In his keynote address at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Feb. 15, Eric Schmidt, Google’s soon-to-be-former CEO paints the portrait of a future society where technology has become subservient to humanity and our shared level of connectivity has the potential to solve the greatest problems facing our collective civilization.
"The goal of everything we’re doing is so that I can spend more time exploring new places, and have a more fulfilled life as I define it," he said, referring to all in attendance. "I would offer a happiness theorem, that computers are here to make us happier, because computers take care of the stuff that gets in our way."
Schmidt’s discussion moved from the demands cultivated by our rapidly growing mobile Web culture to address the personal benefits that advanced search technology can bring to people around the world. "It’s interesting to think of your phone first as a communications device, then a data platform, and now a serendipity platform, giving you the ability to find new things and meet new people you wouldn’t meet otherwise," he said.
He asked the audience to imagine a world where your mobile device monitors your blood pressure, where cloud computing gives users access to applications across multiple devices instantaneously, and an economy driven by a velocity of commerce never before imagined. "We believe speed matters, that your time matters," he said. "The Internet is replacing economics of scarcity with an economy of ubiquity."
The future, Schmidt said, is "for the masses, not the elites. Because of your work spreading mobile devices, 2 billion people will enter our conversation in the next three to four years. They are coming, and they are coming with human values, human concerns and human problems. It’s possible, and it will change their lives so much more than it has changed any of ours. That is what I’m most proud of."
For more, read the eWeek article, Google CEO Offers Vision of a Connected, Egalatarian Future.
