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The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business Hardcover – Deckle Edge, April 23, 2013
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In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the future: a world where everyone is connected—a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and to harness.
Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley’s great leaders, having taken Google from a small startup to one of the world’s most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. With their combined knowledge and experiences, the authors are uniquely positioned to take on some of the toughest questions about our future: 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?
In this groundbreaking book, Schmidt and Cohen combine observation and insight to outline the promise and peril awaiting us in the coming decades. At once pragmatic and inspirational, this is a forward-thinking account of where our world is headed and what this means for people, states and businesses.
With the confidence and clarity of visionaries, Schmidt and Cohen illustrate just how much we have to look forward to—and beware of—as the greatest information and technology revolution in human history continues to evolve. On individual, community and state levels, across every geographical and socioeconomic spectrum, they reveal the dramatic developments—good and bad—that will transform both our everyday lives and our understanding of self and society, as technology advances and our virtual identities become more and more fundamentally real.
As Schmidt and Cohen’s nuanced vision of the near future unfolds, an urban professional takes his driverless car to work, attends meetings via hologram and dispenses housekeeping robots by voice; a Congolese fisherwoman uses her smart phone to monitor market demand and coordinate sales (saving on costly refrigeration and preventing overfishing); the potential arises for “virtual statehood” and “Internet asylum” to liberate political dissidents and oppressed minorities, but also for tech-savvy autocracies (and perhaps democracies) to exploit their citizens’ mobile devices for ever more ubiquitous surveillance. Along the way, we meet a cadre of international figures—including Julian Assange—who explain their own visions of our technology-saturated future.
Inspiring, provocative and absorbing, The New Digital Age is a brilliant analysis of how our hyper-connected world will soon look, from two of our most prescient and informed public thinkers.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherKnopf
- Publication dateApril 23, 2013
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.18 x 9.51 inches
- ISBN-100307957136
- ISBN-13978-0307957139
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Review
—The Economist
“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 tradeoffs 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.”
-Former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright
“Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt have written a brilliant book that should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the huge ramifications of the Age of Google not only for our lifestyles but, more importantly, for our privacy, our democracy and our security. If you already know about the law of photonics, data remanence, Stuxnet, Flame, DDoS attacks and CRASH (the Clean-Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts) then you can probably skip it. If, like me, this is all news to you, you had better download The New Digital Age today. The 'technoptimistic' case will never be more smartly argued.”
-Niall Ferguson, author of Civilization: The West and the Rest
“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
“The New Digital Age offers an intriguing fusion of ideas and insights about how the virtual world is intersecting with the ‘Westphalian order.’ It seeks a balance between the discontinuities of technologists’ ‘revolutions’ and the traditionalism of internationalists’ study of states, power, and behavior. The authors explain that technology is not a panacea, yet the uses of technology can make a world of difference. This book should launch a valuable debate about the practical implications of this new connectivity for citizens and policy makers, societies and governments.”
-Robert B. Zoellick, former president of the World Bank Group
“We have long needed an incisive study of how the ever-evolving world of technology leaves almost no aspect of life unchanged. We have it in The New Digital Age. Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen offer a rigorous approach to decoding what the future holds in a story that is as well written and entertaining as it is important.”
-General Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor
“At last, a brilliant guide book for the next century—what the future holds for entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, politicians, and ordinary citizens alike. Schmidt and Cohen offer a dazzling glimpse into how the new digital revolution is changing our lives. This book is the most insightful exploration of our future world I’ve ever read, and once I started reading I was simply unable to put it down.”
-Sir Richard Branson, founder and chairman, Virgin Group
“This brilliant book will make you re-examine your concepts of the digital age, the way the world works, what lies ahead, and what all this means for you, your family and your community. A must read.”
—Mohamed El-Erian, chair, President Obama’s Global Development Council
“This work of futurology combines optimism and pessimism in an informed and level-headed presentation.”
—Booklist
“Ambitious [and] fascinating . . . [this] book is filled with tantalizing examples of futuristic goods and services.”
—Anna Kuchment, Scientific American
“[Schmidt and Cohen] encapsulate a vast sweep of ideas, including personal citizenship online and off, censorship of electronic information as national policy, and even what future revolutions will look like in years to come . . . A thoughtful and well-balanced prognostication of what lies ahead.”
—Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
JARED COHEN is director of Google Ideas and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a Rhodes Scholar and the author of several books, including Children of Jihad and One Hundred Days of Silence. He is a member of the Director’s Advisory Board at the National Counterterrorism Center.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Our Future Selves
Soon everyone on Earth will be connected. With five billion more people set to join the virtual world, the boom in digital connectivity will bring gains in productivity, health, education, quality of life and myriad other avenues in the physical world—and this will be true for everyone, from the most elite users to those at the base of the economic pyramid. But being “connected” will mean very different things to different people, largely because the problems they have to solve differ so dramatically. What might seem like a small jump forward for some—like a smart phone priced under $20—may be as profound for one group as commuting to work in a driverless car is for another. People 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. Connectivity will not solve income inequality, though it will alleviate some of its more intractable causes, like lack of available education and economic opportunity. So we must recognize and celebrate innovation in its own context. Everyone will benefit from connectivity, but not equally, and how those differences manifest themselves in the daily lives of people is our focus here.
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Increased Efficiency
Being able to do more in the virtual world will make the mechanics of our physical world more efficient. As digital connectivity reaches the far corners of the globe, new users will employ it to improve a wide range of inefficient markets, systems and behaviors, in both the most and least advanced societies. The resulting gains in efficiency and productivity will be profound, particularly in developing countries where technological isolation and bad policies have stymied growth and progress for years, and people will do more with less.
The accessibility of affordable smart devices, including phones and tablets, will be transformative in these countries. 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. The size of these women’s market can even expand as other fishermen in surrounding areas coordinate with them over their own phones. As a substitute for a formal market economy (which would take years to develop), that’s not a bad work-around for these women or the community at large.
Mobile phones are transforming how people in the developing world access and use information, and adoption rates are soaring. There are already more than 650 million mobile-phone users in Africa, and close to 3 billion across Asia. The majority of these people are using basic-feature phones—voice calls and text messages only—because the cost of data service in their countries is often prohibitively expensive, so that even those who can buy web-enabled phones or smart phones cannot use them affordably. This will change, and when it does, the smart-phone revolution will profoundly benefit these populations.
Hundreds of millions of people today are living the lives of their grandparents, in countries where life expectancy is less than sixty years, or even fifty in some places, and there is no guarantee that their political and macroeconomic circumstances will improve dramatically anytime soon. What is new in their lives and their futures is connectivity. Critically, they have the chance to bypass earlier technologies, like dial-up modems, and go directly to high-speed wireless connections, which means the transformations that connectivity brings will occur even more quickly than they did in the developed world. The introduction of mobile phones is far more transformative than most people in modern countries realize. As people come online, they will quite suddenly have access to almost all the world’s information in one place in their own language. This will even be true for an illiterate Maasai cattle herder in the Serengeti, whose native tongue, Maa, is not written—he’ll be able to verbally inquire about the day’s market prices and crowd-source the whereabouts of any nearby predators, receiving a spoken answer from his device in reply. Mobile phones will allow formerly isolated people to connect with others very far away and very different from themselves. On the economic front, they’ll find ways to use the new tools at their disposal to enlarge their businesses, make them more efficient and maximize their profits, as the fisherwomen did much more locally with their basic phones.
What connectivity also brings, beyond mobile phones, is the ability to collect and use data. Data itself is a tool, and in places where unreliable statistics about health, education, economics and the population’s needs have stalled growth and development, the chance to gather data effectively is a game-changer. Everyone in society benefits from digital data, as governments can better measure the success of their programs, and media and other nongovernmental organizations can use data to support their work and check facts. For example, Amazon is able to take its data on merchants and, using algorithms, develop customized bank loans to offer them—in some cases when traditional banks have completely shut their doors. Larger markets and better metrics can help create healthier and more productive economies.
And the developing world will not be left out of the advances in gadgetry and other high-tech machinery. Even if the prices for sophisticated smart phones and robots to perform household tasks like vacuuming remain high, illicit markets like China’s expansive “shanzhai” network for knock-off consumer electronics will produce and distribute imitations that bridge the gap. And technologies that emerged in first-world contexts will find renewed purpose in developing countries. In “additive manufacturing,” or 3-D printing, machines can actually “print” physical objects by taking three-dimensional data about an object and tracing the contours of its shape, ultra-thin layer by ultra-thin layer, with liquid plastic or other material, until the whole object materializes. Such printers have produced a huge range of objects, including customized mobile phones, machine parts and a full-sized replica motorcycle. These machines will definitely have an impact on the developing world. Communal 3-D printers in poor countries would allow people to make whatever tool or item they require from open-source templates—digital information that is freely available in its edited source—rather than waiting on laborious or iffy delivery routes for higher-priced premade goods.
