn anything new from this book by two influential Silicon Valley icons that currently work for Google. While the authors present both the good and dark sides of the internet, their prose is overwhelmingly optimistic which bothered me from the first chapter. They present a hypothetical history of how the internet is and will impact our lives. Julian Assange, who the authors made clear they do not admire, wrote a scathing review in the NYTimes on "The New Digital Age". While I do not agree with Assange's politics, his comments about the book are enlightening:

“THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.”

and

“This book is a balefully seminal work in which neither author has the language to see, much less to express, the titanic centralizing evil they are constructing….If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever.”

[Fabio Ismerim Ismerim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Esperava encontrar relatos e construções de cenários, mesmo que hipotéticos, de um futuro tecnológico que ainda não imaginamos.
Os autores iniciam o livro de forma bem direta e já nas primeiras paginas vão moldando sua cabeça meio que ja preparando para a enxurrada de informações que está por vir.
Alguns destes cenarios até são construídos com fatos e relatos de pesquisas que estao sendo feitas por gigantes do setor, como Google. Tambem falam do papel governamental, principalmente da relaçao estado e população.Teremos um povo mais participativo e que cobrará cada vez mais do governo e de difefentes formas e sempre organizados. Protestos e tais cobranças serao organizados pelas redes sociais(ja vemos isso hoje).Portanto é necessario que os governos se atentem a isso, e que dialoguem com a população, uma vez que sera cada vez mais dificil manter-se no anonimato.
Mas depois da metade, o livro fica muito repetitivo. Eles acabam andando em círculos e, talvez seja pelo patriotismo, focam muito no papel dos países em se ter serviços de inteligência para se defenderem de ciber ataques terroristas.
Esperava encontrar algo mais valioso e arrojado, dado currículo e experiência profissional dos autores, mas o ritmo é fraco e acaba sendo repetitivo caindo na obviedade.

[Senthil Kumaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book read like a one big essay on technology and public policy. Both very important topics and something that will interest any concerned hacker. The treatment of the subject was explorative and breadth-wise and very less advise on suggested solutions, because coming up with solutions to the problems mentioned is a hard one. Startups specifically do not venture into areas to solve problems which are riddled with public regulations because they are so muddled with "unknown unknowns" that it is very difficult to come up with solutions for that. This book explores the issues on online privacy, data explosion, control on our daily lives, warfares, social and economic implications that internet has brought about in this world.

There was a stat mentioned that man has produced more digital data from 2003 to now than he has ever produced since mankind ever walked upon earth. If I can write a one line review about this book, then it is all about "how connectivity and technology" are two important assets any human or a national can have in this digital age.

[Vuyelwa Mantyi · Rating 2 out of 5]

On page 233 and still have not learnt anything new or found new insights. I knew I should not have bought a "digital" book a year after release when even a day is a long time with all the content being created. I think this book would be great for people completely unfamiliar with the current digital age we're in.

[Z U L F i · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly good extrapolation of the events we are facing since the advent of the internet. The authors have done a good job in anticipating both the good and bad omens we are about to face in the future.

Book Reviews by Zulfi

[Ryan Panzer · Rating 2 out of 5]

As Eric Schmidt said on Colbert, this book is 260 pages, small print and no pictures. He could have added no personality to that description.

