The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business

Eric Schmidt · Jared Cohen

Apr 2013 · Hachette UK

About this ebook

'This is the most important - and fascinating - book yet written about how the digital age will affect our world' Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs

From two leading thinkers, the widely anticipated book that describes a new, hugely connected world of the future, full of challenges and benefits which are ours to meet and harness. The New Digital Age is the product of an unparalleled collaboration: full of the brilliant insights of one of Silicon Valley's great innovators - what Bill Gates was to Microsoft and Steve Jobs was to Apple, Schmidt (along with Larry Page and Sergey Brin) was to Google - and the Director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, formerly an advisor to both Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.

Never before has the future been so vividly and transparently imagined. From technologies that will change lives (information systems that greatly increase productivity, safety and our quality of life, thought-controlled motion technology that can revolutionise medical procedures, and near-perfect translation technology that allows us to have more diversified interactions) to our most important future considerations (curating our online identity and fighting those who would do harm with it) to the widespread political change that will transform the globe (through transformations in conflict, increasingly active and global citizenries, a new wave of cyber-terrorism and states operating simultaneously in the physical and virtual realms) to the ever present threats to our privacy and security, Schmidt and Cohen outline in great detail and scope all the promise and peril awaiting us in the coming decades.

A breakthrough book - pragmatic, inspirational and totally fascinating. Whether a government, a business or an individual, we must understand technology if we want to understand the future.

'A brilliant guidebook for the next century . . . Schmidt and Cohen offer a dazzling glimpse into how the new digital revolution is changing our lives' Richard Branson

Ratings and reviews

A huge jumble of ideas about the future, presented with a lot of certainty but mostly no valid arguments for the predictions. Also, without even an attempt at estimating time frames for technological achievements utterly pointless since almost anything could be true in an arbitrary future time.

I'm only half way through it and enjoying it

Google !

About the author

Eric Schmidt is the Executive Chairman of Google. Prior to joining Google, he was the chairman and CEO of Novell and has held senior positions at a number of illustrious technology companies. He has a degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University as well as a master's and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a member of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jared Cohen is Director of Google Ideas and an Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served as a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and a close advisor to Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, where he focused on the Middle East, South Asia, counter-terrorism, and the development of '21st century statecraft.' He was personally responsible for intervening to keep Twitter operating during the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran. He has a BA from Stanford University and an M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University. He is fluent in Swahili.