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Copyright Ian Pearson, BT Futurologist 

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THE FUTURE

Ian Pearson, 1995

Summary

The convergence of telecommunications, computing and consumer electronics that we see all around us today is
being driven almost entirely by the multimedia revolution. The natural focal point is currently the desk top
computer in the home and office. This trend is a fundamental consequence of the technology being at the focal
point of a number of parallel advances, all providing positive feedback and spawning yet more technology
advances. The power of technology feedback is profound.

The present wave of convergence will progressively bring about major changes in education, healthcare,
entertainment, the working environment and the home, which in turn will force a restructuring throughout
business and commerce. Advances in artificial intelligence, coupled with an extensive communications
infrastructure, will enable a wide variety of critical tasks to be delegated with confidence to computers.
Advances in biotechnology will permit direct links between people and machines, thus achieving synthetic
senses, bio-interfaces, and greatly advanced personal health monitoring.

Mobile telecommunications will advance to the point where people will be in almost permanent contact with the
global network no matter where they are and what they are doing. Interactions with people and machines in
remote locations will take place as easily and naturally as a chance meeting in the street with an old friend.
Isolationism will become a thing of the past and society will become a global community.

We believe that the present and anticipated developmental trends in machine intelligence and telecommunication
technologies will produce a society that is dependent on machines for its very existence. By that time the
technologies involved will be so distributed and interwoven into everyday life that we will no longer think of
computers and machines in terms of "them and us". We will at last live in harmony with them.

In this paper, I present a view of impact of technology convergence up to the year 2020. Outlining the likely
time scales for these advances, we consider the significance and consequences of impacting technologies. We
then consider the potential impact of the principal convergence waves on society, highlighting those areas in
which we can anticipate revolutionary changes and advances.

30 years ago, we had the first use of ultrasound to examine unborn babies, the first manmade object landed on
the moon, COBOL had just been invented, and the first passive communications satellite launched. In this
paper, I will take you up to 30 years into the future, and some of what I talk about may seem far too optimistic.
But we have considered the issues carefully and hope you will at least think about what we say. Remember, 30
years is a long time!
BT Laboratories, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, England
Convergence in Information Technology

It is already difficult to categorise information technology. We are already seeing a strong convergence of
computing, telecommunications and consumer electronics, spurred on by video technology. There is a
substantial overlap between these previously distinct fields. By 2000, with video as the driving factor, we will
have a single IT field with no clear boundaries.

Paradoxically, because of this convergence, new opportunities are rapidly emerging. Never before have we seen
such a rapid growth of technology. As convergence brings with it increased integration, we also get increased
diversity of applications and increasingly specialised kit.

So integration is a parallel trend to convergence. As we can see from rapidly growing HiFi, video and computer
stacks, we strongly need integration of functionality in both home and office. There are simply not enough
electrical sockets or sufficient space otherwise. This explosion of devices has been driven by convergence and
the resultant explosion of information. We do have the means to condense these boxes into a smaller number,
integrating the functions and saving cost as well as space and energy consumption.

Convergence waves

The computer is the focal point of this convergence - both in history and the foreseeable future. We are just now
entering multimedia and telecomms, and the impact is only beginning.

Neural networks, expert systems and AI will change the scope for computers, allowing them to tackle tasks
previously outside their domain. Distribution across networks and cordless communication will change the way
we work, learn and play. Sophisticated agents will allow delegation of complex tasks to computers. BT’s ANT
techniques and vastly increased parallelism will allow greater simplification of the systems and easier evolution.
Simplification based on ANTs, will in turn allow easier use of reconfigurable hardware.

Parallel advances in nanotechnology, sensors and materials will increase the scope again around 2010.

Around then, evolving software and fast machines will take people finally out of the development cycle and
accelerate it until we approach the fundamental barriers of physics.

Analog processing and biological interfaces will start to link people to machines, with synthetic senses and very
advanced medical applications between 2010 and 2015. Not long after that, we will see true intelligence greater
than man’s, with mental jobs vanishing to machines quickly. Then computers will take over, with wholly
electronic organisations and a new society. This road must be followed with caution.

Within IT, changing anything has an effect throughout the whole industry
This is the basis of technology feedback. Improving processing affects all the other areas and the whole field
moves on, with a resultant impact on the next generation of processing. The IT machine in effect has lots of
gears, all working together, with any of the gears able to push forward or hold back change.

Technology Calendar

The first BT technology calendar ( Fig 1) was produced in 1991, and was last updated in 1995. It is currently
undergoing another update. It is based partially on a Japanese Delphi study, soliciting the views of very many
experts. We have extrapolated from these views and added many estimates of our own to obtain a full calendar
of development for each technology.
Figure 1 - BT Technology Calendar
Progress in telecommunications

Looking at telecomms progress, the whole field of information technology is accelerating, with the
telecommunications part as fast as any. It will be central to the information economy - hence all the hype
surrounding the information superhighway.

