Google boss predicts Google implant will put the Web in your head by 2020

A top Google boss reckons we'll have Google implants in our heads in the next ten years, searching the Web with the power of our living brains.

Hal Varian is the Chief Economist at Google, which presumably means he spends all day looking at the company's soaring bottom line and laughing heartily to himself. Varian suggested the implant in The Atlantic when asked by New York Times columnist Nate Silver, "What will Google look like in 2020?"

"Now you Google things on your computer. And you Google things on your phone. That's the next stage. And I believe -- people may laugh -- but I think there will be an implant. So you'll have it there, and I won't say it's necessarily Google, I'll say the Web, it will access the Web of information... I think you will be continuously connected to the Web in 2020. You'll be able to pull information in, information out, you'll be able to record information."

Google already knows so much about us that we've always suspected it can read our minds. In ten years from now we'll all be happy cyborgs, Googling things with our minds, liking things with our Facebook RFID implants and lighting up like a Christmas tree with LED skin implants. It sounds likeMek, by comic book technoprophet Warren Ellis, who said of his tale of mechanical augmentation that "What is art and experiment today will be high-end consumer goods in ten years, and cheap enough to be street goods in twenty years".

Google may even be working on the technology right now; Varian mentions a team is working on displaying text on glasses. 2020 may not seem so far off, but a lot can change in 10 years -- just look at the line-up of contenders in our greatest gadget of the twenty-first century. A world without the iPhone or iPad, the PS3 or Xbox 360, the sat-nav or Blu-ray or high def telly seems so grey, so empty... maybe in 2020, when you're reading this on the back of your retina, the Google implant will be a contender for the Greatest Gadget of the Century, 2020 edition...

What technology do you want to get your hands on in ten years time? Will we finally be getting hoverboards, or will all tech be inside us by 2020? Which website would you like in your head?