From 8 March, the BBC’s international news services, BBC World Service, BBC World News and BBC.com, will air a host of interviews from leading internet and technology figures across the world.
Featuring across the BBC’s news services as part of the SuperPower season, which examines how the internet has impacted on the lives of ordinary people across the globe, some of the interview extracts include:
Sam Pitroda on teaching and developing online voting:
"I think this whole concept of teacher delivering with duster and blackboard is obsolete, don’t make sense today, but we still go on doing it. And it will have to change. That’s the power of the internet, it changes the whole paradigm everywhere. We are already using electronic voting but I can tell you voting is going to go on cellphone."
TX: bbc.com/news 8 March, BBC World News 8 March, BBC World Service from 8 March
Martha Lane Fox on the rise of Google:
"The rise of google is one of the biggest differences between pre-lastminute.com and post lastminute.com, speaking from my own experience, you know, that’s a big change and they really do now dominate a market and can make or break the fortunes of a new start up which is you know, something I think you have to think about here in the UK. So, I’m enormously respectful of what google have achieved but I think it does also change the dynamics of a market where you have such an overbearing competitor that can move you up or down its rankings in a seemingly quite opaque way."
TX: bbc.com/news 8 March, BBC World News 9 March, BBC World Service from 8 March
Steve Ballmer on the merging of media:
"All of the world of information, and communications actually, will come together so what we think of as TV today, what we think of as quote "print" today, what we think of as the radio today, even what we think of as voice calls or video calls today, will all get transported over the internet and will all be made more interactive, more interesting, more convenient, using smart software, running in the PC, the phone or the TV and running in the internet or the so-called cloud."
TX: bbc.com/news 8 March, BBC World News 11 March, BBC World Service from 8 March
Eric Schmidt on translation:
"Google’s goal is to be able to have a hundred by hundred matrix of every language to every other language that matters in automatic translation. By doing this, we think we can take every page and translate it in, into your language, even though nothing on that page was in the language that it’s ultimately delivered on."
The same principle, by the way, should apply to video. So you go, "well, maybe I’d like to have all of the videos that are on YouTube, automatically translated into another language, in such a way that I can understand or at least comprehend them”. So, why not take it a step further?"
TX: bbc.com/news 15 March, BBC World News 15 March, BBC World Service from 15 March.
Victor Koo on censorship and Google:
"The whole issue of content monitoring and censorship in China is a very, very visible one. A lot of people talk about it but I would argue that it is somewhat exaggerated.
Yes in terms of content monitoring in areas like inappropriate materials, such as pornography and politically sensitive issues, there are very specific rules by the authorities.
I think that this has been a very hot topic of late, in terms of GoogleChina considering to leave China but since China is the largest internet market I would assume that they would have to really seriously think about it before they do really make that decision."
TX: bbc.com/news 15 March, BBC World News 19 March, BBC World Service from 15 March.
Other ‘Digital Giants’ featuring in the series: Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia ; Joe Rospars, Director of Barack Obama's digital strategy presidential campaign; Daniel Ek, CEO & founder of Spotify; Ge Wang, Assistant Professor at Stanford University, Philip Emeagwali, Supercomputer Scientist; and Evgeny Morozov, Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University.
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