Just back from the Digital Futures expert group meeting in Brussel. A (wild) bunch of people met for two days to discuss trends, expectations, likelihood and desirability. As you can imagine plenty of disagreement but also a few common understandings.

Some of the experts had an economic background, some a technical one, others a social interest. The first day was dedicated to identify trends, not all of them but some that people, because of their background and interest, were interested in. This is a list of some of them, in no particular order:

- Search engines are personalized

- Life expectation is 120 years in most places on the Earth (less diversity in life expectation)

- Internet will connect and “contain” information, objects and people

- People will communicate using different means (and tools), no more cell phones

- Innovation gets more regulated and the pace decreases

- Robots are taking the upper hand. They are becoming co-workers, some jobs no longer exist because of them

- Health care is self managed

- Production of many items is at the point of sale, end of outsourcing, transportation is for bits and skill

- Individuals get more power than institutions (dynamic aggregation as response to specific needs)

- public values have changed significantly

- stem cells are used to replace whole organs

- immortality is granted for the digital existence with the emergence of virtual identity over physical identity, and regulations start to address digital euthanasia

Along with these trends other, on the dark side, have been voiced:

- Privacy is a nightmare

- the society is much more individualistic

- computers have not made people’s life better

- the digital divide has widened. The interface to the digital society is seamless for some and completely opaque for others

- economic based on cheap availability of energy is gone

- there has been an intensification of conflicts

- nature is spoiled, desertification has increased and people are fighting for insufficient resources.

More in coming posts.

The European Commission Information Society area is coordinating research on the future of Internet and more generally the future of our Society in relation to Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). From time to time it sets up forecasting studies to get the perception of possible horizons and hence discuss the direction to follow. Now it is starting a project, Digital Futures to:

(1) Create a paradigm change in policy making practices to be more proactive, agile and anticipatory

(2) Inspire future Commission’s strategic choices related to ICT and beyond

and the team of people clustered to work on this project has been given the question:

What do we imagine life in Europe to be like in 2050?  What are the digital futures we imagine will allow us to co-create relevant and adaptable policies for Europe – with citizens, member states, sectors, regions, Europe wide?

I am involved in this group, we will be having the first meeting this week and I’ll blog the ideas that will be popping up. A few are starting to circulate and are published on the web site as “Visionary Statements“. There is one on the possibility of having devices with embedded electronics and NO battery, able to scavenge the energy required from the environment, another envisaging the possibility of mastering the complexity of living systems, … and so on.

I will try to discuss each on them in future blogs, and you are welcome to comment thus participating in the overall discussion.

Here I am, in Cape Town, at an ITU Conference set up to follow last week UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban. There there were politicians, here are researchers discussing how to move towards a fully connected world. In this context they asked me to participate in the Julius Verne corner and present my view on telecommunications in 2061!

Well that is quite beyond what I am usually thinking. Nevertheless it is fun to respond to the challenge. In the next posts I will share with you a few ideas that I brought to the meeting. In this one I just want to share some background.

Can we imagine something as far away as 50 years from now? We have had for most part of our history as human being a basically stable situation. What was at a given  time it was most likely to be 50, 100 years after that. The year 1,050 was not that much different from year 1,000, nor year 1,550 from 1,500. Indeed the question of what will it be fifty years from “now” would have seem moot.

It is only in the last three-four centuries that change has picked up speed, and that has been fueled by technology (in turn supported by science and by the appreciation that evolution, “progress”, would increase wealth). Actually, stability was considered a great value and the main role of the leading class was to ensure stability; now change is considered a value and the leading class should promote continuous evolution.

Technology, I said, is a fueling force. And technology, in a broad sense, is predictable. It has been so for the last fifty years and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be so for the coming ones. True, new things have, unexpectedly, popped up, some predictions have been completely misplaced (remember in the 60ies as we landed on the Moon we envisaged personal flying machines to replace cars by 2000…. ). All considered, however, the basic technologies, like the chip, have evolved as predicted.