[Bárbaro Ferro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelent

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schmidt, Eric, and Jared Cohen, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business (London: John Murray, 2013). Het knappe van dit boek is dat de auteurs, beiden verbonden aan Google, de mondiale betekenis van de invoering van digitale technologie op een zeer breed terrein weten te analyseren op grond van een diepgaand inzicht in zowel technologische als maatschappelijke aspecten en effecten van digitalisering. Zij slagen er in ver uit te stijgen boven het bedrijfsperspectief van Google. Daarmee bevestigen zij overigens tevens Google’s reputatie als ‘thought leader’ in het digitale tijdperk. Het gegeven dat Google mensen als futuroloog Ray Kurzweil en Regina Dugan (voorheen directeur DARP bij Pentagon) aan zich heeft weten te binden, maakt duidelijk dat het bedrijf deze positie verder wil uitbouwen en voorop wil blijven gaan in de digitale revolutie. Het knappe van het boek is ook dat het getuigt van realisme en evenwicht: de invoering van digitale technologie heeft zowel positieve als negatieve kanten, en niet alles verandert er door. Gelezen: januari-maart 2014. Cijfer: 8.
Introduction
• “The internet is among the few things humans have built that they don’t truly understand. […] The Internet is the largest experiment involving anarchy in history. […] And we have barely left the starting blocks.”
• “Moore’s law means a computer in 2025 will be sixty-four times faster than it is 2013.”
• “Another predictive law, this one of photonics (regarding the transmission of information), tells us that the amount of data coming out of fiber-optic cables, the fastest form of connectivity, doubles roughly every nine months”
• “the promise of exponential growth unleashes possibilities in graphics and virtual reality that will make the online experience as real as real life, or perhaps even better”
• “old institutions and hierachies will have to adapt or risk becoming obsolete, irrelevant to modern society”
• “the vast majority of us will increasingly find ourselves living, working and being governed in two worlds at once”
• “because of the way the current network technology is structured, it truly favors citizens”
• “governments might crack down in one realm while allowing certain behavior in another; they may go to war in cyberspace but maintain the peace in the physical world”
• “there is a canyon dividing people who understand technology and people charged with addressing the world’s toughest geopolitical issues, and no one has built a bridge. Yet the potential for collaboration between the tech industry, the public sector and civil society is enormous.”
• “Who will be more powerful in the future, the citizen or the state? Will technology make terrorism easier or harder to carry out? What is the relationship between privacy and security, and how much will we have to give up to be part of the new digital age? How will war, diplomacy and revolution change when everyone is connected, and how can we tip the balance in a beneficial way? When broken societies are rebuilt, what will they be able to do with technology?”
Our future selves
• “Soon everyone on Earth will be connected” “mobile phones are transforming how people in the developing world access and use information, and adoption rates are soaring”
• “3D-printing will be the perfect partner for advanced manufacturing” “gesture-recognition technology is closer than we think” “breakthroughs in thought-controlled motion technology” “driverless cars will become ubiquitous” “key advance ahead is personalization” (contrast met massaproductie uit industriële revolutie), “mobile phones will have diagnostic capabilities”, “intelligent pills” etc.
The future of identity, citizenship and reporting
• “practically every person will be represented in multiple ways online” “the impact of this data revolution will be to strip citizens of much of their control over their personal information in virtual space” “challenge we face as individuals is determining what steps we are willing to take to regain control over our privacy and security”
• “the potential for someone else to access, share or manipulate parts of our online identities will increase, particularly due to our reliance on cloud-based data storage”
• “strong encryption will be nearly universally adopted” “VPN dealers will roam busy marketplaces”
• “the option to ‘delete’ data is largely an illusion” “cloud computing only reinforces the permanence of information” “there will be a record of all activity and associations online” “if we are on the web we are publishing and we run the risk of becoming public figures”
• “the increased access to people’s lives that the data revolution brings will give some repressive autocracies a dangerous advantage in targeting their citizens” “handsets that citizens have with them at all times will double as the surveillance bugs regimes have long wished they could put in people’s homes”
• “telecommunications seems to be just about the only industry that can thrive in a failed state”
• “a wave of civil-society organizations will emerge in the next decade designed to shield connected citizens from their governments and from themselves”
• “people everywhere will begin to favor ‘peer-to-peer’ (P2P)-networking”
The future of states
• “perhaps the most important question in ten years’ time won’t be if a society uses the Internet, but which version of it they use” “the Balkanization of the Internet” “the Great Firewall of China” “with the flip of a switch, an entire country would simply disappear from the internet”
• “what Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century, technology and cyber security companies will be to the twenty-first”
• “virtual states will be created and will shake up the online landscape of physical states in the future”
• “stealing trade secrets, accessing classified information, infiltrating government systems, disseminating misinformation – all traditional activities of intelligence agencies – will make up the bulk of cyber attacks between states in the future” “we’re already living in an age of state-led cyber war, even if most of us aren’t aware of it” “states will do things to each other online that would be too provocative to do off-line”
• “example of Chinese cyber attacks on Google” “China would certainly benefit from large portions of the world using its hardware and software, because the Chinese government has dominating influence over what its companies do” “this is a commercial battle with profound security implications”
• “perpetual, low-grade cyber war” “Code War”
The future of revolution
• “despite seeing more revolutionary movements, we’ll see fewer revolutionary outcomes”
• “as soon as mobile devices and the Internet became a feature of rebellion and mass protest, regimes adapted their strategy: they shut down the networks”
• “states stand to gain significant advantage of their citizens in the data revolution because of how much of the citizens’ information they’ll have access to”
• “Africa is the fastest growing mobile market anywhere”
The future of terrorism
• “because of the developed world’s increasing dependence on its own connectedness, we’re acutely vulnerable to cyber terrorism” “communication technologies also make terrorists far more vulnerable than they are today”
• “some kind of coordinated physical and cyber attack [by terrorists] is inevitable” “emergent class of virtual soldiers ripe for recruitment” “cyber jihadists” “Hezbollah’s emergent cyber army”
• “outreach to hackers and other independent computer experts should be a priority in the coming years”
• “terrorists have to stay offline to stay alive” “the silver lining of cyber terrorism is that its practitioners have less room for error” “unless a terrorist is acting completely alone (which is rare), there is a very good chance that somewhere in the chain of events leading up to a planned attack, he will compromise himself in some way” [N.B.: belang van ‘ongerichte’ interceptie]
• “each device used by a terrorist will be a potential gold mine” [N.B.: belang van digitaal forensisch onderzoek]
• “no hidden people allowed”
• “the big data challenge: how can intelligence agencies, military divisions and law enforcement integrate all of their digital databases into a centralized structure so that the right dots can be connected without violating citizens’ privacy?” “comprehensive integrated information systems will become the standard for modern, wealthy states in the near future”
• “verification will become the real challenge” “biometric data” “to avoid identification, most extremists will use multiple SIM-cards, multiple online identities and a range of obfuscating tools to cover their tracks”
The future of conflict, combat and intervention
• “the world’s first virtual genocide might be carried out not by a government but by a band of fanatics”
• “in war, data management will short succeed access to technology as the predominant challenge”
• “online attacks will become an integral part of the tactical strategy for groups in conflict, from the lowest intensity fight to full-fledged warfare”
• “the modern automation of warfare, through developments in robotics, artificial intelligence and unmanned aerial vehicles, constitutes the most significant shift in human combat since the invention of the gun” “separate the actor from the scene of battle” “maintaining the cybersecurity of equipment and systems will be chief challenge”
Conclusion
• “every two days we create as much digital content as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003” “two billion people are already connected, the next five billion will follow soon”
• “citizens will have more power than at any other time in history, but it will come with costs, particularly to both privacy and security” “we need to fight for our privacy or we will lose it”