The Internet will disappear, says Google boss Eric Schmidt

 Google boss Eric Schmidt

Google boss Eric Schmidt foresees that the Internet will soon “disappear.”

In late January, the tech giant’s executive chairman spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on a panel with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao. Mr Schmidt suggested that the Internet will become so omnipresent in each facet of people’s lives that it will “disappear” into the background. He added that there will be so many IP addresses, sensors, devices and wearables which interact with people that they “won’t even sense it” anymore.

Google’s executive chairman explained that the Internet will be part of people’s presence all the time and suggested that home automation is one example of how the cyberspace will become an integrated part of the daily life. Conveniently, in October 2014, Google’s Nest acquired Revolv, the maker of a hub device for controlling the smart home appliances. 2014 represented an important step for Google into the home automation market, since it purchased Nest, a company which reinvents trivial home products and became the owner of home surveillance start-up Dropcam. However, Google is not the only company that has entered the home automation market; in August 2014, Samsung purchased SmartThings, a company which promises to turn an ordinary home into a smart home.

Mr Schmidt also mentioned that “new developments in machine intelligence” will make people smarter and claimed that the reason behind this progress is represented by smartphones, which are “basically supercomputers.” He revealed that people get smarter because of technology and added that “the empowerment of people is the secret to technological progress.”

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft shared Mr Schmidt’s views with regard to the future of the Internet and opined that “technology empowers humans to do great things.” Mr Nadella added that people have to be optimistic about what technology can do in their hands and warned that if the Internet is destroyed, “we destroy a lot of our economic future.” 
Furthermore, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook believes that the Internet should be extended to more people. Both Ms Sandberg and Mr Schmidt lauded the cyberspace as an important way to empower people and narrow divides.

The World Economic Forum brought together some 2,500 of the global political and business elite.

Source : http://www.australiannationalreview.com/internet-disappear-google-boss-eric-schmidt/