A day we’ve long anticipated has finally arrived. Today, the new book that Carol Ann Browne and I have written, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age, publishes by Penguin Press and Hodder & Stoughton in North America and English languages around the world. We chose the phrase “Tools and Weapons” to capture the paradox of technology. While tech companies like Microsoft create products and services to serve humanity, that same tech is being weaponized to inflict harm. And more indirectly, many of the issues people debate today, like income equality, trade, immigration and globalization, are all enabled and fueled by technology.
These challenges affect us all, no matter where we live, fostering a new age of anxiety. Tools and Weapons starts with the proposition that if your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help the world navigate these changes. We wrote the book to make these issues more accessible to people and to examine ways to address them.
As we worked on the book, Carol Ann and I reflected on several stories drawn from current events, issues faced by Microsoft, and history. Why history? As we delved into the issues, we realized most have parallels from the past. The horse lost its job to the car, trains forced interstate regulation, the public revolted against the radio in the 1940s, and people feared that early cameras and the advent of street lamps would invade their privacy. But what’s different today is the speed of change. In a way, the issues created by today’s technology aren’t unprecedented, things are just moving a lot faster.
Tools and Weapons opens with a tour of what has become the world’s filing cabinet – the cloud. While the cloud is the underpinning of almost every aspect of society, most people don’t understand what it truly is: a massive fortress of concrete and steel. And while there is no cloud without a data center, these complexes are shrouded in mystery. We realized that to understand how the world really works today, you need to visit a data center. That’s why we open the book by taking the reader on the type of tour that typically is available only to a few industry insiders.
I hope that when people read this book, they will gain not only a better understanding of the forces changing our world, but also a sense that there is a promising way forward. It is a path that requires the entire technology sector to change and take on more responsibility. It’s also a path that requires governments to do more, to move faster and change as well. Fundamentally, it’s a path that requires that we work together in very concrete ways to bring together people who create technology, people who use technology, people who govern technology, and people who are impacted by it. As the book illustrates with concrete and colorful stories, we believe that this will provide the best approach to address issues that range from privacy and security to the development of artificial intelligence and the impact of technology on our jobs and international relations between nations, including the U.S. and China.
And there is one other thing that was very near and dear to our hearts. For all of us who like to read, as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said, we all buy more books than we start and we all start more books than we finish. We had a clear goal throughout our writing process and that was to write a book that we hope people will enjoy reading. I hope you enjoy it. Please tell us what you think on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Tools and Weapons is available today in the English language at retailers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and International Booksellers. Editions in additional languages will publish in the coming months. To learn more, visit the Tools and Weapons website and register for public events in your city.
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