Yesterday, during a joint press conference, two of the tech industry's biggest visionaries, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison, gave their predictions for the future: a billion tiny computers.
It's called the Internet of Things. Or, if you work at Cisco, it's called the Internet of Everything.
Benioff explained: "We are in the third wave of computing. First there was mainframes and mini-computers. The second wave was client/server which Oracle pioneered and I was there [working at Oracle]. Today is dramatically different. It's about billions and billions of computers and everything on the network."
By everything he even means things like your toothbrush. He says Philips is working on a toothbrush with WiFi, GPS and "realtime feedback on how I brush my teeth. When I see the dentist and he asks, Marc, have you been brushing? I can't lie to the dentist anymore. He's got all the data. That's a new world." (The Beam Brush toothbrush does a similar thing.)
Cisco Systems, where Benioff serves as a board member, predicts that the Internet of Everything will become an astounding $14 trillion market over the next 10 years.
Ellison sees the same vision. There will be "billions of cell phones and tens of billions of wearable devices all over the world," he said.
Then Benioff chimed in, "I'm wearing two new computers on my wrist right now."
He wasn't joking. He sent us this picture. Benioff didn't say what these devices were, but we think they're the Fitbit Flex and Jawbone Up, two fitness-tracking wristbands.
Looks like a Fitbit Flex and a Jawbone UP.