In wealthier countries 3-D printing will be the perfect partner for advanced manufacturing. New materials and products will all be built uniquely to a specification from the Internet and on demand by a machine run by a sophisticated, trained operator. This will not replace the acres of high-volume, lowest-cost manufacturing present in many industries, but it will bring an unprecedented variety to the products used in the developed world.
As for life’s small daily tasks, information systems will streamline many of them for people living in those countries, such as integrated clothing machines (washing, drying, folding, pressing and sorting) that keep an inventory of clean clothes and algorithmically suggest outfits based on the user’s daily schedule. 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. Centralizing the many moving parts of one’s life into an easy-to-use, almost intuitive system of information management and decision making will give our interactions with technology an effortless feel. As long as safeguards are in place to protect privacy and prevent data loss, these systems will free us of many small burdens—including errands, to-do lists and assorted “monitoring” tasks—that today add stress and chip away at our mental focus throughout the day. Our own neurological limits, which lead us to forgetfulness and oversights, will be supplemented by information systems designed to support our needs. Two such examples are memory prosthetics—calendar reminders and to-do lists—and social prosthetics, which instantly connect you with your friend who has relevant expertise in whatever task you are facing.
By relying on these 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. Suggestion engines that offer alternative terms to help a user find what she is looking for will be a particularly useful aid in efficiency by consistently stimulating our thinking processes, ultimately enhancing our creativity, not preempting it. Of course, the world will be filled with gadgets, holograms that allow a virtual version of you to be somewhere else, and endless amounts of content, so there will be plenty of ways to procrastinate, too—but the point is that when you choose to be productive, you can do so with greater capacity.
Other advances in the pipeline in areas like robotics, artificial intelligence and voice recognition will introduce efficiency into our lives by providing more seamless forms of engagement with the technology in our daily routines. Fully automated human-like robots with superb AI abilities will probably be out of most people’s price range for some time, but the average American consumer will find it affordable to own a handful of different multipurpose robots fairly soon. The technology in iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner, the progenitor of this field of consumer “home” robots (first introduced in 2002), will only become more sophisticated and multipurpose in time. Future varieties of home robots should be able to handle other household duties, electrical work and even plumbing issues with relative ease.
We also can’t discount the impact that superior voice-recognition software will have on our daily lives. Beyond searching for information online and issuing commands to your robots (both of which are possible today), better voice recognition will mean instant transcription of anything you produce: e-mails, notes, speeches, term papers. Most people speak much faster than they type, so this technology will surely save many of us time in our daily affairs—not to mention helping us avoid cases of carpal tunnel syndrome. A shift toward voice-initiated writing may well change our world of written material. Will we learn to speak in paragraphs, or will our writing begin to mirror speech patterns?
Everyday use of gesture-recognition technology is also closer than we think. Microsoft’s Kinect, a hands-free sensor device for the Xbox 360 video-game console that captures and integrates a player’s motion, set a world record in 2011 as the fastest selling consumer-electronics device in history, with more than eight million devices sold in the first sixty days on the market. Gestural interfaces will soon move beyond gaming and entertainment into more functional areas; the futuristic information screens displayed so prominently in the film Minority Report—in which Tom Cruise used gesture technology and holographic images to solve crimes on a computer—are just the beginning. In fact, we’ve already moved beyond that—the really interesting work today is building “social robots” that can recognize human gestures and respond to them in kind, such as a toy dog that sits when a child makes a command gesture.
And, looking further down the line, we might not need to move physically to manipulate those robots. There have been a series of exciting breakthroughs in thought-controlled motion technology—directing motion by thinking alone—in the past few years. In 2012, a team at a robotics laboratory in Japan demonstrated successfully that a person lying in an fMRI machine (which takes continuous scans of the brain to measure changes in blood flow) could control a robot hundreds of miles away just by imagining moving different parts of his body. The subject could see from the robot’s perspective, thanks to a camera on its head, and when he thought about moving his arm or his legs, the robot would move correspondingly almost instantaneously. The possibilities of thought-controlled motion, not only for “surrogates” like separate robots but also for prosthetic limbs, are particularly exciting in what they portend for mobility-challenged or “locked in” individuals—spinal-cord-injury patients, amputees and others who cannot communicate or move in their current physical state.
