"Do you still feel like Silicon Valley has retained that idealism that struck you when you arrived here?"
"There’s still that optimism. But the optimism is tempered by a sense of deliberation. Things have changed quite a bit. You know, we deliberate about things a lot more, and we are more thoughtful about what we do. But there’s a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems. It was always naïve to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity’s problems. I think we’re both over-reliant on technology as a way to solve things and probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too."
<<But there’s a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems. It was always naïve to think so. Technology is an enabler>>
Google was enabling the DoD to be more efficient at killing people and China to be more oppressive until its workers protested. So he's right about humanity having to solve its problems but he's forgetting that Google, the corporation, is opting to make it harder for humanity to solve its problems by enabling those who do not have humanity's best interest in their heart.
Part of me can't help but read this a little cynically.
They're starting to articulate a shift away from Larry Page's idealistic view of making information universally accessible and useful and toward tempering expectations about what technology can do.
After that they'll pivot increasingly toward a position that lets them justify the drone and censorship programs without the baggage of Page's original naivety.
Again, that's an overly cynical take. But it's kind of hard to avoid reading that as a possibility.
A.k.a. we're a technology company so obviously we still need to believe this, but we're going to co-opt technoskepticism to pretend like the technology we create isn't part of the problem
Even in context, I think saying 'technology' as a shorthand for 'the particular technology Google is selling' is sloppy and lazy.
But then I've long thought that about the whole 'technology sector' shorthand. As if construction, agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, etc. were not technologies.
Technology absolutely solves humanity's problems. There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. The problem is that humanity is bad at choosing where to invest in technology. Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production. Technology is not the problem.
People act like somehow the technology has a mind and it wants us to be free or some bs. Silicon Valley isn't special. It's part of the same system to maximize short-term profit and the whimsical wants of billionaires. Technology would absolutely solve humanity's problems. That is if we put our money where our mouth's are.
You're certainly correct that the major problem is social, economic, and structural, but I do think there are some technologies that are inherently tricky to justify regardless of the economic structures they arise in.
The atomic bomb is one obvious example of a technology that seems to be inherently bad not only for humanity, but for biological life itself.
You could argue that the problem of the bomb is more-so a problem of finding a bad technical solution to the problem of war, but it's quite difficult to think of a beneficial application of the atomic bomb, and thus, very difficult to justify its invention from a moral/valued standpoint.
I think it's also a problem that we seem to treat technological progress as a glorified end for humanity—we find it very difficult, for whatever reason (perhaps economic as you point out) to have the courage to admit when something shouldn't be invented, even if it presumably can be. I think part of this stems from the co-opting of science by technology, and science's silly claim to be "value-free" and neutral—which has had some disastrous consequences. If I'm engaged in a value-free enterprise, I have no reason to stop and wonder what devastation or havoc my creation might one day wreak, I'm doing it, after all, in the name of science, or progress, of unreflective pursuit of an end I can't forsee.
>Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production.
>It's part of the same system to maximize short-term profit and the whimsical wants of billionaires.
Maybe we should organise our production, decision-making, control and incentives structures differently then, rather than sticking to an old, disastrously inefficient, enormously wasteful and unfair model. Maybe some democratic, social system, if I do make myself clear...
> Technology absolutely solves humanity's problems. There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. The problem is that humanity is bad at choosing where to invest in technology.
In other words:
Technology would solve humanity's problems, except it doesn't, because humanity is bad at choosing the right technologies.
> Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production. Technology is not the problem.
The problem is that in order to invest in "clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production" you need a huge amount of capital. A good way to build capital is to invest into technologies that bring a lot of profit such as advertising, you can then use this capital to invest in more noble, less profitable technologies (in the short term at least) such as new medicines, better transportation etc which is what Google is doing to be fair.
I disagree. Technology is the very solution to our problems, the driver of social change.
