

Google CEO Schmidt: "People Aren't Ready for the Technology Revolution" - collistaeed
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_ceo_schmidt_people_arent_ready_for_the_tech.php

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fauigerzigerk
So there's so much data out there and one of the most important uses for that
data according to Schmidt is to predict where I am going next.

If that's Google's best thinking about data, it shows very well why they have
so far not managed to make money on anything outside their original ad
business model.

And I have to say, if everything they are able to come up with is new ways of
spying on me in order to create information that is useless to me then I'm
going to prevent them from getting access to any of my data.

~~~
cake
I wouldn't say they have not managed to make money on anything except ads.

For example, you have to pay for Google Apps for business and they say they
have more than 2M customers. At 50$ per year per users, that's not negligible.

~~~
ktsmith
You are assuming that all 2 million customers are on the premiere edition I
know at least a dozen businesses using google apps for business with less than
50 users and the standard version which they are paying exactly $0 for.

~~~
cake
Agreed that this is not a reliable number, they also say 2M businesses and not
the detail of end users.

But what I meant to say is that they do have other sources of revenue outside
of ads that are not negligible.

~~~
ktsmith
You are probably correct that the other revenue sources are not negligible. I
do wonder however how Google would fare if their ad revenue took a major hit.
I don't think their other offerings could sustain the current juggernaut that
they have become. I suppose given their cash reserves they could figure
something else out. It certainly seems though that most of their new products
are just more ways to push advertisements and of not that much utility in the
first place.

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pierrefar
Finally someone from Google said it: _"If I look at enough of your messaging
and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence," Schmidt said, "we can
predict where you are going to go."_ No wonder people worry about the privacy
implications of their Google accounts.

~~~
axod
A very small niche worry about things like this.

Did everyone suddenly stop using facebook because a few vocal people worried
about privacy a month or so back? nope. Most people just don't care one bit.

I'm really excited about all the fun things we'll be able to do and have.

I wonder how long it'll be before we're all wearing augmented reality
visors/goggles bluetoothed to your smartphone with useful
advertising/help/wiki etc. You could be walking down the street and an advert
shows above a cafe saying "half off coffee today". It could show you customer
ratings etc.

You could walk up to your friend, the goggles/smartphone would recognize their
face as being your friend, analyze their emotions, show you their details next
to their face and so on.

Having the future we want means we have to allow people access to some
information, like 'where we are', where we've been, messages, demographics
etc. Either you get cool stuff, or you get privacy - up to you.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Imagine the futuristic world of 1890!

You walk past a cafe and outside is a big sign, "Half off coffee!" And the
awesome thing about Big Sign Technology is that it doesn't break your
concentration: If you are intently listening to the organ grinder on the
street corner, or talking with your friends about that new Oscar Wilde play,
it does not interrupt you.

Then you meet a person on the street. For a whole millisecond you don't know
who they are. But then your built-in mechanism for recognizing human faces -
which has been QA tested on monkeys for millions of years - kicks in and tells
you that this is a friend, analyzes their emotions based on their face,
clothing, and tone, and shows you details about their life which you have been
storing in your long-term "memory", along with (among other things) customer
ratings for that cafe you just passed. This amazing internal "memory" is
searchable and is indexed according to useful criteria like place, time,
emotional state, and relevance - for example, as you are about to take a bite
of that apparently tasty snack, your "memory system" will helpfully remind you
that the last sausage you ate made you violently ill.

\---

For all its amusement value, though, this comment is certainly a pitch-perfect
illustration of the Google mentality. It's like watching Martians learn to
dance. "We do not understand the odd periodic motions of these hu-mans, but we
believe that we can reduce their motivations to a series of ones and zeroes."
This attitude is undeniably effective, sometimes, but it has real limitations.
As when, for example, Professor Frink tries to exchange all of my privacy for
a bunch of "features" that my great-grandparents were born with.

~~~
axod
boring! I forget faces. I forget if I liked a certain place to eat. I want to
see what the people inside think of the food. I want to see someones face, and
a summary come up next to it saying "You forgot to reply to their email, their
husband just left them, they know java, they're conservative" etc

Human memory is really pretty sketchy and lame. It worked well when all we had
to do was hunt and have babies, but it simply doesn't cut it any more.

~~~
pierrefar
Why don't we just chip everybody? It would save us carrying the gadget that
helps us remember people.

Also, there is a reason you didn't reply to their email. No use pretending
otherwise for you or them.

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InclinedPlane
A quibble: he says "There was 5 exabytes of information created between the
dawn of civilization through 2003". But this is misleading, far more than 5
exabytes of "information" were created during that time, but only about 5
exabytes of it was stored for posterity. This is an important distinction, I
think.

Also, as to technological revolutions, nobody is ever ready for them.
Revolutions are disruptive, no matter how prepared you are your life will be
disrupted by them (if you are lucky it will be for the better).

~~~
protomyth
It also kinda ignores many of the people with oral traditions. Some of those
stories that were carried down for generations have been lost do to
colonization. Let's also not forget a certain library that went up in flames.

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c1sc0
"The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. 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."

I'm torn between thinking "wow, that's scary" & appreciating how much
potential for good there is in a completely transparent world. I've been
thinking about (genomic & medical) identity: research could benefit massively
from a world of total transparency.

23andme is sitting on a growing collection of personal genomics data which
they are trying to use for research purposes through their 23andwe program.
That's great, but that is still a massive collection of data locked up in a
single company.

Imagine a world where every single individual is sequenced at birth & his data
is made publicly available for research purposes. Total transparency. Kind of
the polar opposite of the current situation where the patient owns his data &
permission needs to be gathered to use of that data for research purposes.

We're forgoing massive progress for fear of an artifact of current society
(a.k.a. insurance companies).

~~~
weavejester
The problem with utopian ideals is that they are often open to abuse by
immoral individuals. We should be careful we don't make ourselves more
vulnerable in our quest for efficiency.

However, I doubt that it's fear of insurance companies (by which I assume you
mean medical insurance) that is holding back society from totally transparent
world. The EU has stricter privacy laws than the US, but also has universal
healthcare.

------
jorangreef
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Ben Franklin

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bhavin
The reason why I get too uncomfortable around this kinda stuff is that they
seem to treat human-beings like machines.. These entities seem to say, we know
what you do, what you like, when you're hungry, what you're supposed to do...
etc. We're gonna get you so bombarded with stuff that you lose whatever little
consciousness you have and start spending wherever we ask you to..

From movie Network (1976): "I'm a human being, goddamn it. My life has value."

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bhiggins
5 exabytes of mostly useless information. Information is not an end unto
itself.

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hackermom
Is that a bulletproof vest he's wearing in the picture in the article?

~~~
bd
Yes:

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/04/eric-schmidt-twitter-
pictur...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/04/eric-schmidt-twitter-picture/)

