Tech advances to explode faster than 1990s internet boom
Technological advances are to explode 10 times faster than even the internet boom in the 1990s, top tech tycoons revealed, but also warned that security threats would be worse this year than ever.
As the world's political and business movers-and-shakers opened their annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, one of the hot-button issues was the impact of technology on society and the growing income gap.
John Chambers, chief executive of tech giant Cisco, said: "Take what happened with the internet in the 1990s, multiply it by 10 and that's what you're about to see and the benefits are going to be seen by every single person." Meanwhile, PayPal founder Max Levchin told Davos revolutions in data management and wearable tech were going to transform societies both in the developed world and in emerging nations.
"The barefoot doctor in China will wear something like Google glass and - without a medical degree - this doctor will have access to a huge amount of data telling him 'that's not a bruise, that's something worse, get antibiotics'," he predicted.
But on the flip side, the tech barons also warned cyber attacks will dominate the industry, in the wake of high-profile hacks on firms from Sony to eBay, as well as attacks on government institutions.
"The four biggest challenges the tech industry faces in the coming years are security, security, security and security," said Pierre Nanterme, of consultancy firm Accenture. "Bad guys have to get it right once, we have to get it right every time," said Levchin.
