Eric Schmidt: a Donald Rumsfeld for our times

Donald Rumsfeld is a clever man. His actions have frequently been highly controversial. And he often came up with phrases that were both barmy and yet had some sense hidden inside them.

Google boss Eric Schmidt increasingly reminds me of Rumsfeld. Also smart. Also controversial. And he says things such as:

He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites. (Wall Street Journal)

Er… except that plenty of people will know your old and new name, and you’ll look the same in photos, and… Oh I could go on, but just consider this little thought experiment. If Google changed its name tomorrow, would that suddenly separate it off from the firm’s previous behaviour? No.

Yet there is a decent point in what he says in that quite how we deal with leaving so much of our live documented for others to find is a question that will come back again and again. The example I’ve often used is imagine the scene in a few years: parent lecturing teenager on being out too late one night. Teenager responds: “But I’ve seen your Facebook wall from when you were my age – I know you did just the same!”

Take also Schmidt’s comment, first made a few years ago, that “The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand”.

The first thing? The first? I know there are some darn smart people in Google, but I don’t think even they would have to think too hard to find other examples of things that years after their invention humans were still not struggling to really understand or foresee the impact of. Such as the printing press. And TV. And in fact pretty much every major technology has taken a long time for people to begin to see just quite what the limits are of what it can do.

So once again, Schmidt makes some sense – yes, the internet is bringing about major and uncertain change – but wrapped in words that are more deserving of chuckles than applause. Very Rumsfeld.