Googleは大航海時代の宣教師か

ウィキリークスのジュリアンアサンジがグーグルのシュミット会長が共著で出版したNew Digital Ageという新刊を批判するエッセイをニューヨークタイムズのOpEdに寄稿していました。

The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’
By JULIAN ASSANGE
Published: June 1, 2013

Words checked = [1301]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [79%]

タイトルは、紹介させていただいたばかりのハナアレントのBanality of evilとグーグルの非公式スローガンであるDon’t be evilをかけたものですね。このような知識があればタイトルを見ただけで、何となく内容は推測できるようになります。
（ウィキペディア）
Banality of evil
Banality of evil is a phrase used by Hannah Arendt in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.[1] Her thesis is that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

Don't be evil
"Don't be evil" is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) of Google.[1] It was first suggested either by Google employee Paul Buchheit[2] at a meeting about corporate values in early 2000,[3] or according to another account by Google engineer Amit Patel in 1999.[4] Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out", adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent."[2]
（中略）
Criticism of Google often includes a reference to "Don't be evil".[9]

この本がどういうものか日本語の紹介記事を読んでからの方がアサンジ氏の批判もよく理解できると思います。

2013年05月24日（金）　市川 裕康
グーグル会長らによる新著『The New Digital Age』はデジタル時代の未来予測ロードマップ

タイトルからして批判的でしたが、冒頭からblueprint for technocratic imperialismと手厳しいです。

“THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.

The authors met in occupied Baghdad in 2009, when the book was conceived. Strolling among the ruins, the two became excited that consumer technology was transforming a society flattened by United States military occupation. They decided the tech industry could be a powerful agent of American foreign policy.

この本の推薦の言葉を書いているのはヘンリキッシンジャーやトニーブレア、元CIA長官など、好戦的な人物であることを指摘したり、帝国主義的な振る舞いをさす言葉white man’s burdenをIT的にもじったwhite geek’s burdenを使っていることからも、アサンジ氏にとってはグーグルの試みはアメリカの覇権維持のためとしか見えないようですね。

“The New Digital Age” is, beyond anything else, an attempt by Google to position itself as America’s geopolitical visionary — the one company that can answer the question “Where should America go?” It is not surprising that a respectable cast of the world’s most famous warmongers has been trotted out to give its stamp of approval to this enticement to Western soft power. The acknowledgments give pride of place to Henry Kissinger, who along with Tony Blair and the former C.I.A. director Michael Hayden provided advance praise for the book.

In the book the authors happily take up the white geek’s burden. A liberal sprinkling of convenient, hypothetical dark-skinned worthies appear: Congolese fisherwomen, graphic designers in Botswana, anticorruption activists in San Salvador and illiterate Masai cattle herders in the Serengeti are all obediently summoned to demonstrate the progressive properties of Google phones jacked into the informational supply chain of the Western empire.

White man’s burdenのような文化的な意味合いが含まれる表現はオックスフォードが詳しく取り上げてくれているので助かります。この本の推薦文は、下に抜粋しましたが国際政治に関わらず、ビジネス界、IT業界の錚々たるメンバーが書いています。

(オックスフォード)
the white man’s burden
(old use rather offensive)
a phrase that was used mainly in the 19th century to express the idea that European countries had a duty to run the countries and organizations of people in other parts of the world with less money, education or technology than the Europeans. The phrase was first used in a poem by Rudyard Kipling.
（アマゾンから推薦の言葉の抜粋）
“This is the most important—and fascinating—book yet written about how the digital age will affect our world. With vivid examples and brilliant analysis, it shows how the internet and other communications technologies will empower individuals and transform the way nations and businesses operate. How will different societies make tradeoffs involving privacy, freedom, control, security, and the relationship between the physical and virtual worlds? This realistic but deeply optimistic book provides the guideposts. It’s both profoundly wise and wondrously readable.”
-Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs

“Every day, technological innovations are giving people around the world new opportunities to shape their own destinies. In this fascinating book, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen draw upon their unique experiences to show us a future of rising incomes, growing participation, and a genuine sense of community—if we make the right choices today.”
-Bill Clinton

“Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have produced a searching meditation on technology and world order. Even those who disagree with some of their conclusions will learn much from this thought-provoking volume.”
-Henry A. Kissinger

“This is the book I have been waiting for: a concise and persuasive description of technology’s impact on war, peace, freedom, and diplomacy. The New Digital Age is a guide to the future written by two experts who possess a profound understanding of humanity’s altered prospects in a wireless world. There are insights on every page and surprising conclusions (and questions) in every chapter. For experts and casual readers alike, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have produced an indispensable book.”
-Former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright

“Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt have written a brilliant book that should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the huge ramifications of the Age of Google not only for our lifestyles but, more importantly, for our privacy, our democracy and our security. If you already know about the law of photonics, data remanence, Stuxnet, Flame, DDoS attacks and CRASH (the Clean-Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts) then you can probably skip it. If, like me, this is all news to you, you had better download The New Digital Age today. The 'technoptimistic' case will never be more smartly argued.”
-Niall Ferguson, author of Civilization: The West and the Rest

“The New Digital Age is must-reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the depths of the digital revolution. Combining the skills of a social scientist and a computer scientist, Schmidt and Cohen blend the technical and the human, the scientific and the political, in ways I rarely saw while in government. They challenge the reader’s imagination on almost every page.”
-General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA

“This is a book that describes a technological revolution in the making. How we navigate it is a challenge for countries, communities and citizens. There are no two people better equipped to explain what it means than Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen.”
-Tony Blair

“Few people in the world are doing more to imagine—and build—the new digital age than Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. With this book, they are looking into their crystal ball and inviting the world to peek in.”
-Michael R. Bloomberg

“Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen’s thoughtful, well-researched work elucidates the staggering impact of technology on our daily lives, as well as what surprising and incredible developments the future may hold. Readers might be left with more questions than answers, but that’s the idea—we are at our best when we ask ‘What’s next?’”
-Elon Musk, cofounder of Tesla Motors and PayPal

“The New Digital Age offers an intriguing fusion of ideas and insights about how the virtual world is intersecting with the ‘Westphalian order.’ It seeks a balance between the discontinuities of technologists’ ‘revolutions’ and the traditionalism of internationalists’ study of states, power, and behavior. The authors explain that technology is not a panacea, yet the uses of technology can make a world of difference. This book should launch a valuable debate about the practical implications of this new connectivity for citizens and policy makers, societies and governments.”
-Robert B. Zoellick, former president of the World Bank Group

“We have long needed an incisive study of how the ever-evolving world of technology leaves almost no aspect of life unchanged. We have it in The New Digital Age. Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen offer a rigorous approach to decoding what the future holds in a story that is as well written and entertaining as it is important.”
-General Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor

“At last, a brilliant guide book for the next century—what the future holds for entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, politicians, and ordinary citizens alike. Schmidt and Cohen offer a dazzling glimpse into how the new digital revolution is changing our lives. This book is the most insightful exploration of our future world I’ve ever read, and once I started reading I was simply unable to put it down.”
-Sir Richard Branson, founder and chairman, Virgin Group

“This brilliant book will make you re-examine your concepts of the digital age, the way the world works, what lies ahead, and what all this means for you, your family and your community. A must read.”
—Mohamed El-Erian, chair, President Obama’s Global Development Council

まあ、エッセイのポイントは読まなくてもだいたい想像できそうですが、グーグルの技術がアメリカの外交政策の手先となることをアサンジ氏は懸念しているようです。

I have a very different perspective. The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. This is the principal thesis in my book, “Cypherpunks.” But while Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in “repressive autocracies” in “targeting their citizens,” they also say governments in “open” democracies will see it as “a gift” enabling them to “better respond to citizen and customer concerns.” In reality, the erosion of individual privacy in the West and the attendant centralization of power make abuses inevitable, moving the “good” societies closer to the “bad” ones.

The section on “repressive autocracies” describes, disapprovingly, various repressive surveillance measures: legislation to insert back doors into software to enable spying on citizens, monitoring of social networks and the collection of intelligence on entire populations. All of these are already in widespread use in the United States. In fact, some of those measures — like the push to require every social-network profile to be linked to a real name — were spearheaded by Google itself.

この辺は昨年グーグルの個人情報の取り扱いが変更された時にも問題視されましたね。


最後の締めは、本の中で２１世紀に入り新たに備えるべきは、サイバー攻撃であることからIT企業が２０世紀のロッキードマーティン社に匹敵すると語っていることに警戒感を示しています。

This book is a balefully seminal work in which neither author has the language to see, much less to express, the titanic centralizing evil they are constructing. “What Lockheed Martin was to the 20th century,” they tell us, “technology and cybersecurity companies will be to the 21st.” Without even understanding how, they have updated and seamlessly implemented George Orwell’s prophecy. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever. Zealots of the cult of consumer technology will find little to inspire them here, not that they ever seem to need it. But this is essential reading for anyone caught up in the struggle for the future, in view of one simple imperative: Know your enemy.

グーグル便利、グーグルグラスかっこいという能天気な自分としては少しは気をつけないと思わされました。ロッキードマーティン社は１００周年キャンペーンをやっているようですが、飛行機産業もたかだか１００年なんですね。