Digital world must eventually defeat dictators: Schmidt, Cohen
Nathan Gardels talks to Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen about their new book, The Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business.
NATHAN GARDELS: You paint an exciting portrait of the arriving digital age where most of the Earth’s 8 billion future inhabitants will be empowered through technological inclusion and connectivity. The potential ranges from instant translation to health care through personalized DNA to thought-controlled motion technology for prosthetics.
But you don’t shy away from the central paradox of the digital age: The more we know or learn though connected networks, the more is known and learned about us. Every click and search is recorded as “permanent data” on the “cloud.” The same apparatus that enables unprecedented connectivity enables unprecedented surveillance of the individual.
As you say in the book, “The impact of the data revolution will be to strip citizens of much of their control over their personal information ... the communication technologies we use today are invasive by design, collecting our photos, comments and friends into giant databases that are searchable ... in the absence of regulation, it is all fair game” — whether for any snooping government or aggressive marketing company.
What checks and balances are necessary that will favor the potential while limiting the downside of this paradox?
ERIC SCHMIDT: For all the positive potential you noted for the wealthy countries, the empowerment of individuals through mobile devices linked to networks is even greater in places where people have little or nothing in terms of education or even phone landlines for communication.
On the “central paradox” you point out, each country will resolve this issue in a different way. Their response to the empowerment of their citizens will depend on the culture and the trust level of the government. While it is theoretically possible to create a police state that knows everything and tracks everybody, there are many reasons why that is not likely to happen, including the fact, first and foremost, that dissidents will fight against it. There are also technological solutions like encryption that will make it possible to protect private communication.
JARED COHEN: In reality, so far, there is no autocracy that has been fully tested on this point because there is no autocracy that is fully connected. In the future there will be a “dictator’s dilemma” as well as a “citizen’s dilemma.”