>>Eric Schmidt: I wanted to spend a little
bit of time talking about the future and what
it holds and a little bit about following
up on Professor Sandel's comments on how we
should think about it, what our attitudes
should be.
And I'm going to start by saying that I think
we're missing something, maybe because of
the way our politics works, maybe because
of the way the media works.
We're not optimistic enough.
I think that if you look -- I'm going to try
to make the case to you that the nature of
innovation, the things that are going on,
both at Google and globally, are pretty positive
for the human -- for humankind and that we
should be much more optimistic about what's
going to happen going forward.
Last week we just had Google I/O. I think
people have heard generally about it.
We had more than 6,000 developers.
It was sold out in 90 seconds.
Literally, we need a larger venue.
And the great news about technology is you
can livestream everything out.
And just as Professor Sandel's course is now
the number one global course in the things
that he talked about, here's a gifted professor
who now has a global reach, his impact is
not just the United States but, in fact, the
world.
The same thing is occurring with these kinds
of information platforms.
In our case, we are focused on Android and
on Chrome.
And I will take you through some of the details
there, and we will talk about it in the Q&A
as well.
If you think about it, who thought there was
room for another browser?
And, yet, five years hence, Chrome is the
number one browser in almost every market.
And if you care about security -- and I will
tell you why you should care about security
in a minute -- you should use Chrome.
If you care about speed, in other words, you
don't care about security but you care about
your own time, you should use Chrome.
And if you care about price, you should use
Chrome because it is free.
Okay.
So I will come up with other reasons to use
Chrome, but those are three ones that I think
make it a no-brainer.
With Android, I think people now know that
we've passed more than 900 million activations
of Android.
And we're going to cross a billion smartphones
that are Android based sometime this summer.
In my entire career, all right, this is something
that I would have never dreamed was possible.
And if you told me it would happen, I would
say it will never happen during my lifetime.
It shows you either how terribly wrong I have
been, which is always possible, but more importantly
the scale of demand for services and platform
that solve problems at the level we can do
now.
It is extraordinary.
We also introduced Google Play and on and
on.
Now, Chrome, I mentioned before, with more
than 750 million active users of Chrome, Chrome
is now a platform in its own right, and it
is an opportunity using HTML5 and other sort
of extensions that technical people are building
on to build applications that you can only
dream of.
It used to be in the world that most of us
grew up, you had to have these specialized
apps that were tied to the PC or tied to the
Mac, tied to their architectures.
And now you can, using cloud computing, have
these applications come to your general-purpose
browser, which Chrome is the cheapest, fastest,
and most secure to do it.
That standarization model is now going to
drive the industry forward.
So think of it as browser platform, Java front-end,
mobile device with heavy-set data computation
in the background.
Google is one of the companies that's building
this entire ecosystem, but we are not the
only ones.
Of course, we also introduced lots of things
about Google+ and so forth.
In search, what's the end game for search?
Getting you to the right answer.
The most interesting thing about getting you
to the right answer is that sometimes the
right answer is not a question that you asked.
Interesting.
We have a product called Google Now, which
is the first example of this, which if you
enable it and you just let it run, it eventually,
more or less, guesses what you do every day
in terms of driving.
And it tells you how long it takes you to
get to work and to get home.
Now, how does it do that?
It makes some guesses.
It doesn't have to be perfect.
You didn't ask it.
It is just trying to be helpful.
I know that's a simple example, but it is
the general point of how AI and computation
will make our lives better.
Eventually, you will wake up in the morning
and there will be some flat screen.
And you will sit there and look at the flat
screen and you will wake up and say "Hello,"
and it will say "Hello, Eric," because it
is your bedroom.
And you will go, Okay.
Do I have to get up?
It will say, No.
It has already scanned -- it is all opt in.
You have already chosen this.
It has looked at what's going to happen today.
It's figured out roughly what is going to
happen.
Is there going to be a traffic jam?
You are always late to the airport and there
is a traffic jam.
But today there is not going to be one so
you can sleep for an extra 15 minutes.
How is that possible?
Because of modern computation and modern data
that's available to us.
Do you think people will use this?
Of course they will.
Think of the evolution of search from today
where you type and you sort of scan and so
forth, which obviously works very well at
Google, which is our core business and drives
much of the use of Google today.
Think of that as eventually moving to a platform
where we help you get through the day with
this sort of infinitely intelligent personal
digital assistant that actually sort of can
help you figure out, This is my priority.
This is what I should do.
This is where I would have the most fun, and
this is what I should avoid.
We announced Google Maps.
We change the way Maps works.
Now you get a personalized map.
And this personalized map, again, with the
information that we have is much more targeted
at where you're going to and what you care
about.
We introduced something called Google Glass
which has gotten a lot of publicity because
of some of the implications of it.
You sit there and you go: Would I really use
this?
You betcha!
People at Google who are trying this thing
out said they find it so incredibly convenient
because it is always there.
It is always helping you out.
You can talk to it.
It talks back.
