Top Highlights

• When Smith said, “Talent is universal; opportunity is not,” she was quoting an epigraph from a memoir, It Happened on the Way to War, by former Marine captain Rye Barcott.
• This is very different from Smith’s take. Whereas Smith is concerned with external provision, Barcott builds up internal strengths. The difference is profound, as even Smith – and every Google employee – knows well from another context. Google posts its job announcements on its website, so in theory, anyone with access to the Internet has the oppor...
• doesn’t matter whether they can browse engineering jobs on their phones. Online opportunity isn’t always actual opportunity.
• by equating the Internet with opportunity for underprivileged people, she has made a dubious assumption – an assumption that the Internet can make up for severe non-Internet deficiencies.
• Smith wants to spread technology to every corner of the planet. Barcott focuses on cultivating individual talents. One builds technologies. The other fosters people.