Google Chairman Expects Internet To ‘Disappear’ Soon

Google chairman Eric Schmidt expects the internet as we know it to ‘disappear’ in the next few years as our online connections become ever more smarter and personalised.

“I will answer very simply that the Internet will disappear,” Schmidt said at the Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland when asked about his predictions for the future of the web.

“There will be so many IP addresses…so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it.”

Dynamic

“It will be part of your presence all the time,” he added. “Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic.

“And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room.”

Schmidt said that the shift would be a big opportunity for technology firms, saying: “A highly personalised, highly interactive and very, very interesting world emerges.”

The timing of Schmidt’s comments are particularly interesting, coming a year to the day that last year’s WEF announced a new Global Commission on Internet Governance to look into the future of the Web and political control over it.

The two-year-long effort will be led by Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

Looking forward

Speaking on a panel entitled The Future of the Digital Economy, which also featured Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Schmidt also claimed advances in technology will create a wave of new jobs and dismissed suggestions that innovation threatened a generation of workers.

He said that for every job created in the sector, there were seven more created in non-technology roles, and claimed that a digital single market in Europe would help to create four million new jobs.

“What happens to the job that is lost? It’s the same thing that happened when people stopped farming and started using tractors – they find new skills and services.”

“So while there is an enormous assumption that this time it’s different. That somehow no one is going to have a job in the world, and it’s just going to be the Davos elite who is going to have a good time and everyone else is going to be rioting is completely false.”

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