A review by betsychadwell
The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business, by Jared Cohen, Eric Schmidt
2.0
[22 April 2020]
I bought this book when it first came out in 2013, but just got around to reading it. Not as dated as you might think considering it purports to predict what's going to happen with respect to technology in the future. But the authors are not talking about gadget technology. No flying cars, or virtual reality, or robots (except in war). Instead they talk about what happens to societies and people because of the expansion of the internet and communications technology. In effect, they say there will be two realities, the physical reality we've been dealing with for thousands of years and the virtual reality that is just becoming widespread. They talk about the ways the two realities will conflict with and complement each other, and the ways that people and entities, especially governments, will have to learn to deal with both of them. It's not really a hopeful future they see. More connection, but much less privacy. More possibility of activism, but more repression. I don't know enough about any of it to judge the accuracy of their predictions, but it was a moderately interesting read and pretty short.
I bought this book when it first came out in 2013, but just got around to reading it. Not as dated as you might think considering it purports to predict what's going to happen with respect to technology in the future. But the authors are not talking about gadget technology. No flying cars, or virtual reality, or robots (except in war). Instead they talk about what happens to societies and people because of the expansion of the internet and communications technology. In effect, they say there will be two realities, the physical reality we've been dealing with for thousands of years and the virtual reality that is just becoming widespread. They talk about the ways the two realities will conflict with and complement each other, and the ways that people and entities, especially governments, will have to learn to deal with both of them. It's not really a hopeful future they see. More connection, but much less privacy. More possibility of activism, but more repression. I don't know enough about any of it to judge the accuracy of their predictions, but it was a moderately interesting read and pretty short.