Advance praise for
The New Digital Age
“This is the most important—and fascinating—book yet written about how the digital age will affect our world. With vivid examples and brilliant analysis, it shows how the internet and other communications technologies will empower individuals and transform the way nations and businesses operate. How will different societies make trade-offs involving privacy, freedom, control, security and the relationship between the physical and virtual worlds? This realistic but deeply optimistic book provides the guideposts. It’s both profoundly wise and wondrously readable.”
—Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs
“Every day, technological innovations are giving people around the world new opportunities to shape their own destinies. In this fascinating book, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen draw upon their unique experiences to show us a future of rising incomes, growing participation and a genuine sense of community—if we make the right choices today.”
—Bill Clinton
“Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have produced a searching meditation on technology and world order. Even those who disagree with some of their conclusions will learn much from this thought-provoking volume.”
—Henry A. Kissinger
“This is the book I have been waiting for: a concise and persuasive description of technology’s impact on war, peace, freedom and diplomacy. The New Digital Age is a guide to the future written by two experts who possess a profound understanding of humanity’s altered prospects in a wireless world. There are insights on every page and surprising conclusions (and questions) in every chapter. For experts and casual readers alike, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have produced an indispensable book.”
—Madeleine Albright
“The New Digital Age is must-reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the depths of the digital revolution. Combining the skills of a social scientist and a computer scientist, Schmidt and Cohen blend the technical and the human, the scientific and the political, in ways I rarely saw while in government. They challenge the reader’s imagination on almost every page.”
—General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA
“This is a book that describes a technological revolution in the making. How we navigate it is a challenge for countries, communities and citizens. There are no two people better equipped to explain what it means than Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen.”
—Tony Blair
“Few people in the world are doing more to imagine—and build—the new digital age than Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. With this book, they are looking into their crystal ball and inviting the world to peek in.”
—Michael R. Bloomberg
“Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen’s thoughtful, well-researched work elucidates the staggering impact of technology on our daily lives, as well as what surprising and incredible developments the future may hold. Readers might be left with more questions than answers, but that’s the idea—we are at our best when we ask ‘What’s next?’ ”
—Elon Musk, cofounder of Tesla Motors and PayPal
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2013 by Google Inc. and Jared Cohen
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress
eBook ISBN: 9780307961105
Hardcover ISBN: 9780307957139
Cover design by Peter Mendelsund
v3.1
For Rebecca, to whom we are grateful for her ideas and support, and Aiden, of whom we are envious for the technology he will get to see
We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.
—CHARLES F. KETTERING,
American inventor and businessman
CONTENTS
Advance praise for The New Digital Age
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 Our Future Selves
CHAPTER 2 The Future of Identity, Citizenship and Reporting
CHAPTER 3 The Future of States
CHAPTER 4 The Future of Revolution
CHAPTER 5 The Future of Terrorism
CHAPTER 6 The Future oF Conflict, Combat and Intervention
CHAPTER 7 The Future of Reconstruction
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Introduction
The Internet is among the few things humans have built that they don’t truly understand. What began as a means of electronic information transmission—room-sized computer to room-sized computer—has transformed into an omnipresent and endlessly multifaceted outlet for human energy and expression. It is at once intangible and in a constant state of mutation, growing larger and more complex with each passing second. It is a source for tremendous good and potentially dreadful evil, and we’re only just beginning to witness its impact on the world stage.
The Internet is the largest experiment involving anarchy in history. Hundreds of millions of people are, each minute, creating and consuming an untold amount of digital content in an online world that is not truly bound by terrestrial laws. This new capacity for free expression and free movement of information has generated the rich virtual landscape we know today. Think of all the websites you’ve ever visited, all the e-mails you’ve sent and stories you’ve read online, all the facts you’ve learned and fictions you’ve encountered and debunked. Think of every relationship forged, every journey planned, every job found and every dream born, nurtured and implemented through this platform. Consider too what the lack of top-down control allows: the online scams, the bullying campaigns, the hate-group websites and the terrorist chat rooms. This is the Internet, the world’s largest ungoverned space.
As this space grows larger, our understanding of nearly every aspect of life will change, from the minutiae of our daily lives to more fundamental questions about identity, relationships and even our own security. Through the power of technology, age-old obstacles to human interaction, like geography, language and limited information, are falling and a new wave of human creativity and potential is rising. Mass adoption of the Internet is driving one of the most exciting social, cultural and political transformations in history, and unlike earlier periods of change, this time the effects are fully global. Never before in history have so many people, from so many places, had so much power at their fingertips. And while this is hardly the first technology revolution in our history, it is the first that will make it possible for almost everybody to own, develop and disseminate real-time content without having to rely on intermediaries.
And we’ve barely left the starting blocks.
The proliferation of communication technologies has advanced at an unprecedented speed. In the first decade of the twenty-first century the number of people connected to the Internet worldwide increased from 350 million to more than 2 billion. In the same period, the number of mobile-phone subscribers rose from 750 million to well over 5 billion (it is now over 6 billion). Adoption of these technologies is spreading to the farthest reaches of the planet, and, in some parts of the world, at an accelerating rate.