I watched the interview video with Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen on the NYT site this morning and then read some of the reviews of their book on Amazon. Apparently the book is heavy on foreign policy with little advice on preparing for the future in a business sense.
As much as I sometimes enjoy free services from Google, FB, Twitter, etc. I also think that people like Julian Assange and Richard Stallman have an important message and warning for maintaining some control over personal data and our computing infrastructure.
In the video interview Eric Schmidt makes a point that they want people to opt-in for 'Google total information awareness' (I am using that term, he didn't). I make an informed decision on what information I will share but most of my non-tech friends (who are representative of the general public) do not.
Part of me likes a smaller world via the Internet, communicating with people with similar technical interests no matter where they live, and G+ and Twitter are great for this. On the other hand, I would also like to see a local network, possible centered around my town's library, that is effectively local to the small town I live in. The technology (encrypted VPN) is straightforward for implementing private group communication.
As much as I sometimes enjoy free services from Google, FB, Twitter, etc. I also think that people like Julian Assange and Richard Stallman have an important message and warning for maintaining some control over personal data and our computing infrastructure.
In the video interview Eric Schmidt makes a point that they want people to opt-in for 'Google total information awareness' (I am using that term, he didn't). I make an informed decision on what information I will share but most of my non-tech friends (who are representative of the general public) do not.
Part of me likes a smaller world via the Internet, communicating with people with similar technical interests no matter where they live, and G+ and Twitter are great for this. On the other hand, I would also like to see a local network, possible centered around my town's library, that is effectively local to the small town I live in. The technology (encrypted VPN) is straightforward for implementing private group communication.