The future network has to be largely optical to provide capacity so we will see more and more fibre, closer and
closer to the home until eventually every home will have a fibre connection. It is too early to say when precisely
this will happen. Lots of satellite communications will still exist though since we won’t always be in a home or
close to a main network connection. We will thus be able to get communication anywhere, but will have to
accept lower quality or data rates when we are on the move. There is simply not enough bandwidth to allow
high rate communications on the move of the sort that can be achieved over fibre.

Progress in silicon technology

Computer processor speed is increasing rapidly, but memory density even faster. Unfortunately, memory speed
is becoming a bottleneck, and this is already influencing changes in designs of computers. Recent advances
promise to alleviate this problem at least temporarily. Such is the nature of progress in this industry. Bottlenecks
are encountered and soon circumvented. There is a constant flow of doom-sayers who suggest the next
bottleneck cannot be got around, but they are repeatedly shown to be wrong. There is no reason to suspect this
will change.

Memory and storage

Memory is improving in density quickly, but longer term storage is also improving rapidly. Magnetoresistance
disks will have density of 3Gb/sq in by 2000, 10Gb/sq in eventually. CD-ROM capacity will be 7Gbytes by the
next few months. 100Gb/sq is eventually possible for rewritable optical disks.

Compact Cards may replace most current storage forms, with maybe 100s of Gbits by the early 2000s on a
credit card sized store, read by devices with no moving parts.
Other storage advances are promised via molecular storage, using light or electricity to switch between states;
or by use of DNA solution for storage and computation. In fact it has been estimated that 100 times all current
human knowledge can be stored in a cubic metre of DNA solution, including all our video and audio data.

However, fast access storage will remain RAM based until around 2005. We will see Gbit chips commercially
available by 2000, Tbit chips by 2012 (i.e. 1 million million bits on a single chip). A super-computer’s memory
then might be approaching human brain capacity. But they will continue to improve long after that, we won’t!

Huge changes in memory and storage changes the balance of distribution and impacts on intelligence location,
whether in the terminal or in the network. We will almost certainly see both, so that people can have access to
information from any terminal anywhere without having to duplicate data across many different computers and
disks. Similarly, high computing capability across the network enables services such as computing on demand,
allowing even simple terminals to allow the user to access supercomputer power, without having to buy a
supercomputer.

This is the basis of the debate over network computers. Realistically, the terminal will remain intelligent and
store some data locally, but will also be able to access information and much greater processing capability from
elsewhere.

Processing

The cost of processing is plummeting with increased use of RISC already. We are seeing increased integration.
For instance, Intel are aiming for greatly simplified board architecture by function integration on the CPU,
which they expect to achieve 10 x cost reduction in computers..
3D architectures allow rapid communication between chips, especially if optical interconnection is used. This
may use free space optical connections, solving wiring problems, and allowing further shrinking of processors
and computers. It will also greatly facilitate parallelism, bringing about perhaps an additional x100
performance in next 10 years, and we may also see 10 processors per chip by 2000. With many such multichip
modules, we may have thousands of processors in a desktop computer in 20 years. Massive parallelism is ideal
for use with self contained agents - one per processor.

Meanwhile, materials technology is constantly improving. Plastic ICs enable large sheets of circuits to be made.

We will also see use of quantum computing, molecular and DNA computing, optical computing, neural
networks, analog and so on. Each has its domain of applicability. These are not exclusive - we can have them
all. The future computer will be a formidable beast.

Human and computer performance

Humans have evolved over millions of years, but our brains may have seen little progress in the last 2 million.
Computers by contrast are only starting to take off. As they become smarter, we will see computers gradually
replacing humans across the board.

It is difficult to compare humans with current machines, since we are not digital computers. In any case, there is
little point in exactly emulating human brains, we already have 5 billion of these. We are not the only possible
form of intelligence though , and machines may become much more intelligent, though think differently. On this
basis, we estimate that we may see at least human equivalence by 2015 at the latest.

As we approach this point, we will have ever more assistance from computers in designing their offspring, so
generations will offer bigger improvements and get closer together. Positive technology feedback will really
make itself felt, and we will quickly be overtaken by computers accelerating towards any fundamental limits on
intelligence imposed by physics. At present, we aren’t aware of any. How will this impact on progress in other
areas of research? Surely all areas must be dramatically accelerated when we have supersmart computers.
Certainly, any predictions far into the future which don’t take full account of this technology feedback or the
impact of computer intelligence should be dismissed.

Our timescales may be out by a few years, but not by much more. We are really on the threshold of an
explosion in technological capability.

