Did Eric Schmidt predict his own demise?

If Eric Schmidt, Google/Alphabet's honcho, did just bite the #MeToo bullet, then he probably has a lot more respect for this quote from earlier in his life:

"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time." – Eric Schmidt

Putting everything on the Internet for everyone, everywhere, certainly has changed the world, hasn't it? Before Google, many records were "public" only in the sense that they were available for inspection by another citizen who presented him or herself in the correct office at the right time.

To see such a public document you had to be enough invested to hunt it down at the correct county courthouse, or know which state agency might be holding that document, and in which of the 50 states that agency was located. Public didn't mean plastered on a billboard as you drove the interstate back and forth to work.

In fact, given the colossal failure of the "technologically sophisticated" to protect sensitive personal information – think Yahoo email, the federal government's OPM classified leaks and Equifax, to mention but a few – you might not even be the one creating a public document about "you." Anyone who buys your Equifax account from one of that firm's hackers for a few bucks can do so. In due course their handiwork, too, will be available to anyone, anywhere via the Internet and Google. Now you have a real history and a fake history. Who knows which is which?

TRENDING: Impeach!

None of this says anything about the hoards of information Google, Facebook, Amazon and a host of other big tech sites have gathered about you from your search history, friendly chat and purchasing habits. In fact, they probably know more about each of us than we know about ourselves. They enrich themselves by selling this information to advertisers … and who knows?

Is that a good thing?

Contrast Mr. Schmidt's quote with this one from Steve Jobs, Apple's cofounder:

"That's been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains." – Steve Jobs

The two quotes reflect two very different worldviews, don't they? In fact, they seem more like an either-or choice. You can have one, but then you lose the other.

The problem with everything about everybody, available to anyone, anywhere, all the time is that simplicity and silence become impossible. What will you ignore from the loud, angry world outside, which, once you turn you back, may slip out through your PC screen and the Internet ether to bite you in the posterior?

Constant worry doesn't let us feed the thoughtful inner-world that generates simplicity, elegance and the power to "move mountains," as Mr. Jobs observed.