Don't worry. You aren't going to have to try to imagine what life would be like without the Internet. Google boss Eric Schmidt has predicted that the Internet will soon be so pervasive that it will become a part of every facet of our lives that soon it will effectively "disappear" into the background.
"There will be so many sensors, so many devices, that you won't even sense it, it will be all around you" Schmidt said, while speakingto both business and political elite at the World Economic Forum held at Davos this week. "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."
From the ski slopes of Davos, the heads of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Vodafone sought to dispel fears that the rapid pace of technology was killing jobs.
"Everyone's worried about jobs," Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg says. With so many changes in the technology world, "the transformation is happening faster than ever before."
"But tech creates jobs not only in the tech space but outside."
According to Schmidt, technology has created jobs in almost every area of the economy, quoting statistics that show the job creation of technology.
"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, Schmidt says.
The debate about whether technology is destroying jobs "has been around for hundreds of years". 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 globalized solution means more equality for everyone."
One of the main topics of this year's forum was how to share the fruits of the growth of technology on a global scale, with the heads of the biggest tech firms believing that greater connectivity offered by their companies helps reduce inequalities.
"Are the spoils of tech being evenly spread? That is an issue that we have to tackle head on," Chief Executive of Microsoft, Satya Nadella says. "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."
Schmidt, who recently returned from a visit with the notoriously reclusive state of North Korea, believes that technology has forced many of these types of countries to open up as their citizens gain more knowledge about what is going on in the world around them.
"It is no longer possible for a country to step out of basic assumptions in banking, communications, morals and the way people communicate," Schmidt says. "You cannot isolate yourself any more. It simply doesn't work."
And Sandberg, for her part, believes this is only the beginning. "Today, only 40 per cent of people have Internet access. If we can do all this with 40 per cent, imagine what we can do with 50, 60, 70 per cent."
According to Sandberg, the spread of the Internet across the globe is now two decades old and counting, leaving much room for huge growth as we move forward.
