Digital Giants: Ballmer, Schmidt, Wales look to the future
Hello, I'm Shaunagh Connaire and for the last three months I've been working on the Digital Giants series as part of the SuperPower Season. Digital Giants is a series of monologues in which the digital world's top thinkers share their visions of the future with the BBC from 8 to 19 March, online, on tv and on radio.
7 internet sages, 6 days and 5 cities - and that was just the first leg of my Digital Giants journey! When I say journey it was more like a 'geek stakeout', as we trekked across the U.S to speak with the finest of digital masterminds. First up in Chicago was Sam Pitroda, adviser to the PM of India.
For me Sam Pitroda epitomised 'the big thinker' and not surprisingly he was one of the gurus behind India's telecom revolution.
After spending an hour in his home in the suburbs, I came away feeling enlightened. For him the future for voting was on the cell phone and the archaic classroom as we know it, had seen its day!
Next stop New York, where I caught up with Joe Rospars, Director of Obama's online presidential campaign and Philip Emeagwali, a supercomputer scientist from Nigeria.
Rospars intrigued me. This man in his twenties had somehow managed to not only rub shoulders with one of the most influential men on earth but also boast that he was in some ways responsible for putting Obama where he is today. But a modest Joe was resolute that this bottom up approach to online campaigning could be applied to elections anywhere in the world.
An hour later in the same hotel conference room, Philip Emeagwali delivered the African perspective. The man literally had me on the edge of my seat as his every word commanded my full attention. I soon learned Nigeria was to become the third most populous country in the world and what implications this would have for the internet.
Another seven hours in the air and I found myself in Seattle. It was CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer's turn in the hot seat! Now I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't sneaked a glimpse of the YouTube videos online of Mr. Ballmer screaming at the top of his lungs....and after that I really didn't know what to expect! But alas I quickly digested my worst fears as a jolly and spirited man sat down beside me to chat. Twenty minutes later I had learned about the intricacies of cloud computing and the prospect of one platform for all devices (TV, radio and web merged as one).
Next stop the Googleplex at Mountain View! Here Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) delivered his views on augmented reality and Google's plan to create a 100x100 matrix in every language for online video and sms.
Back in San Francisco I caught up with Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) and he delved into the paradigm of geotagging and creating a more geographical aware encyclopaedia.
Not surprisingly I did probe the notion of net neutrality and the old adage of winners recording history. However it was apparent that Wales had already thought of this and he hopes to create a Wikipedia in every language and dialect throughout the world!
Later that day I spoke to Ge Wang (cofounder of Smule) at Stanford University. And with three cameras focusing on him, his passion and zeal for the app scene and what it brings to music could not go unobserved. Anyone who plays a Beatles tune by blowing into their iphone will always get a thumbs up for me...
Victor Koo (CEO and founder of Youku) delivered the Chinese verdict. Interestingly he considers the idea of censorship and the monitoring of content in China to be exaggerated by the West. An enigmatic argument to say the least but one which makes you question whether this is the generally held opinion of most CEOs in China.....
And that was the U.S.
Inspired, informed and jetlagged I made my way back to London.
Back at the BBC I caught up with our only lady Digital Giant, Martha Lane Fox (cofounder of Lastminute.com). Martha delved deep into the notion of hierarchies online and why UK internet businesses never really had a lasting impact. One word. Google.
Evgeny Morozov, (Yahoo! Fellow member of Georgetown University) laughed at the notion of democracy online and portrayed a more ominous and dark version of the web concluding that transparency and anonymity online are all too opaque.
Music streaming and this whole concept of the Freemiun model had to be explored so I also made it my business to chat to Daniel Ek (of Spotify). According to him, virtual scouting and streaming music in tailored packages is the future. I am still not wholey convinced about this business model and its sustainability but I suppose time will tell.
And that was that. My Digital Giants journey complete.
Shaunagh Connaire is a producer for HardTalk at BBC World News and produced the Digital Giants series for SuperPower. You can see some of them now by logging onto
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/digital_giants
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