Jakarta Globe – AFP, Jan 23, 2015
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| Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, gestures during the session ‘The Future of the Digital Economy’ in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos on Jan. 22, 2015. (Reuters Photo/Ruben Sprich) |
Davos.
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
personalized, highly interactive and very interesting world emerges.”
On the sort
of high-level panel only found among the ski slopes of Davos, a panel bringing
together 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.
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,
said 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.
Agence France-Presse
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