Herein lies a potential problem. The mismatch between the pace of machine evolution and how fast society can
change is bound to cause conflict. Not everyone will welcome the changes and some may fight them. However,
we must realise that these developments are strongly motivated by commerce, so are unlikely to be halted except
by global treaty. Stopping it within a single country only ensures the decline of that country relative to those
that allow the ‘progress’. We therefore need to ask an important question now: “Is there a point of no return?”

I personally believe so, but am not sure when it is, or even whether we have passed it.

Fly by wire society

One possible consequence of progress and increased dependency on smart machines is the fly by wire society.
We put requests in to smart machines, but don’t have any physically direct control of systems. The amount of
human intervention in such a system is minimal, most control is with machines. In its extreme case, humans
could be unaware of how the infrastructure operates. They may find it very hard to pick up the pieces in the
event of a catastrophic failure of the electronic systems.

There would be pros and cons to a fly by wire society. On the plus side, greater customisability is a result of
faster reaction, as would be the more rapid response to human disasters, the more efficient distribution of food
etc. We would expect more wealth, and people would largely be liberated to do what they want.

Expanding on the issue of more wealth, more machines to delegate to means having more time available to
spend with other people, in other words, more leisure time.
Taking the example of the manufacturing process, since the whole of the manufacturing system could essentially
be a closed automated system, wealth production is simply a by-product of automation. Currently the degree of
input to the manufacturing ‘black box’ is high. Human effort in, in terms of instructions, requirements, requests
and labour are significant. This input effort can be gradually displaced by intelligent systems, robots and
automated machinery. In the manufacturing example, this ultimately results in human effort being reduced to
simple requests for output in any form. The black box takes care of the rest.

This concept may be equally applicable in other sectors, such as some services and most information work -
ultimately producing more leisure time.

We have to decide as a society what to do about this, how to organise wealth and so on, otherwise there could
be conflict as increasing numbers of people are made redundant. Without such controls, all wealth could
eventually be concentrated in just a few people. New dictatorships could arise, and economies could stall. Opt
out societies could form. We need to debate these issues at length while we still have time.

On the negative side, such complex systems may have a tendency to instability. The science fiction writers have
explored many nightmare scenarios for such a world. Hopefully, with caution, we could avoid those.

Many instability problems can result in very complex systems of any kind. As we get faster and faster
computers and networks, one possible problem is waves of data that increase rapidly in size as they propagate
through networks. These may be caused by a single piece of useful information, such as news of a rise in
interest rate. Computers may want to find relevant information from other institutions, initiate fund transfers,
etc, each of which may stimulate further calls. These calls could all be initiated within microseconds of
information arrival, so a large body of data might build up in a very short time. As the wave propagates
outward it increases in amplitude. These waves could get big enough to overload network switches, with
obvious consequences to all the customers served by those centres. Our fly by wire society might crash.

Of course, we now know about this particular problem and are designing our networks to withstand it. But
there may be other problems which have escaped being noticed?

Information

Information technology is not new. New formats and technologies have changed the ways we live and work
throughout history but Man has always had a need to communicate. The amount of information available to
Man has increased in leaps and bounds, with the invention of writing, the book, the printing press, the CD-
ROM and will continue to do so. The world’s information is now doubling every 18 months to 2 years. Now we
can capture, generate, process and distribute information faster than ever.

I considered how much information currently exists, simply by adding up the bits from the various contributory
factors. Printed information is already dwarfed by information held on computers. Surprisingly computing is
only passing hand written information about now, because there are a large number of people, most of whom
have produced lots of hand-written material, but computers are relatively recent and only a few people use them
effectively.

However, almost all the world’s information is in audio-visual form, currently about 98%. Pre-recorded audio
and video, i.e. music and films, account for only a small proportion, since again they do not have the benefit of
sheer numbers. TV archives have been grown over decades, with every minute of most stations being archived,
so they add up to a vast pool of bits.

However, the biggest contribution by far is from private camcorders. These record data at the equivalent of
1.5Mbits/s. There are a lot of camcorders worldwide, and each records original information. 98% of all
information will be on camcorder tapes by the end of the decade, even with all the other growth rates

This information is all original in one sense, but mostly the same in another - it’s all babies crawling around on
the carpet, people having a good time, holiday footage. Most of this information is worthless to anyone but the
creator and his family and friends, but when it is transmitted across a network or stored in some way, a bit is a
bit is a bit.
The superhighway will allow video to be shared among friends, but can’t charge it in the same way as voice -
otherwise it would be too expensive. To the network, one video call is broadly equivalent to 23 voice calls. The
superhighway will bring about major changes in the ways that networks charge for communication.

Computers and information overload

Not so long ago, it was possible for an educated person to be fully conversant on just about everything and to
be proficient is several fields. But since the industrial revolution, human knowledge has exploded. It is
increasing faster than ever now. People have had to become more and more specialised and can only have a
reasonable grasp of very small fields.