What we missed was what could be done with those chips, nobody predicted Internet…but again, the twists that eventually led to today’s Internet are not technological but market and society based.

As shown in the drawing, we can see technology evolution although the farther down the road the fuzzier it gets. Technology makes possible a full slate of changes but only some of them will actually take place. This creates ripples, an hilly landscape and we cannot see what’s behind a crest. These ripples are created by market and social forces and they affect the fabric of technology evolution. If the market “likes” a certain technology (its application to a given product/area) then it will fuel its evolution in that direction by providing money for applied research. This not only increase the evolution pace of that technology, it can also block the evolution of an alternative one, since funds are diverted from one to the other.

Hence trying to predict the future has to take into account both technology and basic human needs/pleasures or in other words culture, society and markets.

There are only two things I am pretty certain about 2061: I won’t be there and no-one is likely to notice. Well this, in a way, is disturbing and if it there were a possibility to turn upside down these certainties, surely I would like it.

It turns out that this might indeed be possible, and this involves communication as an enabler.

I am at a meeting with Nokia Siemens (NS) and the focus is on understanding how the future might look like.

NS pointed out that the dream of a single interface / device so powerful and flexible to be able to take care of any needs of any user is not going to happen. Rather, we are seeing a growth in variety of terminals and this is going to be a trend for the years to come.

Multiple screen environment is what industry and market demand are building. Devices will continue to be proposed meeting in principle all needs but in practice serving a specific need or environment.

This variety is going to fuel innovation and continuous increasing performance as each new one is going to set the bar for the existing ones.

On the customer side there will be a growing need to ensure portability over time from one device to the newer one, and also to move information across devices, benefitting from the specific capabilities of each.

The network will need to be flexible enough to accommodate any kind of request thus supporting any devices and this, paradoxically, makes the network more and more neutral and transparent.

However, a new opportunity space opens up in the creation of a virtual layer where information and services can become device/terminal independent.

In a Telecom 2020 foresight I happened to run onto on the Web, http://www.telecoms.com/17954/2020-vision-the-decade-ahead there is this interesting forecast made by Ovum:

Ovum foresees two types of operator in 2020. SMART players (for Services Management Applications Relationship and Technology) play at the very front of the industry, while LEAN players (Low-cost Enablers of Agnostic Networks) represent the evolution of what today might be called the ‘dumb pipe’ model. For mobile operators that have grown up as the dynamic and glamorous element of the telecoms industry, the LEAN proposition offers insufficient flattery to the ego, says Tony Cripps, a senior analyst at Ovum.

“In many instances this ego-led business planning probably doesn’t make sense,” says Cripps. “In general we think that the SMART proposition is a difficult one because it is based around competencies in software infrastructure and application development platforms that the operators don’t really have.

“You hear about initiatives that operators have that see them moving in this direction but there’s a sense that the companies that do this as a core competency are not just already there—they’ve already moved on to the next level,” he continues. “Typically, and it may not even take ten years, it’s going to be companies for whom software platforms are already a core competence that will be likely to dominate this space.”

The article goes on commenting on this Ovum foresight:

It is unlikely that Ovum’s view will dissuade mobile operators from pursuing their glorious dreams but the networks do remain essential to all players in the mobile value chain. Software platforms aren’t much use if applications can’t be delivered to end users. So what will network competition look like in 2020; will it even exist? After all, the suggestion has been made more than once that multiple carriers should be able to compete using brand and proposition on a single, shared network. As Mike Short, CTO at Telefónica O2 Europe puts it: “Network as the primary differentiator has already ceased to be the main story in town.”

