The New Digital Age

by Jared Cohen

  Our agent, Mel Parker, ensured that we found a publisher who shared our vision in tackling these difficult issues. We would also like to thank the many people at Google who offered their important insights at various stages in the writing process. Google’s cofounders Larry Page (also CEO) and Sergey Brin are a constant source of inspiration for both of us. Justin Kosslyn, a product manager at Google Ideas and a product visionary, helped us shape several of our future predictions. Justin is undoubtedly going to be someone to watch in the future. Lucas Dixon, an associate on the Google Ideas team and a brilliant engineer, helped us work through some of the more technical aspects of the book. We also benefited from conversations with many current and former Googlers: CJ Adams, Larry Alder, Nikesh Arora, Jieun Baek, Brendan Ballou, Andy Berndt, Eric Brewer, Shona Brown, Scott Carpenter, Christine Chen, DJ Collins, Yasmin Dolatabadi, Marc Ellenbogen, Eric Gross, Jill Hazelbaker, Shane Huntley, Minnie Ingersoll, Amy Lambert, Ann Lavin, Erez Levin, Damian Menscher, Misty Muscatel, David Pressoto, Scott Rubin, Nigel Snoad, Alfred Spector, Matthew Stepka, Astro Teller, Sebastian Thrun, Lorraine Twohill, Rachel Whetstone, Mike Wiacek, Susan Wojcicki and Emily Wodd.

  There are a number of people at Google who helped orchestrate many of the logistics and trips that helped make this book possible: Jennifer Barths, Kimberly Birdsall, Gavin Bishop, Kimberly Cooper, Daniela Crocco, Dominique Cunningham, Danielle “Mr. D” Feher, Ann Hiatt, Dan Keyserling, Marty Lev, Pam Shore, Manuel Temez and Brian Thompson.

  Our gratitude to all our friends and colleagues whose ideas and thoughts we’ve benefited from: Elliott Abrams, Ruzwana Bashir, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Chris Brose, Jordan Brown, James Bryer, Mike Cline, Steve Coll, Peter Diamandis, Larry Diamond, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, James Fallows, Summer Felix, Richard Fontaine, Dov Fox, Tom Freston, Malcolm Gladwell, James Glassman, Jack Goldsmith, David Gordon, Sheena Greitens, Craig Hatkoff, Michael Hayden, Chris Hughes, Walter Isaacson, Dean Kamen, David Kennedy, Erik Kerr, Parag Khanna, Joseph Konzelmann, Stephen Krasner, Ray Kurzweil, Eric Lander, Jason Liebman, Claudia Mendoza, Evgeny Morozov, Dambisa Moyo, Elon Musk, Meghan O’Sullivan, Farah Pandith, Barry Pavel, Steven Pinker, Joe Polish, Alex Pollen, Jason Rakowski, Lisa Randall, Condoleezza Rice, Jane Rosenthal, Nouriel Roubini, Kori Schake, Vance Serchuk, Michael Spence, Stephen Stedman, Dan Twining, Decker Walker, Matthew Waxman, Tim Wu, Jillian York, Juan Zarate, Jonathan Zittrain and Ethan Zuckerman.

  We also want to thank the guys from Peak Performance, particularly Joe Dowdell and Jose and Emilio Gomez, for keeping us healthy during the final stages of writing.

  And to our families: From Jared, a very special thank-you to Rebecca Cohen, who during our writing process went from being a long-distance girlfriend to a wife. Throughout, she has been an intellectual partner, and served as one of our most helpful advisors. Her expertise and knowledge of the legal system brought up a number of provocative questions that ended up becoming defining features of several chapters. Also a special thanks to Dee and Donald Cohen, Emily and Jeff Nestler, Annette and Paul Shapiro, Audrey Bear, and Aaron and Rachel Zubaty for being such a supportive family. There is also a special debt of gratitude owed to Alan Mirken, who is a veteran of the publishing industry and in addition to being a great uncle (pun intended), is always insightful in his advice and guidance.

  From Eric, a lifetime of thank-yous to Wendy Schmidt, who brought a sense of humanity and purpose to a dry technology executive. She bridges the human and technological worlds flawlessly.

  —E.S., J.C., January 2013

  NOTES

  Introduction

  The Internet is among the few things: This quote is adapted from part of Eric Schmidt’s speech at the April 1997 JavaOne Conference in San Francisco. The original quote is “The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” We have adapted the quote to our current view, which is that it is not the first thing, but instead “among the few,” with others including nuclear weapons, steam power, and electricity.

  it is the first that will make it possible: The printing press, the landline, the radio, the television, and the fax machine all represent technological revolutions, but all required intermediaries.

