Christopher Schroeder: The Future Is Everywhere
In Conversation with Andrew Keen on the Keen On
The coronavirus pandemic is dramatically disrupting not only our daily lives but society itself. This show features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the deeper economic, political, and technological consequences of the pandemic. It’s our new daily podcast trying to make longterm sense out of the chaos of today’s global crisis.
On today’s episode, Christopher Schroeder, entrepreneur, co-founder of Next Billion Ventures, and author of Startup Rising, discusses how the crisis of globalism has been coming for almost twenty years.
From the episode:
Christopher Schroeder: There’s just so much complexity and nuance in it all, but there are too many things that have happened that are interconnected among people around the world. Certainly from a macro business perspective but also in the way people exchange things because of technology, I just don’t believe you can put that genie completely back in the bottle. It doesn’t mean that politicians aren’t going to try to do so. In fact, it’s more palatable to really say, Look, this crisis shows us that we really need to be separate. It shows us that we should be protecting our borders. It shows us that we need our own supply chains, and there are elements of that that absolutely should be rethought.
I think if this thing has taught us anything, it is when we are globally connected, transparent, and sharing data and sharing best practices, unbelievably better things happen, despite what governments may decide to do, top down. The reality is now that sixty to eighty percent of humanity has a supercomputer in their pocket as a smartphone. They will seek out great ideas and great innovation and great reading and great thought from everywhere in the world. You have essentially all of human knowledge at your fingertips, essentially for free. I don’t see how that gets simply blocked out entirely, although that will be certainly efforts to do it and we’ve seen efforts to do it in China and other places.
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Christopher Schroeder is a leading tech media entrepreneur and venture investor. He ran the digital assets for the Washington Post Company and co-founded Silicon Valley backed HealthCentral.com which connected millions of health seekers who had gone through similar experiences. He has invested and advised some of the leading venture capital firms globally, and co-founded Next Billion Ventures to back startups in rising markets. He has written for leading news companies around the globe, a frequent contributor cable news and wrote the best selling Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East. He has work in and advised several administrations in Washington, DC.