Why? Because our social instincts don't change terribly fast, being coded in DNA. Our hardware/OS is more or less what it was when the last ice age ended. Nobody has extra arms or hearts. People still use "look each other in the eye" and other old school tropes to decide if they are comfortable with a new person.
The only thing that changes us is when some guy figures out you can melt certain ores and turn them into sharp tools. Or when some lady finds out the seeds she harvested from a certain grass can be nurtured into new plants.
Innovations like this change the economy and allow us to organize society differently. People no longer need to spend a large part of the day washing clothes. These days you don't even need to know how to farm or hunt. That means you can do other stuff while still having your needs met.
The only way to solve our social problems is to try to think of better ways use the planet. That's technology.
"the only way to solve our social problems to think of "better" ways to use the planet?"
I am skeptical. What if instead of designing new tools and new ways of exploiting natural resources, we also shifted our cultural mores and practices to encourage more efficiency and less waste? New shiny tools are great, but there's something to be said for maintaining what's already laid down and properly utilizing what's already available.
There is a book on this dichotomy of environmentalists vs technologists, and how one group advocates efficiency/conservation and the other advocates innovation/change. I think both schools of thought are needed to move forward to the best outcome, wouldn't you agree?
"Technology" could mean silicon, or it could mean rules, or it could mean processes. It could mean lots of things. In this context, I think it means silicon and the internet, as opposed to, say, "melt certain ores".
I think the context here is "computer software and the internet doesn't solve humanity".
He's right. Humanity's problems are solved by humans solving themselves. Each one of us is a puzzle that gets solved in the same way--doing the inner work to quiet our mind and open our hearts. When enough of us are solved, humanity's problems will automatically solve themselves.
Sundar seems to have done the inner work and understands this Truth. His "Cockroach Theory" is enlightening:
I realized that, it is not the shouting of my father or my boss or my wife that disturbs me, but it's my inability to handle the disturbances caused by their shouting that disturbs me.
It's not the traffic jams on the road that disturbs me, but my inability to handle the disturbance caused by the traffic jam that disturbs me.
More than the problem, it's my reaction to the problem that creates chaos in my life.
Lessons learnt from the story:
I understood, I should not react in life.
I should always respond.
The women reacted, whereas the waiter responded.
Reactions are always instinctive whereas responses are always well thought of.
A beautiful way to understand............LIFE.
Person who is HAPPY is not because Everything is RIGHT in his Life..
He is HAPPY because his Attitude towards Everything in his Life is Right..!!
I think I disagree here. Technology is very much a key part to solving most of humanity's problems. It always has been. Technology is what drives humanity forward. You can look at every empire in history and you will find that at their peak they had some kind of technical advantage over others. Conversely, their fall tends to be correlated with losing that edge.
Silicon Valley thrives on startups spending money on all sorts of crazy stuff that accidentally succeeds once in a while, courtesy of plenty of investor cash to keep that going long enough to find out. The successes are wildly lucrative. There are probably more than a few future billion $ unicorns being nurtured to success in the valley.
However, as soon as unicorns succeed they turn corporate. I think Google is a great example of this. IMHO there's a clear difference between what Google accomplished technically before and after their IPO. At this point it seems they are mostly milking tech that they built/acquired around or before 2005 (search/maps/youtube/android/ads/etc.). It's not that they are getting nothing done but they are accomplishing far less at far greater cost since they probably spend more than ever on R&D while having increasingly less to show for it. They take less risk with their projects and their comfort zone has shrunk to the point that they felt a need to park their more wacky initiatives under the alphabet umbrella, outside of Google. Of course, this may end up being a clever move if some of those efforts succeed. But I would look outside of Alphabet for likely unicorns.
This CEO was employed to look after the cash cow while the Google founders focus on the more exciting stuff in Alphabet. He's not there to build the next Google, merely to keep the existing one going. Stagnation is not unique to Google. Many companies suffer from technical stagnation. Very few companies actually survive more than a few decades. In the tech world, things are trending down not up in terms of longevity.
