Jack Ma, chairman of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, delivered a speech at the WIOT (World Internet of Things Exposition) Summit on September 10th in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. Ma's understanding of the Internet, cloud computing and big data is very interesting. He said that big data will become an important means of production; big computing and cloud data will be the key for this, which means strong computing power and data stored in cloud can be accessed anytime. Coal was the main means of production for the first technological revolution, while oil was the driver of the second one, but data will be the important means of production for the present technological revolution.
 
Big data (database system) is the means of production, cloud computing is the productivity, and the Internet of things is the relations of production. Ma said, "If you don't see the Internet as production, more and more problems will arise as the Internet shouldn't only exist in internet companies, it covers all societies worldwide.”
 
"The Internet of Things (IoT) must be a smart networking, and the core is not the material. The essence of IoT is connection and intelligence". "IoT without intelligence is like a vegetative person. Electric metres can only be used to measure the electric quantity you consumed for charge purposes and traffic cameras would be only used to record traffic violations if they are not used intelligently.” He added.
 
Manufacturing should also embrace the Internet, or it will collapse soon. In the future, there will be no “Made in China”, “Made in USA”, and instead everything will be made on the internet. The essence of future manufacturing is service. Alibaba, Tencent, Facebook and Amazon are all examples of modern services, which contain the relationship between the company and the consumers. Service and manufacturing sectors have no future if there is no strong service-oriented manufacturing,“ claimed Ma.
 
Ma also said that transboundary production, which is considered to be a novelty, will be everywhere in two decades. It has become common within Alibaba as our data is fully shared. Internet is a tool which has no boundaries, and to think beyond the borders will lead us to the real future.