Now, with smart computers and powerful networks, we may not be able to remember much about anything, but
at least we can get access to any information we need quickly and easily. Very soon, computers will help us find
it, understand it, and use it. Not long after that, we won’t even need to do that - we can sit back and watch. We
will effectively have the use of all human knowledge, without the hard work, just by thinking about it.

Right now, it is even more apparent how much we need assistance when we consider the human tendency to
confusion and forgetting. As we are increasingly bombarded with information, we become more able and
efficient, but there comes a point at which there is just too much information and we start making errors,
becoming confused and we are no better off than when we were in the dark.

Intelligent computers with access to all the information and all the required processing power will be able to
conquer this problem. Artificial intelligence is progressing, albeit slowly at the moment. agents allow us to
delegate tasks to computers in a fire and forget fashion. Natural language processing allows us to communicate
our requests easily to the computers. Voice synthesis and advanced visualisation helps us understand the
response.

It seems that whether we like it or not, we are heading for the machine dependent society, but at least in this
area, computers will be on our side.

New telecomms services

Just like the explosive growth of IT, we will see continued growth in the number of telecomms services
available. This could go either of two ways.

We could see active development of myriad's of services, variations for different industries and lifestyles, a
service for every purpose, for every day of the week.

Or it could go the way of simplification. If we can talk to computers, and they can talk to the network, we can
have just one service - what would you like sir? The computer will bridge the gap and push whatever buttons
are required. The whole network and everything attached to it will be at our call.

This second approach may be essential. Already we are in an age where the infrastructure surrounding us is
capable of far more than we ask of it, not because all our wishes are fulfilled, but because it is so difficult to
explain to the machines what we want. Unless we have the time, ability and tolerance of frustration to write
reams of computer code to explain what we want to do, it doesn’t get done. There is a growing gap between
capability and use.

This is a creativity gap - we can’t create code fast enough. Because writing code is a specialist area, many
services which might be popular must have been invented by people without the skills to develop them.

We desperately need new interfaces - to be able to explain in ordinary voice and words what we want. We
should bend the computer to the person - not make people learn to chisel strange symbols from archaic
languages using the clumsy tools of mice and keyboards.

Let’s consider how developments in telecommunications and the rest of IT impact on some specific areas of life
- education first
Education changes

Already we can see that PCs are becoming essential to both education and work

But we have seen an interesting turnaround too. Until recently, children relied on teachers to have the
knowledge, while they had to learn - teachers were rich in expertise and pupils were poor.

Now, kids are far better at driving computers than their teachers. They have grown up with them and they aren’t
frightened of them. To many teachers they are still items to be kept at a distance and used with reverence and
fear.

Similarly, information used to be at school and in the library. Now it’s on CD-ROMs at home and on the
internet, while schools have stood still.

We are seeing computers change the methods of education dramatically. What was previously done in lecture
theatres can now be done across the internet using ‘Cu See me’ video conferencing. This is a primitive
technology but shows the potential. The superhighways will bring this to its full potential.

Children can explore areas of science on the screen that would be expensive or dangerous in real life. VR
obviously could make this arbitrarily lifelike in the future. A virtual lab can have virtual physics. No more
messy friction or air resistance. We can easily test whether a feather and a hammer fall at the same time in a
vacuum.

The teacher-pupil relationship is changing too. Like so many changes we have seen over the last few hundred
years, trends will be reversed by the march of IT.

The guide on the side was the norm hundreds of years ago when only a few were educated. The guide conveyed
knowledge and skills to people on an individual basis. The person could progress at a rate determined by his
ability, and could learn from the experience of the guide as he went along.

We gradually moved to the sage on the stage. The sage can teach dozens of people at a time and answer
questions from the pupils, but they all hear the same message, all at the same speed. There is very little scope
for individual tailoring. Everyone moves with the slowest in the class, or else the slowest is sacrificed.

But it is moving back again. Once again we have the guide on the side. People have access to multimedia
training, where they can proceed at their own speed with a dedicated tutor - the computer. They can experiment
and access information in flexible ways. When they see an avenue which looks interesting, they can explore it.
they don’t have to worry about holding other people back, nor be held back
people can actually have fun while learning - so they will learn more - and understand it more. They don’t need
to remember things because they can always find out again easily. Best of all, the guide doesn’t have to leave. It
is always there, always available, through AI, speech interfaces and so on. When they need human help, they
can still ask the teacher. We will see our children leaving school with far better education than the previous
generations. If we can capture the expertise of a good teacher somehow, that teacher can teach far more people
off-line, still on a one to one basis.

But it doesn’t stop there

Our technology calendar mentioned the potential for direct connection to the nervous system, and eventually the
brain. Although we put this at 2025+, technology feedback has a habit of exceeding our expectations and it
might come much sooner.

