AI agents
Software that does the task, not just answers the question.
A keynote in eight slides
The Internet &
Technology
How a handshake between two machines became the operating system of modern life.
→ to begin
A civilisation-scale nervous system
5.5Bpeople online today — 68% of humanity
6h 40maverage time spent online every day
1.1Bwebsites currently live
8.5BGoogle searches every single day
Fifty-seven years, five turning points
- 1969ARPANET — two university computers exchange the first message
- 1983TCP/IP — separate networks finally speak one language
- 1989The World Wide Web is proposed at CERN
- 2007The smartphone puts the network in every pocket
- 2023Generative AI turns the network into a conversational partner
The trade we made
What we gained
- Knowledge that once needed a library now needs three seconds
- Work, education and medicine delivered across borders
- Anyone can publish, sell and be heard
- Communities found across continents
What it cost us
- Attention sliced into forty-second windows
- A digital divide that still excludes 2.6 billion people
- Misinformation that travels faster than correction
- Privacy quietly converted into a currency
What comes next
Satellite mesh
Connectivity that no longer needs a cable to reach you.
Quantum-safe encryption
Rebuilding trust before it breaks.
Spatial web
The network lifted off the screen and into the room.
Three things worth remembering
- Connectivity is infrastructureAs essential as water and electricity — and just as deserving of public care.
- Attention is the real currencyWhoever captures it shapes what a generation believes.
- Digital literacy is the new literacyReading the network critically matters more than using it quickly.
“We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.”Stephen Hawking
Thank you for your
kind attention.
Questions, disagreements and better ideas are all welcome.
AI