So what I'm thinking about when I think about
Google in the last year, since I was here,
is I look at that set of accomplishments and
I see it as an opportunity to create a platform
play for a series of additional platforms,
right, that we're building on top of this
computational knowledge that I'm describing.
We're building on top of the things that we're
learning about how people like and use information.
And you will see that, and you will see it
over and over again.
Now, why does this matter?
It matters a lot because information is what
people really care about and in the course
of writing the book, which I think you all
have -- and would love you to read, of course
-- we spent an awful lot of time -- we started
off with sort of a techno-optimist view, if
you will.
We started off by saying, you know, technology
will take over.
It is all good, you know, and so forth.
But in wandering around the world, we begin
to understand both its more subtle goods and
its more subtle bads.
So a summary of the book is the book is really
about what we think will happen in the future,
not from a technological perspective, although
we have it in there, but rather how society
will react.
In the course of all this, we had to go visit
some interesting places.
Imagine a world where all the information
that you have is rote learning, where there
is no ambiguity.
There is no textbooks.
There is no alternative sources of information.
You're told exactly one thing, and that's
exactly what you're told and that's what you
believe.
And if you don't believe it, you're taken
to the Gulag.
Your parents and your children and a fair
number of people you know are executed.
That's North Korea.
Today, this year, that's North Korea.
That's not some movie.
That's not some special from the BBC about
something historic about human society.
That is today.
So you tend to think of this as: How can that
be?
22 million people trapped in that?
But it is true.
How do you fix it?
Turn on the Internet.
Put a little bit of information in this thing.
These are people.
These are humans, just like us, trapped in
the inverse system.
It is Kafkaesque.
Trust me, you can't get in.
They can't get out.
How do you solve it?
Put the information in.
How do you do it?
With mobile devices.
Why?
Because they already have them.
That's the key insight.
In North Korea's case, they have more than
a million phones.
They are all SMS capable.
They are technically capable of HSDPA, which
is, of course, the date service for 3G.
Government chose not to turn it on.
Who makes the decision.
The respected leader.
The respected leader has not gotten around
to deciding to turn on the Internet or not.
Only one person can make this decision, and
he is too busy launching missiles and doing
other things.
But that decision might be the most consequential
decision of the entire historical context
because it is the one thing that can really
empower the people.
It is the only way at this point.
But you tend to think -- and if you follow
that, I'm using that is the most extreme.
If you tend to think that everyone -- Everyone
we know is online.
Everyone here has a mobile phone.
Everyone you know has a mobile phone.
All your family members have a mobile phone
and so forth.
It is only 2 billion.
There is 7 billion people around.
So in wandering around, I discovered there
is a lot of the world I don't normally talk
to.
We went to -- doing this with Jared, we went
to Tunisia.
And what happened was interesting.
The revolutionaries who ousted Ben Ali, we
met a whole bunch of the bloggers and so forth.
They have all become Android developers.
It is great.
There is no new revenue, right?
There is no new revenue.
There is no long-term revenue being a revolutionary.
Much more revenue being an Android developer.
These are smart people, right?
More seriously, in Libya, we learned about
school girls using Google Maps.
They would plot where the NATO bombings were
so they could walk to school without getting
killed.
Do you think Google Maps matter?
They matter a lot in Libya.
We went to Myanmar, Burma, where a truly historic
revolution is occurring and Aung San Suu Kyi
will ultimately, I think, be seen as the Mandela
of Asia.
She is an extraordinary lady.
Turns out that the government in 2004 banned
-- because they didn't want the kind of empowerment
I talked about.
They banned all forms of email.
And in their law, they banned Yahoo! mail
and Hotmail.
Everyone uses Gmail because it is legal because
they forgot.
Everyone actually uses Gmail to talk to each
other, but the Internet doesn't work at all.
So depending on how they handle the Internet,
and it is not at all obvious how they are
going to decide, we could have a huge explosion
of creativity from this enormously beautiful
culture and these great people, or not.
We went to Mexico where the government is
tracking -- has this horrendous problem with
the drug cartels.
And they built an infrastructure to track
drug activity and covered list of networks.
The most interesting problem in Mexico is
the police are so corrupt that when we traveled
with the police, they had to wear masks because
they themselves did not want to be photographed
by anyone else because they would be seen
as being legitimate police people.
So what happened in the city that we were
in, which is the murder capital of the world
as of last year, the citizens have formed
their own network to watch what's going on.
They took over the monitoring functions that
the police would normally do because they
don't trust the police, but they trust each
other, and they did it using the Internet.
We went out to -- in Kenya, we went out to
the Masai nomads if you haven't been there,
it is well worth seeing.
So we are greeted by the village elder whose
proudest possessions are, in order, his mobile
phone, his spear and his four wives and very
happy to show all of them off to the camera.
You think it matters?
It matters a lot.
It is how their businesses are.
These are people who don't have toilets, proper
food, proper medical care, and so forth.
I can go on and on.
Maybe the one that affected me the most was
in Pakistan, there are these horrific, horrific
crimes that are done to women where men throw
acid on their face.