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More Innovation, More Opportunity
That the steady march of globalization will continue apace, even accelerate, as connectivity spreads will come as no surprise. But what might surprise you is how small some of the advances in technology, when paired with increased connection and interdependence across countries, will make your world feel. Instant language translation, virtual-reality interactions and real-time collective editing—most easily understood today as wikis—will reshape how firms and organizations interact with partners, clients and employees in other places. While certain differences will perhaps never be fully overcome—like cultural nuance and time zones—the ability to engage with people in disparate locations, with near-total comprehension and on shared platforms, will make such interactions feel incredibly familiar.
Supply chains for corporations and other organizations will become increasingly disaggregated, not just on the production side but also with respect to people. More effective communication across borders and languages will build trust and create opportunities for hardworking and talented individuals around the world. It will not be unusual for a French technology company to operate its sales team from Southeast Asia, while locating its human-resources people in Canada and its engineers in Israel. Bureaucratic obstacles that prevent this level of decentralized operation today, like visa restrictions and regulations around money transfers, will become either irrelevant or be circumvented as digital solutions are discovered. Perhaps a human-rights organization with staff living in a country under heavy diplomatic sanctions will pay its employees in mobile money credits, or in an entirely digital currency.
As fewer jobs require a physical presence, talented individuals will have more options available to them. Skilled young adults in Uruguay will find themselves competing for certain types of jobs against their counterparts in Orange County. Of course, just as not all jobs can or will be automated in the future, not every job can be conducted from a distance—but more can than you might think. And for those living on a few dollars per day, there will be endless opportunities to increase their earnings. In fact, Amazon Mechanical Turk, which is a digital task-distribution platform, offers a present-day example of a company outsourcing small tasks that can be performed for a few cents by anyone with an Internet connection. As the quality of virtual interactions continues to improve, a range of vocations can expand the platform’s client base; you might retain a lawyer from one continent and use a Realtor from another. Globalization’s critics will decry this erosion of local monopolies, but it should be embraced, because this is how our societies will move forward and continue to innovate. Indeed, rising connectivity should help countries discover their competitive advantage—it could be that the world’s best graphic designers come from Botswana, and the world just doesn’t know it yet.
This leveling of the playing field for talent extends to the world of ideas, and innovation will increasingly come from the margins, outside traditional bastions of growth, as people begin to make new connections and apply unique perspectives to difficult problems, driving change. New levels of collaboration and cross-pollination across different sectors internationally will ensure that many of the best ideas and solutions will have a chance to rise to the top and be seen, considered, explored, funded, adopted and celebrated. Perhaps an aspiring Russian programmer currently working as a teacher in Novosibirsk will discover a new application of the technology behind the popular mobile game Angry Birds, realizing how its game framework could be used to improve the educational tools he is building to teach physics to local students. He finds similar gaming software that is open source and then he builds on it. As the open-source movement around the world continues to gain speed (for governments and companies it is low cost, and for contributors the benefits are in recognition and economic opportunities to improve and enlarge the support ecosystems), the Russian teacher-programmer will have an enormous cache of technical plans to learn from and use in his own work. In a fully connected world, he is increasingly likely to catch the eyes of the right people, to be offered jobs or fellowships, or to sell his creation to a major multinational company. At a minimum, he can get his foot in the door.
Innovation can come from the ground up, but not all local innovation will work on a larger scale, because some entrepreneurs and inventors will be building for different audiences, solving very specific problems. This is true today as well. Consider the twenty-four-year-old Kenyan inventor Anthony Mutua, who unveiled at a 2012 Nairobi science fair an ultrathin crystal chip he developed that can generate electricity when put under pressure. He placed the chip in the sole of a tennis shoe and demonstrated how, just by walking, a person can charge his mobile phone. (It’s a reminder of how bad the problems of reliable and affordable electricity, and to a lesser extent short battery life, are for many people—and how some governments are not rushing to fix the electricity grids—that innovators like Mutua are designing microchips that turn people into portable charging stations.) Mutua’s chip is now set to go into mass production, and if that successfully brings down the cost, he will have invented one of the cleverest designs that no one outside the developing world will ever use, simply because they’ll never need to. Unfortunately, the level of a population’s access to technology is often determined by external factors, and even if power and electricity problems are eventually solved (by the government or by citizens), there is no telling what new roadblocks will prevent certain groups from reaching the same level of connectivity and opportunity as others.
