What is Facebook, SpaceX and Google doing right now to keep their companies relevant 10-20 years from now? I will tell you what, they are bringing the internet to 4 Billion people that are not connected and where are these 4 billion people if you ask me? They are in Africa, India, China and all those other villages in South America that are not connected.
As Facebook is working on drones that can beam down internet to the remotest villages, Google X is testing out Ballons that will navigate the globe and bring the internet to everyone and as if that is not enough, Google and Fidelity invested a $1 Billion in Space X to make satellites that are purposely going to bring connectivity to the last mile.
If these companies succeed and 7 Billion people are connected what will this mean for the way we do business and the way we live our lives. What will it mean to you as an individual and the environment around you. Today I want to try and imagine the possibilities of what good and bad can come out of this.
Connectivity possibilities:
It scares me a bit but 7 Billion people online, changes everything and means there are a lot of Ubers, Snapchats, and Matatu games still waiting to be built, there is still endless possibilities towards how this can change economies and the way it will trickle down to the way governments or businesses are run, when people can keep up with the way their leaders are representing them or even the way their businesses are being discovered online. Imagine putting the world’s information in every pocket and people are digesting this information real time.
Digital Safety and Privacy:
We post just about anything in our lives on Facebook, Instagram, Google+, we rush into opening up email addresses that we don’t even consider reading the agreements on the terms of use. We trust our information to these tech Giants without thinking for a second that a government can come and ask to get access to this information and I know a lot of these giants put up a fight and refuse to offer this information but with the exponential changes and increased connectivity won’t governments make a stand to be able to tap into this information?
We all love change but then we have governments try to slow things down so that the kind of change happening can’t overwhelm people. 7 Billion people online will kind of expose everyone to the drastic change and usually because we are human beings when something overwhelms us, we tend to fight it or run away from it(fear/flight). Governments have to start surrounding themselves with people technical enough to advise on digital safety.
On Privacy, I have a friend who deactivated her Facebook account, because she is 34 and Facebook kept on recommending pregnancy related products because they could see all her friends in the same age group were having baby pictures and yet she didn’t have any. This means Facebook was correlating her data with that of her friends and making conclusions that led to advertisers specifically targeting her.
How safe are we going to be when this happens on a global scale, yes I want recommendations that suit me but for a social network to recommend that I should be engaged because half my age mates are engaged is a bit too far.
A billion opportunity:
On the bright side however, 4 billion people create billions of opportunity and Trillions of dollars. More business are going to go global and be exposed to global competition, we are going to see new technologies that will be consumed at a much faster rate.
We are going to need more software engineers than ever before, we are also going to need more technical people advising the governments. Our planet is going to need to embrace a lot of new things because it’s one thing bringing the internet to 7 Billion people and it is another to see how they react to it.
What do you think will happen when 7 Billion people are connected. Tweet us your reactions @pctechmagazine
