Google's Schmidt the next Steve Jobs? Eh, not likely

I guess today's big technology CEOs are under a lot of pressure to be the next guru like Steve Jobs.  It's not enough to be smart, rich and powerful anymore.  I almost feel sorry for them; but not at all sorry for the fawning journalists who try to help them.

So here comes Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, who, according to CNN, "has been thinking a lot about our digital future."  Oh wow.

But I think Schmidt should stick to helping us search for cat videos and naked people instead, because he's obviously better at that.  Here's what I mean:

1) Online privacy classes will be taught alongside sex education in schools. 

Actually online privacy classes will be taught BEFORE sex education in schools, if we're talking about America or most of the developing world. We'd rather talk to our kids about anything but sex. We'd rather teach girls to shave and boys to braid hair. 

2) The rise of the mobile Web means the entire world will be online by 2020.

This is such a techie-naive, developed-world prediction. This may be hard for Schmidt to fathom, but there are billions of people in the world today who have no use for the Internet, no matter how cheap it gets.  

Only 31 percent of the developing world is online today; and only 16 percent in Africa.  About a billion homes have no Internet access.  And they're perfectly satisfied with their lives; or else, they can't afford, or relate to, anything that's on the Internet. They're barely getting used to sending text messages with their calloused, malnourished thumbs.  And smartphones, tablets?  Forget it!  Hundreds of millions of people alive today will die of natural causes without ever having googled anything and they won't regret it. That's my prediction, Eric Schmidt.

3) News organizations will find themselves out of the breaking-news business, as it becomes impossible to keep up with the real-time nature of information sources like Twitter.

Exactly. Because I trust Kim Kardashian over Wolf Blitzer to give me the latest breaking news. 

Seriously, first they predicted that the Internet would kill print news; now Schmidt is predicting that the Internet will kill Internet news.  Huh-what?

And what about every Republican over the age of 50 who gets most of his information from anonymous chain e-mails originating from 2003?  How is Twitter going to replicate that "real-time" experience for them?  

Here's my prediction: Internet news and journalism in general are going to move more towards the PolitiFact / Snopes model, because there are way too many lies out there nowadays and the fact-checkers can't possibly keep up.  

4) "Since information wants to be free, don't write anything down you don't want read back to you in court or printed on the front page of a newspaper, as the saying goes. In the future, this adage will broaden to include not just what you say and write, but the websites you visit, who you include in your online network, what you 'like,' and what others who are connected to you say and share."

This is a really shitty, self-serving prediction for Schmidt to make. Know why? Because we can regulate this with a so-called right-to-forget law that is coming soon in Europe.  And who stands the most to lose from such laws?  Google, Facebook, etc., because they make money selling our private data and Internet habits to businesses.  The Stanford Law Review estimated that they would stand to lose up to 2 percent of their global income just for refusing to delete our photos that we don't like.

5) As the Web expands, revolutions will begin springing up in nations with oppressive governments "more casually and more often than at any other time in history."

Ah yes, a casual revolution. That's one where an unacquainted group of dark-skinned, downtrodden lads in chinos and ironic plaid cowboy shirts sipping on Frappuccinos blog on their smartphones about their "lame" dictator and how they're "totally going to overthrow him this weekend"... sometime between the gym and Game of Thrones.

That's sarcasm, by the way.  The words "casual" and "revolution" do not belong in the same sentence, unless you also include the word "failed."

6) More people will use technology for terror. But a Web presence will make those terrorists easier to find, too.

I put this one in the category of, "Things will get a lot worse, but they'll get a lot better, too."  

Don't go too far out on a limb there with your prognosticating, Schmiddy!

Google chairman: 6 predictions for our digital future

By Doug Gross

April 24, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/23/tech/web/eric-schmidt-google-book/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

'Celebrity saviors' a net negative for Africa

I'm always ready to pile on any criticism of St. Oprah and Lady Madonna!

All in all, despite their perhaps good intentions -- and acknowledging their tendency to self-aggrandizement -- "celebrity saviors" are probably a net negative for international development efforts, really misrepresenting to the public what effective aid is about.

In fact, studies show that "flies in the eyes" imagery of developing nations actually turns Western people off to supporting aid efforts.

Such stereotypical imagery, as African journalist and TED talker Andrew Mwenda notes, also scares away business:

Thus, as a result of these campaigns, our continent tends to attract the most compassionate people of the West who come to give charity. However, its negative side effect is to scare away the most enterprising people of the West who would bring capital to invest and make money. Even when they do try to do something in Africa, like Bill Gates has done through his foundation, they come as merchants of charity, not enterprise.

Madonna and Africa's 'celebrity saviors'

By Andrew M. Mwenda

April 17, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/16/opinion/madonna-charity-africa-mwenda/index.html?hpt=hp_c4

U.S. ethanol requirement is costly...and deadly

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), signed into law by Dubya in 2005 and expanded dramatically in 2007, has increased the price of corn by up to 21 percent. According to Timothy Wise, ethanol now consumes 40 per cent of the U.S. corn crop, up from just 5 percent 10 years ago. 

And people wonder why U.S. foreign aid is "ineffective!"  There is no logic to U.S. policy. On the one hand, we give food aid directly to hungry people, and technical assistance to farmers in developing countries to increase their quality, yields and food security, (see Feed the Future); but on the other hand, we increase the price of this staple food and feed product for the same developing countries. Not only that, we spend $700 billion a year on our military while U.S. farm policy makes conflict-torn countries more unstable and dangerous.  Says Wise:

As I showed in my recent study, "The Costs to Developing Countries of US Ethanol Expansion", the US ethanol programme pushed up corn prices by up to 21 per cent as it expanded to consume 40 per cent of the US harvest. This price premium was passed on to corn importers, adding an estimated $11.6bn to the import bills of the world's corn-importing countries since 2005. More than half of that - $6.6bn - was paid by developing countries between 2005 and 2010. The highest cost was borne by the biggest corn importers. Mexico paid $1.1bn more for its corn, Egypt $727m. 

Besides Egypt, North African countries saw particularly high ethanol-related losses: Algeria ($329m), Morocco ($236m), Tunisia ($99m) and Libya ($68m). Impacts were also high in other strife-torn countries in the region - Syria ($242m), Iran ($492m) and Yemen ($58m). North Africa impacts totalled $1.4bn. Scaled to population size, these economic losses were at least as severe as those seen in Mexico. The link between high food prices and unrest in the region is by now well documented, and US ethanol is contributing to that instability.

President Obama would do well to cancel RFS.  If ethanol fuel standards are what Obama means by an "All of the Above" energy strategy, then I opt for "C. Other."

US corn ethanol fuels food crisis in developing countries

By Timothy A. Wise

October 10, 2012 | Al Jazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210993632838545.html