ntouk.com - Jerry Fishenden's technology policy blog

There's a lot of talk about not being able to predict the future. I'm not convinced that's the case: after all, if you don't understand where technology is already heading, much of what you plan and design today will be redundant by the time it's delivered (or sooner).

My colleague Bill Buxton points out in his book Sketching User Experiences that "anything that is going to significantly impact us in terms of technology in 10 years time is already 10 years old". Which seems about right based on what I've witnessed in terms of how technology moves from concept through research and development and then finally into the market.

As a technologist I find it frustrating how slow technology adoption actually is - the opposite of popular perception, which seems to think that we swim in a fast river of baffling, relentless change. Not so - the average time from concept to adoption is a rather sluggish 20 years.

What is important however is that we understand the significance of the fact that we're entering a new phase in the digital age,one which seems to have attracted a wide range of labels: immersive / ambient / pervasive / ubiquitous. Much of it is generally best summarised in the phrase "invisible computing". An age when we will be surrounded by a mesh of devices with intelligence built into everything around us: not just networks such as the Internet, but buildings, places, everyday devices and our clothes. Gartner predict that by the end of 2007 alone, more than 30 million of the sensor network nodes that will help flesh out this new age will be shipped in the United States and the European Union.

Of course, it wasn't so long ago that computers seemed capable of little more than a game of Pong, batting a black and white image of a ball across the screen between two paddles, impressive as it may have been at the time. As a one-time owner of one of those original Magnavox Odyssey computers, "immersive environments" at that time meant a flimsy plastic overlay with a picture on it that you placed on a TV screen and which was held there (on a good day) using the static electricity generated by the CRT screen. Of course, in the background the reality was that the game of Pong carried on: it just looked more interesting when masked by a coloured screen overlay with dinosaurs or rabbits which you could then take shots at with a light gun. (NOTE: this blog does not condone in any way shooting or otherwise behaving in a negative way towards either ugly extinct scaly creatures or cute fluffy ones).

We are already seeing new ways of interacting with technology, be that through speech, handwriting or the move to much more immersive and engaging graphics. The first phase of the digital age was largely about replicating in the digital arena what we were familiar and comfortable with from the paper age and the age of typewriters. That is now changing rapidly and our ideas about where and how we interact with technology are going to change more profoundly over the coming years than at any time before.

Take a look at the world-leading work taking place here in the UK at the British Library for example with the second generation of its Turning the Pages. Using the latest presentation technologies, they have taken some of mankind's greatest cultural assets and made them available for interaction on the Internet: original works such as Mercator's Atlas or an original Mozart manuscript. From being resources that only a privileged few could access, they are now available for the whole of mankind to experience (or at least, the 1 billion or so estimated users of the Internet). And in ways that are nearly as good as being in front of the original.

Experiencing developments like the British Library's Turning the Pages on a touch screen provides some insight into where we are headed. The generation of surface based devices now emerging take us away from many of the concepts we've grown familiar with during the initial wave of computing such as icons, mice, cursors, buttons, scroll bars etc. These are replaced instead with far more intuitive, natural gestures. These devices are also more appliance-like in nature and support concepts such as multi-touch, rather than single touch. They also come in a variety of forms, from wall-mounted through to desktop-mounted.

These types of multi-touch screens are changing the way people are able to work with and manipulate digital information. They provide a more intuitive way of handling content than has been possible in the past and will finally begin the transition away from a reliance on paper (yes, many years after first predicted, perhaps, just perhaps, that paperless office - or less paper-intensive office - is finally on its way ....)

Many of these screens can interpret gesture and movement without actually needing the hands and fingers of the user to come into contact with the surface. The screens can interpret movements, scaling images, rotating them in full colour, motion-rich 3D. Take the example of two colleagues collaborating with each other, apparently face-to-face courtesy of a two-way interactive screen in front of them, with one of them standing on one side of the screen, one on the other. In reality, one of them is in Tokyo, the other in New York. But these rich, two-way interactive surfaces are able to provide an experience of working directly opposite your colleague, of interacting with them in the same way we would if they were physically with us in the room. But this raises questions such as who is real and who "virtual" and where the work really happens! After all, the only combined output exists neither in New York nor Tokyo but somewhere inbetween, in the digital realm.

Some of the most recent developments have seen multi-touch environments like this becoming commercially available. A device such as Microsoft Surface has been optimised to respond to 52 touches at a time. What's interesting is how such devices bridge the divide that we have traditionally assumed exists between the real and digital worlds:

"For example, when a diner sets down a wine glass, the table can automatically offer additional wine choices tailored to the dinner being eaten. The device also enables drag and drop digital media when wi-fi enabled devices are placed on its surface such as a mobile phones, or digital cameras. The technology allows non-digital objects to be used as input devices. In one example, a normal paint brush was used to create a digital painting in the software."