The accurate thing to say is that technology magnifies people's will. People use technology to spread both good and bad messages, to entice people to do better or worse things, to help others or to put them down. The spread of technology means more people have more power to do either good things or bad things. Therefore, it's on all of us to use technology for good and build technologies that help good work flourish.
This is a dramatic shift from the mid-90s viewpoint, which held an incredibly youthful optimism that has long fed into Google's culture. I want to bring that to one's attention.
That said, this also reads like a thoughtful and mature viewpoint; nuanced and understanding the reality of humans colliding with sophisticated technology.
Historians and philosophers have a lot to contribute to this world; I think there's an increasing awareness of that reality.
If you're at the top of Google, one of the most well-financed entities in the world and you actually understand all of its "high end" technologies to a reasonable degree, I think that's going to bring you back down to earth. Plus, coming from another culture brings in some perspective.
Is code truly amoral? Technology is not morally neutral. It embodies a set of values, a framework and an ideology. For instance, Google search engines have intrinsic properties that make them inherently and irredeemably flawed, because they attempt to infer intellectual properties, such as the meaningful content of a web site, from physical properties. Search engines rely primarily on query term location and query term frequency, sometimes boosted by other computable factors, such as link popularity. These pseudo-intellectual technologies such as search engines and metasearchers, are not morally neutral they fundamentally alter exosomatic conditions of our being as sensemaking entities. We now have new intellectual technologies coming to ascendancy: information architecture, knowledge management and intelligent infrastructure. Now is the time to raise questions about their non neutrality instead of abdicating such responsibility - for if anyone has agency it's the firm that designs these algorithms.
They aren't. But Google really didn't want to obey a perfectly reasonable law in Europe, and absolutely wants to do business in China regardless of the social cost, and so is making a false equivalency to try and justify a morally bankrupt position.
Europe is censoring personal and private information that harms ordinary citizens and is not of the public interest in order to protect European citizens. China is censoring information about the government, people's rights, and major historical events in order to control society. If you remove the absolutist "free speech is always right" position, the former is about protecting citizens and the latter is about protecting the government.
Equivalent doesn't seem right but the idea is that they are down information that the government tells them to. The difference is just the government rationale for having it taken down (which clearly hugely important).
I was curious about it and my interpretation of the official company stance is they they can either do their best to give the Chinese what the best search they can or not try to give them any help at all.
It's a slippery slope. It certainly gives fodder to China and other countries to say "Hey, look, you have the tools to censor results for X, Y and Z, because those laws say so. Why not ours?"
The Canadian case was even worse than RTBF.
> But there’s a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems. It was always naïve to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity’s problems. I think we’re both over-reliant on technology as a way to solve things and probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too.
The headline sounds so much like a copout, and to a degree, I think even the completed statement is. However, when you read the overall interview, I think I share a similar perspective:
Right now, technology has clearly amplified everyone's voice to vaguely the same level, and as a result has exponentially amplified the voices of fringe groups. And as a society, we have to confront that. But it's a relatively recent problem, and our earliest attempts at solutions have been entirely based on technology, instead of a better mixture of people and technology.
In other words, we need technology to enable people to better learn, then curate their world, and get involved in ways that show support and organization better than a Like/Retweet button.
I think we're not far from tools like this being widely available, but we're just at the beginning of such a concept, and the overall reticence society now has to technology thanks to the irresponsible stewardship of its leaders will inhibit technology's ability to fix the problem, too.
What is the difference between today and 20,000 years ago? What's the difference between today and 20,000 years from now? There are of course social and political changes but the key thing that invariably is behind all progress and improvement in society is technology. For instance throughout our entire history as a species we not only had slavery but it often played a key role in day to day life. Then, as we hit the industrial revolution it suddenly began to be rapidly phased out of existence, world wide. By the time it was ended slavery had long since gone from a necessity to a luxury and was well on its way from a luxury to a burden. Technology obsoleted it and society followed. In areas where technology has not completely obsoleted slavery, it still exists to this day.