Half of them die.
Aside from the horrendous physical pain and
recovery that's involved, they are not allowed
out of the house because in their culture
it is a shame crime.
So they are trapped in-house for the rest
of their lives.
So the stories we heard when we met with these
women was that they were using the Internet
to build lives and that on the Internet no
one knew that they didn't have a face.
And, in fact, one of them had managed to actually
become a digital person, digital identity.
Had met a men and married him in the real
world.
That gives you a sense of how powerful the
Internet is to change these societies.
So what will happen with all of this is that
when these 5 billion people connect, right,
when they actually get to us, the changes
will be profound.
So we think of what I'm talking about.
Remember I gave you the thing how Google is
doing really well, which I'm very, very proud
of, we have this new product.
We're excited about this product.
Everybody at Google is excited about this.
When you are sitting in a village in Inlay
Lake in Myanmar where you have no entertainment,
no medical information, no textbooks, no educational
system and basically no hope, no political
knowledge, no way to express yourself and
the mobile phone arrives, it is a day you
will remember for the rest of your lives.
Even if it is a shared one and even if it
is a slow one with a slow browser because
it became all of a sudden a way in which you
could get information.
We were in south Sudan, which is a country
I do not recommend you visit.
There is a war between south Sudan and regular
Sudan, right at the border.
It is so bad and people are so hungry for
information that the only way to get information
into that part of the world is through micro
SD cards which are smuggled in small bags
and they are spread throughout the people
to figure out what's going on, how they can
win, how can they can be empowered, how they
can fight the horrific violence being done
by one tribe against the other.
But my point here is that in the course of
this, the values that I'm talking about, free
expression, freedom of assembly, critical
thinking and meritocracy, everyone wants them.
Everyone associates them with the Internet.
And I would argue that it is our shared responsibility
to make that happen; that in terms of impact
and things that we can do as a human society
to make our world safer, less violent, better
treatment of women, less violence to ourselves,
less likelihood of state-to-state conflict,
less tribal conflict and so forth, this is
the single thing that we as individuals can
do.
It's the thing that we can do that has the
biggest impact on a personal basis.
It's also the thing that is the most satisfying,
because these are solutions that scale.
So to me, I can give you example after example
after example of what's going on.
A number of examples here.
You know, we have -- think about small business
here in the U.K.
The Cambridge Satchel Company figured out
a way -- a lady who is very clever, she figured
out a way to make these things out of the
proper leather.
She did it in her kitchen and all of a sudden,
she figures out a way, using Google AdWords,
to get not just a U.K. business but a global
business building what turns out to be incredibly
clever, very, very desirable satchels which
are now part of the, you know -- you know,
the sort of Coachella, Fashion Week, you know,
the whole buzz.
Now, did that have an impact?
You betcha, because it started in her kitchen.
It provides lots of employment in the town
that she grows up in.
But more importantly, it's a brand, it's an
impact, it's something people care about.
Another example.
In Germany, there are these basically stolen
sort of pastries, bakery shops, and people
are all of a sudden marketing these things,
and who are their customers?
Not just in Germany.
They're all throughout Europe.
You can now ship them everywhere.
So you sit there and you go, "Does that matter?"
Absolutely.
A source of economic growth.
A source of branding.
A source of culture.
And so forth.
I'm using those two as examples because they're
easy ones for all of us to understand.
The same is -- occurs all over.
I don't know, another one that I thought was
interesting was that there's a Swedish company
called jDome that has an indoor bicycle.
They're just having fun, right?
You know, typical engineers having fun.
So they have an indoor bicycle and they have
a dome and you're biking along, and using
Street View, you're biking along on whatever
street you want in the entire world.
Now, this sounds like the neatest thing you
could possibly imagine because, remember,
Street View covers something like 3,000 cities
including parts of the Artic and Antarctic.
So imagine yourselves sitting on a bicycle,
bicycling to the North Pole, which I understand
is a little difficult because it's all ice,
or mostly ice, some of the time, declining
at a percentage, and the South Pole which
is, of course, on top of a land mass.
So you sit there and you go "What a neat product!"
Well, there's a much more interesting solution,
which is, it turns out that if you're mentally
challenged, if you have had various mental
diseases, one of the treatments is to get
outdoors.
But the people are sort of unsafe to allow
them to go to biking.
You put them on this thing and the treatment
turns out to have one of the highest rates
of improvement of any.
Put the people on the bike, tell them to go
bike around, right?
Perfectly safely, I might add, right?
And have a good time.
So you sit there and you go, "Does that matter?"
It matters to the families of the people who
have had Alzheimer's and dementia and so forth,
who care very deeply about these people and
who want them to have a good life.
So when I think about this, put it into context,
what is it?
It's connection.
It's meaning.
It's the simple act of getting on line, making
all of our lives better.
But let me give you a simple rule.
There are no countries where the arrival of
the Internet has made things worse.
In every case, the arrival of the Internet
has made it better.
I think we are vastly underestimating the
potential of these countries.