I have to say, I have a slightly diffent view. I would bet that the Ovum prediction for 2020 is going to materialise sooner, that the comment to Ovum will be true for the next few years, let’s say till 2015 but then in the later pat of the decade we are going to see that a certain number of (successful) Operators will go at the same time to become LEAN and SMART but using different companies. The LEAN Operator part will result into an enterprise, probably backed up by Government although remaining private and independent, the SMART Operator part will likely consist of a cluster of enterprises creating seeds enabling ecosystems (and in this sense also backed up by Governments) and leading galaxies of small medium enterprises. There is a need for such seeds, in education, health care, logistics, transportation…

Apple did it with iTunes in the music and entertainment world but it is unlikely that a company like Apple can do that in the fields I mentioned. I see real opportunities for Operators in this area but to be addressed efficiently I feel that Operators will need to put on the table their competences in managing complexity, customers and relations keeping, though their network assets in the background. Trying to impose themselves as key players because they own the network may backfire, IMHO.

At the European Parliament there is a group of key politicians who served in various capacity at the local Governments throughout Europe. Their job is to leverage on their experience to propose actions for the European Parliament. It is called Reflection Group, http://www.reflectiongroup.eu/ .

I have been asked to speak at one of their meeting in Brussel on Thursday, November 19^th. The theme was Information and Communications technology implication in the 2020-2030 timeframe. I was there as a futurologist (that’s their definition of what I am doing), and in good company. With me were the Director of Google Europe and the Director of Research and Development of Telefonica Spain.

Presentations were quite in synch, although the three speakers was meeting there for the first time (I understand that was intended, with the goal of getting different perspectives). These the main “visions”:

a) basically unlimited bandwidth both fix and mobile, provided at a flat rate;

b) data available for free by a variety of sources. Information embedded in services and interactions (augmented reality is the normal way of presenting information);

c) privacy is a personal decision and follows from the complete control over data directly and indirectly created.

d) any physical object in part of the web, connected to the Internet in various way.

e) most innovation is created by small enterprises and individuals, all over the world. It is made viable to the market by few big overreaching organisations; infrastructures at Country level are crucial to make innovation reality in that Country.

Interesting the discussion. Among the things that I felt notable

-       the understanding of the lock in created by an emphases (strict regulation) on privacy and the agreement that Europe should change the approach by ensuring control, rather than blocking access to private information, but the political difficulty in changing direction and lowering, at least at perception level on the public audience, the attention on privacy;

-       the importance of education and specifically in the areas of creating an innovation attitude (and a conducing environment)and in entrepreneurship. It is clear that most educated people in the long term (20 years from now) will be in Asia and Latin America. Those, therefore, are the geographical areas that are likely to have the most innovative resources, but the challenge for Europe lies more in leveraging on these resources than in improving education locally (although this remains a fundamental issue).

-       Infrastructures are crucial, they will be pervasive and will provide capacity exceeding demands, but who is going to build them? What should be the role of the regulation in fostering the development of these infrastructures, should they be a private or joint public and private endeavour?

I have just finished reading an impressive article published on Popular Photography and based on the ideas of some of the most influent visionaries in the digital photography research. Professor Raskar, who I had the honor to meet in his laboratory at MIT, is probably the best known (and most mentioned) scientist when it comes to digital photography disruptive innovation.

According to the article (and to Professor Raskar’s ideas), in the next years an increasing significant role will be played by the computational photography and by the miniaturization of image recording devices, since the sensors will be probably embedded not only in mobile phones but in clothes and fabrics in general, making it possible to take a photo just moving a finger. The camera will disappear: it will be a part of our everyday objects.

3D pictures will become popular and easy to create. Actually, they are already available today: YouTube has recently start providing a 3D visualization option. The following video is a demonstration of this feature.

We will be available to change the light direction after (and not during) taking a photo in order to express our mood and obtain different result. We are going to completely change the way we take pictures and record videos.

Even if some of the predictions can sound little realistic, most of the work and the research of Camera Culture at MIT  will probably become true in the next 20 or 30 years. I do encourage you all to read this short story and to take a look at Computational Photography research here.

Few days ago, I run onto an interesting interview to Lee Dryburg, the founder of the Emerging Communications Conference, published on the Skype Journal:

http://skypejournal.com/2009/06/dryburgh-what-after-skype-intent.html

Even though one has to take into account that the “pro Skype” statements may result from the context where the interview took place, there remains several interesting points being made that, I am afraid, I resonate with.