The guide inside is the ultimate in education - people can have the benefits of education in every field without
every having to set foot in a classroom.

If the computer can read thoughts, and if all knowledge is on-line, with computers smarter than we are, we can
have the benefits of higher intelligence and infinite memory. By that time, computers will certainly be much
smarter than us.
If this ever happens, it will reduce the value we currently put on high intelligence in the same way that the
steam engine reduced the value of hard manual labour. There will be little difference in the capability of smart
and dumb people - both have access to machines which are much smarter than either. If our society still has any
resemblance to today's before that, it won’t after.

Medicine and care

The ratios of young to old are falling in developed countries, even though the population worldwide is growing
fast. There will simply not be enough young people in the developed world to look after the older generation.

We are also seeing a rapid disintegration of the traditional household. Many more people leave home and live
alone earlier in their lives as they become financially independent sooner. The get married later, or not at all.
They do not even always cohabit. Now that everyone has cars, people don’t even know their neighbours any
more. When they get sick, they have a problem: who cares? The problem of caring will increase.

Who cares for these people when they are alone? Who will do it in the future when it is an even bigger problem?

We expect more and more medical care, people live longer and require curing of many more ills. The fact is that
often, no-one cares, people stay miserable and just about survive on their own.

When they are hospitalised or in a home, there is an army of human carers. This can’t continue, since there
won’t be enough carers. But in the future we will see assistance once again coming via technology. Robots will
be able to carry out physical tasks, provide at least some companionship, and be able to carry out medical
checks and provide assistance.

Virtual neighbourhoods will put people in touch with each other as if they lived next door, with full sized
pictures on wall sized video screens. Meanwhile, telepresence allows people to have access to medical attention
without having to travel, and for consultants to offer their expertise to non-specialists anywhere.

For example, pictures, video and data from one surgery can be sent to a terminal in a remote consultant’s
surgery. The consultant is virtually present at the remote surgery and can instruct the doctor or even a robot on
which action to take. A single consultant can take part in many more operation than is possible today. The time
associated with travel and scrubbing up, can be saved and used to treat patients across the network.
Remote surgery is even possible, but Heaven help a patient who moves during the satellite delay!

First of all, a virtual neighbourhood puts us in touch with our friends and other people in the same boat, and
anyone else willing to be virtual neighbours, including care professionals. As I said before, we can’t expect our
physical neighbours to look after us, but the network solves any problems of geography. It will be as easy to
meet people on the network as it was to walk next door. Of course, to be a serious solution, the machines for all
this will have to have better interfaces than today’s .

New services such as teleshopping, banking and telemedicine will allow us to avoid travel when we want. We
can visit a doctor any time of the day or night without having to get out of bed - the doctor could be thousands
of miles away.

Household agents will automate a lot of routine tasks, removing worries about bills and food shopping. The
internet already provides information on wide ranges of topics and on-line services for shopping, advice,
banking etc are just hatching. The superhighway will deliver even better services.

The internet

The internet is growing fast, with high support from innovators, lots of free information and with its services
rapidly multiplying. It is truly global. It provides services for entertainment, social, business, education,
communication, publishing, information, shopping. However, it is severely bandwidth and capacity limited. It is
certainly NOT an information superhighway, but the first machete hacked path through the information tropical
rain forest.
Both security and censorship are now almost impossible to enforce on a national level unless there is total
international agreement. Satellite TV, telephone chatlines, the Internet and computer bulletin boards are good
current examples where different countries have legislated varying levels of morality which they are now
discovering cannot be enforced. What is considered pornographic material in the UK can be picked up from
Dutch broadcasters by a suitable receiver. There is little, short of jamming the signal, that UK authorities can
do. Other countries also having problems.

Internet wide, we are seeing a battle for control of access; content; advertising; tariffing; billing & payment;
intelligence provision; transmission - media, tariffing, performance, interfaces - simplicity v power; facilities -
customer v seller; hardware & software; copying; tagging; encryption and other security issues. In all these
battles, it is too early to pick winners

Taxation

We already see small markets arising in the 'real' world with participants exchanging goods and services for
tokens which in turn are exchanged for other goods or services. The taxman claims no revenue because at no
time does 'money' change hands. No doubt local tax laws will be changed should this situation represent a
considerable threat.

It is not clear, however, how one would police a high speed communications network and how you would place
real values onto information goods. In the information economy, which will be truly global, geographical
taxation and information law enforcement would become almost impossible, or at the very least, controlled by
the network operators and service providers.

An information company can uproot and move head office in milliseconds, to whichever country offers the best
deal at that time.

National governments are obviously going to be unhappy about losing control. On censorship, US authorities
are already having difficulties with controlling use of the internet while staying within the constitution. Many
other countries are in the same situation. Tax minimisation will bring even harder problems. This is just the
beginning.