Amusingly even Socrates predicted as much thousands of years ago, "For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus.. If, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves." Technology is, practically by definition, exactly what solves humanity's problems.
Though to be fair, this headline is somewhat clickbaity. The article is not really suggesting that technology doesn't solve humanity's problems. But rather than Google, and to some degree the entirety of Silicon Valley, has entered its twilight phase. And as Google has surprisingly rapidly metamorphosized into the next e.g. Microsoft, it's not an unreasonable suggestion.
A bit orthogonal to the point of this interview but:
> When we follow “right to be forgotten” laws, we are censoring search results because we’re complying with the law. I’m committed to serving users in China. Whatever form it takes, I actually don’t know the answer.
This is an important point: Google has a lot to offer Chinese users. From providing a trusted search engine in a context where people still trust foreign products over Chinese ones, to simple access to its services which, let's be honest, are pretty solid for the average user. It's fair to criticize the company for trying to find a way to access an environment that will almost inevitably demand some degree of censorship, but it overlooks the real good that that such a presence would deliver.
Much of the criticism I hear of Google in this case centers on their presumed willingness to tolerate censorship. Pichai makes a good point here: complying with some degree of censorship imposed by a regime is just the cost of doing business in an international setting. No one is howling for Google to pull out of Europe after the ridiculous "right to be forgotten" censorship ruling. You can quibble about where to draw the line; censorship out of a misplaced desire to protect privacy and censorship to prop up a repressive, authoritarian regime are far from equivalent, but in either case it's a cost-benefit analysis with principles on one side and the potential gains for users on the other. This quote suggests Pichai hasn't yet found the best way to do that, or even that he ever will.
And to those cynics out there who will throw out thirst for profits, I say: if money were as strong a motivation for Google as y'all seem to think it is, Google would have never left China to begin with. They (full disclosure, we) lost tremendous leverage in that market when it became obvious that operating in China was not sustainable.
I knee-jerk want to say this guy is bad for censorship, surveillance and so on, but I think he is sort of like Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, he is there to take the unpopular choices so owners can get wealthier without responsibilty.
Technology when in hands of Google certainly won't solve any sort of problems, they may pretend to you that they are solving problems but they will be carving you inside out from the other end..
So one or other way, truth came out ;)
What are humanity's problem exactly? Every era of humans had different list of problems. Problems today (climate change, nuclear weapons, etc) are very different than say 1000-1500 years ago.
Technology definitely solves lot of problems and some tech enables to scale the solutions (e.g. discovery of antibiotics and tech to mass produce them). But then it gives rise to new set of problems which are much harder to solve. The harder the problems get more collaboration and working together is needed at global scale, which itself is very hard. In this sense, tech can only go so far.
"Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral." -Melvin Kranzberg
What is bad are the neutral to bad actors who propagate technology, without planning or caring for its unintended consequences.
Technology is an amplifier, and like other amplifiers humans build, it is far easier boost some existing signal when you abdicate yourself from the goal of also maintaining the integrity of the signal: sure, you can get more power if you don't care about noise. In fact, building a perfect amplifier of arbitrary power is probably impossible.
[+] [-] Kurtz79|7 years ago|reply
"Do you still feel like Silicon Valley has retained that idealism that struck you when you arrived here?"
"There’s still that optimism. But the optimism is tempered by a sense of deliberation. Things have changed quite a bit. You know, we deliberate about things a lot more, and we are more thoughtful about what we do. But there’s a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems. It was always naïve to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity’s problems. I think we’re both over-reliant on technology as a way to solve things and probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too."
[+] [-] discoball|7 years ago|reply
Google was enabling the DoD to be more efficient at killing people and China to be more oppressive until its workers protested. So he's right about humanity having to solve its problems but he's forgetting that Google, the corporation, is opting to make it harder for humanity to solve its problems by enabling those who do not have humanity's best interest in their heart.
