Back to the Future

BT Futurologist Ian Pearson speaks to EM about changing technology and how it will impact on tomorrow's big issues

"The future,"once noted an eminent thinker, "is clear to me. What I don't understand is the present." This person was probably right, but only because he understood that the element of surprise was something he could not control. The present is, to all intents and purposes, something we can deal with because it is in our faces from dawn to dusk - the here and now of the everyday experience. The future is something that previous scientists, philosophers and pundits have thought they could handle; history tells us that they were wrong about a lot of things - including the telephone and the computer.

Ordinary people, says Ian Pearson, Futurologist at British Telecom's award-winning think tank in the south of England, are interested in big issues. But, he advises, the trends that drive them have to be a bit more exciting in order to capture the attention. "There's no point telling people how fast computers are going to be," he says. "You have to say things like they might be able to connect computers to the brain, and by doing so enhance the IQ. Or you could tell them that by connecting computers to the brain you'll be able to make a back-up of the mind."

Exciting stuff and there's more for next year - and the year after that. And - believe it or not - the year after that.

"What we're really going to see over the next few years is the emergence of very, very large television screens in people's homes. There are 42" plasma displays selling at the moment, but we can see that size increasing to 50".

"We're also seeing the increase of High Definition technology. The good thing about that is that a broadband connection will allow you to connect in real time to a person at the other end of the line - in life-size images. For someone who is elderly, perhaps with little or no social contact, this kind of technology will improve their lives tremendously. Most people, of course, tend to look at technology in terms of entertainment, but this is one way in which a real social problem could be addressed. Another thing we'll see in the short term is a portable video; we have that now in the shape of PSP, but one of the exciting technologies coming on stream now is roll-up screens, which will be like a scroll that you can unravel out of something the size and dimension of a pen. You'll no longer have to carry around a big laptop or a portable DVD. The movie could be on a tiny memory stick that you can connect onto your scroll display. In fact, these very thin displays will be added to clothing - t-shirts one presumes, but also to any amount of other clothes as well.

"In the medium term, special fabrics and make-up are on the way, while holographic make-up is about to come out in the next couple of years. There have been a lot of scientific advances in material - the creation of nanoparticles, for instance, that companies such as L'Oreal are spending billions on research in order to have new product that they reckon will make women look pretty. We're going to see things like holographic eye shadow.

"In the long term we can look forward to electronic make-up, which behaves as a display. They can't do that yet - not even in their research labs - but some companies are looking at and tracking the technology for makeup that you can slap on your face, push a button and it'll know where your eyes, cheeks and lips are. It'll be a full video display, which means you can change your makeup as much as you want during the day and night. If you're a child you could change it every few minutes.

"The social problem that we're going to experience in the short term will be quite important. A lot of people are lonely - we looked at that in some degree and the technology is developing along the lines of allowing people to experience sensations across the network - not just see and hear but to physically interact; people will be able to touch things at the other end. BT have a technology called Active Skin, which will print digital codes directly onto your skin surface - totally painlessly, I might add. This can link into your nerve endings, which means you can record things, in principle, anyway, like a handshake, a cuddle, a hug, a kiss. You might also use that for business meetings across the network - or even in computer games.

"We're expecting increases in longevity to be a really big issue in the long term. Already, we're starting to see major progress in the treatment of breast cancer and progress in the treatment of other forms of cancer and heart disease.

A lot of the diseases that effect older people are starting to be challenged by medical technology and it looks as if we're going to extend the lifespan and improve the quality of life for people quite a bit over the few years. All the research over the past several years shows that the average lifespan will extend into the 90s, perhaps even the 100s in due course.

"So how do you pay for your longevity? If you're going to live for another 30-40 years, you can't retire at 65 anymore - especially if you've been putting only 10 per cent of your income into a pension fund. The only way you can increase pensions fund is if the younger people coming up behind are heavily taxed, but why would anyone stay around so they can pay 60-70 per cent tax just because the older people didn't make the right provisions in the first place? We could have a really serious social problem on our hands if we don't fix this pension problem now.

Governments are grossly underestimating the problem. "There are a few trends in our favour - research shows that a lot more work is going to get done by computers. This means that the economy is going to expand, so the cost of material goods, services and food should go down - it shouldn't cost so much to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.

"Also, the jobs that computers do will leave jobs that human skills are necessary for. That works very well in favour of older people. You might ask who will want to employ someone who is 70? Actually, people of that age have quite good human skills - they're wise and they have compiled a lifetime of knowledge about certain areas of life and the world. Compared to some person who is only a few years out of school someone of a more mature age is a bonus. So there will be a lot of jobs where age won't be a factor. Proportionally, the market will allow people to work longer. And people will have to work longer - there isn't any way around that.

"One of the important things is the ability of the global computer network to link people together in what is known as network communities. The important thing here is the amount of political power that people can generate. The internet is gradually becoming an instinctive tool in all our lives and eventually the mobile phone will be properly internet-friendly and useable. All this sounds very techie and boring, but what it does is that it gives you the ability to link people together who have similar interests.

"Most people try not to worry about the future too much - they just take it on a day-by-day basis. The ones that do think about it, however, are very apprehensive. We are seeing a lot of school children becoming very interested in topics such as this. There is something idealistic about kids - they're very caring compared to grown ups."EM