Remember, they can leapfrog all the infrastructure,
all the history, and all the things that we
had to go through, right to the modern computer
architecture, right to the modern way of consuming
information, and I would argue that mobile
phones in the architecture that I'm describing
is really the only good news in many of these
countries after centuries of hardship, of
bad governments, corruption, which is the
number one issue people talk about.
So I think of mobile devices as solving the
education problem.
They solve the -- for obvious reasons.
You can empower, you can basically preload
laptops and so forth.
Violence, especially against women, checked
by the cameras and so forth.
You can publish it, you can use it to shame
the governments and so forth.
And corruption, right?
The most persistent of problems in many of
these countries of all, checked again by mobile
phones.
So you think that mobile phones matter.
You guys think that it matters that you have
all this information.
It matters a lot more than you think for an
awful lot of our fellow citizens, and I spend
my time committed to making this happen.
I know that the company feels very strongly
about this.
But to me, I think that I have a request,
and the request of each of you.
All of us have done well because of the Internet.
Every one of you is here because of the sophisticated
global business approaches that you have taken.
You understand smart people, globalization,
interconnection, business.
You're the winners, right?
So my request of you is to scale our social
impact for this next 5 billion.
I want you to rededicate yourselves to making
their lives better.
In terms of philanthropy, in terms of impact,
this may be the biggest impact that you as
an individual can have during your entire
lives in terms of scale and impact on humanity.
If we -- if we do this, I'm quite convinced
the world is going to be safer and much more
prosperous than at any other time.
You know, Google does a lot, right?
And I'm very, very proud to be here representing
the company.
I know the other Googlers here feel the same
way.
It's been an enormous ride.
But we're not done.
We're just at the beginning of what the architecture
that I've just described can do to make the
world a better place.
This is what we do.
This is who we are.
Let's figure out a way to solve this problem.
This is why we exist, right?
So thank you very, very much.
[ Applause ]
>>Eric Schmidt: I think that we have time
for some questions or comments.
I'm happy to talk about what I talked about
or anything else.
And again, I want to say thank you all.
I've had the privilege of being at this conference
for every year since it's been founded and
I want to thank Lorraine and the usual suspects
for making this so successful.
I'm not sure what the numbers mean.
This is like an IQ test.
[ Laughter ]
>>Eric Schmidt: Number 3 -- okay.
That would mean Number 1.
Oh, okay.
Good.
Does somebody over here want to go -- get
started?
We'll start with Number 6.
Or are you a different number?
[ Laughter ]
>>> I'm a person, not a number.
>>Eric Schmidt: Excellent.
[ Applause ]
>>Eric Schmidt: You know, in the famous British
prisoner series, it was good to be Number
6 and it was not good to be Number 2.
>>> Okay.
Then I'm Lou Tomblin and Number 6 and my question
is: I'm nearly finished with your book.
I like it a lot.
And you were saying there are the 5 billion
people and they have to connect and we have
to connect with them.
But if I see the products of Google or of
Facebook, it is mainly about connecting with
the people I know or that are like myself,
so that's a question that I'm really interested.
How is it going to help us with the people
that we are normally not connecting?
That was what the professor was saying before,
this is what makes a good democracy, so that's
my question.
>>Eric Schmidt: I can't give you a perfect
answer.
I can say that with digital technology, you
can have more friends, right?
If you believe that the Dunbar number is correct,
150 friends is the maximum number of friends
you can have -- look it up -- the -- it looks
like these technologies allow you to interact
at different levels with much greater numbers
of circles, that you -- at some level, that's
what Twitter is fundamentally about.
Sort of broadcasting who -- it's about your
identity, who am I, how do I interact, what
are my relationships.
And I think those are being replicated in
Facebook and Google+ and so forth.
To really understand -- to really get the
sort of -- I would describe it as there are
people in this room who should be your very
close friends and you don't know because you
haven't had the time, we haven't been here
in our meeting long enough for you to hang
out with them, and so forth.
Modern associative matching could actually
suggest that.
There's a new set of applications being built
for your mobile phones which will ultimately
allow you to introduce you to people who have
like interests and so forth.
So it's probably the case that most human
experience will be people who I like, people
like me, people who I find interesting, that
sort of random search.
There are just simply too many complicated
people.
How will you know the 7 billion?
But what we can do is have a jump-ball where
all of the really interesting choices are
available to you using digital technology.
So we can optimize the level of scales of
friends you want.
And the other thing I would tell you is that
some people are introverts, some people are
extroverts.
Some people who are extroverts, they have
5,000 friends.
Some people who are introverts, they have,
you know, 10 very close friends.
Both models are made stronger by this technology.
Let's see.
Over here.
Number 3.
>>> Good morning.
I'm Robin.
I've got a question about the bad governance
that you described, and you're doing a great
job personally with the company and with the
Internet in addressing many bad cases of governance
around the world, and I guess as a human race
we've shown this is really an issue.
If you have too much power in a certain place,
bad governance comes to be a result of it.
