Eric Schmidt on the future

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, on the future:

“We don’t need you to type at all, because we know where you are, with your permission. We know where you’ve been, with your permission. We can more or less guess what you’re thinking about. Now is that over the line? Is that right over the line? Is that right over the line?”

This model seems to confuse the unpredictable play of idea and association and memory (what I would call thinking) with a crude stimulus-response model, in which restaurants mean eat and stores mean shop. I begin to wonder: what sorts of humanities courses did Schmidt take in college? Someone who’s read Emily Dickinson or James Joyce or Frank O’Hara would have more complex ways to think about what it means to think.

Oh, and yes, it’s over the line.

(via Daring Fireball)