19th Feb 10
What Will Technology Be Like In the Next 10 Years?
by David Davies
This is what technology looked like 10 years ago.
“A human’s desire is to reinvent himself, live out his fantasies, overindulge; addiction will definitely increase. Whole communities/subcultures, which even today are a growing faction, will materialise. We may see a vast blurring of virtual/real reality with many participants living an in-effect secluded lifestyle. Only in the online world will they participate in any form of human interaction.”
– Robert Eller, technology consultant
“Random acts of senseless violence and destruction will continue and expand due to a feeling of 21st century anomie, and an increasing sense of lack of individual control.” – Martin Kwapinski, FirstGov, the U.S. Government’s official Web portal
from ‘The Future of the Internet II’, Pew Internet & American Life, Sept. 2006
Oh yes, the end is most certainly nigh. By 2020, neo-Luddites and ‘refuseniks’ – splinter factions of society subscribing to a life ‘off the grid’ and committing violent acts in the spirit of technological regression – will be stalking a cybercafé near you.
If ‘cybercafé’ sounds like your dad talking about the internet, bear in mind that the first recognizable internet café opened less than two decades ago. In the space of 20 years the primitive, predominantly text-based web has evolved into a fully-fledged multimedia cornucopia, altering commerce, education, communication, language – pretty much every facet of our lives in some way. Even more excitingly, the internet is still in its infancy. Think about what TVs looked like 30 years down the line, or cars, or phones.
With 2010 just around the corner, it’s tempting to think we’re at one of the high watermarks, where phones can order your Sky+ box to record your TV show on the way home while you chat on your bluetooth headset with your boss who happens to be on the other side of the world. At least, that’s how it should work. Anyone who uses the internet for anything important will know that a disrupted wi-fi connection, or a lack of 3G signal, or the refusal of one bluetooth device to pair with another, is starting to feel like the water has been turned off, or that electricity is useless. While our digital cameras, mobile phones and the like may be on the surface advanced, in terms of connectivity, interoperability and reliability, we’re still operating in the technological dark ages. In the words of William Gibson, ‘the future has already arrived, it’s just unevenly distributed.’
Think about it. Whenever you read about the future of technology, it always runs something along these lines: “in the future, you will get into your car, tell it where you want to go, and it will drive you there. As you leave your house, all electrical appliances and lights will automatically switch off until you send a message on your phone telling it to warm the lounge five minutes before you get back.” All of these things are to do with networking, with communication between people and devices.
This is what technology looks like now.
At the moment, communication and interoperability are being stifled and broken by competition between companies with conflicting commercial interests. Skype, the application that allows you to make free or extremely cheap phone calls over the internet, is an excellent example – with the ability to completely bypass standard call charges altogether, many mobile phone networks are blocking Skype access through handsets unless the customer is on wi-fi, hampering their ability to use the technology. Douglas Rushkoff, an author and social commentator, has this to say: ‘Real interoperability will be contingent on replacing our bias for competition with one for collaboration. Until then, economics do not permit universal networking capability.’ Paul Saffo, director of the Institute of the Future, concurs: ‘The road ahead is going to be messy and disorderly. It’s going to have some downsides.’
The e-world that we live in now can be equated to the initial electricity grid running through the UK in the early 20th century. Back then, plug shapes and sizes and mains power voltages varied from town to town. It stayed this way until 1925 when Lord Weir, a scottish industrialist, was commissioned by the government to solve this problem of fragmentation and inefficiency. Within 15 years, the ‘National Grid’ was providing reliable, homogeneous power to almost every town in the UK.
For whatever hardware or software Microsoft, Google, Apple, HP or any other technology company comes up with, this could be the one potential sea change over the next decade that makes today’s technology look cute and ridiculous: an efficient, wireless, omnipresent internet. Hopefully, somewhere between now and 2020, there will be another Lord Weir, or a committee of like-minded parties dedicated to the purpose. However, it would have to operate on a worldwide scale to be of any true use – a task never undertaken before.
This is what technology will look like in 300 years’ time.
What would a reliable, hyperfast, homogeneous, wirless network do for the world? Imagine never losing signal on your phone again. Imagine free video calling to everyone in the world. Imagine your house being able to tell exactly where you are at all times and moderating electricity, gas and heating supplies accordingly to reduce your monthly bills. This is what an ubiquitous network could do.
While it is highly likely that by 2020 our current laptops, phones and GPS systems will look quaint and antiquated, the same cannot be said of the networks they communicate on. With mobile carriers and landline providers casting beady eyes over bandwidth and network caps, any instigation of plans for a ubiquitous network are likely to meet with fierce opposition from these powerful conglomerates, unless an alternative source of revenue can be found in this new network or there is widespread state intervention. Perhaps the boldest prediction of all would be that in the space of ten years, enough people in the right positions could agree on enough to provide us with the framework under which all these new wonders of technology could operate without fear of lost signals, incompatibility or national borders. Maybe then your car really could drive you to work. As long as it still ran on petrol.
Our Stories
- Awesome Ways to Be Proper Scary at Halloween
- How much for love?
- Days of Distraction for under £10
- Celebrities Phones You Wouldn’t Bother Hacking
- The Best Holidays to Do with the Kids
- The Best, The Worst, The Most Expensive and The Cheapest
- Happy Days, Unkempt Nights: The Best and Worst of Music Festivals
- This Summer’s Top Fashion Trends
- The Best Internet Browsers and Why You Should Care
- Best Apps for Shopping
- The Top Summer Blockbusters of 2011
- Five Nights, Four Bank Holidays: Royal Special!
Popular Topics
Amazon ASDA Bonfire Night Celebrity Weddings Cheap Children In Need Christmas Christmas Presents Christmas Shopping Costume Discount Vouchers Fancydress fireworks Flat screen Food Gifts guy fawkes Halfords Halloween Harrods KFC Lady Gaga lastminute.com LCD LG lidl mobile phones Nokia Pizza Express Pizza Hut Plasma Poundland Samsung Shopping Simon Cowell Sony Stocking Fillers T.M.Lewin Tesco Toys TVs Waitrose Walmart what-if-nans-present-is-rubbish X FactorArchive
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
