Google's Think/Do Tank

Jarod Cohn is head of Google Ideas - - sort of Google's "Think and Do Tank."  Previously, Cohen served under both the Bush and Obama administrations.  He was employed in the U.S. State Department's Office of Policy Planning.  His primary role at the the State Department was thinking about the role of technology in statecraft.  Using technology as a tool to empower citizens, promote greater accountability and transparency - - to do capacity building.  At its core, what technology does is it connects people to information, which is new media; it connects people to each other, which is social media; and then there's a far more exciting path that engineering needs to help people go down.  This is the path where technology is a tool to connect people to actual resources - - like mobile banking or mobile money transfers or telemedicine.

Attached is a video with Cohen on the subject of 21st century statecraft: