With the everyday use of products that once would have been considered technological impossibilities, Schmidt sees in the proliferation and sophistication of modern information technology the new face of global interconnectivity. 

“That change is a truly revolutionary change, because it means that people are carrying around these phenomenal computing resources that are hyperconnected,” he said. “My point is that people live in very local contexts, but they have the Encyclopedia Britannica streaming to [their phones] every day.”

Nowhere has the globalization of modern society been more evident than in the evolution of the Internet, Schmidt commented, and he further suggested that the Internet does not only bridge the gaps between people, but that, in reality, these gaps were not so very large to begin with.

“The key insight from my experience at Google has been that people are the same everywhere,” he said. “The only thing that’s really different is languages, and we can solve that with volunteer translators.”

Despite the seeming universality of a search engine-based system such as Google, Schmidt claimed to have learned very quickly that result information that was acceptable in the United States could be taken the wrong way in other parts of the world, sometimes with drastic consequences. As an example, he cited the story of Google’s Brazil office, at which officials jailed several employees after finding child pornography in a Google search result.

“That was a wake-up call,” he said. “We learned a hard lesson, which is that, in the way governments work, including democratically elected governments, prosecutors have very strong and arbitrary powers, and many of them do not fully understand this complex process of how the Internet works.”

Of course, he said, the sheer amount of material added to the Internet every minute makes it difficult to control what shows up on an Internet search engine, and this is something that many people have taken issue with. 

“One of the central issues that the Internet has is that there are a number of organizations that would like prior censorship obligation,” he said. “Many, many governments would like prior censorship before publication.”

In order to illustrate his point, he provided the example of Turkey, in which the popular website YouTube was blocked last year in response to videos that were considered disrespectful to the state.

“We all think of Turkey as a pretty modern state, but I’ll tell you from a YouTube perspective they are a seriously backwards state,” he said. “It is perfectly possible that the motivation for this censorship has more to do with the political dynamic and criticism of the government.”

Schmidt advocated the use of the Internet, and particularly such sites as YouTube, as a way to combat global injustice through immediate international exposure.

“The fact of the matter is that the ubiquity of recording devices and the ability now to publish them really does serve as a check and balance on despots,” he said. “Now you have the ability, using private communications, to serve as a check and balance, at least against the societally sanctioned or the local actions.”

And the opposite can also be true, Schmidt stated, suggesting that the power of the Internet to bring a balanced worldview to citizens of oppressed countries was the first step to preventing dictatorship by enabling people to choose their own news sources.

“The Internet is precisely organized to not allow those kinds of activities [that would provide only a single source of news],” he said. “The way you invade these countries is with information.”

Though transparency is critical to Schmidt’s vision of the Internet, at the same time, he stressed the need for the protection of the privacy of individual Internet users. 

“I think that privacy is in every issue for the Internet; we’re going to be having conferences about privacy for the next 50 years,” he said. “People are obsessed with their own image, public and private.”

According to Schmidt, there is also a definite practical motivation for Google to protect the rights of those who frequent the site. 

“The entire relationship that Google has is on the trust of our users,” he said. “If we were to do something that would violate your trust, a reporter would find you and make such an enormous storm that we would lose…three quarters of our users.”

In addition to the personal and economic reasoning, there is also a moral imperative that has led Schmidt to become an activist for the individual right to privacy.

“We really want to fight for the right to privacy,” he said. “If you are not willing to fight for it, you should not be in this business.”

Ultimately, according to Schmidt, regardless of current debate, the new global paradigm for international interaction via the Internet will be based on the people who contribute to it. This means  that, to him, the era of user-generated material is just beginning.

“Google is all about the wisdom of crowds,” he said.