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

Eric Schmidt is 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 Masters and PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a member of President Obamas 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 Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously he served as a member of the State Departments Policy Planning Staff where he focused on the Middle East, counterterrorism and the development of 21st-century statecraft. He serves on the Directors Advisory Board at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He has a BA from Stanford University and an MPhil in international relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He is fluent in Swahili.

This is the most important and fascinating book yet written about how the digital age will affect our world. 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. How will different societies make trade-offs involving privacy, freedom, control, security, and the relationship between the physical and virtual worlds? This realistic but deeply optimistic book provides the guideposts. Its both profoundly wise and wondrously readable

Walter Isaacson, President and CEO of the Aspen Institute and author of Steve Jobs

At last, a brilliant guidebook for the next century what 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

Richard Branson, Founder and Chairman, Virgin Group

This is a book that defines both the nature of the new world which the internet is creating, and its challenges. It 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, Prime Minister, 19972007

Starting with a simple, powerful and terrifying observation that the internet is among the few things humans have built that they dont truly understand this fascinating book takes you on a wonderfully stimulating and important journey. It will make you rethink 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.

You dont need to know much about technology to benefit from this incredibly insightful book. Using their repeatedly tested talents and their highly successful experiences, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen brilliantly detail for us how the digital age is rapidly altering the balance of power between citizens and governments, between the physical and the virtual worlds, and between good and bad.

Whether we like it or not, technology is fundamentally changing the manner in which we all interact and depend on each other and in an accelerating manner whose scale and scope remain obscure for too many of us. Schmidt and Cohen expose you to the enormous productivity potential of this transformational period in history, as well as the scary risks of harmful balkanization and threatening individual empowerment.

This brilliant book is a must read for all those seeking to understand and navigate well a fundamental structural shift that will play a critical role in determining the wellbeing of current and future generations

Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of Pimco

Every day, technological innovations are giving people around the world new opportunities to shape their own destinies. In this fascinating book, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen draw upon their unique experiences to show us a future of rising incomes, growing participation and a genuine sense of community if we make the right choices today

Bill Clinton, US President, 19932001

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, Former US Secretary of State

The New Digital Age is must reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the depths of the digital revolution. Combining the skills of a social scientist and a computer scientist, Cohen and Schmidt 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. Indeed, what will be the impact of virtual and physical worlds coexisting, the first generation of humans to have an indelible record, or more frequent revolutions without resolution as the digital age nurtures more celebrities than leaders. And these questions are just the beginning. Read on

General Michael Hayden, Former Director of the CIA

The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business offers an intriguing fusion of ideas and insights about how the virtual world is intersecting with the Westphalian order. It seeks a balance between the discontinuities of technologists revolutions and the traditionalism of internationalists study of states, power, and behaviour. The authors explain that technology is not a panacea, yet the uses of technology can make a world of difference. This book should launch a valuable debate about the practical implications of this new connectivity for citizens and policymakers, societies and governments

Robert B. Zoellick, Former President of the World Bank Group, US Trade Representative and US Deputy Secretary of State

Few people in the world are doing more to imagine and build the 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, New York City Mayor and founder of Bloomberg LP

We have long needed an incisive study of how the ever-evolving world of technology leaves almost no aspect of life unchanged. We have it in The New Digital Age. Eric Schmidt and Jared 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 US National Security Advisor

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohens thoughtful, well-researched work elucidates the staggering impact of technology on our daily lives, as well as what surprising and incredible developments the future may hold. Readers might be left with more questions than answers, but thats the idea we are at our best when we ask Whats next?

Elon Musk, Founder of SpaceX and Cofounder of Tesla Motors and PayPal

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www.johnmurray.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by John Murray (Publishers)

An Hachette UK company