What will our digital future be like? Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have an idea and express it in their book, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. Eric Schmidt is the Executive Chairman of Google. Jared Cohen is the Director of Google Ideas and was formerly with the U.S. State Department. The book illustrates the adage: you hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
Our high-tech future will automate our lives and improve them with new computer-controlled devices. We are talking about much more that having your coffee maker turn on at the appropriate hour.
We will also have access to so much more data, which they believe will make us wiser and more discerning. They promise a “new accountability.” We will be less likely to be misled by charlatans or dictators.
But they also warn of a darker digital future. Although they acknowledge that the Internet is “the world’s largest ungoverned space,” they also see how authoritarian regimes have walled off sections of the Internet they don’t want their citizens to see. They predict a “Balkanization of the Internet” where more and more leaders in these countries close off onramps to the information superhighway.
Their book describes three types of Internet filtering systems: the blatant, the sheepish, and the politically acceptable. In previous commentaries, I have talked about how governments have stepped in to prevent their citizens from accessing various Internet avenues. Sometimes it might be minor. Years ago, a French court told Yahoo that is had to “make it impossible” for web surfers to purchase Nazi memorabilia.
Often the filtering is blatant. The authors call China “the world’s most active and enthusiastic filterer of information.” Communist China has constructed a firewall that prevents their people from reading articles about Tibet, the Tiananmen Square massacre, or dozens of other topics.
Their book is a reminder that our digital future will not only be influenced by new technologies but by old political realities.