Davos Day 3: Technology Is Like Magic
Eric Schmidt and other WEF participants argue that mobile technologies can make us better humans.
Although today the skies above the Swiss village of Davos
were clear and a toothachingly chill blue, everything else was a blur.
I saw panels discuss the future of journalism (the verdict?
Health uncertain), debate what should happen after the failed Copenhagen summit
on the climate (the answer? No one really knew), and consider the benefits of
nuclear power (attractive! But the planet would need to build more than 20 plants
a year to really reduce the use of coal, and the politicians said that would be hard to sell). I watched
Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek
International, interview the gentlemanly, reasonable King Abdullah of
Jordan. (And I was amused when, after the king had entered the room and the
Europeans and Arabs in the audience stood as the courtesy due a reigning
monarch, the Americans struggled to their feet with varying degrees of
democratic resentment or sheepishness.) Like any other conference I attend,
importunate entrepreneurs insisted I see their demos. I was busy.
But for the readers of Technology
Review, perhaps the most interesting event was a panel discussion on
“Technology for Society,” moderated by Adam Lashinsky, editor-at-large at Fortune. Lashinsky was tasked by the
World Economic Forum to inquire whether technology could be effectively applied
to fields like education, development, and health care. He asked, “Can it make
a difference?”
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On his panel were Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of
Google; Rainer Bruderle, the minister of economics and technology for Germany;
William Green, the chairman and chief executive of Accenture; Didier Lombard,
the chairman and chief executive of France Telecom; Michael Laphen, the
chairman and chief executive of CSC, an IT services firm; and Joel Selanikio, a
pediatrician who works in poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South America,
and Asia, and the director of DataDyne, a mobile medical services venture.
What surprised was that there was such broad, optimistic consensus
amongst men who had little in common except their general age, race, and
professional responsibilities. They agreed: very suddenly, smart, mobile devices
were transforming societies around the planet, and for the better. Talking
about the various pressing problems that faced the world, such as poverty,
conflicts, and untreated diseases, Schmidt said, “But the thing is, most of
these things were true 20 or even 60 years ago, but people all over the world
now have a powerful computer on their belts.”
Green had begun this theme at the beginning of the session
by noting, “For technologists, the future was always 10 years in the future,
but now it’s here.” Selanikio agreed, giving an example. He said, “Every single
health worker in Africa is walking around with a small computer. These low-cost
devices make a real difference in the places I work. These health workers might
not have much education, they may have no books, but now I can give them a drug
dosage by SMS [Short Message Service].”
Schmidt gave two slightly more futuristic examples. “We can
use augmented reality to give people really useful information about wherever
they are. Or, we’re getting to the point where a cell phone can do 100 [percent
accurate] to 100 [percent accurate] translation [between languages]. Now what
these two things have in common is that they’re magic–people couldn’t do them
by themselves–and they really allow us to be better human beings.”
Did anything dampen the panelists’ enthusiasm? Not so much.
Indeed, too many people were still without such technologies. Lombard said, “We
need to connect more people with devices. It’s all very well to say that two billion
can use the Internet. But we’re missing
the other four billion. We can’t say that we are truly egalitarian with respect
to technology until we connect everybody.”
This sentiment did not seem to be inspired only by the businessmen’s
lust for ever-larger markets. Curiosity and generosity contributed, too. With transparent
sincerity, Schmidt said, “Imagine you could hear the four billion people you
can’t hear today, because they’re not connected. That would be interesting,
right?”
Perhaps one thing troubled them. “I worry a little bit that
these instantaneous technologies might be bad for deep reading of longer things
like books and magazines. We don’t know what that means for cognition.” In
general, Schmidt said, we’re going to have to learn, as humans, how to be
always on. “Instantaneous technologies increase volatility of all kinds. You’re
going to have more financial bubbles
and more scandals, because you’re
more interconnected, but you’re still human.”
Follow me at Davos on twitter @jason_pontin.
