Man v2.0
The person who invented Google might not be recognizable, but Sergey Brin is mainly responsible for the fact that man and technology are rapidly turning into a single entity. Would any of this have happened if his family had moved to Israel?
With a net worth of over $22 billion and ranked 21 on the Forbes list of The World’s Billionaires, Sergey Brin is still not widely recognized. The Economistcalled him an “Enlightenment Man.” In 2009, Forbes ranked Brin and his partner, Larry Page, in the fifth spot among the world’s most influential people. Even so, the words “Sergey Brin” do not mean much to the man on the street. The same goes for the billions of Internet users who unwittingly use the search engine he devised: Google.
But a decade and a half after he and Page made history, Brin is working on technology that will change our lives entirely. Brin’s current role at Google is any scientist or computer engineer’s dream: development of Google’s new technologies. From this position, he is undoubtedly one of the people with the most influence over mankind today; he is one of the standout leaders working to combine man and technology.
In April 2012, Brin arrived at a Foundation Fighting Blindness charity event
in San Francisco wearing a clunky pair of glasses. This was one of the first times the world was exposed to GLASS – the glasses that will replace the computer, cell phone, camera and telephone. We might all end up looking cybernetic, but our hands will remain free. Is this the first true connection between man and machine? Or perhaps we’re just talking about a geeky fashion accessory. The combination of virtual reality, social networks and augmented reality seems closer than ever.
It is important to Brin that we understand his DNA. His personal interest in the matter was sparked after his Chromosome 12 was discovered to contain a mutation of the LRRK2 gene, which causes an increased likelihood of Parkinson’s disease. His wife, Ann Wojcicki, founded a company called 23AndMe in order to enable anyone to conduct a simple DNA mapping. Brin lent millions of dollars to the company and Google invested in it. In the past few years, Brin invested in research and drug companies connected to Parkinson’s disease. Obviously, a cure for this widespread disease would completely change the lives of the people who suffer from it.
On April 1, 2008, together with Virgin, Page and Brin founded Virgle – a project to colonize Mars. The (April Fools) joke was highly successfully. Thousands of people signed up, and what began perhaps with a smile became a serious story. Recently,Google’s entrepreneurs invested in Planetary Resources, a company whose goal is to mine asteroids for resources and return said resources to Earth. Human colonization of Mars will become more than science fiction in the coming decades. A senior manager at NASA has proposed calling the first two colonies on the Red Planet “Pageville” and “Brin’s Valley.”
Sergey Brin’s family left the USSR in 1979 when he was six. More than a million Soviet Jews chose to move to Israel at that time. Hundreds of thousands of others chose (or succeeded, depending on how you see it) to move to the United States. The Brins arrived in Maryland. Sergey’s father, Michael Brin, got a job at University of Maryland in math and computers. Among the list of honored graduates of University of Maryland is Brin’s son, Sergey: “Mathematics, 1993, founding partner of Google, search engine.” Indeed, once upon a time, Google needed to be explained.
Five years later, at the end of 1998, ittook a great deal of courage – or stupidity – to leave doctoral studies at Stanford in order to develop a new Internet search engine. At the time, there were already a number of search engines, like Alta Vista and Yahoo. However, Brin and Page thought their algorithm was better, and they were right. The estimate today is that more than 80% of Internet searches are done using Brin’s technology. It is no exaggeration to say that the information revolution that made information so accessible is attributable to Brin and Page.
Fifteen years later, the world is moving even faster. Technology that they and their peers created ramps up the pace of change. Robots, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biotechnology and space exploration fuel progress. The technology being created is no longer merely a tool in the hands of its creator. It is incorporated into the fabric of humanity itself. What is human and whether a clear line still exists between carbon and silicon are questions to be answered. Brin’s developing technology will define the next generation of humanity.
And I am left pondering whether Brin’s new world is truly global. Would Brin have become what he is today if his parents had chosen to immigrate to Israel?
Yanki Margalit is a social entrepreneur, investor and chairman of SpaceIL.