Product details
- Publisher : Knopf; 1st edition (April 23, 2013)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0307957136
- ISBN-13 : 978-0307957139
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.18 x 9.51 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,703,979 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #435 in Computing Industry History
- #6,131 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
- #6,994 in History & Theory of Politics
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Eric Schmidt is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, known for his pivotal role in the growth of Google as CEO and Chairman from 2001 to 2011, overseeing its transformation from a small startup to a global tech giant. Working alongside Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its products, while maintaining a strong culture of innovation.
Eric currently serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees for The Broad Institute and as a board member for the Mayo Clinic and the Advisory Board at UC Berkeley, among others. His philanthropic efforts through The Schmidt Family Foundation and the Schmidt Ocean Institute with his wife Wendy, focus on climate change, including the support of ocean and marine life studies at sea, as well as education and cutting-edge research and technology in natural sciences and engineering. Notably, in 2024 Eric was awarded an honorary Knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by His Majesty King Charles III for services to Philanthropy.
Additionally, he co-founded Schmidt Futures with his wife Wendy, which supports projects at the intersection of talent and technology, centered on specific, finite challenges that are connected to other efforts in the Schmidt philanthropic network. Most recently, the couple co-founded Schmidt Sciences, a nonprofit organization working to advance science and technology that deepens human understanding of the natural world and develops solutions to global issues.
In 2021, he founded the Special Competitive Studies Project, a non-profit initiative focused on strengthening America’s long-term AI and technological competitiveness in national security, the economy, and society. Eric is also a commissioner on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB).
An accomplished author, Eric has co-authored three New York Times bestsellers, The New Digital Age, How Google Works, and Trillion Dollar Coach. In 2021, Eric co-authored the WSJ bestselling book The Age of AI: And Our Human Future with Dr. Henry Kissinger and Professor Daniel Huttenlocher. His most recent book, Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit (2024), was co-written with the late Dr. Henry Kissinger, and Craig Mundie, offering a guide to how AI will shape the modern era.
Jared Cohen is the founder and CEO of Jigsaw at Alphabet Inc. He also serves as an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to Alphabet, he was Google’s first Director of Ideas and chief advisor to Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt. From 2006 to 2010 he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and as a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.
Cohen is the New York Times bestselling author of four books, including Children of Jihad, One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide, and The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Business, and our Lives, which he co-authored with Eric Schmidt. His new book, The Accidental Presidents, examines the eight instances in American history when a president has died in office. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, LA Times, Washington Post, TIME Magazine, and Foreign Policy.
He has been named to the "TIME 100" list, Foreign Policy's “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and Vanity Fair's "Next Establishment." Cohen serves on several advisory boards, including Allianz, Stanford University’s Freeman-Spogli Institute, Rivet Ventures, FluidMarket, ASAPP, and NCTC. he is a member of GenNext and a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum.
Cohen received his B.A. from Stanford University and his M.Phil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He speaks fluent Swahili.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book insightful and thought-provoking. They appreciate its value for time and consider it a must-read for those in the digital realm. The views are described as excellent and optimistic. However, some readers feel the book is not worth reading. Opinions differ on the pacing and scariness level.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book insightful and thought-provoking. They appreciate the thoughtful perspective into our future that intertwines multiple facets of life. The research is impressive and the attention to detail is appreciated.
"...Soothing and sagacious, no wonder so many famous world shakers and shapers have bestowed advanced praise on the kind of volume by skilled teams..." Read more
"...I liked the book because it was well-written and thought provoking. The style is not popular, nor is it academic, but rather somewhere inbetween...." Read more
"...move is about -- I get that, but a good read that broadens our understanding of the future, sprinkled with some bling-bling, particularly, when..." Read more
"...macro and micro view and it is an experienced and thoughtful peep into our collective future...." Read more
Customers find the book interesting and worth their time. They appreciate the concise writing style and the well-respected authors' knowledge in the field. The book provides good quality for the price, with a wonderful first chapter that introduces futuristic ideas.
"...Schmidt and Cohen are imminently reasonable and readable in this compendium of what's up and coming up in the digital diplomatic age...." Read more
"...like to guess what Google's next move is about -- I get that, but a good read that broadens our understanding of the future, sprinkled with some..." Read more
"...Are these the people we are putting our futures in? The book is essential reading if only because it gives a rare look into the minds and thoughts..." Read more
"...as a major part of your life then you will perhaps find this book useful and entertaining...." Read more
Customers find the book insightful and a must-read for digital enthusiasts. They appreciate the authors' understanding of technology and connectivity. The book provides a new vision of the future of technology and is thought-provoking for all readers, not just tech geeks.
