Professionals prioritise web access, says report

Nearly half of young professionals would allow their mobile network access to all of the information stored on their smartphone in exchange for a free phone with unlimited data, a global survey by Cisco has found.

The Cisco Connected World Technology Report, which surveyed 1,388 professionals under the age of 30, found 45 per cent would be willing to share data with their carrier/service provider in exchange for a free phone and unlimited data.

The report found the majority (76 per cent) of young professionals would select their smartphone instead of their television, while 58 per cent would give up sense of smell to have internet access, if given the choice.

The report also surveyed 1,524 Gen X professionals (age 31-50), finding one-third would forgo electricity for one week in favour of their smartphone. Facebook is the most preferred social media application among professionals, distantly followed by Snapchat and Twitter, but the preference for Snapchat is considerably higher in Russia and China.

About one-quarter of professionals would be willing to move to Mars or another planet if their organisation was to open a branch there.

Similarly, assuming a company invented a brain implant that made the world wide web instantly accessible to their thoughts, roughly one-quarter would move forward with the operation.

When it comes to self-driven cars, one-third of professionals expect them to be available by the year 2020, making their commute to work easier.

Cisco's chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior has predicted a future of urban transport where driverless cars will be available on demand and congestion will be a thing of the past.

Speaking to The Irish Times, she said: "Like Hailo and Uber taxi systems, you will be able to have a car on demand, except the car will be a self-driving one. It will drop you off wherever you want to go and you will not have to worry about parking."

These cars will also be connected to each other and to traffic lights, meaning the flow of traffic will be far more organised and less chaotic.

Everything connected

She said there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020, up from 10 billion currently. “The internet of everything sounds very generic but only 0.6 per cent of what can be connected is connected. We feel that connectivity is taking over the world, but it’s not.”

She said there will be more robotics and automation, making everything safer and more efficient.

“People will still work but they will do different types of jobs. There will be less manual jobs and more analytics and programming.”

The Cisco report found 70 per cent of professionals believe that middle-income workers could have robots to assist them by 2030. Ms Warrior said the tech industry and business environment is undergoing a great transition driven by the cloud, mobile and the internet of things. "In five years huge companies might not exist. Not only will they not be on the Fortune 500 list, they won't exist."