Biodiversity. Workplace diversity. Religion. Wind turbines. Self-driving car crashes. Science fiction. Political lobbying. And yes, even the Internet.
Wednesday morning was Google’s annual shareholder conference, which is also a perennial opportunity for activists and vocal shareholders to pick the brains of some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley: Google CEO Larry Page, co-founder Sergey Brin and Chairman Eric Schmidt, along with Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond.
The star activist of the morning was civil rights legend the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who stood up — as he has before — to press Google and the tech world to improve its workforce diversity. But the most unusual question came from a UC Berkeley law student and Google investor who identified himself as Evan Chau, who asked Google about the long-term future it has in mind for us, and if it will look more like Wall-E, with its pampered, helpless humans, or the Matrix, or some other dystopian or utopian world.
Page started out by mentioning how he recently went to see the new Disney movie “Tomorrowland,” hoping to watch a sci-fi movie with a positive perspective of the future. He seemed to agree with critics that it wasn’t very good. Then he got philosophical.
“Everything’s getting better, in general. We should be optimists,” said Page, answering the student’s question but also connecting it to Jackson’s appeal for representation — something he believes is getting better, albeit slowly.
Above: At Google’s annual shareholder conference in Mountain View on Wednesday, just before CEO Larry Page showed up. (Photo by Matt O’Brien)