You also have a company that really makes
the lives of billions of people better every
day, and to a certain extent controls the
lives of billions of people.
What type of governance structure should we
aim for with a company that is so powerful
and that at the moment does so much good?
How can we make this sustainable so that it
remains the case in the future?
>>Eric Schmidt: Well, part of the -- the answer
to that is that the company was founded under
a set of values and one of the sort of rules
about corporations is that the values, once
set, don't really change.
You know, formed evils remain evil; formed
greats remain great or as great as you can
be.
And I think the governance structure of Google,
and in particular the values of the two founders,
are so imbued in the culture today, I can't
imagine that it would be easy to change in
any future scenario.
So I think for the rest of our lives, I suspect
you're going to see Google in sort of a roughly
similar position.
A variant of your question is the regulation
question, and information is regulated pretty
thoroughly by countries already, and when
I think about it, I don't think of it in a
European context because Europe -- Europe
is a pretty well run place.
I mean, we can debate that, but the fact of
the matter is, it's the rule of law, the people
are honest, there's relatively little corruption.
I think a lot about what happens in countries
where there isn't rule of law and where the
governments are busy trying to game the system
to their own advantage.
You all spend most of your time complaining
about your political system.
I can assure you that in the United States
we spend most of our time complaining about
our political system.
Imagine being in Pakistan, Thailand -- right?
-- Afghanistan, on and on and on.
So thank God we're in Europe, thank God we're
in the U.S, compared to those places.
And so what I would say that Google's mission
in those countries is to bring some of the
western values -- right? -- to those countries,
and we serve as a thorn in their side which
is why they're constantly blocking us.
And we'll continue that, by the way, because
it's great fun.
Let's see some more questions.
Yes, go ahead, Number 6.
We have a new Number 6.
>>> And I am not a number either.
My name is Michael Aidan.
I have a question.
You mentioned the -- that many countries that
have very limited access to your systems or
to Facebook saw the uprise of that and actually
went to the Arab Spring and I think you mentioned
the example of Tunisia.
It's fair to say that now in these countries
they have access to all your tools.
It's also fair to say that a few years after
the revolution, the situation is not glorious,
to say the least.
So given that now these countries have access
to the information, to the Internet and everything
else, and that the revolution has occurred,
where, in your view, did it go wrong and what
is it that we can do to help further?
>>Eric Schmidt: There's a view that the Internet
arrives and that once you empower the citizens,
democracy flourishes, the system becomes orderly,
the rule of law takes over, and it's sort
of a kumbaya moment.
This is clearly false.
The road to democracy of any form or modernity
is a difficult one.
It's a long-term one.
And in the book we talk about this.
We interview Henry Kissinger who talks a lot
about this in his own generational context.
And what we say basically is it's much easier
to start a revolution because of the Internet
and it's much harder to finish one.
So imagine the plight of these poor folks
in the Arab Spring.
They managed to get rid of these evil dictators
who were inhibiting growth, inhibiting civil
rights, did not promote rule of law, generally
had secret police.
I mean, these are really bad architectures
for human organization.
And they're replaced by what?
Right?
Now, it takes decades to develop the leadership
skills, to organize the society, to become
a great leader of -- again, I mentioned Mandela
before.
He's an example.
There are many in history.
These sort of great leaders develop their
skills, their human skills.
They know how to get people organized.
They have a unique ability that most of us
do not.
In a society which had had an Internet revolution,
such people aren't around, except perhaps
the religious leaders, which is what's happened.
So now you have a religious -- you have the
religious leaders taking over the country,
for whatever reason, and you have everyone
now connected, and so expectations are beginning
to rise very fast.
So I argue that these are danger points where
the country could slide back or forward.
I'll give you an example of Myanmar/Burma.
So 18 months ago, the generals for whatever
reason -- we can debate the reason -- decide
to open up.
They release the Lady in the Lake, and they
finally allow freedom of expression after
50 years of absolute dictatorial control,
police state control over the country.
Sanctions and the whole bit are lifted.
It's a wonderful country.
You should definitely visit.
What happens?
Well, the moment you lift that, all of the
sectarian and religious violence becomes worse
because one of the things that the government
had been doing was clamping down on that along
with clamping down on everyone else.
So now what happens on the Internet, there's
violence in the town that we were in.
There was a big fight, which was horrendous,
above us, and on the Internet the rumors are
much worse.
So the government sits there and says, "This
Internet thing is bad," right?
Because not only do we have people really
being killed, which was bad, obviously bad,
but we've also got people using the Internet
to incite further violence.
They then pass the law -- or sorry, they're
in the process of passing a law which will
return Myanmar to the level of media control,
et cetera, that you find in the Soviet Union,
in China.
A step backwards.
Something we should fight.
So that's what I worry about.
I worry that these countries go through the
optimism that we all saw and we all are -- because
we're naturally optimists, we all think that's
going to happen.
We get to this danger point and then there's
this huge retrenchment because they've never
had this empowerment, and with empowerment,
empowerment of evil people comes along with
good.
This lady up here.
Number 4.
You are Number 4.
>>> Number 4.
Does what does that mean?
First of all, thank you so much for an inspiring
and interesting talk.
My question is partly for everyone else in
this room.
Leaving aside the astonishing capacity and
possibilities for development in the sorts
of countries that you've been mentioning -- Burma,
Kenya, and the like -- I'm just wondering
if anyone else in this room is slightly terrified
by the picture that you painted when, for
example, the first person you -- after you
wake up in the morning, the first thing, person,
that you talk to is your superintelligent
digital personal assistant, regardless of
who might be lying beside you, for example;
and that in some fundamental way it might
be that all of this technology is actually
corrosive to our human relationships, despite
the fact that, as you say, this is about opening
up the world in terms of the friendships that
we might make, and that part of what it is
to be human, if we're thinking about what
search is, an essential quality of search
is discovery, and if our superintelligent
assistant has basically seen ahead to the
rest of our day and it knows what's going
to happen, it knows where we should go, and
it's going to guide us along that way, that
we miss those serendipitous moments that Mr.
Timmermans was talking about earlier, that
we miss what might be unknown along the path,
and that, in some way, as a human being that
might not be the greatest thing for spiritual
development.
>>Eric Schmidt: We, of course, have a technical
solution to your spiritual question.
>>> Of course you do.
[ Laughter ]
>>Eric Schmidt: So I omitted your, shall we
say, apartment partner out of modesty, but
presumably you would talk to him or her, as
appropriate.
[ Laughter ]
>>Eric Schmidt: The --
>>> Would you, though?
Because how many of us when we wake up in
the morning already, the first thing we do
is check our phones?
We probably don't even say hello to our partner.
Or is that just me?
[ Laughter ]
>>> Please tell me no.
>>Eric Schmidt: I'm not even going to answer
that question.
[ Laughter ]
>>Eric Schmidt: I think that the simplest
answer is that these devices have off buttons,
and it's very important to know -- yes, they
do.
There is an off button.
If you give me your phone, I'll show it to
you where it is.
[ Laughter ]
>>Eric Schmidt: And it's very important -- I
try very, very hard to turn my devices off
during dinner, which gets shorter and shorter
because I can only have it off for some period.
But I think it's important to respect both
the power and the limitations of the digital
world.
And sort of the -- at Google, for example,
for a long time -- and Nikesh will remember
this very well -- I enforced the 60-minute
rule, which is that once a week for 60 minutes
we had to turn off all of our devices and
actually have a meeting where we had to actually
talk to each other and look to each other.
So Nikesh and others would sit with their
BlackBerries -- before Android -- underneath
the table, we would catch them, and there
was a fine.
Am I right?
Yes.
You remember.
We eventually gave up because we were unable
to turn off our devices while working for
60 minutes once a week.
That's how powerful this technology is.
So my answer is a couple-fold.
The serious answer is that serendipity is
something that we can generate, and that in
fact that we can select and have interesting
surprises for you with respect to people.
>>> Think of the etymology of "serendipity."
>>Eric SchmidtI understand.
>>> Think about what you just said: Serendipity
is something we can generate.
>>Eric Schmidt: I do.
It's called random number generation.
And what happens with serendipity is, if you
think about newspapers -- right?
-- there are some curated sites that you went
to.
We can do things which are very similar and
we can probably do them with greater breadth
than a human can.
That's literally how good it is.
So you asked two different questions.
The first is human interaction.
I would argues human interaction becomes more,
not less, because you meet more people, you
have more opportunities to find the right
people to work, play, and enjoy.
And the second thing is that computers -- computers
can help you get rid of the other inefficient
aspects of your life so you can spend more
time playing and interacting.
I really do believe that.
More questions.
Over here.
I'm sorry.
And then this lady over here.
You go ahead first.
Yes, sir.
>>> I am Edouard from Prague, and I am very
sorry but I can't agree with your enthusiastic
optimism about the influence of the Internet
on human rights or any other.
It is everything similar to the live fire
atomic energy, (indiscernible) energy.
It can be used and abused.
And what is important for the mankind and
the improvement of the mankind is the history.
And all the total (indiscernible) governments
try to change history on demand.
You can read about it in 1948 [sic] or in
"451 Fahrenheit."
Both these books describe how the government
tried to change history or to remove the history
of the man, of the world totally as to remove
the books, et al.
Now everything is moving to cloud.
Now the books are not as much read.
Maybe in U.S. they are paying 2 bucks per
reading e books, not paper books, and maybe
somebody remember that Amazon was the very
first company who abused Internet and electronic
distribution of the books, and what is the
interesting point that they have (indiscernible)ize
for the book "1984" and they should remove
it from all Kindles three years ago.
But it is the similar of destroying the data
on the computer with the virus or other malware,
but much more strange or even horrible with
this is if somebody change data slowly.
And it is the way how the Internet and the
history of the man can be abused.
So be careful.
And finally, you can imagine, or everybody
should imagine, that Google as a king of the
Internet can abuse its own forces.