"This book is a little too glib and cheerleader-ish. Technology is wonderful and undoubtedly the hope of the world, but I don't think its proper..." Read more
"...this is a must read for not just tech geeks but all of us" Read more
"...The content is very general and overly optimistic. I find that it is also overly technologically deterministic...." Read more
"There is many benefits for technology and progress. Yet everything has its two sides...." Read more
Customers find the opinions of Eric capturing. They find the views excellent and optimistic.
"Some of the views are excellent but if you are a regular reader of newspaper you may not find it very revealing.." Read more
"The opinion of Eric is very capturing. Wow, a singularity is behind our home. if is true, we can find out in next ten years" Read more
"Very optomistic..." Read more
Customers have different views on the pacing of the book. Some find it well-written and insightful, with a progressive mindset. Others feel the reading experience is tedious with rambling writing and repetitive phrases. Overall, opinions are mixed on the pacing and readability.
"...Schmidt and Cohen are imminently reasonable and readable in this compendium of what's up and coming up in the digital diplomatic age...." Read more
"...My only criticism of the book is that it becomes a bit repetitive...." Read more
"...I liked the book because it was well-written and thought provoking. The style is not popular, nor is it academic, but rather somewhere inbetween...." Read more
"...Also the writing is choppy and uneven, with the first half of the book chock full of ideas And the second half more diluted...." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's scariness level. Some find it revealing and frightening, with an interesting perspective on our future. Others find it unsettling and lacking depth.
"...It is not a book of doom and gloom on the contrary the authors point out the very fabric of human nature is to achieve greatness and prosperity,..." Read more
"...I found the book fascinating, but terrifying. He spent considerable time discussing the potential for cybercrime and cyberterrorism...." Read more
"...It mixes the good with the bad and makes a lot of interesting points...." Read more
"I found this book to be both inspiring and a terrifying all at once. Overall I very much enjoyed it...." Read more
Customers find the book unengaging and lacking value for money. They say it's not worth reading, boring, and insignificant. The editorial content lacks substance and is naive, with minimal educational value.
"...The style is not popular, nor is it academic, but rather somewhere inbetween. Moreover, the reading level approaches that of the academic...." Read more
"...To put it somewhat differently, this book does not engage the reader in the 'how to' aspect of these changes and is instead forcefully conclusory:..." Read more
"...Not worth your time, regrettably, as the authors pedigree leads you to expect more." Read more
"...may be a book of interest, but for a simple individual, this book was too meaty and carried on too long of what danger lurks...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2013Five stars for a book which amply demonstrates what two master promoters believe is good and bad for wedding business and government. They claim it is based on a report the two made to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Flattering high officials with private briefings has long been a lucrative industry. Commingling and whispering at Bilderberg, Aspen, Davos, Council on Foreign Relations, TED, secret global jaunts on private and official jets; seducing publishers, journalists, scholars and domesticated dissidents with tete-a-tetes at CIA HQ and White House, Georgetown, Back Bay and Foggy Bottom, Beijing, Hong Kong, Paris, London -- never forgetting Bohemian Grove sweat lodging -- this book delivers what every striver needs to carefully study for upward mobility. Buy this book, or grab it for free on Torrent.
Expected preach: Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple are golden calved deity of the new digital age. The four horsemen's technological prowess will lead to political emancipation, healthiness, congeniality, mutual understanding, and, happily, huge profits for the manufacturerers of ubiquitous personal devices capable of spying on every user on earth to collect marketing data required to keep supply pipelines near bursting.
In the late 1990s a remarkable study was published titled "An Appraisal of the Technology of Political Control" (search Google! or grab it on Cryptome.org), later greatly expanded by the European Parliament. It described the vast array of technological means to suppress and control the populace -- everywhere. Schimdt's and Cohen's survey could be seen as an update without the harsh criticism of the earlier work.
Schmidt and Cohen are imminently reasonable and readable in this compendium of what's up and coming up in the digital diplomatic age. Soothing and sagacious, no wonder so many famous world shakers and shapers have bestowed advanced praise on the kind of volume by skilled teams always hired to research, draft and publicize musings and ponderings of what the world needs -- as if "world" was not a curse word. In this instance it is digital technology infusing "people-empowering" diplomacy which may counter the rise of every more murderous war technology and forever treacherous self-interested diplomacy.
Schmidt the computer geek and Cohen the policy wonk combine the two worlds they posit, the virtual and the physical, topped with the prestigious cream of being somebody notable. The virtual bloodless, newly born and future oriented, to affirm TED, the physical all too bloody, venerable and compelled to fight every war ever again to affirm Malthus.
There is nothing in the volume that is new to an scarred addict of the Internet, instead another a blessing of the digital doped diplomacy as healthy exercise and diet for what they term "the upper band" of well-to-do marketing junk to the under band.
Evgeny Mozorov will hand their balls to them for inexorable digital and diplomatic optimism. Next up: Op-Eds, Friedman and TED.
While national security ruses, lies, spying and propagandizing will continue to push junk technology in the new digital age to disempower taxpayers and consumers and dismember targets.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2014A couple of family members became interested in this book after the authors appeared on the Glenn Beck program. So the book was purchased, and I became the first in the family to read it. I liked the book because it was well-written and thought provoking. The style is not popular, nor is it academic, but rather somewhere inbetween. Moreover, the reading level approaches that of the academic. Perhaps it is inevitable, given the subject matter. But if you are considering the book, do not let this keep you from buying it. Yes, it may take you a little longer than normal to read it, but you will be glad you did.
I was apprehensive prior to reading the book. I thought it would be so full of Google geekspeak that it would be beyond my comprehension. To be honest, the book does have a bit of jargon in it; yet that is not the point of the book and should not deter most readers. Nearly all the industry vocabularly may be understood from the context. For those few terms that differ from the norm one may, well, google them. :-)
The book is divided into broad chapters by what might be termed policy concerns. Then the chapters are divided into narrower sub-concerns. This lends the reading to take place in medium-sized sections, with time to briefly put down the book and think between.
If you want to know what the leaders of Google (and for that matter, Facebook, Yahoo, and others) believe about the direction of our world and the ways technology will impact those directions, this is the book for you. Perhaps, like nearly all futurist books, not all of their predictions will happen exactly as prognosticated; yet the possibilities will inspire the reader.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2013This is an easily accessible tale for the uninitiated about all of the core businesses that Google engages in and will continue to do so. Yes, having Eric Schmidt as the author means that every topic will inevitably connect in some fashion to something that Google does.
My biggest critique is that the book is simultaneously too cursory and too granular. The great bulk of the content focuses on (i) government censorship/information control (ii) the developing world and (iii) warfare, cyber and physical. (There is also a token chapter about how Google is going to make our every day lives oh-so-science-fictiony full of shiny gadgets) Granted these three are really big themes, but so much so that it almost seems that each deserves a more in depth treatment than is afforded here. Somewhat schizophrenically, at other times the book seems to miss the forest for the trees: For all the talk about autocracies, terrorism, and warfare there is no mention of the Western countries' demographic shifts, cultural diaspora; health care and aging; world wide economic troubles; energy production; pollution, etc. Kinda seems like those matter more in the grand scheme of things.
So the overarching theme about the future here seems to be is that 'things will work themselves out', one way or another thanks to new technology. But the author does a terrible job of intelligently introducing the reader to any of the 'on the ground complexities' involved in each matter. (Would it kill to have a brief discussion of the current state of the art in cryptography and why it's really important?) To put it somewhat differently, this book does not engage the reader in the 'how to' aspect of these changes and is instead forcefully conclusory: repeatedly the author uses terms like '[so and so] will happen this way' or '[so and so] will not happen and instead [this other thing will]' without laying out all the facts. The conclusions may be valid, but evidence based arguments tend to be a more interesting read. A few specific examples: (i) No more "Spring" movements; (ii) 'Balkanization of the web'; (iii) The NGO Bubble will burst.
i) Regarding revolutions: it would be nice to read more about the technical details of each such revolution, the specific tech involved, why some worked and why some didn't, the concrete lessons learned and what that means going forward (in terms of tech) for budding resistance movements, rather than just do a big fly over to basically (and quite unexpectedly) conclude 'Arabs are a homogenous group more likely to revolt if one country revolts so don't expect the same "Spring" movements in Latin America or Asia'.
ii) Regarding balkanized internet (e.g. Iranian-only internet): it would be nice to discuss the technical difficulties of doing so and the poorly understood world of sea-cable lines, satellite points of contact, etc., rather than just say 'this may happen'. Or how about the economic ramifications for doing so?
iii) The NGO Bubble- wow that's really interesting. How about some figures, numbers, factors that affect long term success, you know metrics, that thing that Google does a lot.