Cybernations

Let’s consider the virtual neighbourhood on a bigger scale. The global information superhighway will eradicate
many of the constraints of geography, replacing many geographically based entities with structures based on
other attributes than location. Unification of people from different countries to form new cybernations presents
us with an opportunity unrepeated since the colonisation of the New World.

Cybernations are simply very large network groups with similar interests or values - a highly geographically
distributed power base. They could be very powerful but independent of countries. We may have aids homeless
companies, with independent legal systems, independent taxation, networks etc. We could have an information
elite nation, a network superpower. There will be many new opportunities and many new problems.

The cybernation is in a strong defence position. It is easy to defend, due to the difficulty in identifying and
locating its members, but it is able to attack electronically as ably as any geonation.

The information economy

Man has passed through many changes. Each economic era has lasted a shorter time than the one before

We are already in the information economy, spending more than we do on industrial age products and services.
A consequence is that money changes hands around the globe faster than ever. The only faster money transfer is
when people get married
But even the information economy but it won’t last long

We don’t know what is next. It could be experience? Information is not the whole story. For a while, experience
will be in demand as computers educate their expert systems and neural networks. In a different sense, people
with more leisure time and money will pay for experience of other areas, other activities. We will move up the
information value chain, but even this won’t last for long.

In the longer term - i.e. 50 years, we will see people retain an advantage over machines in areas where they are
dealing with other people on a human level, i.e. care. Physical tasks can be better done by robots and machines.
Mental tasks can be better done by computers with higher intelligence and better judgement. Physical or mental
contact with other human beings will stay in fashion for much longer. We will still want real people in many
jobs. An economy based on human interaction - is it possible? A caring society?

But how long the care economy will last is anyone’s guess. Let’s look at near term business trends and see
where they are headed.

Companies are already changing, but we are only starting to see the impact. The traditional distribution chain is
about to change dramatically. Retailers are concerned that electronic shopping could take 15% of the retail
market within 10 years from now(i.e. $300Bn/year in the US). This will drive many conventional retailers into
bankruptcy, and will force the rest to place a stake themselves in this area, which will come primarily from dull
commodity goods such as food.

The distribution sector will thrive, and the manufacturer may take the opportunity to keep a larger proportion of
the final price. We can then expect that either distributors and manufacturers will become much richer, or that
these will expand to provide more work for those displaced in conventional retailing chains.

Clearly, some of the savings from electronic sales will be spent on making them more attractive, with
customisation, personalisation, payment, security.

For information products such as software, the network can even provide distribution. We can provide the
transport behind attractive real time multimedia services, with rapid response for transactions and database
look-ups. High bandwidth and fast processing will be needed.

There are many business opportunities here. Streamlining distribution, customising production, building the
customer interfaces, business marketplaces... The list is endless.

Better comms is changing the structures used in industry too

Virtual companies:

These are set up for just one product or service. A company is formed by linking together the appropriate
employees from anywhere, and getting them communicating as if they shared the same office. They can all
access same information from anywhere so they don’t need to be housed together. This allows easier use of low
wage workers from around the globe so it may bring better equalisation of wealth - but this could be upwards or
downwards. It could either make poor countries more wealthy or just a few individuals in rich countries.

Not everyone has space in their home to telework, so there will be a continuing demand for office space. With
virtual companies, their staff are highly distributed. An office which allows many people from different virtual
companies to work together would be useful.

Each worker could be hard wired into the network, but offices need to be flexible
terminals are becoming more mobile, so we really need a cordless system. Optical wireless technology allows
private cells to be constructed in an office with broadband communications in the cell.

With increasing use of the network as the home of data, we can expect many offices to work this way. Our
information workers will still need broadband connectivity when they are on the move, and here again, optical
wireless can provide the cordless flexibility of radio without the capacity and privacy problems

Working on the train need no longer mean working in the effective isolation of a 16kbit/s cellular modem. The
traveller can have the same rates as in the office. Such technologies indicate that we will soon be able to work
equally well from anywhere, and that will change work dramatically.
Global working

The global information teleworker will be able to use information anywhere from anywhere using a satellite
based communications network. This enables him to work as a nomadic software engineer.

Many other people will work from home, with a worldwide community of information smallholders, selling their
wares on the world markets. These workers need not be co-located. Indeed, for many tasks, information workers
can operate anywhere there is a socket for their modem.

If current plans for worldwide satellite communications are successful even this restriction will be lifted. Low
orbit satellites acting like a giant cellular network make access possible from anywhere on the planet.

Some Silicon Valley companies are already exporting their programming to India. The global virtual company
with its workers distributed over the planet can itself operate in a distributed manner with it’s core people as
well as it’s workers spread across many countries. Maybe the core will never meet in person.