[+] [-] SquishyPanda23|7 years ago|reply
They're starting to articulate a shift away from Larry Page's idealistic view of making information universally accessible and useful and toward tempering expectations about what technology can do.
After that they'll pivot increasingly toward a position that lets them justify the drone and censorship programs without the baggage of Page's original naivety.
Again, that's an overly cynical take. But it's kind of hard to avoid reading that as a possibility.
[+] [-] Zarath|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Agathos|7 years ago|reply
But then I've long thought that about the whole 'technology sector' shorthand. As if construction, agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, etc. were not technologies.
[+] [-] mkirklions|7 years ago|reply
Until the world gets violent, technology is solving problems. Even then, it will be the politicians, not the programmers who caused this.
EDIT: HN whales, I'll never understand your silence.
[+] [-] dumbfoundded|7 years ago|reply
People act like somehow the technology has a mind and it wants us to be free or some bs. Silicon Valley isn't special. It's part of the same system to maximize short-term profit and the whimsical wants of billionaires. Technology would absolutely solve humanity's problems. That is if we put our money where our mouth's are.
[+] [-] voidhorse|7 years ago|reply
The atomic bomb is one obvious example of a technology that seems to be inherently bad not only for humanity, but for biological life itself.
You could argue that the problem of the bomb is more-so a problem of finding a bad technical solution to the problem of war, but it's quite difficult to think of a beneficial application of the atomic bomb, and thus, very difficult to justify its invention from a moral/valued standpoint.
I think it's also a problem that we seem to treat technological progress as a glorified end for humanity—we find it very difficult, for whatever reason (perhaps economic as you point out) to have the courage to admit when something shouldn't be invented, even if it presumably can be. I think part of this stems from the co-opting of science by technology, and science's silly claim to be "value-free" and neutral—which has had some disastrous consequences. If I'm engaged in a value-free enterprise, I have no reason to stop and wonder what devastation or havoc my creation might one day wreak, I'm doing it, after all, in the name of science, or progress, of unreflective pursuit of an end I can't forsee.
[+] [-] andrepd|7 years ago|reply
>It's part of the same system to maximize short-term profit and the whimsical wants of billionaires.
Maybe we should organise our production, decision-making, control and incentives structures differently then, rather than sticking to an old, disastrously inefficient, enormously wasteful and unfair model. Maybe some democratic, social system, if I do make myself clear...
[+] [-] zeroname|7 years ago|reply
In other words:
Technology would solve humanity's problems, except it doesn't, because humanity is bad at choosing the right technologies.
Or, more succinctly:
TECHNOLOGY does not solve humanity's problems.
[+] [-] fwip|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickaljord|7 years ago|reply
The problem is that in order to invest in "clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production" you need a huge amount of capital. A good way to build capital is to invest into technologies that bring a lot of profit such as advertising, you can then use this capital to invest in more noble, less profitable technologies (in the short term at least) such as new medicines, better transportation etc which is what Google is doing to be fair.
[+] [-] craftyguy|7 years ago|reply
Technology has failed over and over to provide an accountable, verifiable, and secure election process.
[+] [-] tychomaz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordnacho|7 years ago|reply
Why? Because our social instincts don't change terribly fast, being coded in DNA. Our hardware/OS is more or less what it was when the last ice age ended. Nobody has extra arms or hearts. People still use "look each other in the eye" and other old school tropes to decide if they are comfortable with a new person.
The only thing that changes us is when some guy figures out you can melt certain ores and turn them into sharp tools. Or when some lady finds out the seeds she harvested from a certain grass can be nurtured into new plants.
Innovations like this change the economy and allow us to organize society differently. People no longer need to spend a large part of the day washing clothes. These days you don't even need to know how to farm or hunt. That means you can do other stuff while still having your needs met.
The only way to solve our social problems is to try to think of better ways use the planet. That's technology.
