Schmidt - The new digital age: reshaping the future of people, nations and business

Ambitious [and] fascinating [this] book is filled with tantalizing examples of futuristic goods and services.

Scientific American

Schmidt and Cohen make a formidable intellectual duo, combining Schmidts encyclopedic knowledge of digital technology with Cohens equally impressive grasp of international diplomacy and politics. The New Digital Age reads with surprising clarity, verve, and even occasional wit. Sophisticated analysis. Balanced and interesting.

The Christian Science Monitor

Full of fresh thinking, tightly researched examples and creative twists. If you care about the future read this book. Bound to get the digerati buzzing and cause regular people to reflect deeply about our future. It will give you resolve to take action and perhaps even help you figure out what is to be done.

The Huffington Post

Together [Schmidt and Cohen] forecast a raft of new innovations and corresponding threats that will arise for dictatorships, techno revolutionaries, terrorists, and you.

NPR

As tech-industry VIPs, Schmidt and Cohen deserve credit for probing the dark side of progress. In the wake of the Boston bombings, their warnings about the Nets dangers have gained chilling salience.

San Francisco Chronicle

A thorough book that provides an admirable overview of current disruptive trends in technology while attempting to predict how theyll reshape the relationships between states and citizens.

The Observer (UK)

This is for your must-read list. The authors have chosen to predict the future rather than polemicizing about how to achieve it. The upshot is a book packed with predictions on issues such as the future of states, revolution, terrorism, conflict, combat, citizenship and identity.

The Star (Toronto)

With vivid examples and brilliant analysis, it shows how the Internet and other communications technologies will empower individuals and transform the way nations and businesses operate. Realistic but deeply optimistic. Profoundly wise and wondrously readable.

Walter Isaacson,
author of Steve Jobs

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have produced a searching meditation on technology and world order. Even those who disagree with some of their conclusions will learn much from this thought-provoking volume.

Henry A. Kissinger

A guide to the future written by two experts who possess a profound understanding of humanitys altered prospects in a wireless world. There are insights on every page and surprising conclusions (and questions) in every chapter. For experts and casual readers alike, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have produced an indispensable book.

Former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright

A brilliant book that should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the huge ramifications of the Age of Google not only for our lifestyles but, more importantly, for our privacy, our democracy and our security. The technoptimistic case will never be more smartly argued.

Niall Ferguson,
author of Civilization: The West and the Rest

Thoughtful, well-researched. Readers might be left with more questions than answers, but thats the ideawe are at our best when we ask Whats next?

Elon Musk,
cofounder of Tesla Motors and PayPal

The New Digital Age is must-reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the depths of the digital revolution. Schmidt and Cohen blend the technical and the human, the scientific and the political, in ways I rarely saw while in government. They challenge the readers imagination on almost every page.

General Michael Hayden,
former director of the CIA

This is a book that describes a technological revolution in the making. How we navigate it is a challenge for countries, communities and citizens. There are no two people better equipped to explain what it means than Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen.

Tony Blair

Few people in the world are doing more to imagineand buildthe new digital age than Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. With this book, they are looking into their crystal ball and inviting the world to peek in.

Michael R. Bloomberg

The New Digital Age offers an intriguing fusion of ideas and insights about how the virtual world is intersecting with the Westphalian order. This book should launch a valuable debate about the practical implications of this new connectivity for citizens and policy makers, societies and governments.

Robert B. Zoellick,
former president of the World Bank Group

Schmidt and Cohen offer a rigorous approach to decoding what the future holds in a story that is as well written and entertaining as it is important.

General Brent Scowcroft,
former National Security Advisor

This brilliant book will make you reexamine your concepts of the digital age, the way the world works, what lies ahead, and what all this means for you, your family, and your community. A must read.

Mohamed El-Erian, chair,
President Obamas Global Development Council

At last, a brilliant guide book for the next centurywhat the future holds for entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, politicians, and ordinary citizens alike. Schmidt and Cohen offer a dazzling glimpse into how the new digital revolution is changing our lives. This book is the most insightful exploration of our future world Ive ever read, and once I started reading I was simply unable to put it down.

Sir Richard Branson,
founder and chairman, Virgin Group

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MARCH 2014

Copyright 2013, 2014 by Google Inc. and Jared Cohen

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies. Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, in 2013.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.

Vintage Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-307-94705-5
eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-96110-5

Author photographs Google, Inc. 2012
Cover design by Jeff Koons
Cover photographs: multicolor cut from fiber optic cable nikkytok/Shutterstock; hands Jeff Koons; Modular Prosthetic Limb prototype Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; code isa55/Shutterstock

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

For Rebecca, to whom we are grateful for her ideas and support, and Aiden, of whom we are envious for the technology he will get to see

We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.

C HARLES F. K ETTERING ,
American inventor and businessman