THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
Christopher Montgomery on the coming age of the talking freezer
TODAY isn't quite as the past foresaw it. Few, if any, of us seem to live on the moon with robot butlers. Britain's most pressing social problem is not how to manage the vast amount of leisure time that computeris- ation was supposed to grant us. Other than a brief shell-suited period in the late Eight- ies and early Nineties, we haven't taken to wearing homogenous one-piece body-suits. One noticeable difference, though, between the present and the recent past is that we no longer make such extravagant predictions about the future. For all the hoo-hah about the Intemet, its evangelists never really sing. Predictions made by scientists of 'marginally better telephones' or 'slightly more intelli- gent toasters' hardly seem to augur social revolution. The real difference between futurology today and yesterday is that a gen- eration ago it was fatally dependent upon technological pipe-dreams. Today, the tech- nology's here.
For this we don't have state corpora- tions, so beloved of Sixties futurists, to thank. Or ministries of technology, or even university labs. No, we've got business to thank. What separates our technology- based visions of the future from those in the Sixties is that we're dealing with realis- able techno-dreams. This emphasis on the practical stems from the fact that business only ever exploits a technology when there's a genuine 'value-add'.
No matter how good an idea someone might be working on in a bedsit in Hack- ney or a science park in Cambridge, the only thing that will drive it forward is not its intrinsic conceptual beauty, but its utili- ty as a money-spinner. That's why peeking at the future is best done by looking at those corporate dinosaurs, likely — despite visions of a marketplace dominat- ed by a multitude of small-scale 'sunrise companies' — to survive in this brave new world. Adastral Park, BT's research and development centre in Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, is an obvious example. Here, most of the 4,500 employees are engaged in short-to-medium-term product develop- ment. But a small pool of anywhere between 200 and 600 conduct 'blue skies' research. In the words of their 'Advanced Concepts Manager', Graham Whitehead, this means 'doing the work BT doesn't yet know it wants done'.
The object in the corner of the room is going to be among the biggest beneficia- ries of this bold thinking. For television sets, or certainly their kissing cousins, are about to become a whole lot smarter, transformed from mere receivers of pic- tures to 'information portals'. Every item of electronic hardware, such as computers or mobile phones, will be controlled by this single point of reference. For instance, you will be able to use your infor- mation portal (i.e. your television) to watch EastEnders, while elsewhere in the house the same box of brains is being simultaneously used to access the Internet, or as a phone, or for videoconferencing, or shopping. Information portals need not be televisions. The device used to control all your previously discrete electronic toys could even be, in Mr Whitehead's words, 'a wristwatch on steroids'. This portal will compose documents, buy shares, send e- mails, control our house lights while we're hillwalking in the Highlands.
The Now revolution will ensure that we'll be better served by technology, our major- domo in this instance being artificial intelli- gence units. In the case of television, this means a monitor will accompany you into the wonderful world of 3,000 channels. It will know your preferences and will draw programmes to your attention. Having interrogated you, it will be able to construct current affairs programmes which include the rugby, but exclude the grey faces of the reshuffle. It will even talk to you and have a face, if you want. On the same principle there will be serried ranks of other agents serving you — such as banking ones ('I see you've got a healthy amount of money in that account, but it would be better off in this savings account I've found for you').
Another transformation will be in the field of shopping: we are entering the age of the intelligent bag of processed peas. It
is predicted that in ten years' time, thou- sands of commonplace items will be fitted with tiny 340 megabyte microprocessors — each with enough capacity to store 300 copies of War and Peace. Bags of processed peas will have these chips in them that will communicate with your freezer as to how long they've been frozen before you bought them, and where and how best you should store them. Artificial intelligence units in your freezer will tell you when you are run- ning low on, for example, frozen peas. The fridge will send a message to your own chip, or smartcard, which will flash you a reminder, triggered by crossing the super- market threshold, to buy some more peas. In essence, your fridge will be in perpetual conversation with the items inside it and with you.
This sort of technology is leading to the cashless society. If you buy a bar of choco- late from a vending machine you will not need to scrabble around for small change. Instead, you could simply swipe your smartcard across the machine, and the money will be deducted automatically from your bank account.
Work life also will be transformed. We are near to the death of the keyboard. Integrat- ed Voice Recognition will enter words into your computer. More importantly, your office will not necessarily have a physical form but will exist somewhere in cyberspace. BT envisages a mushrooming of telebureaux — in other words someone will, perhaps by the hour, hire you a desk where you will be able to summon your 'office', regardless of where you are in the world.
Education may develop in the same way, with virtual-reality universities. With their funding driven by the entry rolls, universities will obviously be tempted to teach over the net. This approach is already well estab- lished in Finland, and happening here in the University of the Highlands. In Blackburn a local cable company found itself with two spare channels and nothing to put on them. Local higher education outlets persuaded it to run educational material. The vast and, by the cable company, entirely unforeseen demand was explained by the social factors which prevent unchaperoned Muslim women from going on to tertiary education.
The technosceptics are right to point out the propensity for electronic systems to 'crash'. The big challenge for the 'blue skies' thinkers is how to overcome this. At BT and elsewhere the buzzphrase is 'bio- logically inspired software'; that is, software which is so sensitive that it can work around a problem without crashing. If this can be achieved, then the world of talking fridges will be a blessing.
We should be less mealy-mouthed in our response to the shape of things to come as envisaged by the Netheads. This time, thanks to free enterprise, the future is going to arrive on time.
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