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20-20 visionary
by Ian Pearson, futurologist,
BT Research Laboratories, Adastral Park

Ian Pearson graduated in 1981 in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Queens University, Belfast. He spent four years in Shorts Missile Systems, in many different disciplines from mechanical engineering to battlefield strategy simulation. He joined BT in 1985, analysing the performance of computer networks and protocols, and after two years, moved to the Local Access Division where he helped develop ATM transmission over optical networks. From 1990 to 1992 he worked in the Network Studies Unit, on the evolution of broadband networks and services, and then in 1992, he moved to the Systems Research Department where he became a full time futurologist. He still works as BT's futurologist in C2G, the Communications Consultancy Group. From day to day, he maps the future impact of developments throughout technology, considering both their business and social implications, and then travels globally to share his conclusions with both external groups and other parts of BT.

No-one knows precisely what life will be like twenty years from now, but futurologists at BT's technology centre in Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath, Suffolk have plenty of ideas about some of the technologies that will be making a major impact on the way we work and live in the future. Synthetic intelligent life forms, for example, are just one of the advanced technologies on the horizon.

If we know the development rates of many different technologies, we can anticipate many of the things that will be possible and when they are likely to happen. Considering the interactions between the many technologies and society along the way, we can also foresee many potential consequences on business and social life. Developing such scenarios allows us to plan with a much better picture of how life might look, realising that many things will still turn out differently in spite of our best efforts.

This article provides a 'glimpse into the future' and is based on some of the predictions that have been made recently by BT's researchers and scientists.

Towards life in 2020

It is in computer-based technology that we may see the greatest changes. By 2020, we will have synthetic intelligent life forms sharing our planet and they may even have legal rights. They will catch up with human intelligence before then in overall terms, though there will still be a few things left that only people can do. Most new knowledge will be developed by synthetic intelligence and we will have to accept that we just don't understand some of it, while accepting the resultant benefits.

This will lead us in to the care economy, where people gradually concentrate more on the human side of activity, as machines gradually take over both physical and mental work. A partnership between man and machine will make our work more productive and our play more enjoyable, augmenting the smallest spark of creativity with machine intelligence. Even entertainment will be within the machine domain, with today's crude computer game heroes and heroines evolving into a whole range of entertainers - even chat show hosts. It is even possible that some of our friends may be synthetic. Since many of our relationships will be Internet-based, we won't even necessarily know which of our friends are synthetic.