In June 2011, Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman
of Google, Eric Schmidt, arrived from America at Ellingham Hall, the
country residence in Norfolk, England where Assange was living under
house arrest. For several hours the besieged leader of the world's most
famous insurgent publishing organization and the billionaire head of the
world's largest information empire locked horns. The two men debated the
political problems faced by society, and the technological solutions
engendered by the global network - from the Arab Spring to Bitcoin. They
outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating
power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For
Schmidt, emancipation is at one with US foreign policy objectives and is
driven by connecting non-Western countries to American companies and
markets. These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet's
future that has only gathered force subsequently.
When Google Met WikiLeaks presents the story of Assange and Schmidt's
encounter. Both fascinating and alarming, it contains an edited
transcript of their conversation and extensive, new material, written by
Assange specifically for this book, providing the best available summary
of his vision for the future of the Internet.
