Turn off your PC, look at people: Google CEO

PHILADELPHIA: When a politician makes such a comment, one can go excavating for hidden agenda behind it. But when a person whose whole business is spread across the virtual space, makes this statement, it has to be taken note of very seriously. And that's why Google CEO Eric Schmidt's commencement address to University of Pennsylvania graduates on Monday became a great news.

In his address Schmidt, the head of the world's most popular search engine, urged students to step away from the virtual world and make human connections.

"Turn off your computer. You're actually going to have to turn off your phone look, at the people who are near and around you, and decide that humans are the most important things, not the other aspects," Schmidt told a gathering of around 6,000 graduates. "Nothing beats holding the hand of your grandchild as he walks his first steps."

He also received an honorary doctor of science degree at the ceremony.

For Schmidt, giving a commencement address to University of Pennsylvania graduates was in a sense a return to roots in many ways. He was a student in Princeton University in Pennsylvania in the mid-1970s. And Pennsylvania is the birthplace of the first complex machine, what we today call “the computer.”

Though Schmidt said he wanted to see computer technology continue to flourish, he warned the students that too intense a focus on electronic gadgetry is “destroying life.”

What is your take? Do you think too much of computer dependency is a threat to social life?