In the same way that the aeronautics and car industries have been revolutionised by the ability to use technology to develop synthetic environments that model the real world, 3D immersive, interactive environments will begin to change many other industries and sectors of the economy in terms of how products are designed and tested before they are ever constructed in the real world.

I would be surprised if they do not also begin to impact policymaking itself, since synthetic modelling need not be restricted solely to manufacturing or industrial environments. It can just as well be applied to service industries and "knowledge working". Think of an optimised "SimCity for Town Planners" for example, inbuilt with a modelling engine based on real world evidence and experiences of town planning that understands how complex decisions about roads, housing, schools, hospitals, leisure facilities, power stations and the like interact with each other and, most importantly, with people. Modelling in software, particularly public policy modelling, would be a great step towards a world where the real population did not need to feel like guinea pigs all the time!

One of the main areas where all of this technology will be brought together of course is in the area of independent living enabled by technology - "ambient assisted living" as it is known under the European Union's Framework Programme. The use of ambient technology will enable the elderly (as just one example) to continue living in their own homes as long as possible, living independently under their own control, with a higher quality of life rather than having to move into hospitals or other institutions. Through the use of devices such as bathroom scales, blood pressure monitors, blood glucose monitors and heart-rate monitors that update the patient and their GP automatically (eg. via wireless and broadband), and drugs that tell you when they're out of date (or if you've forgotten a dose), technology will empower the citizen in positive ways not possible in the past.

So too the very fabric of our roads and buildings will be enriched with digital devices, capable of identifying and assisting us. Of course, I'd be failing as a technologist if I didn't point out the obvious - that this technology could have profoundly toxic effects too if we don't think through its design properly. I'm sure there are many people who do not relish the thought of being identified and "interacted with" wherever they go. So the privacy of technological design is a topic that will continue to have great significance and one of the reasons why we need sound security/identity/privacy models before we progress much further, otherwise the mess we currently see on the Internet is only going to be compounded as Internet-driven devices become ever more ubiquitous and important to us.

So, to quote Bill Buxton again, if I were to encapsulate much of this in a soundbite, it is that we are moving into an age where "every loudspeaker is also a microphone". That is, genuinely two-way interactions of a much more intuitive, immersive nature are going to become the norm.

But this isn't just about the technology of course: it's as much about the way such technology impacts everything, from the way we live, learn, work and play through to the way in which policymaking will happen in the future. This is truly the heart of what we should mean by transformational government. As Alvin Toffler wrote in Rethinking the Future:

"The illiterate of the 21^st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn"

This concept of "unlearning" is probably the greatest challenge for us all. It is hard to set aside the way in which we currently do things and genuinely, constructively re-think and re-engineer them in new ways. There remain so many questions yet to be answered fully, amongst them:

• will social acceptance limit our ability to tap technology's full potential?
• does technology improve or disrupt social cohesion?
• how will concepts of liability and personal responsibility evolve?
• in an age when you can find answers in seconds using the Internet, is it not what you know but knowing where to find it and how to use (and verify) that information that counts, not rote learning?
• will we continue to be willing to trade our privacy for a free lunch in an all-immersive world?
• can citizens, organizations, policymakers and regulators keep up?

And if you think this is all some abstract future speculation and bears no relation to the problems you need to tackle today, you're wrong. The "real" world and the "virtual world" are already fused and all this is already beginning to happen. (Actually, "virtual" is entirely the wrong word: the digital domain is as real as anything in the physical world we know around us. Just ask anyone who's suffered from online identity or financial fraud).

You can see the evidence around you everywhere, from what is happening in research and early commercial adoption through to the arts and online environments like Second Life. The UK needs to ensure it understands these developments and plans accordingly: other countries certainly will.

New modalities and invisible technology will change the very nature of the role technology plays in our lives whether working, learning or playing. These technological developments need to be understood prior to the design of services, and prior to establishing public policy. So if you're wondering how best to plan for the future well, the best way to predict the future is of course to invent it yourself. That is, to be active participants rather than passive recipients, blown aimlessly in the digital wind.

Otherwise we all face the prospect of the UK designing for, and living in, the world that has just gone.

[this blog is a very abbreviated version of a Keynote I provided this week at WorkTech 07 at the British Library. With thanks to Microsoft Research and the Institute of Creative Technologies]

Technorati tags: Microsoft ubiquitous computing immersive environments new world of work Surface pervasive computing privacy policy technology