*These are just three examples I remembered at this moment. There are more; they are meant to be illustrative, not determinative.
Moreover, at times the personal bias comes through all too clear for this to be any type of academic work, which is completely unnecessary given the subject matter. I understand that as a public figure Mr. Schmidt must protect his reputation (as he spends a chapter on it) but some of the editorial content was just fluff without substance. At other times the neutral tone borders on the absurd: sure Saudi repression of women is perfectly normal. So here too it seems that corporate PR folk were very insistent that Mr. Schmidt not offend certain political figures.
Lastly, there is no discussion of the social evolution of either the Western world or the developing world. For all the talk of a 'personal web' and 'social internet' the book does not do a good job of exploring the changing psychology and social norms that is brought about by new technology. Again, here it feels like the author is purposefully avoiding discussing any potentially controversial social policies or norms.
So the takeaway is this- it's on okay read for a boring day but I expected more from someone who is supposed to have his finger on the pulse of technology.
TLDR: the book basically argues that mobile phones are awesome and will make everything awesomer; governments will find new ways to ensure that they know more about you than you do about them or yourself; corporations will continue to be corporations, but meaner and leaner; the developing world is a mess but mobile phones will fix everything; and we're gonna have more robots, mostly for killing.
Top reviews from other countries
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Luis ZavalaReviewed in Mexico on October 23, 2024
1.0 out of 5 stars El empastado y el corte de las hojas horrible!
Más alla de opinar sobre el contenido del libro, mi queja es sobre la impresión de libro y el como llegó en el paquete.
Primero que nada el libro llegó sin película de protección alguna ni en el producto como tampoco la caja. Lo cual no seria tanto el problema si tan solo la caja en que se entregó estuviera en buena forma, lo cual no fue el caso porque hasta cayendose en pedazos esta la caja de Amazon y casi se pierde la hoja con información del paquete.
Desgraciadamente, no es la primera vez que compró un libro de pasta dura en Amazon y parece que te venden un libro de segunda mano (o peor), con las hojas maltratadas y la cubierta desgastada (como se nota en la foto) y, peor aún, que parece que ni siquiera pueden cortar o pegar de manera uniforme las páginas del libro. Volviendose no solo fea su presentación sino incluso puede llegar a maltratar más el libro de lo que ya esta.
Ya en este punto te repiensas comprar un libro en Amazon aunque este en rebaja, cuando al final del día tienes que devolverlo porque te entregan cosas de mala calidad.
Luis ZavalaEl empastado y el corte de las hojas horrible!
Reviewed in Mexico on October 23, 2024
Primero que nada el libro llegó sin película de protección alguna ni en el producto como tampoco la caja. Lo cual no seria tanto el problema si tan solo la caja en que se entregó estuviera en buena forma, lo cual no fue el caso porque hasta cayendose en pedazos esta la caja de Amazon y casi se pierde la hoja con información del paquete.
Desgraciadamente, no es la primera vez que compró un libro de pasta dura en Amazon y parece que te venden un libro de segunda mano (o peor), con las hojas maltratadas y la cubierta desgastada (como se nota en la foto) y, peor aún, que parece que ni siquiera pueden cortar o pegar de manera uniforme las páginas del libro. Volviendose no solo fea su presentación sino incluso puede llegar a maltratar más el libro de lo que ya esta.
Ya en este punto te repiensas comprar un libro en Amazon aunque este en rebaja, cuando al final del día tienes que devolverlo porque te entregan cosas de mala calidad.
Images in this review
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Cliente AmazonReviewed in Brazil on October 13, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars previu a queda da Dilma e disse que a Interner é uma coisa que o homem inventou e não sabe o que é
Imperdível. Eu o li em maio de 2013. Hoje não tem o mesmo impacto. Mas, vale a pena ler, quem não leu.
- bissan hazemReviewed in Canada on December 22, 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars imagination turn into reality
I enjoy this book, and I even gave a copy to a friend of mine. If you are looking for imagination turn into reality, read this book.
- shahrukhReviewed in India on November 13, 2015
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Excellent book. Gives all insight into the digital world.
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Amazon CustomerReviewed in Italy on December 13, 2013
5.0 out of 5 stars Tempestivo e preciso
Il libro che ho richiesto è stato spedito nei tempi e modi previsti, e il prodotto era in ottime condizioni