
Google
boss Eric Schmidt predicted on Thursday that the Internet will soon be
so pervasive in every facet of our lives that it will effectively
“disappear” into the background.
Speaking
to the business and political elite at the World Economic Forum at
Davos, Schmidt said: “There will be so many sensors, so many devices,
that you won’t even sense it, it will be all around you.”
“It
will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a
room and … you are interacting with all the things going on in that
room.” “A highly personalised, highly interactive and very interesting
world emerges.”
On
the sort of high-level panel only found among the ski slopes of Davos,
the heads of Google, Facebook and Microsoft and Vodafone sought to allay
fears that the rapid pace of technological advance was killing jobs.
“Everyone’s
worried about jobs,” admitted Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer
of Facebook. With so many changes in the technology world, “the
transformation is happening faster than ever before,” she acknowledged.
“But tech creates jobs not only in the tech space but outside,” she insisted.
Schmidt
quoted statistics he said showed that every tech job created between
five and seven jobs in a different area of the economy. “If there were a
single digital market in Europe, 400 million new and important new jobs
would be created in Europe,” which is suffering from stubbornly high
levels of unemployment, he said.
The
debate about whether technology is destroying jobs “has been around for
hundreds of years”, said the Google boss. What is different is the
speed of change.
“It’s
the same that happened to the people who lost their farming jobs when
the tractor came … but ultimately a globalised solution means more
equality for everyone.”
Everyone has a voice
With
one of the main topics at this year’s World Economic Forum being how to
share out the fruits of global growth, the tech barons stressed that
the greater connectivity offered by their companies ultimately helps
reduce inequalities.
“Are
the spoils of tech being evenly spread? That is an issue that we have
to tackle head on,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft.
“I’m
optimistic, there’s no question. If you are in the tech business, you
have to be optimistic. Ultimately to me, it’s about human capital. Tech
empowers humans to do great things.” Facebook boss Sandberg said the
Internet in its early forms was “all about anonymity”, but now everyone
was sharing everything and everyone was visible.
“Now
everyone has a voice … now everyone can post, everyone can share and
that gives a voice to people who have historically not had it,” she
said.
Schmidt,
who said he had recently come back from the reclusive state of North
Korea, added he believed that technology forced potentially despotic and
hermetic governments to open up as their citizens acquired more
knowledge about the outside world.
“It
is no longer possible for a country to step out of basic assumptions in
banking, communications, morals and the way people communicate,” the
Google boss said. “You cannot isolate yourself any more. It simply
doesn’t work.”
Nevertheless,
Sandberg told the assembled elites that even the current pace of change
was only the tip of the iceberg. “Today, only 40 percent of people have
Internet access,” she said, adding: “If we can do all this with 40
percent, imagine what we can do with 50, 60, 70 percent.”
Even
two decades into the global spread of the Internet, the potential for
opening up and growth was tremendous, she stressed. “Sixty percent of
the Internet is in English. If that doesn’t tell you how uninclusive the
Internet is, then nothing will,” said the tycoon.
The
World Economic Forum brings together some 2,500 of the top movers and
shakers in the worlds of politics, business and finance for a four-day
meeting that ends on Saturday.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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