Be careful.
It is for all of us, not just for Google.
>>Eric Schmidt: Okay.
Thank you.
I disagree with --
[ Applause ]
>>Eric Schmidt: I disagree with some of your
points.
I want to give you an example.
We, in fact, have the inverse example with
respect to data.
In our book, we talk about the fact that how
there is no delete button and information
once distributed is very hard to get off the
Internet.
So I disagree with you about the "Fahrenheit
451" and other scenarios.
I think it's very, very unlikely that any
information can be, at some basic level, removed.
And the more the information, the harder it
is to delete because there are always multiple
servers.
And the way the Internet is organized, the
replication capability is fundamental to its
architecture.
It's what bedevils copyright and government
and those sorts of things.
So I think that's one comment.
I think the second is that in many of the
examples that you used, "1984," for example,
there's systematic evil.
It's very, very difficult to implement systematic
evil now in an Internet age.
I'll give you an example.
We were in Rwanda.
Rwanda in 1994 had this terrible essentially
genocide.
750,000 people killed over a four-month period
by machetes, which is a horrific, horrific
way to do this.
It required planning.
People had to write it down.
What I think about 1984, if everybody had
a smartphone, it would have been impossible
to do that; that people would have actually
noticed this was going on.
The plans would have been leaked.
Somebody would have figured out and somebody
would have reacted to prevent this terrible
carnage.
Some more questions over here.
Way in the back, number 5, and then we'll
come over here.
Go ahead.
Yes, ma'am.
>>Bianca Jagger: Good morning, and thank you
so much for this very interesting speech.
My name is Bianca Jagger, and I have a foundation
called the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation,
and I was very interested about your objective
to make a difference in the world.
As you know, governments from throughout the
world got together to what they called the
millennium development goals, but they forgot
to include ending violence against women and
ending discrimination against women or all
gender discrimination.
And I know how useful is Google Earth, for
example, for indigenous people with whom I
work with my foundation to be able to know
when they're going to be -- to have their
land invaded by gold diggers or by loggers,
et cetera.
Is there any way, you think, that you could
perhaps achieve by 2015 what governments have
failed to do and perhaps join forces with
all the organizations that are working throughout
the world to end violence against women and
end discrimination against women as well and
help all those girls that I'm glad you have
seen in places like Afghanistan, but which
is not only happening in countries like Afghanistan
or Iran or Saudi Arabia but is happening right
here, is happening all over the world.
Violence against women, it is something that
is happening, and we need to worry, and I
will be speaking this afternoon about that,
but what I want to know is could you put all
your tools, all your power behind to achieve
this?
Thank you.
>>Eric Schmidt: Thank you.
And we obviously agree with your, both, premise
and opportunity.
I would argue that the Internet is the single
best empowerment tool for women worldwide.
Again, studying the plight of women in this
next 5 billion, lack of access to critical
resources, the violence that occurs every
day against women by men, the lack of empowerment,
and the lack of education.
Educated women, educated village.
I think everyone is familiar with those ideas.
The Internet is the primary and fastest way
for you to scale of all of that.
So Google's spent a lot of time with that.
We would certainly be sympathetic to your
proposal about putting even more resources
behind it.
That's how powerful the idea is.
This lady had a question.
Yes, ma'am.
>>My name is Sidea (phonetic).
I'm from Jordan, and my question is in two
parts.
First is a question, the second is a request.
The first is about regulation of the Internet.
As we all know -- And thank you, Google, for
all the good you do all over the world, but
you can learn about, you know, how to build
a bomb on the Internet, children can watch
hard-core pornography.
Many young Muslims in this country are radicalized
by the distorted preachings they have access
to on the Internet.
So what would you say about regulation of
the Internet and responsible regulation?
The second is a request, and forgive me if
I misunderstood you but earlier on in your
presentation you spoke about western values
and bringing western values to the rest of
the world.
And I don't want to come across as the chippy
foreigner, but please can you move beyond
that language and recognize that they're not
exclusively western values.
Respecting human life and the rules of law,
these are also Muslim values.
These are values that go across the world.
And as an international corporation with such
a global reach, I would really appreciate
if you would lead the way by moving beyond
that terminology.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>>Eric Schmidt: I agree with that.
I'll change my rhetoric as appropriate.
I think that's good.
So your first question was about -- go ahead.
Remind me of your first question.
>>> Regulation.
>>Eric Schmidt: The regulation question.
The problem with Internet regulation is who
would do it and how would it work?
And from our perspective, you're better off
taking a position that additional regulation
is net negative.
And, in fact, in the book we spend a lot of
time talking about the danger of countries
which find information so threatening that
they will filter the Internet.
Classic example being China.
Human society seems to operate pretty well
when it doesn't know what it's missing.
It's a bizarre property.
But if you look at the China, the Chinese
are generally happy even though they don't
have a certain amount of dissent because they're
not aware of the dissent.
So we, as a company, have tried very hard
to make people aware of the political speech
that's being censored in China with all sorts
of bad outcomes for us and others.
