Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt predicted Tuesday that rapid advances in technology will soon transform science fiction into reality — meaning people will have driverless cars, small robots at their command and the ability to experience being in another place without leaving home. Schmidt said the introduction of books available online, Internet translation of languages and voice recognition for computers all happened much faster than anyone envisioned and that technological research into even more previously unheard of advances is progressing at a fast clip. “People who predict that holograms and self-driving cars will become reality soon are absolutely right,” Schmidt told thousands of attendees at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the planet's largest cell phone trade show. Small robots could be used so busy people can send them places where people need to be aware via video and voice of what is happening but their presence isn't required, Schmidt said. “In the future you'll be able to dispatch a robot to each event,” he said. Underlying it all is the explosion of data and devices that consumers will be able to use without even caring if they are logging onto the Internet, Schmidt said. “The Web will be everything, but it will be nothing,” he said. “It will be like electricity, it is just there.”
