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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Google's Eric Schmidt: People aren't ready for the technology revolution

In an interesting piece from ReadWriteWeb, I've learned about a recent staement by Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt. He states (in a manner reminiscent of Mark Zuckerberg's 'privacy is dead')
"People aren't ready for the technology revolution". I must admit that while finding unneutral Zuckerberg's assesment annoying, but had to agree with him that privacy concepts are changing along with the information revolution, Schmidt's statements somehow hit a more sensitive nerve. The predictions -
  • "There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003...but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing...People aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them."
  • "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence...we can predict where you are going to go"
  • "In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."
  • "In our lifetimes...we'll go from a small number of people having access to information, to 5 billion people having all the world's knowledge in their native language." 
might foresee a safer, more comfortable world, but they also bring with them a definite atmosphere of a sea of information that is very hard to navigate for the individual, and greater power than ever before to some who will control the flow of information and its uses.

I don't know what you make of it. I think I'll clear some time for another reading of Roger Zelazny's "My name is Legion".

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