(If this post looks too long, boring and geeky, instead listen to the 10min audiocast.) If it won’t play on your computer, you can hear the superb interview by clicking a link at it at the bottom of this page.

Not everyone agrees, but for me Eric Schmidt is the person best placed to predict the future of the internet.

He’s the CEO of Google. On the Apple Board of Directors. And capable of almost anything.

From his article in Economist:

The internet is much more than a technology—it’s a completely different way of organising our lives. But its success is built on technological superiority: protocols and open standards that are ingenious in their simplicity. Time after time they have trounced rival telecommunications standards that made perfect commercial sense to companies but no practical sense to consumers. …

But what’s surprising is that so many companies are still betting against the net, trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. The past few years have taught us that business models based on controlling consumers or content don’t work. Betting against the net is foolish because you’re betting against human ingenuity and creativity.

Of course this new technology raises profound challenges for many established companies. Skype, an internet telephony business (voice over IP), is as disruptive to the economics of the telecommunications industry as China has been to the global manufacturing sector. But that disruption is only going to intensify.

In 2007 we’ll witness the increasing dominance of open internet standards. As web access via mobile phones grows, these standards will sweep aside the proprietary protocols promoted by individual companies striving for technical monopoly. Today’s desktop software will be overtaken by internet-based services that enable users to choose the document formats, search tools and editing capability that best suit their needs.

…

The fastest-growing parts of the internet all involve direct human interaction. Think about the blogging phenomenon and social networking sites like MySpace in America, Bebo in Britain, Orkut in Brazil, CyWorld in Korea and Mixi in Japan. In 2007 the virtual communities so prevalent in Asia and among students will become mainstream. Political pundits may claim that society is becoming atomised, but online communities are thriving and growing. The internet is helping to satisfy our most fundamental human needs—our desire for knowledge, communication and a sense of belonging.

Trend is not destiny, of course. But as a no-nonsense sports writer once wrote during the depth of America’s Depression, “The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong—but that’s the way to bet.” We’re betting on the internet because we believe that there’s a bull market in imagination online.

The World In 2007 | Dont bet against the internet