A new wwworld in your hands

A new wwworld in your hands

By ERIC SCHMIDT
Chief Executive Officer of Google
October 04, 2006

THE boss of search engine Google, Dr Eric Schmidt, yesterday wowed the Tory Conference with his vision of the future for the Internet. Here he writes exclusively for The Sun . . .

FOR centuries access to information — and the ability to communicate it — has been controlled by the wealthy and the well educated.

The Internet changed all that. It has broken down the barriers that exist between people and information, effectively democratising access to human knowledge.

This has made us all much more powerful as individuals.

We no longer have to take what business, the media or indeed politicians say at face value.

By typing a few key words into a computer, it’s possible to find out about almost any subject — comparing prices, products and policies within seconds.

The Internet has rewritten all the rules of production and distribution too — bringing unprecedented freedoms to millions of people worldwide: The freedom to create and communicate, to organise and influence, to speak and be heard.

Shelf space, air time, room on the pages of a newspaper — these used to determine which artists got their records played, what TV shows we watched and which elite opinions appeared in print. Now anyone can record songs and put them online. Or shoot home movies, edit them, add special effects and broadcast them to millions worldwide.
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Or start a blog, sharing opinions and comments with readers in different countries and on different continents.

Not surprisingly, people are using that power to buy better value goods and services, to hold others to account and, above all, to express themselves.

It’s the first rule of the Internet — people have a lot to say. It’s amazing but true. A new blog is created every minute of every day.

In fact, the amounts of information we are creating are simply staggering.

Most Sun readers know about gigabytes and megabytes. But it’s estimated that in the year 2002 we created five exabytes (that’s a byte followed by 18 noughts) of information.

To translate that into television hours, absorbing five exabytes of data would mean sitting in front of a screen for 40,700 years.

So what does the future look like?

As more information becomes available, the harder it’ll be to find what you are looking for, and the more important search will become.

Expect to see more personalised searches too — bringing quicker, more accurate results.

Think mobile — because people are increasingly going to access the web through their phones.

Opening emails, checking the weather, reading the news headlines — you don’t need to be at your desk to do these things.

We’re going to see the development of simultaneous translation — search in English but getting the results in Spanish.

The potential is enormous, especially for people in developing countries.

And then there’s my dream product — I call it serendipity.

It works like this. You have two computer screens. On one you’re typing, on the other comments appear checking the accuracy of what you are saying, suggesting better ways of making the same point.

This would be good for journalists and politicians too!

Impossible you might say. But I’m an optimist about human nature.

History has proven that we have the ability and ingenuity to solve problems and improve our lives if only we are given the freedom to do so.

And that’s exactly what the Internet does.

So remember, it’s a great time to be alive.