  50 million: See figures for year 2000 in “Estimated Internet Users (World) and Percentage Growth,” ITU World Telecommunication Indicators (2001), referred to by Claudia Sarrocco and Dr. Tim Kelly, Improving IP Connectivity in the Least Developed Countries, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Strategy and Policy Unit, 9, accessed October 23, 2012, http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/ni/ipdc/study/Improving%20IP%20Connectivity%20in%20the%20Least%20Developed%20Countries1.pdf.

  more than 2 billion: See figures for year 2010 in “Global Numbers of Individuals Using the Internet, Total and Per 100 Inhabitants, 2001–2011,” International Telecommunication Union (ITU), ICT Data and Statistics (IDS), accessed October 8, 2012, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/.

  from 750 million to well over 5 billion: See sums for years 2000 and 2010 in “Mobile-Cellular Telephone Subscriptions,” International Telecommunication Union (ITU), ICT Data and Statistics (IDS), accessed October 8, 2012, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/.

  projected eight billion: See total for both sexes’ population in “World Midyear Population by Age and Sex for 2025,” U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base, accessed October 8, 2012, http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/worldpop.php.

  many old institutions … reallocate the concentration of power: This concept was something we had discussed for a while, but it wasn’t until a conversation with our good friend Alec Ross that we were able to capture it in this way. He deserves shared credit for this concept. See Alec Ross, “How Connective Tech Boosts Political Change,” CNN, June, 20, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/20/opinion/opinion-alec-ross-tech-politics/index.html.

  banned the use of mobile phones: “Better than Freedom? Why Iraqis Cherish Their Mobile Phones,” Economist, November 12, 2009, http://www.economist.com/node/14870118.

  unreliable access to food, water and electricity: “Iraq: Key Facts and Figures,” BBC, September, 7, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11095920.

  garbage hadn’t been collected in years: Zaineb Naji and Dawood Salman, “Baghdad’s Trash Piles Up,” Environmental News Service, July 6, 2010, http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2010/2010-07-06-01.html.

  CHAPTER 1

  OUR FUTURE SELVES

  five billion more people: The World in 2011: ICT Facts and Figures, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), accessed October 10, 2012, http://www.itu.int/ITUD/ict/facts/2011/material/ICTFactsFigures2011.pdf. The above source shows that as of 2011 35 percent of the world’s population is online. We factored in population increase projections to estimate five billion set to join the virtual world.

  Consider the impact of basic mobile phones: This fisherwomen thought experiment came out of a conversation with Rebecca Cohen, and while we put it in the context of the Congo, the example belongs to her.

  650 million mobile-phone users in Africa: “Africa’s Mobile Phone Industry ‘Booming,’ ” BBC, November 9, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15659983.

  close to 3 billion across Asia: See mobile cellular subscriptions, Asia & Pacific, year 2011, in “Key ICT Indicators for the ITU/BDT Regions (Totals and Penetration Rates),” International Telecommunication Union (ITU), ICT Data and Statistics (IDS), updated November 16, 2011, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/at_glance/KeyTelecom.html.

  The majority of these people are using basic-feature phones: Ibid. Compare mobile cellular subscriptions to active mobile broadband subscriptions for 2011.

  life expectancy is less than sixty years, or even fifty: “Country Comparison: Life Expectancy at Birth,” CIA, World Fact Book, accessed October 11, 2012, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html#top.

  This will even be true: One
of the authors spent the summer of 2001 in this remote village, without electricity, running water, or a single cell phone or landline. During a return trip in the fall of 2010, many of the Maasai women had crafted beautiful beaded pouches to store their cell phones in.

  China’s expansive “shanzhai” network: Nicholas Schmidle, “Inside the Knockoff-Tennis-Shoe Factory,” New York Times Magazine, August 19, 2010, Global edition, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22fake-t.html?pagewanted=all.

  machines can actually “print” physical objects: “The Printed World: Three-Dimensional Printing from Digital Designs Will Transform Manufacturing and Allow More People to Start Making Things,” Economist, February 10, 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/18114221.

  a full-sized replica motorcycle: Patrick Collinson, “Hi-Tech Shares Take US for a Walk on the High Side,” Guardian (Manchester), March 16, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/16/hi-tech-shares-us.

  “social robots” that can recognize human gestures: Sarah Constantin, “Gesture Recognition, Mind-Reading Machines, and Social Robotics,” H+ Magazine, February 8, 2011, http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/02/08/gesture-recognition-mind-reading-machines-and-social-robotics/.

  In 2012, a team at a robotics laboratory in Japan: Helen Thomson, “Robot Avatar Body Controlled by Thought Alone,” New Scientist, July 2012, 19–20.

  Consider the twenty-four-year-old Kenyan inventor Anthony Mutua: “Shoe Technology to Charge Cell Phones,” Daily Nation, May 2012, http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Shoe+technology+to+charge+cell+phones++/-/1056/1401998/-/view/printVersion/-/sur34lz/-/index.html.

  placed the chip in the sole of a tennis shoe: Ibid.

  Mutua’s chip is now set to go into mass production: Ibid.

  Khan Academy: In the spirit of full disclosure: Eric Schmidt is on the board of Khan Academy.

  replacing lectures with videos watched at home: Clive Thompson, “How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education,” Wired Magazine, August 2011, posted online July 15, 2011, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/.

  In 2012, the MIT Media Lab tested: Nicholas Negroponte, “EmTech Preview: Another Way to Think About Learning,” Technology Review, September 13, 2012, http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429206/emtech-preview-another-way-to-think-about/.

  distributing preloaded tablets to primary-age kids: David Talbot, “Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves,” Technology Review, October 29, 2012, http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/.

  one of the lowest rates of literacy in the world: “Field Listing: Literacy,” CIA, World Fact Book, accessed October 11, 2012, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html#af.

  in 2012, Nevada became the first state to issue licenses to driverless cars: Chris Gaylord, “Ready for a Self-Driving Car? Check Your Driveway,” Christian Science Monitor, June 25, 2012, http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Tech/2012/0625/Ready-for-a-self-driving-car-Check-your-driveway.

  California also affirmed their legality: James Temple, “California Affirms Legality of Driverless Cars,” The Tech Chronicles (blog), San Francisco Chronicle, September 25, 2012, http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2012/09/25/california-legalizes-driverless-cars/; Florida has passed a similar law. See Joann Muller, “With Driverless Cars, Once Again It Is California Leading the Way,” Forbes, September 26, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/09/26/with-driverless-cars-once-again-it-is-california-leading-the-way/.

  Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first electronic pill in 2012: Erin Kim, “ ‘Digital Pill’ with Chip Inside Gets FDA Green Light,” CNN Money, August 3, 2012, http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/03/technology/startups/ingestible-sensor-proteus/index.htm; Peter Murray, “No More Skipping Your Medicine—FDA Approves First Digital Pill,” Forbes, August 9, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/08/09/no-more-skipping-your-medicine-fda-approves-first-digital-pill/.

  pill carries a tiny sensor one square millimeter in size: Ibid.

  stomach acid activates the circuit: Daniel Cressey, “Say Hello to Intelligent Pills: Digital System Tracks Patients from the Inside Out,” Nature, January 17, 2012, http://www.nature.com/news/say-hello-to-intelligent-pills-1.9823; Randi Martin, “FDA Approves ‘Intelligent’ Pill That Reports Back to Doctors,” WTOP, August 2, 2012, http://www.wtop.com/267/2974694/FDA-approves-intelligent-pill-that-reports-back-to-doctors.

  The patch can collect information: Cressey, “Say Hello to Intelligent Pills,” Nature, January 17, 2012, and Martin, “FDA Approves ‘Intelligent’ Pill,” WTOP, August 2, 2012.

  track what a person eats: Randi Martin, “FDA Approves ‘Intelligent’ Pill That Reports Back to Doctors,” WTOP, August 2, 2012.