There are a whole bunch of governments which
don't fundamentally want freedom of speech,
freedom of political conversation, and so
forth, which we're very committed to.
So I worry that in a regulation path, the
first thing that goes -- the classic example
-- and again, I'm sorry to use an Arab world
example -- but in most of the Arab states,
pornography is illegal.
Perfectly reasonable from a cultural perspective.
Their definition of pornography includes an
awful lot of what we would think of as political
speech.
So that's an example of this problem.
So in general, I think you're better off taking
a position of no regulation of the Internet
on a content basis, and, rather, regulate
the behavior.
I would also disagree with you that the Internet
is being used to radicalize.
The inference is people are being radicalized
without the Internet.
The Internet perhaps enables some of the messages
but the radicalization is not occurring because
of the Internet.
It's occurring because of evil people.
>>> (Off microphone)
>>Eric Schmidt: Unfortunately, I can't organize
the world in only information that I like.
So you're better off in my view having other
human systems that address that.
I would furthermore say it is also absolutely
true there is bad information on the Internet
and stuf which can be, if you're evil, you
can go get and so forth, but the evidence,
and we present this in the book, is it's also
much easier to detect this stuff before really
something bad happens.
So the Internet seems to be a net aid for
the police who are investigating terrorist
cells and things like that.
So on balance, it looks to me that the openness
of the Internet reamains a net positive for
safety, security and defeating radicalization
and narrow thinking.
My core argument about teenage boys, which
is typically at the source of the problem
here, is give them some choices, give them
some information.
Allow their natural human curiosity to defeat
the person who is pounding them, pounding
them, pounding them with that information
and I think that's a principle that applies
globally and in all religions and cultures.
I think we have time for maybe one more question.
Number 4, and then we'll be done.
>>> I'm (saying name).
I run the international think tank Redefine.
Now, you said something really interesting
now, which is it's amazing how much human
beings can stand when they don't know what
they're missing.
And that's a very, very crucial point and
of course one of the biggest things the Internet
technology has done is exactly make people
aware of exactly what they're missing.
So on the one hand, you have the poorest people
in the world now being able to see exactly
how the, let's say, top 1% lives, and often
cheek by jowl within their country.
And on the other side, technology has actually
allowed for scalability to happen, which means
that the billionaire in India probably has
access to the same sort of markets that the
billionaire in the United States does.
So never before in history have such a situation
existed where those -- let's call them Plutocrats
to generate some controversy -- those Plutocrats
who have essentially benefited from having
access to global markets have got as little
to do with the people that they originate
from, and there's very little of, you know,
historically for several reason, the robber
barons generated charitable foundations.
They didn't want to get mobbed, or they had
a feeling of being a kindrid spirit within
society.
So on the one hand, technology is actually
making people aware of exactly what they're
missing, and on the other hand, it is actually
enabling people to live completely separate
lives within countries.
And the kind of challenges that many of the
poorest countries are now facing, where you
have record levels of wealth and record levels
of poverty living cheek by jowl, has never
existed before.
So there is a great potential conflict and
what, if anything, can technology do to kind
of smooth the path?
>>Eric Schmidt: You're asking a political
question and an economic question.
I think the technology roughly enables everybody,
and it enables people at scale to also become
more powerful, greater reach.
I disagree with you that as a result, people
will become less involved with their local
communities, and I would argue that over the
next 20 or 30 years, we will see enormously
large philanthropic efforts from these new
Plutocrats, as you described them, who have
found themselves possessed with this enormous
wealth and reach.
That is my own opinion.
I would roughly argue that the world is becoming
more similar rather than more different because
of this global elite, and that you have people
who have now a stake in multiple countries.
You have enormous trans-border flows.
It's much harder to imagine true conflict,
true war and so forth with so many powerful
people who have economic interest in avoiding
it.
So that's sort of statement number one.
I think statement number two is that the sum
of the sort of visibility that the Internet
and (indiscernible) provides serves in a check-and-balance
against the Plutocrats.
There are many, many examples of countries
where once Google Maps came out, people discovered
that the ruler owned all of this land that
nobody knew.
And, in fact, you can crowdsource for corruption
by saying let's crowdsource and build a map
of the country where you tell us who owns
what plots of land.
Most countries don't actually have proper
land records.
And so it turns out that the ruling party,
the king or what have you, owns a quarter
or whatever it is of the country and all illegally
and they stole it and so forth and so on.
What happens after that is a matter of conjecture.
You've got a powerful leader, you have empowered
citizens.
We all want a peaceful transition to a more
democratic basis.
I would tell you that in my view, because
of the Internet societies will ultimately
organize themselves around the interests of
the middle class of the societies; that it
will not be possible for the Plutocrats or
the very poor to take over the country, but
that the middle class and whatever their values
are can probably drive the outcome to their
satisfaction.
There's too many of them.
They're too important for the country, and
they're too empowered.
I think with that, I've run over, and I'm
told I have to finish.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate you all coming, and I'll
see you soon.
[ Applause ]