We have already addressed the likelihood that such structures may make for easier tax minimisation.

The growing economic importance of information and the globalisation of the information market may reduce
the significance of geography and existing nations, but the highways supporting the new networked economy
must still exist physically.
Bit transport is becoming an increasingly competitive market, but it is still fundamental to the networked
economy, and will surely continue to be a revenue source for the winning players.

A particularly lucrative segment of this market is likely to be that of hubbing traffic for a region by providing a
point of interconnect. Recognition of this has led to recent intense competition between a number of states on
the Pacific Rim.

The importance of becoming a regional hub becomes clear in the context of a market where competition is for
superior information, so that speed of access and volumes of information become crucial sources of competitive
advantage.

Some have postulated the emergence of the “technopolis” as organisations centre themselves at points of
maximum network throughput. In the short term, this will continue to be within the developed Western
countries, close to information markets and suppliers. But if Western telcos are unable to cooperate in their
tightly-regulated competitive markets, and find themselves unable to justify investment in the radical new
technology being deployed in the virgin East, they may be trying for too long to exploit legacy networks. This
could lead to an exodus of multinational corporations to Eastern Europe in the next 10-20 years as they pursue
the competitive advantage offered by faster networks.

Information ghettos could form if areas of cyberspace become isolated, either by choice or because their
geographical locations have poor connectivity or performance.
This leads perhaps to the creation of an information Third World, maybe causing conflict in cyberspace. If we
miss the information highway boat, we will be part of that third world. Other countries, more prepared to take
risks or invest, could overtake us, take our business and leave us behind.

Unless our global teleworker sees what is happening soon enough, he will get stuck in the information swamp,
unable to respond quickly enough to take opportunities or avoid the crocodiles.

These swamps can be of any size, from small towns to entire continents. We really must be careful not to allow
the UK to become such a swamp.

The interface problem

It is very clear that we will be spending more and more time with computers. Since many services that we
currently associate with people will be automated, that means spending less time with people, at least until we
are all made into care workers.
We tend to assume kids have had the best exposure to computers, but in fact they aren’t old enough yet. The
people with the most computer flying hours are the 25 - 35 age group - many using them for work every day
since they were invented. As we get older we will see the peak of this curve move to the right for the same
reasons, so computer phobia will gradually become less of a problem. Nevertheless, something needs to be done
to make them easier to use.

We can see a big difference by age group in attitude to information technology. Many bank tellers have been
made unemployed by ATMs, but the use of these is largely avoided by old people. Given the advances in
medicine already, many of these people have quite a few years left, so we need to solve the phobia problem.

We shouldn’t make people have to do the running in the man machine interface - it’s not fair, people can’t run as
fast. We should work hard at making the interfaces better. Processing, bandwidth, and voice interface advances
remove the technology bottlenecks - we just need careful and considerate design.

In short the computer should bridge the intelligence gap and work to understand the human, not the other way
round.

Unfortunately progress has been slow. We look for killer applications? We should think instead of killer
interfaces: ‘Anything, anywhere, anytime, anyhow, anyone’.

We need an intuitive environment - many people are working on it. Writing, voice, gesture & image recognition
are all being developed; lightweight audio-visual equipment is becoming common; displays are improving
rapidly; voice synthesis and recognition are becoming usable and intelligent software is on the horizon.
Visualisation is being researched and developed all over the world and fast response will soon be the norm from
fast computers. Even format compatibility is also only a matter of time. So the future looks good, we might
crack the interface problem soon.

Telecomms is essentially about being somewhere else. In effect, when we make a phone call, we are putting
ourselves in the same room as the other person. Except that today we are blindfolded and wearing a straight-
jacket. But we now have sufficient telepresence technology to make the sensation of being there a bit more
lifelike. Surrogate heads and CamNet (call us) allow people to see what a person or robot at the other end of the
line can see.

3D videoconferencing, Virtual reality, tactile gloves and wall sized screens will soon help improve it still further.
In the short term, it is likely that TV will become standard interface for telecommunications and computing
services. But we will also need smaller personal devices, so we don’t have to monopolise the screen and can
retain a degree of privacy. Domestic interfaces must be highly intuitive, then we can expect home information
services to take off. Many don’t cost in without a mass market so they need to be usable by the masses.

Shopping interfaces

Teleshopping is hailed as one of the big new applications of the late 1990s, estimated to displace between 15
and 50% of retailing. Computer technology will make this much more than just an electronic catalogue. A
woman in a chair could watch computer emulations of herself in the various outfits available to see which one
she would look best in, not just look at a model. It will be more of a leisure activity than a chore. After choosing
an outfit, arranging the order, payment and delivery can all be delegated to the machine.

