“Now is the moment for India to decide what kind of internet it wants for them: an open internet that benefits all or a highly regulated one that inhibits innovation,” he wrote.

Schmidt is currently traveling around Asia and published this article in response to efforts by India’s government to censor and control the internet. This is a hot button issue in India right now as conservative officials and politicians want to regulate (and quash) material that is deemed offensive and inflammatory. However, India is the world’s largest democracy. It is home to a younger generation that is less traditional than its forebears and an erupting technological community. that requires freedom to flourish.

“In 10 years, it will be almost impossible to describe to any child in India what life was like before the internet,” Schmidt wrote. “Only about two billion of the world’s seven billion people have an internet connection, and I believe the remaining five billion will get one in the next decade. Almost one billion of them will come online in India.”

India is one of the most vibrant emerging markets for tech development and startups, but it is also a society riddled with social unrest. The Indian government began cracking down on internet freedom in 2008 after the Mumbai bombings. It passed the Information Technology Act to expand censorship and monitoring capabilities and has put pressure on internet service provers and private companies to remove certain types of information, under threat of imprisonment.

Then in 2011, the New York Times reported that the Indian government asked companies like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo to “prescreen user content from India and to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online.” Flagged content ranges from personal postings that are deemed blasphemous, pornograpaphic, or encouraging immorality. The Department of Telecom also tried to block video torrent sites like Vimeo, The Priate Bay, and Torrentz.

Internet freedom came to the forefront again in August of 2012 as a result of tension in Assam, a northeastern state in India where there is conflict between Muslims and Hindus.  The Indian government ordered more than 300 specific URLs blocked from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Worpress, Wikipedia, and even the Times of India for allegedly promoting violence. Tempers were flaring as a result of hate message, misinformation, and online rumors which led to unrest and at least 300,000 people fleeing.

Schmidt’s article sought to show that the government should view the internet as a way to improve and develop the country, rather than threat to national security and morals. It can be used to disseminate knowledge and enhance education and dialogue, as well as to make the transportation system more efficient

“The most striking Indian internet innovations won’t come from big institutions or companies moving online, however,” he said. “They will come from Indians solving local problems. We know that India’s internet infrastructure allows Indian engineers to solve the problems of small businesses in other countries. If India plays its cards right, we’ll soon see Indian engineers and Indian small businesses tackling Indian problems first, then exporting the solutions that work best.”

Rather than using its resources to policing the web, the Indian government could “reap a huge dividend” from the internet’s growth and use it to address some of the pressing and persistent problems facing the country today.

Later this week, Schmidt will speak on the future of the internet at the Big Tent Activate Summit in New Delhi, an event held jointly by the Guardian, Google, and MediaGuru.

Photo credit: mattwi1s0n/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

While Google Chairman Eric Schmidt was criticized for his visit to North Korea last month, it appears that at least some good came out of it.

Today the North Korean government announced that it would now allow foreign travelers to use wireless Internet on their mobile devices while in the country. The country has long been considered isolated from the rest of the world due to the strict authoritative rule of the Kim dynasty, which has prevented citizens from communicating with the outside world via the Internet. (And really displaying any sort of unique personality, as Schmidt’s daughter noted during her visit.)

Schmidt, who was on a private trip with former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson because the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea, was attempting to urge the country’s leaders to adopt policies that would open up the Internet within the country. Unlike his father, Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un has previously hinted at created a new North Korean “Industrial Age” that would heavily rely on using new technology.

Wireless service provider Koryolink also announced today that it would launch a 3G network by March 1, according to an AP report. Foreign travelers will be able to user their own devices on the network via a Koryolink-issued SIM card, which presumably means that access won’t be identical to what you’d get in the U.S. or European countries. Previously, visitors to the country had to check their mobile devices at customs during their stay, leaving them without any means of communication.

If this story has a moral, it’s certainly that not talking to isolated, authoritarian governments isn’t the best course of action when attempting to promote personal freedoms. Of course, North Korea still doesn’t let its citizens online, but at now foreign nationals that travel to the country (unofficially or otherwise) will have an open communication line to the rest of the world.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Google chairman Eric Schmidt attracted headlines recently for visiting North Korea, but he had been shy to talk about it. Today he finally opened up about the trip in a carefully worded Google+ post. His daughter had some interesting things to say too.

North Korea has a fraught relationship with the United States and many other countries around the world, so Schmidt’s visit with a delegation led by former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was an uncharacteristic development. North Korea hardly gives its citizens access to the Internet and censors what they know about the outside world. Schmidt said the delegation advocated for the country to open up the Internet, which would help its economy and citizens.

Schmidt writes:

There is a supervised Internet and a Korean Intranet. (It appeared supervised in that people were not able to use the Internet without someone else watching them). There’s a private intranet that is linked with their universities. Again, it would be easy to connect these networks to the global Internet.

They also demonstrated their software and technology based on open source (mostly Linux) and it was obvious to us that access to the Internet and all of this was possible for the government, the military, and universities, but not for the general public.

As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth. It will make it harder for them to catch up economically.

We made that alternative very, very clear. Once the Internet starts in any country, citizens in that country can certainly build on top of it, but the government has to do one thing: open up the Internet first. They have to make it possible for people to use the Internet, which the government of North Korea has not yet done. It is their choice now, and in my view, it’s time for them to start, or they will remain behind.

Funny enough, Schmidt’s daughter Sophie was also with the delegation and shared her own thoughts on the trip online. She was far more descriptive than her father about the strangeness of the place and in some the experiences the delegation had while visiting.

A few excerpts from her detailed blog post:

On the visit in general:

Our trip was a mixture of highly staged encounters, tightly-orchestrated viewings, and what seemed like genuine human moments. We had zero interactions with non-state-approved North Koreans and were never far from our two minders (2, so one can mind the other). The longer I think about what we saw and heard, the less sure I am about what any of it actually meant.

Top takeaways from the trip:

1. Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange.
2. If it is January, disregard the above. It is very, very cold.
3. Nothing I’d read or heard beforehand really prepared me for what we saw.

How North Korean citizens live:

Ordinary North Koreans live in a near-total information bubble, without any true frame of reference. I can’t think of any reaction to that except absolute sympathy. My understanding is that North Koreans are taught to believe they are lucky to be in North Korea, so why would they ever want to leave? They’re hostages in their own country, without any real consciousness of it. And the opacity of the country’s inner workings — down to the basics of its economy — further serves to reinforce the state’s control.

The best description we could come up with: it’s like The Truman Show, at country scale.

On likely being bugged:

We were told well ahead of time to assume that everything was bugged: phones, cars, rooms, meetings, restaurants, and who knows what else. I looked for cameras in the room but came up short. But then, why bother with cameras when you have minders? After a day in frigid Pyongyang, I was just thankful it was warm.

On power dying on the subway:

In a fantastic bit of timing, as we exited the train, the station’s power cut out. The commuters around us immediately pulled out flashlights, which they presumably carry all the time. Can’t win ‘em all, minders.

On visiting the library at Kim Il Sung University (pictured above):

All this activity, all those monitors. Probably 90 desks in the room, all manned, with an identical scene one floor up.

One problem: No one was actually doing anything. A few scrolled or clicked, but the rest just stared. More disturbing: when our group walked in — a noisy bunch, with media in tow — not one of them looked up from their desks. Not a head turn, no eye contact, no reaction to stimuli. They might as well have been figurines.

Sophie also posted photos from the trip on Picasa.

North Korea tech photo via Sophie Schmidt/Picasa