The number of people in the world has now reached 7 billion, but the number that have been online are only at 2 billion, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, said today at a keynote presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.



“We need to be realists about technology,” he said. The future, most easily, belongs to “ultra connected people” who can embrace the future of technology, but the majority of people do not fall into that category, he said as he kicked off a speech about what he sees as the role of technology in the world today, and carefully suggested what role Google could play in the game.