When we want to do some serious shopping, or visit a bank, or a library, we need to have an easy to understand
interface to allow us to do this on the network, otherwise we will get in the car and go into town. We need good
real world emulation, with real people. In these environments, agents may appear as people; VR Overlays will
provide customised and enhanced reality. Virtual environments will offer a range of rule-sets.

The importance of a good interface is that it removes the barrier between the customer and processing and
communications. This allows its users to think about the task rather than the implementation. As a result,
processing, the network, and all its services will be closer to the user.

Future interfaces
The network will gradually grow to support a wide range of interfaces, from simple phones to virtual reality and
beyond, with the network making up for any lack of terminal intelligence to allow the user the fullest possible
access. Although the look and feel of the services may depend strongly on the interface available, the capability
will be as full as possible wherever possible. Sending a fax may be as simple as picking up the virtual document
and handing it to the virtual person.

Once we have such interfaces, we can add to them new functionalities which require users to learn new
techniques - but we need to get them to buy in first, with something they can relate to.

Although we can clearly digitise information which can be captured about feelings, we need to find ways of
encoding the information so that it can be mixed with other data such as voice. Many channels are needed
simultaneously. Such problems can easily be tackled on integrated services networks designed to cope with
multimedia, but there is still a large problem to establish common standards for feeling transmission.

Significant work is being done worldwide on facial expression recognition, pupil dilation, gesture & body
language recognition, direct biometric detection - temperature, pulse, skin moisture, electrical detection, voice
processing e.g. tone, modulation, thought recognition using SQUIDs or GSR units, chemical detection - e.g.
smells, pheromones, direct nerve link, leading ultimately to a brain link. Output work is also under way in these
areas.

Many people are bored with just sitting watching TV. Computer games have taken off more rapidly than anyone
anticipated. Interactive TV is hailed as another important development for telecomms companies and
information providers

The technologies will soon be in place to allow people to really participate in programs, not just select the
ending, but to interact with virtual characters and AI programs, to act out their own situations, experience new
experiences, virtually visit new places beyond the holiday budget.

Interacting with other people in virtual space blurs the distinction between communication and interactive
entertainment. We will soon see real place emulation environments becoming abundant. They will include pubs
n clubs meeting/socialising environments; business environments and markets; activity oriented environments;
lifestyle environments; period environments; designer environments; and leisure /holiday /escape /relaxation
/fantasy /game environments. We are only limited by our imaginations.

As performance improves and interfaces become easier to use, such meeting places are likely to multiply.
Imagination is already evident in the use of the Internet for socialising. People assume alter egos and we see new
sub-cultures developing. People combine activities, socialising while shopping or being entertained or educated.
Whilst we see many of the same patterns of behaviour people enjoy in the physical world, as people get used to
the network and its facilities, natural creativity will add new ways of interaction not based on that 'real' world.

Geographical location need no longer dictate educational standards as good teachers will be able to teach many
dispersed students simultaneously.

And finally?

But no-matter how good VR gets, there is no substitute for being there - or is there?

When we have artificial senses, direct connections to nerves, thought recognition, blindingly fast computers,
direct brain links, will it not be possible to artificially create the exact same brain sensations that would be
experience if we were actually there?
can we not have a box which allows several people to lie on the same beach and interact as if they were there? I
believe we can, in 25 - 30 years. Maybe Total Recall might happen sooner than you think.

But lets take it one more step. If computers can fully communicate with the brain directly, and if our networks
are up to it, we can communicate telepathically with anyone else, or any machine. We might carry a small
computer - a personal agent for life - our PAL, which has far greater intelligence than us - but which we are
able to treat as an extension of our own brain. This could be linked in to the network and in constant
communication with all other computers around the globe - and their pet humans.
People effectively all share the same consciousness - but what a consciousness. All this global intelligence is
linked together, with all knowledge on-line and virtually infinite intelligence. Humans could have much higher
effective intelligence. Our minds could be backed up in the network, or duplicated with infinite variations. We
will not die mentally, and with technology feedback, synthetic bodies will soon be better that the human ones
anyway. Dying biologically might become no more than an inconvenience requiring purchase of an artificial
body. If we are all linked together telepathically, sharing the same consciousness, individuality may become a
thing of the past - or explored ad infinitum.

I think it is sensible to consider that mankind will then have moved into another phase of evolution - one in
which he is inextricably linked with the progress in the machine world.

Not everyone will want to join in - many of you will consider this a nightmare, but some of you won’t. Some of
you will relish the opportunity of enhanced mental and physical existence, and indeed immortality.

This will be accomplished through IT progress, but biological researchers are working hard on decoding the
human genome, so we might see a biologically optimised human variant too - again this brings with it both
nightmarish and utopian visions, depending on taste.

Certainly, intelligent machines are just around the corner. They may exist alongside us, or we might eventually
become interwoven.

Will we become a new species, several new species, or is this just sci fi? Or is it just round the corner?

You decide.

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