I looked forward to this book for a couple of weeks as I was finishing up a few books which I had committed to read. When I finally got around to The New Digital Age, I found I was quite disappointed. There were very few new insights from what I’ve been reading for years now and this book could easily have been much shorter. There were what I consider to be a lot of “statements of the obvious.” For example: “Everyone will benefit from connectivity, but not equally, and how those differences manifest themselves in the daily lives of people is our focus here.” Well, that has been a topic for years now. And the authors went on to give their view (focus), which did not add anything new to what has been in the press for many months/years.
Of course, security came up. Again nothing particularly new or insightful. And there was much discussion about who Schmidt visited on his trip to China and other countries. I found that somewhat interesting but again, it wasn’t particularly insightful.
I admit that I am a true Geek and spend a great deal of time reading, listening to and watching podcasts of all things that have to do with digital technology. So I’m perhaps being a bit too hard on this book in that respect. Also, I admit to being very “Google centric.” I “love Google” at least for the time being. So I was perhaps setting a very high standard for this read from the much admired chairman of Google.
If you are not one who follows technology as a major part of your life then you will perhaps find this book useful and entertaining. If, like me, technology is part of your life and you live with it and the news it generates every day, you will likely find nothing new here. To paraphrase my favorite movie, “Move along, this is not the book you’re looking for.”
See this book on Amazon.