Kevin Kelly: The next 5,000 days of the web

Futurist Kevin Kelly sits in a red chair and like a latter-day Nostradamus reminds us of why we should be in awe of what has happened in the last 5,000 days of the web and what we should look forward to in the next 5,000 days.

Kelly says that the internet was first a database of computers, then a database of web pages and links, and now it is a database of individual pieces or granules of information.

And we continue to feed the web by acting as the eyes and ears of this global brain by taking photos, recording video and making observations of every facet of the earth.

"There are an approximate 55 trillion links to web pages which is about as many synapses in the human brain, and 1 quintillion transistors is almost the same as the amount of neurons in your brain. The size of the web is almost equivalent to your brain except your brain isn't doubling in power every two years."

Kelly estimates the total processing power of the web would exceed humanity's by 2040, not unlike the estimates of the coming Singularity predicted by Ray Kurzweil

Three consequences of this: We are going to embody it, restructure its architecture and then be completely co-dependent on it.

Watch the video on TED.com
or YouTube.