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|7 years ago|reply
I am skeptical. What if instead of designing new tools and new ways of exploiting natural resources, we also shifted our cultural mores and practices to encourage more efficiency and less waste? New shiny tools are great, but there's something to be said for maintaining what's already laid down and properly utilizing what's already available.
There is a book on this dichotomy of environmentalists vs technologists, and how one group advocates efficiency/conservation and the other advocates innovation/change. I think both schools of thought are needed to move forward to the best outcome, wouldn't you agree?
[+] [-] mikemotherwell|7 years ago|reply
I think the context here is "computer software and the internet doesn't solve humanity".
[+] [-] starbeast|7 years ago|reply
For anyone who would like ideas on how to get technology to do a better job of following needs, I'd strongly recommend the book 'Design For The Real World' by Victor Papeneck - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/190560.Design_for_the_Re...
[+] [-] davebryand|7 years ago|reply
Sundar seems to have done the inner work and understands this Truth. His "Cockroach Theory" is enlightening:
I realized that, it is not the shouting of my father or my boss or my wife that disturbs me, but it's my inability to handle the disturbances caused by their shouting that disturbs me.
It's not the traffic jams on the road that disturbs me, but my inability to handle the disturbance caused by the traffic jam that disturbs me.
More than the problem, it's my reaction to the problem that creates chaos in my life.
Lessons learnt from the story:
I understood, I should not react in life. I should always respond.
The women reacted, whereas the waiter responded.
Reactions are always instinctive whereas responses are always well thought of.
A beautiful way to understand............LIFE.
Person who is HAPPY is not because Everything is RIGHT in his Life..
He is HAPPY because his Attitude towards Everything in his Life is Right..!!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cockroach-theory-beautiful-sp...
[+] [-] yoavm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abledon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|7 years ago|reply
Silicon Valley thrives on startups spending money on all sorts of crazy stuff that accidentally succeeds once in a while, courtesy of plenty of investor cash to keep that going long enough to find out. The successes are wildly lucrative. There are probably more than a few future billion $ unicorns being nurtured to success in the valley.
However, as soon as unicorns succeed they turn corporate. I think Google is a great example of this. IMHO there's a clear difference between what Google accomplished technically before and after their IPO. At this point it seems they are mostly milking tech that they built/acquired around or before 2005 (search/maps/youtube/android/ads/etc.). It's not that they are getting nothing done but they are accomplishing far less at far greater cost since they probably spend more than ever on R&D while having increasingly less to show for it. They take less risk with their projects and their comfort zone has shrunk to the point that they felt a need to park their more wacky initiatives under the alphabet umbrella, outside of Google. Of course, this may end up being a clever move if some of those efforts succeed. But I would look outside of Alphabet for likely unicorns.
This CEO was employed to look after the cash cow while the Google founders focus on the more exciting stuff in Alphabet. He's not there to build the next Google, merely to keep the existing one going. Stagnation is not unique to Google. Many companies suffer from technical stagnation. Very few companies actually survive more than a few decades. In the tech world, things are trending down not up in terms of longevity.
[+] [-] hathawsh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnathan|7 years ago|reply
That said, this also reads like a thoughtful and mature viewpoint; nuanced and understanding the reality of humans colliding with sophisticated technology.
Historians and philosophers have a lot to contribute to this world; I think there's an increasing awareness of that reality.
[+] [-] zeroname|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namank|7 years ago|reply
Replace "guns" with "technology".
[+] [-] jonnykim98|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golemotron|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ma2rten|7 years ago|reply
They have a different underlying value system. Europe believes in individualism and privacy. China believes in collectivism and harmony.
Right to be forgotten protects the individual. China's wall protects the government.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|7 years ago|reply
Europe is censoring personal and private information that harms ordinary citizens and is not of the public interest in order to protect European citizens. China is censoring information about the government, people's rights, and major historical events in order to control society. If you remove the absolutist "free speech is always right" position, the former is about protecting citizens and the latter is about protecting the government.
