Google CEO predicts 'end of Internet'

Speaking on possible scenarios around the future of the web, Schmidt, who was addressing the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland: “I will answer very simply that the internet will disappear.”

Google’s executive chief continued to say he believed the internet’s presence would end up being to  all-embracing, so ubiquitous that people won’t even be aware of its presence, according to  an article in Hollywood Reporter.

“There will be so many IP addresses … so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it … It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic,” said Schmidt.

Technologies will be built into the very fabric of our communities and personal lives to such an extent that we no longer actually pick up that are all around. As a result, Schmidt said, the internet would end up being “highly personalised, highly interactive and very, very interesting”.

An example used to illustrate the point was the use of artificial light. It was only fairly recently that this technological advance in fact became common-place or mainstream.

It was a lot more recent when it indeed became affordable to the point that most people no longer need consider whether or not to turn on the switch.  Whereas the humble light bulb was a stand-out technology that people really noticed until quite recent times, these days by contrast only its absence is noticed.

Schmidt also addressed the issue of techno-replacement, and the notion suggesting we could all well be losing our current jobs to machines as computers increasingly get smarter and more powerful.

Schmidt roundly dismissed the idea, noting that rather technology would provide new job categories.  Some seven out of every  eight of these would be non-technology jobs, which will nonetheless be benefited by technology, he noted.

"That somehow no one is going to have a job in the world, and it's just going to be the Davos elite who is going to have a good time and everyone else is going to be rioting is completely false," added Schmidt.

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Optus network glitch wakes Queensland users hour early

Optus has apologised following a technical glitch that saw its Queensland customers’ clocks set an hour ahead. The fault affected people on the Optus and Virgin networks, mostly around Brisbane, who used their mobiles as alarm clocks. 

“Due to a technical issue, selected Optus customers in Southern Queensland temporarily saw their mobile clocks changed to an hour ahead,” said an Optus spokesperson, adding that the issue was now resolved and that all mobiles were back to the accurate time.

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Telstra outage brings down BigPond services

A major power outage at Telstra’s St. Leonards datacentre in Sydney has affected the telco’s BigPond ADSL and Wireless Data customers across the country who took to social media to report the issue. The telco’s support lines struggled to process the flow of calls from customers requiring assistance, resulting in wait times of more than an hour.

Telstra confirmed that an outage had occurred in the early hours on Wednesday and noted that widespread issues impacting on customers in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and Victoria had been resolved.  Customers experiencing problems connecting were advised to reboot their network hardware.

“During planned works on the power system in parts of the St Leonards New South Wales datacentre, power was switched over to the standby unit which unfortunately failed,” said a Telstra spokesperson. “While the main power source and the majority of services were restored as quickly as possible, there are still a number of applications we are working to restore.”

The spokesperson added that Telstra was still investigating why the backup power failed. “We are currently [also] experiencing issues with some of our online applications,” the spokesperson noted. These are understood to have included BigPond Online Catalogue, MyAccount, LiveChat, and Boost Prepaid.

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