  Tissue engineers will be able to grow new organs: Henry Fountain, “One Day, Growing Spare Parts Inside the Body,” New York Times, September 17, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/health/research/using-the-body-to-incubate-replacement-organs.html?pagewanted=all; Henry Fountain, “A First: Organs Tailor-Made with Body’s Own Cells,” New York Times, September 15, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/health/research/scientists-make-progress-in-tailor-made-organs.html?pagewanted=all; Henry Fountain, “Synthetic Windpipe Is Used to Replace Cancerous One,” New York Times, January 12, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/health/research/surgeons-transplant-synthetic-trachea-in-baltimore-man.html.

  doctors and disease specialists will have more information: Gina Kolata, “Infant DNA Tests Speed Diagnosis of Rare Diseases,” New York Times, October 3, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/health/new-test-of-babies-dna-speeds-diagnosis.html?_r=1; Gina Kolata, “Genome Detectives Solve a Hospital’s Deadly Outbreak,” New York Times, August 22, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/health/genome-detectives-solve-mystery-of-hospitals-k-pneumoniae-outbreak.html; Gina Kolata, “A New Treatment’s Tantalizing Promise Brings Heartbreaking Ups and Downs,” New York Times, July 8, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/health/new-frontiers-of-cancer-treatment-bring-breathtaking-swings.html.

  due to change as the burgeoning field of pharmacogenetics: “One Size Does Not Fit All: The Promise of Pharmacogenomics,” National Center for Biotechnology Information, Science Primer, revised March 31, 2004, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/primer/pharm.html.

  the “mobile health” revolution: “mHealth in the Developing World,” m+Health, accessed October 23, 2012, http://mplushealth.com/en/SiteRoot/MHme/Overview/mHealth-in-the-Developing-World/.

  Mobile phones are now used: Lakshminarayanan Subramanian et al., “SmartTrack,” CATER (Cost-effective Appropriate Technologies for Emerging Region), New York University, accessed October 11, 2012, http://cater.cs.nyu.edu/smarttrack#ref3.

  tiny microchip that uses low-radiation: Kevin Spak, “Coming Soon: X-Ray Phones,” Newser, April 20, 2012, http://www.newser.com/story/144464/coming-soon-x-ray-phones.html.

  how could a dog eat his cloud storage drive?: A New Yorker cartoon by Tom Cheney in 2012 expressed a similar idea. Its caption read “The Cloud Ate My Homework.” See “Cartoons from the Issue,” New Yorker, October 8, 2012, http://www.newyorker.com/humor/issuecartoons/2012/10/08/cartoons_20121001#slide=5.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE FUTURE OF IDENTITY, CITIZENSHIP AND REPORTING

  While many worry about the phenomenon of confirmation bias: Eli Pariser describes this as a “filter bubble” in his book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (New York: Penguin Press, 2011).

  a recent Ohio State University study: R. Kelly Garrett and Paul Resnick, “Resisting Political Fragmentation on the Internet,” Daedalus 140, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 108–120, doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00118.

  famously dissected how ethnically popular names: Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (New York: William Morrow, 2005); their study showed that the names were not the cause of a child’s success or failure, but a symptom
of other indicators (particularly socioeconomic ones) that do influence a child’s chances. See Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, “A Roshanda by Any Other Name,” Slate, April 11, 2005, http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2005/04/a_roshanda_by_any_other_name.single.html.

  Wall Street bankers hired: Nick Bilton, “Erasing the Digital Past,” New York Times, April 1, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/fashion/03reputation.html?pagewanted=all.

  Assange shared his two basic arguments on this subject: Julian Assange in discussion with the authors, June 2011.

  lightning rod, as Assange called himself: Atika Shubert, “WikiLeaks Editor Julian Assange Dismisses Reports of Internal Strife,” CNN, October 22, 2010, http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-22/us/wikileaks.interview_1_julian-assange-wikileaks-afghan-war-diary?_s=PM:US.

  “Sources speak with their feet”: Julian Assange in discussion with the authors, June 2011.

  WikiLeaks lost its principal website URL: James Cowie, “WikiLeaks: Moving Target,” Renesys (blog), December 7, 2010, http://www.renesys.com/blog/2010/12/wikileaks-moving-target.shtml.

  “mirror” sites: Ravi Somaiya, “Pro-Wikileaks Activists Abandon Amazon Cyber Attack,” BBC, December 9, 2010, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-11957367.

  Alexei Navalny, a Russian blogger: Matthew Kaminski, “The Man Vladimir Putin Fears Most,” Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203986604577257321601811092.html; “Russia Faces to Watch: Alexei Navalny,” BBC, June 12, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18408297.

  donate toward its operating costs via PayPal: Tom Parfitt, “Alexei Navalny: Russia’s New Rebel Who Has Vladimir Putin in His Sights,” Guardian (Manchester), January 15, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/jan/15/alexei-navalny-profile-vladimir-putin.

  set of leaked documents: “Russia Checks Claims of $4bn Oil Pipeline Scam,” BBC, November 17, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11779154.