[+] [-] tdb7893|7 years ago|reply
I was curious about it and my interpretation of the official company stance is they they can either do their best to give the Chinese what the best search they can or not try to give them any help at all.
[+] [-] puzzle|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quaunaut|7 years ago|reply
The headline sounds so much like a copout, and to a degree, I think even the completed statement is. However, when you read the overall interview, I think I share a similar perspective:
Right now, technology has clearly amplified everyone's voice to vaguely the same level, and as a result has exponentially amplified the voices of fringe groups. And as a society, we have to confront that. But it's a relatively recent problem, and our earliest attempts at solutions have been entirely based on technology, instead of a better mixture of people and technology.
In other words, we need technology to enable people to better learn, then curate their world, and get involved in ways that show support and organization better than a Like/Retweet button.
I think we're not far from tools like this being widely available, but we're just at the beginning of such a concept, and the overall reticence society now has to technology thanks to the irresponsible stewardship of its leaders will inhibit technology's ability to fix the problem, too.
[+] [-] TangoTrotFox|7 years ago|reply
Amusingly even Socrates predicted as much thousands of years ago, "For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus.. If, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves." Technology is, practically by definition, exactly what solves humanity's problems.
Though to be fair, this headline is somewhat clickbaity. The article is not really suggesting that technology doesn't solve humanity's problems. But rather than Google, and to some degree the entirety of Silicon Valley, has entered its twilight phase. And as Google has surprisingly rapidly metamorphosized into the next e.g. Microsoft, it's not an unreasonable suggestion.
[+] [-] browsercoin|7 years ago|reply
An entire generation of Chinese kids grew up thinking the Tianmen Square was a god damn festival singing "Wo Ai Beijing Tianmen"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IVg_mpzIQ
[+] [-] jfasi|7 years ago|reply
> When we follow “right to be forgotten” laws, we are censoring search results because we’re complying with the law. I’m committed to serving users in China. Whatever form it takes, I actually don’t know the answer.
This is an important point: Google has a lot to offer Chinese users. From providing a trusted search engine in a context where people still trust foreign products over Chinese ones, to simple access to its services which, let's be honest, are pretty solid for the average user. It's fair to criticize the company for trying to find a way to access an environment that will almost inevitably demand some degree of censorship, but it overlooks the real good that that such a presence would deliver.
Much of the criticism I hear of Google in this case centers on their presumed willingness to tolerate censorship. Pichai makes a good point here: complying with some degree of censorship imposed by a regime is just the cost of doing business in an international setting. No one is howling for Google to pull out of Europe after the ridiculous "right to be forgotten" censorship ruling. You can quibble about where to draw the line; censorship out of a misplaced desire to protect privacy and censorship to prop up a repressive, authoritarian regime are far from equivalent, but in either case it's a cost-benefit analysis with principles on one side and the potential gains for users on the other. This quote suggests Pichai hasn't yet found the best way to do that, or even that he ever will.
And to those cynics out there who will throw out thirst for profits, I say: if money were as strong a motivation for Google as y'all seem to think it is, Google would have never left China to begin with. They (full disclosure, we) lost tremendous leverage in that market when it became obvious that operating in China was not sustainable.
[+] [-] vertline3|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vijay_n|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudeepj|7 years ago|reply
Technology definitely solves lot of problems and some tech enables to scale the solutions (e.g. discovery of antibiotics and tech to mass produce them). But then it gives rise to new set of problems which are much harder to solve. The harder the problems get more collaboration and working together is needed at global scale, which itself is very hard. In this sense, tech can only go so far.
[+] [-] nicklaf|7 years ago|reply
What is bad are the neutral to bad actors who propagate technology, without planning or caring for its unintended consequences.
Technology is an amplifier, and like other amplifiers humans build, it is far easier boost some existing signal when you abdicate yourself from the goal of also maintaining the integrity of the signal: sure, you can get more power if you don't care about noise. In fact, building a perfect amplifier of arbitrary power is probably impossible.