“First you’ve got the telephony application itself. Because of the exceptional widespread deployment of the telephone, it’s century long cultural embedment, extreme ease of use and very low barriers to usage, it’s not going away in a big way, at any time least soon. It’s far too big and you’ve got far too much inertia in and around it. However because it’s substantial list of deficiencies grows, what we are seeing emerging and what will gain ever further traction is software based voice-enabled, communication technologies. Interestingly voice may not be the “substrate” of these clients, “relationships” will be, both between people and things.”

Software is going to be the basic infrastructure enabling communications. Clearly, physical transportation of bits is required but all processing is no longer part of the “wiring infrastructure”, it lays at the edges, in terminal and in data centres. Furthermore communications is not focussing on people only but on any combination of people and things.”

“Six years ago, the Skype software client was released. It was the harbinger of change to come. It called into question the need for very expensive dedicated underlying transport networks by pushing edge intelligence into the Codec layer to deal with less than ideal networks. It called into question the need for dedicated telecom hardware in the core network, by using the edge-clients to perform the work in a decentralised fashion. It called into question the inherent limited geographical structuring of telecom operators themselves; software does not face such physical and regulatory boundaries; distribution is relatively zero-cost; and worse still for the operator model, by it’s global footprint, it achieves unprecedented scale.”

I found this statement interesting because it moves the focus from “cheap communications” enabled by Skype to the issue of what is needed to enable communciations, sealing the fate of the switching and control points that have played a central role in telecommunication evolution. Skype, according to Lee, represents just the first tiny step. What’s next is more related to user behaviour and economic models than to technology. Again, there is no downplaying  the importance of technology, its continuous evolution is making the shift possible.  The point is that the importance moves from technology to its impact.

“Phase two is built around an economic model that puts human time and attention at a premium as opposed to dedicated circuits, specialist hardware and personnel. It’s the opposite of what we experience today with telephony, where human time and attention is wasted; ringing, call queues, voice mail boxes, IVR trees, repetitious verbal transfer of static information such as credit card numbers, call transfers and such like. And that’s just a quick C2B example. C2C has similar lunacy, for example needing to place a telephone call to request a single piece of discrete information or the other person’s location. The economic crisis experienced worldwide is likely to highlight such sources of great inefficiency. Here is another angle to get you thinking, more and more calls originate from a number noted on a Website and yet when the call is placed, no information is passed with the call about what the context of the call. It’s lost, so each end has to orally work more at the beginning that would otherwise be necessary. Billions of minutes are needlessly wasted on a every day globally.”

“Phase two is about intention-based economics. It’s focused on fulfilling intentions and desires. Another way of putting it is we no longer need to care about network availability (i.e. “dial tone”), and reaching an endpoint (i.e. A telephone). Network availability and endpoint reachability is assumed. What we care about with intention based economics is human psychology and behavour, both individual and in aggregate. I’m not saying we need to become psychologists and anthropologists. But what we need to build for is access to ever more personal information, i.e. about the human behind the endpoint. Privacy does not exist looking long-term. Ever more personal information is the new currency, which underlies intention-based economics, and people will increasingly trade it for free access to services.”

These concepts of personalization and use of our own information, with a sort of trading between privacy and convenience/service are interesting. They are our motivation at the Future Centre to study issues created by our Digital Life. Let me close this blog by inviting you to read the full interview and come up with your comments. I wish to close with the last statement Lee made in his interview:

“You’re probably wondering what phase two looks like from the point of view of applications? This is where things get very abstract and potentially the prose could get long-winded. But this is not to be unexpected since the foundation is in the abstract with the word “intention.” To try and get a flavour of the phase two application direction, imagine for a start that the demarcation lines between content, information access, entertainment, ecommerce unravel ever further and the result is intrinsically tied to an ever smarter fusion of increasing communication modalities. Now underpin that attention and intention based economics. Now dream a little”.